newrepublic--2020-09-08--The Anti-Democratic Origins of Voter Prediction

I ’ m always a bit relieved when a tech company ’ s algorithm seems to fall short of mind reading .
It ’ s somewhat reassuring when a so-called smart ad displays hideous shoes I would never buy just because I once bought a different pair from the same brand , or when Facebook suggests I befriend a good friend ’ s ex , having determined that he ’ s in my extended orbit , but lacking the sophistication to comprehend that I dislike him .
In an age of unchecked data harvesting , in which corporations have free @ @ @ @ @ @ @ history and personal information—not to mention , in some cases , your movements , thumbprint , face , and DNA—there ’ s a certain comfort in seeing where the machine still hasn ’ t quite mastered the quirks and nuances of human thought .
That sense of comfort , though , is almost certainly illusory .
Tech companies ’ surveillance and rampant data collection practices don ’ t need to replicate the exact intricacies of a person ’ s brain in order to invade the privacy of billions of people .
There ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quietly yet meticulously collects data on users ’ searches , locations , and video-watching habits , and has even partnered with a private health care chain to obtain the medical information of millions of people .
Then there ’ s also Facebook , which stores information on the pages its users have clicked on , the people they ’ ve searched for , and their ethnicities .
These tech giants ’ primary use of all this personal data so far seems to be to sell ads .
But 2016 ’ s Cambridge Analytica @ @ @ @ @ @ @ troves of information could be marshaled in an attempt to influence a national election , or change the course of democracy .
Though such predations may look like a uniquely twenty-first–century problem , Jill Lepore ’ s new book , If Then , demonstrates that this technological dystopia has been in the making since at least the Cold War era .
Lepore traces the birth of one strain of predictive technology through the rise and fall of the mysterious Simulmatics Corporation , an advertising and political consulting company that produced a “ People @ @ @ @ @ @ @ designed to profile and predict the behavior of voters .
Among other ventures , Simulmatics consulted on John F. Kennedy ’ s 1960 campaign and ( it claimed ) helped him win , in part by persuading him not to attempt to obscure or downplay his Catholicism and to take a stronger stance in support of the burgeoning civil rights movement .
Though the company was eventually shuttered and forgotten , it was also , Lepore writes , a shadowy and indirect participant in some of the most significant events of the decade @ @ @ @ @ @ @ civil rights movement , and the construction of Lyndon Johnson ’ s Great Society .
Compared to today ’ s still-imperfect algorithms , Simulmatics ’ People Machine was rudimentary and very often either missed the mark or produced rather commonsense results .
And the company itself , though staffed by several brilliant minds , was at least as much the product of savvy hype and its founder ’ s well-placed connections as it was of groundbreaking technological innovation .
What Lepore ’ s rich account unearths is the impetus behind the project , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drive psychographic microtargeting efforts today : For the stratum of professionals who developed voter prediction , politics was primarily a code to be cracked , rather than a means to a better life , let alone a matter of survival .
The men who ran Simulmatics were archetypal Cold War liberals—committed , in a sense , to an idea of human progress and the prospect of a brighter world—but also completely in the thrall of the idea of engineering and controlling that world themselves .
The Simulmatics Corporation , which was in business @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by Madison Avenue advertising executive and man-about-town Ed Greenfield .
The company ’ s name , which now has the retro-futuristic feel of something out of The Jetsons ( a show that first aired , as it happens , around the same time that Simulmatics was at its height ) , was a portmanteau of “ simulation ” and “ automatic.
” Greenfield hoped it would become a household phrase .
“ Instead , ‘ artificial intelligence ’ became that catchphrase , ” Lepore writes .
“ Still , ‘ artificial intelligence ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by ‘ simulmatics .
’ ”

Greenfield, a lifelong Democrat with an interest in civil rights, defeating communism, and presidential politics, had been stung by the loss of the Democratic Party candidate Adlai Stevenson to Dwight D. Eisenhower in the presidential election of 1952. That same year, he had also watched CBS unveil a massive computer on election night that tallied returns more quickly than ever before, and accurately forecast Eisenhower’s win. Convinced that such a tool could be harnessed for Democrats, Greenfield assembled a handpicked team of leading behavioral scientists over the next few years. They ultimately constructed what Greenfield called the People Machine, a computer program that analyzed voter data in order to predict election outcomes. The program they sought to create, according to Lepore, was “not, at an elementary level, different from what Cambridge Analytica sold as its services to the Trump and the Brexit ‘Leave’ campaigns in 2015 and 2016.” In the spring of 1959, Simulmatics fed 100,000 voter surveys from Gallup and Roper into the People Machine to create 480 discrete voter profiles—“Midwestern, rural, Protestant, lower income, female” was one example of a voter type—that could then be matched to election returns from past years, and used to make predictions about those voters’ future behavior.
It’s not entirely clear how well the technology ever worked. For example, an analysis produced by the machine suggested that Kennedy could appeal to black and Jewish voters by condemning the anti-Catholic prejudice he himself faced. He did so, and went on to win those groups. But, as Lepore observes, many of the recommendations that Simulmatics gave the Kennedy campaign largely echoed what was “fairly commonplace political wisdom among his close circle of advisers.” The machine was birthed during the height of America’s struggle for global ascendancy, amid a surge of interest from the political class in quantitative analysis. As Lepore notes, the primary preoccupation of social scientists in the United States during the Cold War era was, in essence, “How do voters in a democracy form their opinions? And how can the influence of communism be stopped?” A company like Simulmatics was perfectly positioned to take off—particularly with Greenfield’s personal connections—regardless of whether it truly delivered what it promised. (Or as Lepore puts it, “There’s a lot of puffery and nonsense in the archival trail left behind by flimflam men.”)
As a result, If Then is somewhat less about the People Machine than it is about the people who built the machine, who were all, in various ways, elites (if not outright masters of the universe) of their time. In fact, the Simulmatics Corporation itself doesn’t make its first real appearance in Lepore’s book until about 100 pages in, after a lively guided tour through the cast of characters that would come together to helm the company. Greenfield, the main force behind the company, was an outgoing, well-connected public relations mastermind who “collected people,” Lepore writes, “the way other men collect comic books or old stamps or vintage cars.” That particular talent led him to rub elbows with the academics, programmers, and politicians who would become enmeshed with Simulmatics. Greenfield recruited Eugene Burdick, a surfer, a political scientist, and the novelist who would go on to write The Ugly American as well as a popular, thinly veiled novel about Simulmatics called The 480 (a reference to the People Machine’s 480 voter types). There was Ithiel de Sola Pool, a onetime communist turned patriotic behavioral scientist who would involve Simulmatics in the Vietnam War and help found MIT’s political science department. And there was Bill McPhee, a moody, occasionally violent alcoholic who would come up with part of the design for the People Machine from the confines of a mental institution.


newrepublic--2020-09-08--The Monsoon Season That Drowned Chennai, India

In 2015 , the winter monsoon season brought torrential rains to Chennai , in southern India .
Unprecedented floods followed , and some parts of the city of 6 million residents experienced floodwaters as high as 8 feet .
About 130,000 people were evacuated to relief shelters ; 347 people died , as well as 3,889 cattle meant to provide sustenance .
The government warning came too late for many Chennai residents .
The heaviest recorded rains in more than a century had overwhelmed the dam .
Photographer and artist Anjali Ponni Rajkumar was at home with her family in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ began .
She left immediately to help other residents .
“ It took everybody by surprise , ” said 42-year-old Rajkumar , who runs her grandfather ’ s photo emporium and specializes in wedding photography .
“ The warning didn ’ t prepare us by any means .
First , officials didn ’ t anticipate the extent of these rains and were forced to open the floodgates of some of the city ’ s 30 waterways .
One close to me overflooded , and some of the poor residents along the riverbanks swam @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t live in houses , but in huts , so they couldn ’ t seek safety anywhere else.
” Some affluent areas in the city were affected , too .
“ There , people did much better because they sought safety on higher floors or on the rooftops on their houses , and rescue boats were able to pick them up , and they checked into hotels , ” Rajkumar said .

She volunteered at the nearby Egmore Children’s Hospital, delivering blankets and clean clothes to survivors. “I had to walk in some water,” she said. “The hospital didn’t flood, even though it was surrounded by floodwaters. I also picked up emergency supplies for the hospital that were delivered to other parts of the town. I volunteered at the hospital for about one week. In the meantime, the slum dwellers were evacuated to nearby colleges.”
Devastated communities didn’t always welcome the help. “There was a lot of anger,” Rajkumar said. “My friends brought pizzas for the dwellers, and they said: ‘What is this? We don’t want any pizzas.’ It got rowdy, and they threw the pizzas back to them. There was and still is a lot of resentment because of the division of people into those who have and those who don’t.”
Rajkumar believes the reason for the divide is governmental corruption. “The government doesn’t really look after our people,” she said. “They allocate money to many things, but it doesn’t get delivered. It’s more about themselves: ‘How can I fill my pockets?’”


newrepublic--2020-09-08--Trumpian Politics Is the Greatest Threat to a Coronavirus Vaccine

Donald Trump has figured out the One Weird Trick to winning the 2020 election : a working vaccine , announced just in time for the election and teased throughout the campaign .
Having failed to control the pandemic , institute an adequate testing regime , provide enough economic support to keep people home , or save the lives of vulnerable Americans in places like nursing homes , he believes he has hit upon the infinite health cheat code , allowing him to shake off all those catastrophic errors and live to fight another day—or if you prefer , another presidential @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
There is only a very , very small chance that a vaccine will actually be ready—that is , proven to be safe and effective—before November .
At the moment , this doesn ’ t seem to trouble the president .
Trump is pushing ahead , teasing the possibility that a vaccine will be available before “ a very special date , ” like it ’ s the Christmas episode of a TV show .
We are thus left to wait and see what happens if the evidence of a safe and effective @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of October as promised—if the chief scientists and advisers in his administration are faced with the impossible task of convincing the president that he can not do the insane , dangerous , and entirely selfish thing that he wants to do , which would be to pressure the Food and Drug Administration to issue an emergency use authorization , or EUA , for an unproven vaccine .
The threat is apparently so great that a group of nine pharmaceutical companies developing vaccine candidates have issued a statement promising not to submit their drugs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have concluded .
It ’ s not every day that there ’ s cause to laud Big Pharma for being comparatively humane and responsible , but it ’ s just one more way in which everything gets warped and distorted in the funhouse mirror of Trumpian politics .
There are , however , some particular dangers at seeing the prospect of a vaccine so reflected : If Trump says a vaccine will be ready by November , his supporters will likely absorb that as gospel .
At the same time , his opponents @ @ @ @ @ @ @ news that might come regarding a vaccine , unable to believe that it actually works—even if it does .
This is a terrible and dangerous dynamic , one we ’ ve already seen play out during this pandemic both with Trump ’ s hydroxychloroquine craze and , to a lesser extent , with plasma treatments .
News of legitimate scientific advancements gets swirled together with Trump ’ s pseudoscientific pronouncements , leaving a polarized public no further path forward .
Each new bit of snake oil promoted from the president ’ s pulpit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ flimsy hope to scared patients , but a piece of revelation that people of certain political stripes must accept—another thing for red-faced guys holding fish in their Twitter avatars to yell at people about online .
As soon as Trump became wedded to the prospect of having a vaccine available by Election Day , it became impossible to imagine how he would row back those promises if the vaccine doesn ’ t pan out by that convenient date .
And the more the media criticizes his pronouncements as dangerous , the more important @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that he ’ s right .
Perhaps predictably , Trump is pushing the notion that Joe Biden has revealed himself as the anti-vaxxer in the race for criticizing the push to get a vaccine out before the election .
Insisting that a vaccine should not be pushed on the public without first taking all the necessary steps to ensure its safety and efficacy is now the anti-science position , according to Republicans .
On Labor Day , Trump attacked Biden ’ s “ reckless anti-vaccine rhetoric , ” which he claimed “ undermines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tweeted a truly horrible Funny Internet Video , complete with references to eight-year-old memes , a semi-ironic deployment of the eagle-and-flag imagery , and what sounds like an H. Jon Benjamin impersonator , to explain how a vaccine could be made fast—and why Biden is wrong to say “ no miracle is coming.
” There is , however , a world of difference between saying that a vaccine can be produced much more quickly than usual and insisting that it could be safely approved before the election .
One is a hopeful possibility @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mary .

So what stands between us and the prospect of Trump ordering up tens of millions of vials of useless or dangerous vaccines for political purposes? We have career bureaucrats at the FDA who assure The Washington Post that they both “take this responsibility very seriously and … understand what’s at stake” and grasp the importance of the FDA’s office of vaccines remaining a neutral and trusted institution in the eyes of the public. “Without a clear blessing from this office, I don’t think Americans would be willing to be vaccinated,” says one former administration official. It nevertheless feels naïve at best to imagine that the vast majority of Republicans would trust the FDA over their Dear Leader. Frankly, it seems more likely that a good chunk of them would let Trump personally inject their grandchildren with Trump-branded bleach than side with the FDA on the need for scientific rigor.
Moncef Slaoui, the chief scientific adviser to Operation Warp Speed—the Health and Human Services Department’s vaccine initiative—and FDA Commissioner Scott Hahn have made repeated public reaffirmations that approval for a vaccine would be entirely dependent on whether it worked and similar assurances that they are free from political interference from the president. Slaoui told Science that “there has been absolutely no interference,” and that he would resign if there were; “there will be no EUA filed if it’s not right,” he claimed. In comments that were seized on by the Trump campaign as evidence that the president is correct to claim a vaccine will arrive by November, Resistance hero Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN last week that he “would not hesitate for a moment to take the vaccine.” What the Trump campaign left off was the caveat that Fauci would take that vaccine only if it’s “safe and effective.” Luckily for us, Fauci is “pretty sure it’s going to be the case that a vaccine would not be approved for the American public unless it was indeed both safe and effective.” Well, as long as you’re pretty sure!
In a similarly depressing vein, Fauci—who recently awoke from a surgical procedure to discover that a slew of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Covid-19 testing guidelines had been changed while he was under anesthetic—recently told The Washington Post that if an EUA was granted for a vaccine before it was clear whether it was safe and effective, he would be “disappointed.” This does not instill much confidence. Wouldn’t it be a bit beyond disappointment if the president pushed his FDA to approve a vaccine that might not work or, worse, was dangerous? Wouldn’t that be more like “a massive disaster?”


newrepublic--2020-09-08--Donald Trump Is the Military-Industrial Complex

Everybody knows Donald Trump is an opportunistic , lying asshole .
Hell , that was his defenders ’ main point this weekend , when they tried vainly to save the president from Jeffrey Goldberg ’ s September 3 article in The Atlantic , in which multiple former U.S. officials and senior military officers revealed—anonymously—that Trump in private is the same as Trump in public : a narcissistic twit who lacks a tenth-grader ’ s understanding of American combat history and thinks the nation ’ s war dead are “ losers ” and “ suckers.
” Trump , one senior White @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ means no disrespect to our troops ; it ’ s just that the way he speaks , he can sound like an asshole sometimes.
” Sometimes !
On Labor Day , however , Trump held a press conference and funneled his Big Asshole Energy into a different demagogic faux-populist defense .
Those retired military officers hate him , the wealth-inheriting tycoon said , because they ’ re deep-state war profiteers .
“ They want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stay happy , ” said the man who has increased U.S. bombing in Afghanistan by 800 percent over his presidential predecessor , dropping more bombs on the nation in 2019 than in any year since the military began keeping those records in 2006 .
“ Some people don ’ t like to come home , some people like to continue to spend money , ” said the man who vowed in late 2017 to “ once and for all , stop the endless budget cuts to our military ” and has bragged about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ every year of his presidency , a runaway spree that even honest conservative think tanks call “ crazy.
” But America ’ s expensive wars , Trump claimed on Labor Day , were not his fault .
Responsibility for them went to the generals and to another shadowy group : “ One cold-hearted globalist betrayal after another , that ’ s what it was.
” It should be lost on no one that Trump made sure to deploy the “ globalist ” slur—with its echoes of past anti-Semitic conspiracy plots—to push back on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He may be a globalist , ” Trump once said of Gary Cohn , his outgoing Jewish economic adviser , “ but I still like him.
” ) By Monday evening , Trump was on Twitter , retweeting self-identified anti-imperialist and longtime horseshoe-theory vindicator Glenn Greenwald , who compared Trump ’ s blather to Dwight Eisenhower ’ s famous warning to the American people about the “ military-industrial complex ” :

Everybody knows Donald Trump is an opportunistic, lying asshole. Hell, that was his defenders’ main point this weekend, when they tried vainly to save the president from Jeffrey Goldberg’s September 3 article in The Atlantic, in which multiple former U.S. officials and senior military officers revealed—anonymously—that Trump in private is the same as Trump in public: a narcissistic twit who lacks a tenth-grader’s understanding of American combat history and thinks the nation’s war dead are “losers” and “suckers.” Trump, one senior White House official told The Daily Beast, “means no disrespect to our troops; it’s just that the way he speaks, he can sound like an asshole sometimes.” Sometimes!
On Labor Day, however, Trump held a press conference and funneled his Big Asshole Energy into a different demagogic faux-populist defense. Those retired military officers hate him, the wealth-inheriting tycoon said, because they’re deep-state war profiteers. “They want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy,” said the man who has increased U.S. bombing in Afghanistan by 800 percent over his presidential predecessor, dropping more bombs on the nation in 2019 than in any year since the military began keeping those records in 2006.


newrepublic--2020-09-09--The Instant Nostalgia of the Televised Campaign

“ What are we hearing , my friend ?
” asks Fox News host Neil Cavuto .
He is speaking from a bright Fox studio .
On the other side of the split screen is Peter Doocy , a Fox reporter , live from Rehoboth Beach , Delaware .
Doocy is wearing a very bright , almost reflective striped shirt , as if he fears venturing too far from Fox headquarters without the protective armor of Fox ’ s extraordinary , garish palate of kindergarten colors .
He is reporting on Joe Biden ’ s decision to name a running @ @ @ @ @ @ @ replies , “ this is a video that you are only going to see on the Fox News channel.
” In an age of digital reproduction , when every bit of text and image is instantly snipped , posted , retweeted , and commented upon thousands of times , the media ’ s persistent devotion to the idea of the scoop , the exclusive , is a charming anachronism .
After a few befuddling bits of footage of the former vice president walking around in a mask and saying something about jobs , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Biden clicks toward the camera on a bike as Doocy calls , “ Mr .
Vice President , have you picked a running mate yet ?
” “ Yeah , I have , ” Biden calls back .
“ Who is it ?
” Doocy asks , as a second unidentifiable voice from out of shot does the same .
Biden , coming right into the frame as he wheels past , turns and looks at the camera , his aviators pointing directly at you , me , televisionland , and he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ directly : “ You.
” By now , gallons of ink , in publications from Vice to Vox , have been wasted on pieces that describe Trump as our “ reality TV ” president , to treat his singular love of the medium , and its unquenchable thirst for him , as a definitive break from the past , when presidents were on , but not of , television .
As is so often the case with Trump , this argument both exaggerates his importance while underestimating the forces and tendencies that he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the power of The Apprentice created the necessary conditions for him to win the election , then it is also true that the whole setup of his reality empire derived from American political culture , from the quadrennial contest that puts presidential wannabes through a series of preposterous challenges and made-for-the-screen arguments , until at last only one remains .
It would be easy to let the idea that presidential politics is nothing more than gaudy , bread-and-circus entertainment harden into a schema that obscures as much as it illuminates .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which this election may be unique in American history : It will be conducted almost exclusively on TV .
The coronavirus has put a stop to door knocking , pancake breakfasts , speeches to thousands of cheering fans .
Trump tried to hold one rally , which was ridiculed for low attendance and made infamous for the unmasked appearance of Herman Cain , who later died of Covid-19 .
His second , an evening screed before Mount Rushmore , was only slightly better attended .
Biden , meanwhile , spent the first few @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hits from his basement .
His campaign has knocked on zero doors in recent weeks , and while he has himself been more visible of late , these appearances have an unmistakable air of theater .

To some extent, this has happened before. Nixon jealously guarded his screen image as president. Reagan, who had begun to show signs of decline by 1984, also ran a carefully controlled campaign for reelection. (He famously hired Hal Riney, a lifelong adman, who made both the “Morning in America” ad and the truly strange, almost psychedelic “Bear in the Woods” spot.) And yet there was still some sense, in those campaigns and in those presidencies, that something was happening out in the real world, and that TV was only covering it. Now the opposite feels true; it’s a TV show about a TV show, TV shows all the way down.
The campaigns have responded to the conditions of full TV immersion in various and variously effective ways. Trump has given several long interviews, one to Fox’s Chris Wallace and another, shot, astonishingly, in the jittery, handheld style of an Armando Iannucci comedy, to Axios’s Jonathan Swan. Such interviews may be the terminal metastasis of televisual culture: a host body being consumed by its own cells and organs. In another time, I would have described the Axios interview as “disastrous.” Was it, though? Like an old sitcom, everything resets after the credits roll, and next week the characters are all exactly the same.
Biden has had several fairly disastrous interviews of his own, at one point telling a Black interviewer, Charlamagne tha God, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black,” at others trailing off before muttering, “I shouldn’t say that.” In an effort to sharpen his image, a group of Never Trump Republican consultants and admen have formed the Lincoln Project, which makes the sort of sharp-nosed ads about Trump that used to be the province of, well, Republican consultants and admen. These ads have a general Swift Boat Veterans for Truth sensibility about them, adopting the Roger Ailes adage of attacking your enemy for his perceived strengths. They are not bad as ads go, certainly better than the mush-mouthed palaver that Democrats usually serve up, but are they good? Will they work? Though they appeal to the desire to knock Trump down a peg, they evince precisely the gauzy nostalgia for a lost, better America that got Trump elected.


newrepublic--2020-09-09--Hari Kunzru’s Reckoning With the Far Right

Hari Kunzru ’ s Red Pill is a ghost story .
It ’ s different , though , from Kunzru ’ s previous book , 2017 ’ s White Tears , a parable of race in America with a ( genuinely frightening ) supernatural dimension .
I mean more that the author ’ s new novel is haunted—as every cultural product of our time seems destined to be—by the specter of Donald Trump .
While Red Pill isn ’ t overly preoccupied with his persona ( it concludes on the night he wins the 2016 election ) , it aims @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to him .
It ’ s historical fiction , grappling with the past to illuminate the present .
Red Pill ’ s nameless narrator is , like Kunzru , a writer of Indian descent who lives in Brooklyn with his family but travels to Germany for a prestigious fellowship .
( The novel ’ s Deuter Center for Social and Cultural Research feels like the American Academy in Berlin , where Kunzru was a fellow in 2016 , dressed up for fiction . )
Success has made the protagonist complacent , and he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ idea for a new book , on “ the construction of the self in lyric poetry.
” Portents hang over the novel ’ s early pages .
“ Our very happiness made me uneasy , ” he says of his wife and their daughter , and it ’ s clear that more unease lies ahead .
He stays up at night , “ worrying about money and climate change and Macedonian border guards.
” Arriving at the Deuter Center , the narrator explains that the fortune endowing his intellectual labor was garnered by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world whiter .
On his first morning at the center , he meets a helpful local , who informs him that one of the neighboring buildings , hidden among the trees , was the venue of the Wannsee Conference : I nodded and said I had heard of it , but he felt the need to complete his explanation .
“ Where the final solution to the Jewish Question was planned in 1942.
” Politely I looked in the direction he indicated .
The house was too far away to see clearly .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ His European sojourn brings him into contact with those who believe they have found it : that they can see through the pall of history , through liberal propriety , to the world as it is .
The book ’ s title is a reference to a scene in the 1999 film The Matrix , in which ingesting a red pill liberates the hero from the trap of a simulated world .
The red pill is a potent image for our meme age , used to describe an awakening .
For the libertarian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the cult adherent , the men ’ s rights activist , the self-styled iconoclast , it ’ s a turn away from society and its norms .
In The Matrix and in dark corners of the internet , this might look like truth ; in wider parlance , the red pill is less about revelation than radicalization .
Will this narrator swallow this metaphorical pill , and what will he see if he does ?

“Greg’s another crusader. He’s from LA, like me, so we essentially grew up knee-deep in Jews, but we both have a feeling for our heritage. And here’s another thing. My friends have an aversion to being told what to do. To having things forced on them. Karl doesn’t like his culture being polluted by immigrants. Tara doesn’t want to have to worry about rape. Greg just doesn’t like spicy food. The question is do Greg and Anton and Tara have a right to their preference?”
When the narrator dismisses this “just asking questions” routine, Anton indicts his umbrage as hypocrisy:
“Your weakness,” he added, turning back to me, “is that you’re always surrounded by people who think just like you. When you meet someone who your silly shame tactics doesn’t work on, you don’t know how to act. I’m a racist because I want to be with my own kind and you’re a saint because you have a sentimental wish to help other people far away, nice abstract refugees who save you from having to commit to anybody or anything real.”
He knows that reality is rooted in objective fact and that Anton’s red pill world is a vicious illusion. And yet he can’t say why he is so captivated by it.
I understood this scene as the novel’s red pill moment. Not because it ends with the narrator persuaded by Anton’s vision of the world. Indeed, this conversation builds the narrator’s resolve to reject those politics thoroughly. But it’s the moment of epiphany, the narrator comprehending the limits of his vague liberalism, understanding that there are others who not only reject his worldview but see another reality altogether. He knows that reality, while there are many perspectives on it, is rooted in objective fact, that the sci-fi mumbo jumbo of The Matrix does not translate to our politics, and that Anton’s red pill world is a vicious illusion. And yet he can’t say why he is so captivated by it.
From this point, Red Pill wanders, rather like a prestige television show after a bravura first season. Anton recedes, less a character than an animating force, his condemnation of the narrator made into prophecy. Stung by Anton’s words, the narrator enacts them. First, in a well-intentioned but absurd turn, he tries to intervene in the life of a refugee he spies on the streets of Berlin. This echoes his earlier attempts to forge a connection with Monika, a woman who works as a maid at the Deuter Center. A chunk of the novel is given over to Monika’s memories of life in the former East Berlin, where she was a punk and radical, then a collaborator with the national security services. It’s a digression and feels too pointed—the state brutalizing its citizens for no particular reason—and too long, like a multi-episode arc on a television show focused entirely on some guest star.


newrepublic--2020-09-09--Trump’s Fire Sale of Public Lands for Oil and Gas Drillers

On Tuesday , the Bureau of Land Management auctioned off oil and gas leases to 11 parcels of land totaling around 15,000 acres in Nevada .
It ’ s the latest event in a troubling trend in the Trump administration : Much as the Environmental Protection Agency has been in a mad dash to peel back environmental regulations in the lead-up to November ’ s election , the Department of Interior now seems to be embarking on a fire sale of public lands to oil and gas drillers in advance of a potential Democratic administration .
Cheap leases are some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ furnishes to fossil fuel producers .
The Trump administration in recent months has been especially eager to accelerate drilling by offering up federal land to fossil fuel companies at a bargain .
But like much of the so-called relief Republicans have offered the struggling fossil fuel industry , this basically comes down to making drilling easier—and drilling more won ’ t help the oil industry right now , given the way supply is outstripping demand .
After a temporary rally through mid and late summer , oil prices dropped sharply on Tuesday owing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s ensuing decision to slash prices .
Brent crude dipped to less than $ 40 per barrel for the first time since June , well below the price needed for most unconventional drilling to be profitable .
Six more lease sales are planned for the rest of September , spanning several Western states and fuel reserves there isn ’ t currently much of an appetite for .
The lease sales are clearly bad for the planet , local ecosystems , and also Native nations who often aren ’ t adequately consulted on such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they ’ re a risky bet .
Some experts predict that , even with an economic recovery in the coming months , oil demand will soon start to drop off permanently .
With bankruptcies among smaller firms mounting , big multinational fossil fuel producers have been selling off and writing down their investments in North America , where the high-cost , unconventional drilling that fueled the shale boom was failing to turn a profit well before the country ’ s first reported cases of Covid-19 .
A sale of New Mexico leases late @ @ @ @ @ @ @ averaging just $ 169 per acre , compared to the $ 1,386 per acre the state brought in through a sale before the pandemic took hold in February .
Results of yesterday ’ s sale will be released on EnergyNet just over a week from today .
This is not a temporary problem , nor is it confined to lease sales .
While the state-owned producers in OPEC can turn taps on and off in response to changing economic and political conditions , the U.S. has exercised no such authority since the 1970s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with major oil companies to control world oil prices .
As a result , it ’ s mostly lost its ability to shape global energy markets .
With the U.S. now unwilling to curb domestic production—indeed , with a White House hell-bent on boosting it—the country ’ s producers are now effectively at the mercy of other big fossil fuel exporters , namely Saudi Arabia .
A Biden administration wouldn ’ t necessarily reverse these trends .
Though Republicans have spent the last few months fear-mongering that a Biden administration would abolish fossil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pretty light touch when it comes to polluting industries .
On the campaign trail , Biden himself has reiterated in recent weeks that he wouldn ’ t put an end to fracking , pledging instead to halt only new drilling on federal lands .
That means that the leases the Trump administration intends to sell off before November could be fully developed even if the White House changes hands .

In evaluating the climate agenda of a potential Biden administration, Rystad Energy analysts note that a “potential fracking ban on federal acreage would hardly have any impact on nationwide oil and gas output in the medium term,” due to existing drill sites and companies’ ability to move production elsewhere. Still, drilling companies are attempting to head off the modest effects of new bans under a Democratic administration by snapping up heavily subsidized federal permits. The country’s biggest oil and gas producers, Rystad found—including ExxonMobil, Devon Energy, and Occidental Petroleum—have dramatically upped the percentage of their drilling on federal lands in the last two years, casting any caution about the profitability of shale production to the wind. The American Petroleum Institute perversely continues to insist that opening up more lands to drilling is crucial to restoring U.S. jobs and energy security.
There’s another downside to these sales: With the federal government now practically giving away land for oil and gas drilling, oil-producing states that levy taxes on leasing and drilling that happens on state and private lands may stand to lose important revenue streams at a time when public budgets are already under serious stress. That’s led even conservative-leaning taxpayer advocacy groups to join environmentalists in opposing the administration’s sell-off push, also fearing potential damage to Western states’ tourism economies if protected areas are opened up for extraction. Montana Senator Jon Tester—hardly a climate hawk—introduced a bill this summer called the Leasing Market Efficiency Act, which would subject federal auctions to market pressures that Trump’s Department of the Interior seems keen to avoid.
Controversy over the Trump administration’s public lands approach has led to novel alliances that have already claimed at least one victory. Last month, the White House withdrew its bid for acting BLM Director William “Perry” Pendly—a fierce advocate of public lands privatization—to officially head the bureau. For now, he’s still nominally in charge. But putting him officially at the helm of the BLM was deemed too much of a liability in the party’s attempts to reelect Republican Senators Cory Gardener and Steve Daines, who are facing Democratic challengers in Colorado and Montana, respectively. And given that even some generally pro-leasing officials opposed one of the more recent sales in Utah, it’s possible the past four years of BLM-sponsored plunder may hurt Republicans in other states as well. Showering fossil fuel executives with giveaways may not be such a great political strategy after all.


newrepublic--2020-09-09--The Incredibly Obvious Way to Win Elections and Weather the Recession

Last week , seizing upon a slightly better-than-expected jobs report as proof of an economic recovery underway , Republicans once again pushed a stimulus deal to the back burner .
States , whose budgets have been hollowed out by the pandemic , are now inching that much closer to fiscal collapse .
As The New York Times reported on Monday , state and local governments have been forced to cut funding for public programs , schools , and cultural institutions .
Without significant federal aid , those revenue shortfalls and pared-back services are likely to spell prolonged economic hardship for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ continues to rise and millions remain out of work .
This is a crisis but not an unsolvable one .
In fact , the solutions are so obvious in some cases that they can seem almost stupid .
Like staving off an eviction crisis in a time of mass unemployment by canceling rent or taxing wealth-hoarding millionaires and billionaires to fill state-level budget gaps instead of killing composting programs or cutting education spending .
The kind of policy that , when said aloud , makes you think : Well yeah , no duh @ @ @ @ @ @ @ take away from Bernie Sanders ’ s two presidential campaigns or the rise of lawmakers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar , it ’ s that Democrats are at their best—and also most politically popular—when they leave behind their smartest-person-in-the-room wonkishness and fight for simple solutions that help the most people .
And it ’ s precisely that kind of obvious policy that will help protect millions of people from economic collapse in our pandemic recession .
In New York , which is now facing a budget shortfall of about $ 14 billion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pushing an idea that ’ s so straightforward that the Times recently called it “ a three-word solution to many of New York ’ s problems ” : Tax the rich .
While that particular solution has been roundly rejected by Governor Andrew Cuomo , an estimated 91 percent of Democratic voters agreed even prior to the pandemic that the government should raise taxes on the wealthy .
Likewise , since the beginning of the lockdowns , New York state Senator Michael Gianaris has called for a similarly uncomplicated solution to the looming @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Gianaris ’ s office and Data for Progress polling , his bill attracted overwhelming support from both voters and national politicians , including even Joe Biden .
That ’ s because it will help people , but also because it makes sense .
Rather than the edge-tinkering fixes that have defined genteel Washington policymaking for decades or the tepid , incremental changes nurtured in centrist think tanks , it ’ s a bill that plainly proposes what should already be obvious .
Rather than imagining some future scenario in which an out-of-work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ back rent or is further indebted to their landlord through incremental payments , it solves the problem through outright debt forgiveness .
Duh .
And at the national level , representatives including Ilhan Omar and Grace Meng have introduced similar bills in Congress to cancel rent and mortgages for the duration of the pandemic .
For her part , Omar—who ’ s made a national name for herself supporting policies like Medicare for All , student loan forgiveness , and a $ 15 minimum wage—handily defeated a challenger in Minnesota ’ s August @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about heavy-handed government intervention right now , it hardly shows .
Perhaps , then , it ’ s the simplest ideas that might actually ameliorate the misery of the recession .
According to Morning Consult , approximately 50 percent of people receiving unemployment benefits said they couldn ’ t afford basic expenses in August , up from 27 percent who said the same in July ( which , of course , is when the $ 600 federal unemployment supplement expired without any additional relief in place ) .
Former Obama adviser Jason Furman @ @ @ @ @ @ @ payouts based on the national unemployment rate , recently urged Democrats to settle for “ President Trump ’ s number of $ 400 a week.
” But I suspect that no one who ’ s still out of work and struggling to afford necessities takes much comfort in the fact that unemployment is all the way down to 8.4 percent .
What if , as Bernie Sanders , Kamala Harris , and Ed Markey proposed early on , the government just gave people the money to make ends meet ?
“ If we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trillion tax break to the top 1 percent and large corporations and $ 740 billion to the Pentagon , please don ’ t tell me we can not afford to provide $ 2,000 a month to the working class , $ 600 a week to unemployed workers and expand Medicare to all , ” Sanders tweeted on Tuesday .

Last week, seizing upon a slightly better-than-expected jobs report as proof of an economic recovery underway, Republicans once again pushed a stimulus deal to the back burner. States, whose budgets have been hollowed out by the pandemic, are now inching that much closer to fiscal collapse. As The New York Times reported on Monday, state and local governments have been forced to cut funding for public programs, schools, and cultural institutions. Without significant federal aid, those revenue shortfalls and pared-back services are likely to spell prolonged economic hardship for residents at a time when food insecurity continues to rise and millions remain out of work.
This is a crisis but not an unsolvable one. In fact, the solutions are so obvious in some cases that they can seem almost stupid. Like staving off an eviction crisis in a time of mass unemployment by canceling rent or taxing wealth-hoarding millionaires and billionaires to fill state-level budget gaps instead of killing composting programs or cutting education spending. The kind of policy that, when said aloud, makes you think: Well yeah, no duh. If there’s anything to take away from Bernie Sanders’s two presidential campaigns or the rise of lawmakers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, it’s that Democrats are at their best—and also most politically popular—when they leave behind their smartest-person-in-the-room wonkishness and fight for simple solutions that help the most people. And it’s precisely that kind of obvious policy that will help protect millions of people from economic collapse in our pandemic recession.


newrepublic--2020-09-09--Trump Is Waging a One-Sided Judicial War Against Democrats

The Supreme Court ’ s most recent term ended without any unexpected retirements leaving a seat to be filled , but that hasn ’ t prevented President Donald Trump from sending some election-year signals about his intentions should one occur .
The White House released a new shortlist of potential Supreme Court nominees on Wednesday , once again pledging to appoint only conservative jurists on the nation ’ s highest court .
Wednesday ’ s move was an undisguised effort to refocus the presidential race on terrain where Trump feels more confident about his record .
“ Apart from matters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a Supreme Court justice is the most important decision an American president can make , ” Trump said in a speech from the White House .
“ For this reason , candidates for president owe the American people a specific list of individuals they consider for the United States Supreme Court.
” The shortlist marks the first high-profile injection of Supreme Court politics into the 2020 campaign .
While the 2016 race effectively cemented a conservative majority on the court for at least a generation , this year ’ s election will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Republican-appointed justices will be able to move the American legal system further to the right .
As of right now , only one presidential campaign—and one political party—is making that a central argument for their election .
Among the twenty new names Trump announced were three hard-right senators : Tom Cotton , Ted Cruz , and Josh Hawley .
( Moments after Trump read Cotton ’ s name , the senator tweeted , “ It ’ s time for Roe v. Wade to go.
” ) The rest included two former @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cameron , at least two current Trump administration officials , and more than a dozen past Trump judicial nominees to the lower courts .
One curious absence was Neomi Rao , one of Trump ’ s D.C .
Circuit appointments who has delivered a series of high-profile rulings in his favor over the past 18 months .
Trump also used the opportunity to warn of a “ growing radical left movement ” that “ rejects the principle of equal treatment under law , ” insinuating that it could attain a majority on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Radical justices will erase the Second Amendment , silence political speech , and require taxpayers to fund extreme late-term abortion .
They will give unelected bureaucrats the power to destroy millions of American jobs .
They will remove the words ‘ under God ’ from the Pledge of Allegiance .
They will unilaterally declare the death penalty unconstitutional , even for the most depraved mass murderers .
They will erase national borders , cripple police departments , and grant new protections to anarchists , rioters , violent criminals , and terrorists.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden to release his own shortlist of Supreme Court nominees and claimed the Democratic nominee wouldn ’ t do so “ perhaps because he knows the names are so extremely far-left .
”

There are no indications that the Biden campaign will release a Supreme Court shortlist any time soon. Biden previously pledged to appoint the first black woman justice to the high court if given the opportunity. Though he suggested his campaign had a shortlist in mind of prospective appointees in June, he declined to release any names. “I am not going to release that until we go further down the line in vetting them,” he told reporters in June.
The gap between the two campaigns reflects a deeper asymmetry in American judicial politics. In recent years, American liberals have started to assemble their own dedicated infrastructure for judicial battles, though they still lag behind conservatives in relative influence and funding. Demand Justice, one of the leading groups in the surge, released a generalized Democratic shortlist last October with 32 names on it. Among the luminaries from that list are The New Jim Crow author Michelle Alexander, NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund President Sherrilyn Ifill, and Supreme Court of California Justice Leondra Kruger. The Democratic nominee has given no indication if he’s favorably inclined toward any of these prospects.
While past presidents have made Supreme Court appointments with electoral goals in mind, none have been as openly transactional about them as Trump. He released two shortlists during the presidential campaign in an undisguised effort to convince conservative voters and elites that he would not abandon the movement’s half-century mission of pulling the high court further to the right. This show of fealty successfully persuaded Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who had famously snubbed Trump at the 2016 convention only weeks earlier, to reverse course and openly support him for president. Justice Neil Gorsuch was featured on the second 2016 list; Justice Brett Kavanaugh was added in a 2017 update.


newrepublic--2020-09-09--Health Care in America Is Exactly Like a “New Dress Shirt”

The staff assistant is clearly an asshole .
But he was also , in the most callous way possible , completely right .
By design , the United States health care system truly is no different from any other profit-driven business .
If you want a service or a good , be it “ a new dress shirt ” or chemotherapy , you have to be able to afford it ; if you can ’ t afford it , you have to go without a dress shirt or die of a treatable illness .
In the eyes of the market @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And as in businesses , the profit motive that exists in health care is oftentimes constructed to conform to and reproduce larger societal ills , like systemic racism .
The only possible result is tragedy .
It ’ s 21-year-old Jesimya David Scherer-Radcliff dying because he had to ration his insulin due to skyrocketing prices .
It ’ s a cottage industry being built around people who are forced to publicly beg both friends and strangers to help them pay for their medical bills .
It ’ s 34 million Americans admitting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ passed away because they couldn ’ t afford care .
The problem is not with the people—or the cOnSuMeR—but with the model .
There is no way to give people enough consumer choice to remedy these outcomes .
You can ’ t smart shop your way out of medical debt or preventable death .
Most people in power get this and think it ’ s more or less tolerable .
On one side , there ’ s a Democratic Party that ’ s spent the past decade staving off leftward pushes for a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a Republican Party trying to entirely roll back the half-measures its opposition has foisted on the American people .
One side is marginally better , but the choice is ultimately between two This Is Fine dogs .
Caught in the middle is Veal .
And you , probably .
Tillis ’ s office says that the staffer has since been reprimanded , and issued a pair of statements—one apologizing for what a spokesperson called the “ completely inappropriate ” behavior on the part of the staffer and then a follow-up statement attempting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on health care .

The staff assistant is clearly an asshole. But he was also, in the most callous way possible, completely right.
By design, the United States health care system truly is no different from any other profit-driven business. If you want a service or a good, be it “a new dress shirt” or chemotherapy, you have to be able to afford it; if you can’t afford it, you have to go without a dress shirt or die of a treatable illness. In the eyes of the market, these are functionally the same things. And as in businesses, the profit motive that exists in health care is oftentimes constructed to conform to and reproduce larger societal ills, like systemic racism.
The only possible result is tragedy. It’s 21-year-old Jesimya David Scherer-Radcliff dying because he had to ration his insulin due to skyrocketing prices. It’s a cottage industry being built around people who are forced to publicly beg both friends and strangers to help them pay for their medical bills. It’s 34 million Americans admitting that they know someone who’s passed away because they couldn’t afford care. The problem is not with the people—or the cOnSuMeR—but with the model. There is no way to give people enough consumer choice to remedy these outcomes. You can’t smart shop your way out of medical debt or preventable death. Most people in power get this and think it’s more or less tolerable. On one side, there’s a Democratic Party that’s spent the past decade staving off leftward pushes for a universal system and, on the other, a Republican Party trying to entirely roll back the half-measures its opposition has foisted on the American people. One side is marginally better, but the choice is ultimately between two This Is Fine dogs. Caught in the middle is Veal. And you, probably.


newrepublic--2020-09-09--The Two Joe Bidens

The Two Joe Bidens

Campaign leaks about Joe Biden ’ s intentions as president so far seem to follow two completely incompatible paths .
On one track , Biden has been reinvigorated by the scale of the coronavirus pandemic and is gearing up for an “ FDR-size ” presidency to not just patch up the cracks that have appeared since March but attempt broad , systemic changes to fix the underlying problems that were exposed .
On the other , Biden is wedded to bipartisanship , keeping the filibuster , reassuring big donors , and not blowing up the deficit—a set of criteria that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other words .
Though it doesn ’ t impact the calculus of whether Biden would be a better president than Donald Trump , it is nonetheless very frustrating for people who would prefer to have some idea whether the future is going to be tolerable or not .
A story from The Washington Post this week further hinted at this Schrödinger ’ s Candidate problem .
According to the story , Biden ’ s campaign has privately sought to reassure skittish Wall Street “ leaders ” —whatever those are—who have recently become worried @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the recommendations made by the farcical Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force .
Those troublesome policies included “ having the Federal Reserve guarantee all Americans a bank account.
” But not to worry : The paper ’ s source said they were reassured that such policies were “ just an exercise to keep the Warren people happy.
” ( Bernie Sanders and his supporters apparently just don ’ t exist to these people , even though Sanders did far better in the primaries and demonstrated a far greater base of support than Elizabeth Warren .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ TJ Ducklo gave to the Post gave away the game , in that it was dripping with contempt for the left .
The paper ’ s source , he scoffed , “ appears to be confused and uninformed about this very basic distinction ” between the unity commission ’ s recommendations and actual shifts in policy—which would seem to confirm that the campaign does not intend to heed those recommendations and instead will listen to the Wall Street whiners .
How stupid of you to think that thing we did meant anything at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ No one should have bought for a minute that Joe Biden had any intention of listening to the left .
He got here without them , after all .
As the rest of the Post story makes clear , Biden ’ s isn ’ t so much flexible in his approach to policy as he is willing to publicly absorb the obvious dissonance between the demands of different constituencies while quietly calming the emotions of centrists .
Or , as the Post put it , “ sometimes making strong public declarations while relying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scenes.
” This is perhaps a euphemistic way of saying that Biden is lying to one side or the other .
What seems more likely : that Biden is pulling the wool over the eyes of Democrats ’ Wall Street benefactors , the better to get the drop on them and bully them into submission when he gets in office or , alternatively , that he ’ s leading on voters with all this talk about big ideas ?
The former scenario requires us to believe that Biden is running some sort of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the moneyed interests that have supported him throughout his career .
The other is just how politics usually goes .
And if there ’ s one thing that Biden has consistently promised voters , it ’ s a return to normalcy—and to “ how politics usually goes.
” So it ’ s possible that Biden ’ s “ flexibility ” on policy simply stems from his not particularly caring about what sort of specific policy outcomes his presidency enables , just that he , the normal-keeper , remains in the White House , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seems to suggest that Biden intends to get the best he can out of a hoped-for moderate climate in Congress that will presumably descend on Washington after Trump departs ; it notes that “ bold ideas are often hemmed by political reality ” in the Senate , where Biden spent several decades , and quotes former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta as saying Biden ’ s “ gut reaction is to legislate ; he ’ s been a legislator.
” And then , the money quote : “ He ’ s going to try @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can rebuild that in the Congress and see whether that takes him anywhere.
” ( Two of the more exciting places bipartisanship has taken America in recent years have been “ the smouldering wreckage of deregulated banks ” and “ to war with Iraq .
” )

As the rest of the Post story makes clear, Biden’s isn’t so much flexible in his approach to policy as he is willing to publicly absorb the obvious dissonance between the demands of different constituencies while quietly calming the emotions of centrists. Or, as the Post put it, “sometimes making strong public declarations while relying on aides to soothe critics behind the scenes.” This is perhaps a euphemistic way of saying that Biden is lying to one side or the other. What seems more likely: that Biden is pulling the wool over the eyes of Democrats’ Wall Street benefactors, the better to get the drop on them and bully them into submission when he gets in office or, alternatively, that he’s leading on voters with all this talk about big ideas? The former scenario requires us to believe that Biden is running some sort of long—really, really long!—con on the moneyed interests that have supported him throughout his career. The other is just how politics usually goes.
And if there’s one thing that Biden has consistently promised voters, it’s a return to normalcy—and to “how politics usually goes.” So it’s possible that Biden’s “flexibility” on policy simply stems from his not particularly caring about what sort of specific policy outcomes his presidency enables, just that he, the normal-keeper, remains in the White House, safeguarding all that ordinariness. The Post seems to suggest that Biden intends to get the best he can out of a hoped-for moderate climate in Congress that will presumably descend on Washington after Trump departs; it notes that “bold ideas are often hemmed by political reality” in the Senate, where Biden spent several decades, and quotes former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta as saying Biden’s “gut reaction is to legislate; he’s been a legislator.” And then, the money quote: “He’s going to try to build—or test—bipartisanship to see if he can rebuild that in the Congress and see whether that takes him anywhere.” (Two of the more exciting places bipartisanship has taken America in recent years have been “the smouldering wreckage of deregulated banks” and “to war with Iraq.”)


newrepublic--2020-09-10--Dangers of the Lame Duck

Dangers of the Lame Duck

Why is the period between Election Day and inauguration so long in the United States ?
What kind of trouble @ @ @ @ @ during the interregnum ?
And in the event Joe Biden wins , how can we @ @ @ @ @ ?
On Episode 15 of The Politics of Everything , hosts Laura Marsh and Alex @ @ @ @ @ the presidential transition and how we might prepare for it : Michael Kazin , a @ @ @ @ @ co-editor of Dissent ; Jason Linkins , a deputy editor at The New Republic ; @ @ @ @ @ , Melissa Gira Grant , and Libby Watson ; and longtime campaign reporter and TNR @ @ @ @ @

Why is the period between Election Day and inauguration so long in the United States? What kind of trouble have past outgoing presidents made during the interregnum? And in the event Joe Biden wins, how can we expect Donald Trump to behave? On Episode 15 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene interview six guests about the presidential transition and how we might prepare for it: Michael Kazin, a professor at Georgetown University and co-editor of Dissent; Jason Linkins, a deputy editor at The New Republic; TNR staff writers Matt Ford, Melissa Gira Grant, and Libby Watson; and longtime campaign reporter and TNR staff writer Walter Shapiro.
* On this episode, one of our guests suggested that Congress could change the date of the presidential inauguration if it wanted to. That’s true of Election Day, but changing the date of the inauguration would require a constitutional amendment. We regret the error.


newrepublic--2020-09-10--Why Doesn’t Michael Cohen Get to Be an Anti-Trump Crusader?

Michael Cohen knows you don ’ t trust him .
In his tell-all memoir , Disloyal , he frequently acknowledges that he is “ the least reliable narrator on the planet.
” Having spent more than a decade lying , cheating , and covering up for Donald Trump in his role as the president ’ s personal lawyer and fixer , and having recently served part of a 36-month prison sentence for campaign finance violations and tax evasion , Cohen is short on credibility .
He belongs to a special club—he and James Comey are its only members—of people hated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and detractors .
“ You will no doubt ask yourself if you like me , or if you would act as I did , ” he writes .
“ And the answer will frequently be no to both of those questions.
” Still , the revelations in Disloyal are significant .
The advance hype for the book focused primarily on its depictions of Trump ’ s racism .
Blacks and Hispanics , in Trump ’ s view , are “ too stupid ” to vote for him .
He routinely denigrated Black leaders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me one country run by a Black person that isn ’ t a shithole , ” Cohen quotes Trump as saying .
Barack Obama is singled out by a bigoted , jealous Trump , who even recorded a video of himself humiliating a “ Faux-Bama ” impersonator .
( That video was recorded for the 2012 Republican National Convention but was never aired ; Trump said at the time “ the reason they didn ’ t put it on is because they thought it was too controversial.
” ) Yet the book didn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as another recent report based on the observations of those with access to Trump ’ s unfiltered thoughts .
A cadre of anonymous military officials told The Atlantic ’ s Jeffrey Goldberg that the president had claimed that soldiers , particularly those killed in battle , were “ losers ” and “ suckers.
” This was shocking evidence—and it is a testament to Goldberg ’ s scoop that Trump ’ s words still have the power to shock—that the concepts of “ heroism ” and “ service ” and “ honor ” were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s unfeeling response to the sacrifices of these soldiers only underscored his venality and self-absorption .
The differing responses to these two respective bombshells is telling—about what issues the media and the establishment perceive to be important and which narrators are considered trustworthy .
Cohen freely admits throughout Disloyal that he idolized Trump .
He portrays himself as a Mini-Me , imitating Trump as he stiffed vendors and paid off porn stars on behalf of his boss .
This closeness to Trump , both literally and figuratively , has been off-putting for many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t credible , especially when compared to public servants , whether they are named or unnamed .

Cohen promises that he will provide a portrait of “the real real Donald Trump—the man very, very, very few people know.” Cohen’s links with Trump are indeed deeper and more intimate than those of other tell-all writers. One “reason why there has never been an intimate portrait” of the president, Cohen writes, is that Trump “has a million acquaintances, pals, and hangers on, but no real friends.… He has lived his entire life avoiding and evading taking responsibility for his actions. He has crushed or cheated all who stood in his way, but I know where the skeletons are buried because I was the one who buried them.”
A great many skeletons are excavated in Disloyal. The ins and outs of Cohen’s dealings with Stormy Daniels, which would ultimately lead to his imprisonment, take up much of the book’s second half. He claims that Jerry Falwell’s endorsement of Trump came in exchange for Cohen helping make topless pictures of Falwell’s wife posing on a tractor disappear. He sheds light on the relationship between the Trump campaign and the National Enquirer, revealing that he helped push the lie during the Republican primary that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. And there are many, many examples of Trump’s racism, sexism, and disdain for his supporters, whom he regards as marks.
Disloyal is best understood as a bildungsroman, a story of Cohen’s gradual awakening to Trump’s lawlessness and selfishness and the threat he posed to the country. (The fact that Cohen was 39 years old when he met Trump gives this bildungsroman a particularly pathetic edge.) Cohen repeatedly sets himself up as a stereotypical Trump supporter, driven by the same furor you see at the president’s rallies. “Trump embodied an entire portfolio of ambitions and desires and resentments, for countless people including me,” Cohen writes. For Cohen, there is something transfixing about Trump’s flouting of norms and laws, his refusal to bend to reality. “Like a confidence artist, Trump was showing me that he inhabited a different type of reality, one that he would share with me alone, a world that was filled with wonder and excitement and power and intrigue and adulation,” he writes.


newrepublic--2020-09-10--The Emptiness of Matthew Yglesias’s Biggest Idea

What is a book ?
A novel , a biography , a popular science story—I think I know what these are , even at the far edges of formal experimentation , where categories are tricky .
But what does it mean when a columnist or a pundit writes “ a book ” ?
Swift reads , even when they number in the many hundreds of pages , volumes like David Brooks ’ s The Second Mountain or Paul Krugman ’ s Arguing With Zombies or Thomas Friedman ’ s “ flat world ” diptych tend to collect a set of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ closer inspection almost always resolve themselves into the preexisting , commonsense notions that their intended readership already assumes to be true .
Designed for an educated , business-class airport set who have heard of the Aspen Ideas Festival , they gather groups of loosely connected , lecture-circuit insights like guests at a party where everyone seems to be the friend of someone else ’ s spouse , awkwardly unable to explain why they ’ re all there together , sweating and drinking under the same tent .
Matthew Yglesias ’ s latest , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Thinking Bigger , is a near-perfect example of the genre—a book-length collection of thoughts and proposals loosely arrayed around the endearingly crackpot idea that there should be one billion Americans by some undefined point in the future .
Why one billion ?
The author is surprisingly hazy on this point , except to note that the aggregate economic output of China ’ s and India ’ s billion-plus people will inevitably exceed our own ( and China ’ s may already have ) .
Yglesias does recognize that by any per capita measure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , much poorer than the United States .
But “ India and China are trying to become less poor and seem to be succeeding.
” They may , of course , “ stumble and fail , in which case we will stay number one , ” although we should not deliberately pursue this “ hideously immoral ” policy aim .
“ By contrast , ” however , “ tripling the nation ’ s population to match the rising Asian powers is something that is in our power to achieve.
” OK .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disappears for long stretches of the book .
One Billion Americans is stuffed full of perfectly serviceable and unobjectionable policy ideas that would , hypothetically , allow for a denser country that permitted more immigration and subsidized a higher birthrate .
But it is not by any stretch an organized proposal for how , over a period of years and decades , the USA will triple its head count .
The policies and the population exist in a curious parallel , running in the same direction without touching one another .
Many of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other countries where they ’ ve been successfully implemented or else yoinked from online policy discourse .
Congestion pricing in big cities is good urban policy , as European experiments in cities like Oslo and Paris have conclusively shown .
Matt Bruenig ’ s People ’ s Policy Project “ Family Fun Pack ” is full of interesting ideas about alleviating the dire economic hardship of raising children in America if you aren ’ t already rich .
A gas tax is a bad way to fund transportation infrastructure .
These sentiments are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ since Yglesias has neither the visionary scope nor the technical expertise to make any of this remotely plausible as a sustained argument , a “ case for thinking bigger ” if you will , or even as a set of discrete proposals .
He has no theory of political power or change , no idea how any of this will come to pass .
“ There ’ s no way that all the specific ideas in this book will ever command broad consensus in American society , ” he writes on page one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ I think the big picture idea of the book , that America should try to stay number one , already does.
” This is not so much the book ’ s “ big picture idea ” as it is its central anxiety .
Unlike the titular thesis and the subtitle ’ s big thoughts , this one does not disappear .
Yglesias is a digitally peripatetic , D.C.-based commentator who has bounced from early notice as a Harvard student blogger through a series of increasingly prominent online gigs for outfits such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ landing , with his friend and peer Ezra Klein , at Vox .
He attracted notice as a young liberal hawk on foreign policy and converted into a kind of enthusiastically untutored business and money columnist , then into a catch-all policy guy .
The left regards him as a contrarian and slightly sinister nincompoop , infamous for responding to a disastrous factory collapse in Bangladesh with a column titled , “ Different Countries Have Different Safety Standards , and That ’ s OK .
”

The center and right used to laud him for taking the occasional potshot at the supposedly radical left for protesting too stridently or complaining about globalization, although they now seem to have largely forgotten he exists. During the recent protests and uprising against police brutality, he glibly proclaimed that “abolish the police” or “defund the police” were mere “three-word slogans” and not “policy” proposals, before thousands of replies informed him that, in fact, police abolition has a long and detailed intellectual history, to which his response was a churlish and late review of Brooklyn College sociologist Alex Vitale’s 2017 volume, The End of Policing. He complained that it did not say what he thought it ought to have said about the scourge of “violent crime.”
This habit of assuming that a popular slogan must be devoid of content because he has not himself done the reading is of a piece with many no-longer-so-young commentators who evince an interest in “policy” primarily as a style of discussion, regardless of intellectual content. (Ezra Klein famously promoted former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan as an example of even-if-you-disagree-with-him fiscal policy seriousness, before sheepishly admitting it was all a content-free con, long after it ceased to matter.) Yglesias is an enthusiastic opinion-haver, but he is no autodidact: He lacks interest in the particularities and provenance of ideas that often obsess the self-taught. Policy is what serious people write about: Matthew Yglesias is a serious person; ergo, Yglesias writes about policy.
But this lack of interest in either real ideas or practical details means that even when Yglesias is sorta right, he is often yawningly, astonishingly wrong. It is this complete, blithe, and seemingly deliberate ignorance that drives so many of his detractors to apoplexy. Two-thirds of the way through One Billion Americans, he finds himself discussing universities. The broad sweep of his argument—that colleges and universities really can be engines of both personal transformation and broad economic good—is, again, unobjectionable. The observation that a small cadre of elite institutions gobbles up disproportionate resources, especially where research is concerned, is perhaps less defensible. The ranks of so-called R1 and R2 research universities include many nonelite and even regional schools, and many of them secure significant research monies and produce much excellent scholarship. But I can let this slide: Compared to the resources of the Ivies, say, their few national peers, and a handful of influential medical schools, there is indeed a yawning gap to everyone else.


newrepublic--2020-09-10--Academia Was Built on White Theft

Academia Was Built on White Theft

Last week , a white professor at George Washington University outed herself in a years-long charade in which she told people she was Black and built an academic career around this lie .
Jessica Krug , who is from a white Jewish family in the Kansas City suburbs , affected an accent and an evolving set of backstories , eventually landing on a version in which she self-presented as an Afro-Latina from the Bronx .
Krug ’ s colleagues at George Washington privately questioned her claims and recently began to raise the alarm with administrators , which is likely why @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and RaceBaitr editor in chief Hari Ziyad put it , “ She didn ’ t do it out of benevolence .
She did it because she had been found out.
” In this absurd public disgrace , Krug joins other white people who have made false claims to nonwhite identities in some combination of career predation , white entitlement , and a perhaps unknowable X factor of what-the-fuck : Rachel Dolezal , who maybe needs no introduction at this point , but also lesser-knowns like the former Vanderbilt neurology professor who created an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then killed it off during the pandemic .
But these are obvious fringe cases—entertaining upon implosion for the general public and quietly devastating to the web of people they drew into the lie and harmed in the process .
The more common version of white theft in academia is way less tabloid sensational .
The entire American university system was built on white theft made mundane through the passage of time .
The casual mention of schools acting as assimilation academies on a campus tour .
The somber press release , all too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ past university leaders and the names on campus buildings as slave owners and segregationists .
A ceremonial shield gathering dust in a lab thousands of miles away from its creator ’ s ancestors .
It ’ s a history that bleeds into the present , the echoes of which can be heard every time the academy shows its true colors .
The modern American university system is a tool , not a product , of colonization .
The University of North Carolina , the oldest public college in the nation , was , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , built with the labor of enslaved Black people .
So , too , were prestigious Ivy League institutions , like Brown , while presidents at Princeton and Columbia and countless others owned slaves through the Civil War .
As Massachusetts Institution of Technology history professor Craig Steven Wilder wrote in his 2013 book on the subject , “ The academy never stood apart from American slavery .
In fact , it stood beside church and state as the third pillar of a civilization built on bondage .
”

To stave off those who felt self-conscious about their complicity in such a violent system, white academics molded their fields of study to fortify their claims of superiority. Entire fields of racist pseudoscience were designed in the nineteenth century to back up the claim that Black minds were inferior and to deny Black people true personhood, to act as a rebuke to the growing abolitionist movement.
The academy did not stop at dismissing living Black bodies and minds, though. It also sought to retrieve every physical ounce of these varied and unique cultures and communities, for the sake of proprietary knowledge and profit. This is how both modern museums and land-grant universities came to be. Signed by Abraham Lincoln in 1862, the Morrill Act, not so dissimilar from Harvard’s Indian College, was a money-making affair, with the stated desire of “turning land taken from tribal nations into seed money for higher education,” as High Country News wrote earlier this year. When the dust settled, 11 million acres had been, often violently and illegally, wrested from Indigenous nations and placed under the management of university endowment funds. To date, the land transfer has netted these endowments at least a half-billion dollars.
As the land was distributed, the universities sought to take also what accompanied these spaces, namely the remains and cultural items that the displaced Indigenous peoples had stewarded and protected until this stage of colonization. Under the guise of fields such as archaeology or anthropology, white professors at these schools scoured Indian Country, digging up remains that had been respectfully buried for thousands of years. As explained in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory in an article on the shifting ethics of reburial and repatriation, by the middle of the nineteenth century, “the majority of Euro-Americans thought Native Americans incapable of becoming civilized.”


newrepublic--2020-09-10--Bob Woodward’s Critics Are Missing the Point

For Donald Trump , every story about him is a media story .
Good stories come from good reporters with good sources working for good organizations—though every once in a blue moon , a good story comes from a bad reporter working for a bad newspaper or TV network .
The bad stories , of which there are many , are fake news filled with false information from fake sources .
This approach to media criticism has the advantage of shifting attention away from the substance of a story to inside baseball questions about process and sourcing .
Trump is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ media ’ s own solipsism and self-regard , qualities that have only been amplified by the president ’ s “ fake news ” barbs .
Questions of process and integrity are catnip for the media .
They can also be a kind of kryptonite .
This has never been more apparent than in the feverish response to early coverage of Bob Woodward ’ s Rage .
On Wednesday afternoon , the book ’ s pre-publication embargo broke , and the premier scoop was that Donald Trump knew that Covid-19 was “ deadly ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ play it down ” to the public .
This had been reported before , but coming from Woodward , who had audio to back it up , it quickly enveloped the news cycle , leading every outlet and network .
By mid-afternoon , the story had accelerated to the meta-cycle nearly every big Trump story eventually reaches : Did Bob Woodward commit an ethical breach by failing to report this information in a timely manner ?
Or was he saving this juicy scoop to boost sales of his book ?
By the following @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this angle for his own purposes , arguing that Woodward must have held onto the story because he secretly agreed with the president ’ s Covid response .
The freak-out over the timing of Woodward ’ s revelations isn ’ t just misplaced—it ’ s a gift to Trump , obscuring the damning takeaways of Woodward ’ s reporting .

Speaking to Vox before the publication of Fear, his bestselling book about the first year of Trump’s presidency, Woodward laid out his philosophy. “My job is not to take sides,” he said. “I think it’s important to send the message to people and to act and be as careful and neutral as possible.” Woodward’s initial response to the latest accusations against him largely followed this pattern. He told The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple that he wanted to be careful with Trump’s claims, and took three months “to nail down all the reporting about what Trump knew about coronavirus, when he learned it, and how all that related to the public pronouncements he was making.”
In another interview with another Post colleague, Margaret Sullivan, Woodward insisted that he was aiming for something more substantial than a news bulletin. “I knew I could tell the second draft of history, and I knew I could tell it before the election,” he said, alluding to former Post publisher Phil Graham’s axiom about journalism being history’s first draft.
These claims, to be fair, do stretch credulity. Woodward is the godfather of the type of book that has come to dominate the Trump era: a loosely connected series of scoops—some big, most small—that attempt to piece together, with varying degrees of success, a larger story about the president. Over the last six administrations, Woodward has dutifully provided windows into the rooms where big decisions are made, without providing much else. “Woodward is the ultimate existential reporter—wondrous at getting inside a moment, indifferent to questions of context or meaning,” wrote Slate’s Fred Kaplan in 2004. “In J-school parlance, he’s peerless at uncovering who said what, when, and where; but he has never been good on the fifth W—the why.”


newrepublic--2020-09-10--Ben Sasse’s Plan to Save the Senate Will Bury It Instead

No one can blame Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse for his disillusionment with the Senate .
Under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell , the chamber is little more a well-oiled machine for stacking the federal courts with right-wing judges .
The “ legislative graveyard , ” as Democratic lawmakers call it , can ’ t muster the energy to pass a second wave of coronavirus relief even as the U.S. death toll nears 200,000 .
It acquitted President Donald Trump last February for abuse of power , indicting itself for its moral and ethical failings in the process .
“ What would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they came back to life ?
” Sasse asked in a Tuesday op-ed in The Wall Street Journal .
“ Their eyes would surely bug out first at our technology and wealth .
But I suspect they ’ d also be stunned by the deformed structure of our government .
The Congress they envisioned is all but dead .
The Senate in particular is supposed to be the place where Americans hammer out our biggest challenges with debate .
That hasn ’ t happened for decades—and the rot is bipartisan.
” While Sasse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s flaws , he is also profoundly wrong about how to fix them .
His solution would make the chamber even less democratic : by repealing the Seventeenth Amendment and letting state legislatures choose senators once more , by limiting those senators to a single 12-year term , and by banning televised coverage of their hearings and debates .
Other proposals , like requiring senators to live in dormitories—an idea that ’ s hard to imagine actual adults signing up for—would likely make the Senate an even more unpleasant place to work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sasse , who laments the growing imbalance of power between Congress and the executive branch , is hardly the first person to seek ways to reverse the trend .
Legislative and constitutional experts have proposed no shortage of solutions : shift power away from congressional leadership and back to rank-and-file members , restore the primacy of committees in the legislative process , expand Congress ’ s institutional support to counterbalance federal agencies and think tanks , and reverse past “ reforms ” like earmark bans and shorter legislative calendars .
Campaign finance reform @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the table thanks to the Roberts court .
The junior senator from Nebraska has a different idea for how to fix the Senate .
His central plank is depriving voters of the power to choose their own senators by repealing the Seventeenth Amendment .
His rationale is unpersuasive .
“ Different states bring different solutions to the table , and that ought to be reflected in the Senate ’ s national debate , ” Sasse explained .
“ The old saying used to be that all politics is local , but today—thanks to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a cottage industry dedicated to political addiction—politics is polarized and national.
” The Senate already provides for ample geographic diversity—if anything , it provides too much of it .
Sasse ’ s proposal seems more likely to nationalize state legislative races than localize the Senate ’ s institutional outlook .

To make matters worse, Sasse would also impose a one-term limit on anyone chosen by the state legislature to serve. “One of the biggest reasons Congress gives away its power to the executive branch is that it’s politically expedient for both parties to avoid the decisions that come from the work of legislating,” Sasse claims. “Lawmakers are obsessed with staying in office, and one of the easiest ways to keep getting re-elected is by avoiding hard decisions. We ought to propose a constitutional amendment to limit every senator to one term, but we should double it from six years to 12. Senators who don’t have to worry about short-term popularity can work instead on long-term challenges.”
Contrary to Sasse’s negative framing, it’s a good thing that senators are “obsessed with staying in office.” A central premise of representative government is that the representatives will do what the people want so they can keep their jobs. Sasse’s end result would be 100 senators who represent other politicians instead of representing the people themselves, and who have no incentive to act according to the people’s wishes except for their own conscience and sense of civic duty. Relying on that alone, especially in the age of Trump, seems foolhardy at best.
Not all of Sasse’s ideas are bad. His alternative to repealing the Seventeenth Amendment should be enacted immediately. “If that’s a bridge too far, at least ban fundraising while the Senate is in session in Washington,” he argued. “It’s an everyday experience to sit down at a $2,000-a-plate lunch fundraiser and then run over to make committee votes. Lobbying is protected by the First Amendment, but it shouldn’t be the primary focus of senators when we’ve got work to do.” Some on the left, notably Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, have also targeted lobbying and fundraising issues in their own proposals.


newrepublic--2020-09-10--Drilling for Oil While California Burns

Drilling for Oil While California Burns

Democrats now control every branch of government in California , which is home to what are arguably the most ambitious climate policies in the country .
California is currently burning .
Some 900 wildfires throughout the state have painted its skies an eerie , dull orange .
The images are a warning of the dangers of climate denial , as global warming turns trees into tinder .
But they should also be a warning to anyone who thinks electing Democrats is the be-all and end-all for saving the planet .
Since Donald Trump ’ s election and the disastrous environmental @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been easy to see the next step in climate politics as a simple imperative : Defeat the GOP .
By this metric , California is a success story : Old-school climate denial isn ’ t a meaningful force in the state ’ s politics .
While there are plenty of Republicans in California ’ s congressional delegation , that group is headlined by liberal stalwarts like Nancy Pelosi and Diane Feinstein , who ’ ve proudly urged their colleagues to “ Believe Science.
” Before leaving office , former Governor Jerry Brown—who ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ champion—signed a bill committing the state ’ s power sector to zero-carbon electricity use by 2045 and an executive order stating an ambition for California to have a carbon-free economy along the same timeline .
In his two years as governor , Gavin Newsom has largely continued this trend .
But even as California has dramatically increased its renewable power , it ’ s continued to hum along as a major fossil fuel producer .
As solar panels blanket the Hollywood Hills , pumpjacks still bob up and down in urban oilfields a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s refinery in Richmond continues to spew cancerous toxins onto people who are incentivized to buy electric cars .
The Western States Petroleum Association—a regional trade lobby for the oil and gas industry , and generous Democratic Party donor—consulted with Jerry Brown on the state ’ s cap and trade legislation , the language of which bore a striking resemblance to draft text WSPA circulated around the state capitol .
Gavin Newsom has approved 190 percent more oil and gas drilling in the first half of 2020 than in his first six months @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 48 new permits for hydraulic natural gas fracturing just since April ; according to the Center for Biological Diversity , he ’ s also approved drilling permits for 1,400 new oil and gas wells so far this year .
As Steve Horn recently reported , it was California ’ s Democrats who , this past August in a state Senate committee , once again killed regulations requiring a 2,500-foot setback between new oil wells and playgrounds , homes , and schools .
The state has been alarmingly gentle with PG & E , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for several blazes in the last few years .
Nor is the Golden State an exemplar for how to navigate the effects of climate change that it ’ s already facing : To fight its fires , California depends largely on inmates , who are still mostly ineligible to work as firefighters after their release .
Kamala Harris ’ s office defended the policy while she served as California ’ s attorney general , arguing that expanding early release programs would deplete the number of prisoners on hand to fight fires .
California @ @ @ @ @ @ @ alone haven ’ t caused the global warming fueling the state ’ s fires , of course .
But its de facto “ all of the above ” climate policy—leaving plenty of room for fossil fuels as it builds out renewables—is a dangerous model for Democrats nationwide to keep following .
This isn ’ t an invitation for false equivalence .
After nearly four years of unhinged GOP regulatory rollbacks and fossil fuel boosterism , on top of decades of denial and delay , there ’ s no case to be made that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rising temperatures : The GOP offers a fast track to climate destruction .
A report released last month from the consultancy Wood McKenzie predicts that reelecting Trump would “ mark the end to any hopes ” for decarbonizing the power sector in the United States by midcentury .
In our current two-party system , and with current Republican intransigence on this issue , getting Donald Trump out of office , winning durable Democratic majorities in Congress , and chipping away at the GOP ’ s hold over the federal court system are all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But they ’ re also entirely insufficient .

One of the more sinister effects of Trump’s environmental revanchism is setting a disturbingly low bar for what constitutes climate progress.
This isn’t an invitation for false equivalence. After nearly four years of unhinged GOP regulatory rollbacks and fossil fuel boosterism, on top of decades of denial and delay, there’s no case to be made that Democrats and Republicans bear equal blame for rising temperatures: The GOP offers a fast track to climate destruction. A report released last month from the consultancy Wood McKenzie predicts that reelecting Trump would “mark the end to any hopes” for decarbonizing the power sector in the United States by midcentury. In our current two-party system, and with current Republican intransigence on this issue, getting Donald Trump out of office, winning durable Democratic majorities in Congress, and chipping away at the GOP’s hold over the federal court system are all necessary conditions for averting runaway climate chaos. But they’re also entirely insufficient.
One of the more sinister effects of Trump’s environmental revanchism is setting a disturbingly low bar for what constitutes climate progress. Climate deniers have been an easy foil. Gestures like rejoining the Paris Agreement have served as a stand-in for more meaningful conversations about what it’ll actually take to keep emissions down and help communities make life-saving adaptations. As the fires blazed, Newsom took to Twitter. “These pictures cry out for change,” he captioned two pictures of California’s orange skies. “Climate change is REAL. So please—VOTE.” In another Tweet he urged, “We do not have time to deny the reality of climate change.”
Our warming world mostly isn’t controlled by climate deniers, though. It does, for the most part, run on fossil fuels, which constitute a far bigger threat to planetary well-being than the few cranks still claiming that global warming is a hoax—a position oil CEOs abandoned years ago. The world is now consuming more energy than it ever has, and coal, oil, and gas continue to account for about 85 percent of that consumption worldwide, according to the International Energy Agency, which predicts that the U.S. will account for 80 percent of the growth in oil production through 2030, and 30 percent of the growth in fossil gas. Meeting the ambitious goals laid out in the Paris Agreement, to cap warming at “well below” two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), means actively winding down fossil fuel production.