newrepublic--2020-10-06--Trump’s Gilded Age Coronavirus Care Is a National Shame

The nation surely breathed a sigh of relief last night , just as the president inhaled some very normal , deep , refreshing breaths , on the balcony of the White House , in front of television cameras—just a completely candid demonstration of perfect health .
Donald Trump returned to the White House from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center , because he was feeling “ better than [ he ] did 20 years ago , ” according to the man himself .
The road ahead may not be certain for the president : His doctor says that he isn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” One thing is certain , however : His experience in hospital was very different from the experience of the vast majority of Americans .
Trump needn ’ t fear the arrival of a big bill , for one thing , not even for the helicopter that whooshed him up to Walter Reed ; most air ambulance bills for regular people are out of network and cost tens of thousands of dollars .
Once Trump was settled , he had everything he needed at his disposal ; every potential treatment or procedure was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ risk that the emergency room would be closed .
There was no chance his reported symptoms wouldn ’ t be believed by his doctors or that his doctors wouldn ’ t have the equipment they needed to treat him .
Perhaps you think that this is how it should be for the president of the United States , even one as awful as Trump .
But even if he wasn ’ t president , one thing would still have protected him from the ravages of our health care system : his wealth .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a country where wealth and privilege buy better health care , and poverty ensures worse .
Trump ’ s treatment path , which was markedly aggressive , was not at all influenced by the prohibitive cost of potentially life-saving medical interventions .
Regular people , meanwhile , have to worry that each new procedure or drug recommended by doctors over the course of a hospital stay is adding line items to the bill .
Even privately insured patients might have to meet a deductible of up to $ 13,800 or pay a percentage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The price of everything on the patient ’ s bill can vary wildly , even within the same region .
It ’ s not uncommon for patients to discover they ’ re being charged ridiculous amounts of money for simple treatments , like a single dose of Tylenol for $ 16 .
There is nought but the free market to regulate what hospitals charge patients without government insurance for these drugs , and the market is dropping the ball there .
According to chargemaster lists posted online , thanks to a Trump administration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia charges $ 20 per 4 milligram dose of dexamethasone , the steroid that Trump received at Walter Reed .
At Crozer-Chester Medical Center , a few miles away , it costs $ 9 .
Somehow , at Doctors Medical Center of Modesto , California , it ’ s $ 126 .
( One wonders why doctors at this facility don ’ t just give patients two 2 milligram tablets , which , on the same price list , only cost $ 43 each . )
Dexamethasone is one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s regimen : Remdesivir , an antiviral medication for the coronavirus that was only recently approved , costs a hospital $ 3,120 for a typical privately insured patient or $ 2,340 for those with government insurance .
( The raw materials for the drug cost about $ 10 . )
The basic medical procedures that Trump received , such as chest X-rays and CT scans , add up , as well .
Doctors Medical Center charges $ 2,071 for a chest X-ray that is viewed once ; at Baptist Medical Center in San @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
X-rays work the same in California as they do in Texas .

The fact that Trump is able to direct his own care stands in direct contrast to the experience of low-income patients who, if they can even afford care, might find their doctors dismissive or rude. In multiple studies based on focus groups, low-income patients reported feeling patronized or judged by their doctors, or less wanted because of their Medicaid status. Many doctors simply don’t take Medicaid patients at all. Trump’s race, too, would help him, even if he weren’t president: There is a wealth of evidence showing that Black people, especially women, receive poorer medical care from doctors. We have harrowing examples from the same disease that has stricken Trump of Black women’s symptoms being ignored: Rana Zoe Mungin, a 30-year-old teacher from Brooklyn, died of Covid-19 in April after twice being turned away from the emergency room and told that her inability to breathe was just a panic attack. (Black women don’t often benefit from their VIP status: In recent years, Serena Williams and Beyoncé have published accounts attesting to their struggles to get adequate medical treatment.)
Trump is far from the only member of the gilded society receiving this sort of highly tailored care during the coronavirus crisis. The uberwealthy of Washington, D.C. call on private doctors for rapid coronavirus tests, via Tesla or plane, so that they can host and attend parties. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was apparently able to check himself into hospital as a “precautionary” measure. Never mind the possibility that he would take up a needed bed or hospital resources—after all, this is a rich person we’re talking about—or that for normal people, the decision to admit someone to hospital is supposed to be based on medical need. Normal people can’t waltz into a hospital because they think they might get sick; many normal people can’t get into a hospital even if they are already very sick.
Compare Chris Christie’s preemptive stay at hospital to the experience of patients in Los Angeles County’s public hospital system, where poor people with no other option wait months for appointments with specialists, according to a recent Los Angeles Times investigation. The Times reported on several patients who had died waiting to be seen by the county’s doctors. Sometimes their requests for appointments, even for routine diagnostic procedures like colonoscopies, were denied as medically unnecessary. Just 57 percent of patients whose primary care doctors had requested an appointment within a specific time frame—say, within two weeks, or within three months—received timely appointments; the average wait time is more than two months. One patient profiled in the piece was recommended for surgery to remove a golf-ball-size tumor in her brain but never received an appointment at all. Nearly a year later, she was found dead by her five-year-old daughter on the bathroom floor. She was 30.


newrepublic--2020-10-06--ExxonMobil Should Not Exist

ExxonMobil Should Not Exist

On Monday , Bloomberg reported that multinational oil company ExxonMobil has recently planned to increase its carbon dioxide emissions 17 percent by 2025 while doubling its earnings .
According to internal documents obtained by Bloomberg reporters , the company ’ s seven-year , $ 217 billion investment plan would see it expand its core oil and gas business and keep its investments in low-carbon fuel and emissions reductions as a sliver of overall spending .
That 17 percent projection only accounts for the company ’ s operations , not the emissions generated when customers burn the fuel it sells , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
According to Bloomberg , these projections were circulated as late as early this year , before Covid-19 settled over the energy sector .
ExxonMobil is also the company that Inside Climate News found sponsored cutting-edge research into climate science dating back to the 1970s , and proceeded for decades to fund climate deniers to cast doubt on global warming , despite knowing full well the threat that it posed .
There ’ s a tempting story to be told about all this : that a small clique of diabolical fossil fuel interests @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of global warming .
First through denial and then through delay , the same companies have spent decades and billions of dollars obfuscating the truth about the crisis , using advertising and lobbying campaigns to waste time that humanity will never get back .
That ’ s all true , of course .
But it wasn ’ t idiosyncratic personality defects that led generations of executives across continents to make the same choices .
Improbable as it might seem , there ’ s nothing uniquely craven about the world ’ s top fossil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doing their jobs .
For the sake of the planet , those jobs shouldn ’ t exist .
What might seem like reckless sociopathy is in fact a business model enabled by trillions of dollars ’ worth of government support and a whole body of domestic and international law protecting fossil fuel companies ’ right to profit off the substances fueling a deadly crisis .
It isn ’ t just Donald Trump and his revanchist appointees helping them do it , either .
In more than a third of all countries on earth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sue sovereign governments that threaten to infringe on their profits .
Though the G20 nations have talked a big game about ending fossil fuel subsidies , they haven ’ t yet .
And through the Obama-era State Department ’ s Global Shale Gas Initiative , Hillary Clinton was arguably more effective and aggressive at promoting fossil fuels as a Cabinet member than former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson .
Even today ’ s progressive climate plans often avoid tackling fossil fuels , with direct challenges to fossil fuel production still considered a third rail @ @ @ @ @ @ @ written before , such proposals—including Joe Biden ’ s climate plan—treat energy transition as a problem of addition : Rapidly building up the country ’ s store of renewables and electric vehicles , the thinking goes , will cut into coal , oil , and gas production by outcompeting them .
But decarbonization also requires actively phasing out carbon-intensive fuels along a rapid timeline .
The business model of companies like ExxonMobil—to dig up and burn as much of their core product as possible—poses a direct challenge to that goal .
Even as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the last decade , fossil fuel use has continued to rise .
Fossil fuels continue to meet around 80 percent of the world ’ s energy demand , and study after study shows an industry hell-bent on producing vastly more of that fuel than the planet can safely take .

So long as it can make money digging up new stores of oil and gas, ExxonMobil will continue to do so. Only government policy—not subtle market tweaks or a change of CEO hearts—can eliminate its core business model, making it unprofitable via regulations on drilling and exports, withdrawing the ample state support the sector receives, and even exploring public ownership of fossil fuel firms as a way to manage a rapid transition equitably. Fear of such measures has driven those companies’ efforts to brand themselves as good-faith actors in the climate fight, advertising their token investments in low-carbon fuels and sponsoring dead-end pushes for a modest carbon tax. Approaches like the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative—a collection of oil companies that have pledged to voluntarily reduce their greenhouse gas emissions—carry a clear message for governments: We’ve got this. This week’s reporting from Bloomberg should be treated as hard evidence that they don’t.
There are some understandable political reasons why Biden would be wary of going after fossil fuel companies in a general election: for example, the desire to win extraction-heavy swing states like Pennsylvania. But with fossil fuel companies at what may be their weakest point in living memory, Democrats shouldn’t fear them if they win back control of the White House and Senate in November. The same day the Bloomberg story broke, Exxon was dethroned as the country’s most valuable energy company, replaced by the renewables company NextEra Energy. Its stock now sits at 18-year lows. The Big Oil that Biden officials will face, should they take the White House next year, will be a fundamentally different, more desperate beast than the one the last Democratic administration set out to please. It’s Exxon’s prerogative to hang on for dear life and squeeze every last dollar out of a future even its industry peers now say looks bleak for fossil fuel production. It’s also the government’s prerogative to keep that from happening and not sacrifice untold lives for the sake of corporate profits.


newrepublic--2020-10-06--Who Will Win the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature?

Four years ago , I made the worst prediction of my professional life .
No , not that Hillary Clinton would defeat Donald Trump—though I was pretty confident of that , too .
Instead , I wrote that Bob Dylan would not win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 and , furthermore , that he would never win it—and that if he did I would eat my vinyl copy of Blood on the Tracks .
( For the record , I have yet to eat my copy of Blood on the Tracks , though I promise to eat it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Donald Trump wins the Nobel Peace Prize this Friday . )
My Nobel Prize predictions have not gotten much better .
Kazuo Ishiguro—the Japanese-English writer of novels of intricate subtlety dedicated to exploring one of literature ’ s great themes—Britain ’ s awfulness—won in 2017 .
Ishiguro wasn ’ t even mentioned in my annual preview that year , and we ’ re talking about a feature that typically mentions about 100 potential honorees .
I did include 2018 ’ s Nobel laureate , Poland ’ s Olga Tokarczuk , as a favorite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that 2019 ’ s winner , Peter Handke , “ shouldn ’ t stand a chance given his politics , which are horrific.
” Every year I publish this preview , and people bet real , actual money based on it .
If you are reading this because you want to bet on the Nobel Prize in Literature , please—and I can ’ t stress this enough—don ’ t do that .
Buy something useful instead , like a lottery ticket .
Or bet on the Nobel Prize in Literature , just do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The last five years have been tumultuous for the Nobel Prize .
Attempts at breaking new ground—with Dylan being the most prominent example—suggested an openness to a more expansive interpretation of literature .
At the same time , the prize has been beset by scandal .
The 2018 prize was postponed after the husband of one of the Nobel Committee members was accused of serial sexual harassment and abuse—as well as leaking the names of the winners to bettors .
( He would go on to serve a two-year prison sentence for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then chair of the Swedish Academy ’ s Literature Committee , Anders Olsson , went on a P.R .
blitz promising that he and his fellow judges were aware of the prize ’ s dismal record on gender and race , as well as its perceived stuffiness and Eurocentrism .
The Nobel Prize was subsequently awarded to two Europeans , one of whom has been trailed for years by accusations of genocide denial based on his writings about the Balkan Wars of the 1990s .

Maryse Conde has been a betting favorite in recent years, and her work, which explores colonialism, race, and inequality, is particularly resonant in 2020. I have been cheering for Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o for five years now. He began his career writing in English but has spent decades now writing in his native tongue; awarding him the prize for his searing work, which is both political and literary, would be the perfect response to the Handke disaster. (That, of course, is also why it probably won’t happen.)
What if the Nobel Prize in Literature Only Goes to Europeans From Now On?
Lyudmila Ulitskaya (Russian novelist and short story writer; 5–1 odds)
Javier Marias (Highbrow Janet Evanovich, whose books all take place in museums; 10–1 odds)
Annie Ernaux (French autobiographical novelist; 20–1 odds)
Frederike Mayrocker (Austrian poet; 25–1 odds)
Edna O’Brien (Irish novelist; 25–1 odds)
Jon Fosse (the Norwegian heroin to Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Norwegian cocaine; 20–1 odds)
Milan Kundera (91-year-old French-Czech writer of essay-fiction hybrids considered deeply uncool by the same people who treasure contemporary essay-fiction hybrids about being on the debate team; 33–1 odds)
Mircea Cărtărescu (Romanian novelist; no odds)
Ismail Kadare (Albanian novelist; no odds)
Laszlo Krasznahorkai (Hungarian writer who, when I make fun of him for being read only by sad young men, generates a torrent of angry emails in my inbox from sad young men; 33–1 odds)
Peter Nadas (Hungary’s second-most-important export, behind neofascism; no odds)
For reasons discussed above, all of these writers are unlikely to win—unless, of course, the Nobel Prize in Literature is in the midst of a rebrand as a European literature prize, which is basically what it traditionally has been. Bettors once again think that this is Ulitskaya’s year, but I’m not so certain—she operates in a similar political, literary, and geographical space as two recent laureates, Svetlana Alexievich and Olga Tokarczuk. Nadas, Kadare, O’Brien, and Cărtărescu are all deserving and thus wholly unlikely recipients. Fosse is the galaxy brain to Knausgaard’s small brain and Dag Solstad’s big brain, but I can’t see a Scandinavian winning for another couple of years at least. Marias and Krasznahorkai would win if the Nobel Committee were composed entirely of editorial assistants at a literary imprint of a big publishing house who spend their days polishing their grad school applications for an English Ph.D. Kundera is one of the last of a cohort of twentieth-century figures whose personal life everyone is just a little better off not knowing too much about. His fiction has not aged particularly well, and Ivan Klima is very much still alive, if the Swedish Academy would like to award someone from the Czech Republic’s Golden Generation. A poet hasn’t won since 2011, so Mayrocker is probably the closest thing to a dark horse on this list.


newrepublic--2020-10-06--The Barrett Confirmation Hearings Don’t Have to Be a Waste of Time

The Senate Judiciary Committee will begin its confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett next week .
I am not looking forward to them , and for reasons that have nothing to do with Barrett herself .
Supreme Court confirmation hearings as they currently exist are far from a productive use of time for the Senate , the nominee , or the American public .
Fifteen years before her own hearings , Justice Elena Kagan described them as “ a vapid and hollow charade , in which repetition of platitudes has replaced discussion of viewpoints and personal anecdotes have supplanted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so miserable ?
Partisan and ideological divides play an obvious role .
Since Robert Bork ’ s disastrous hearings in 1987 , nominees are far more cautious when describing their own views .
The nominees ’ obligation to show some manner of judicial independence also hinders some lines of questioning .
Would-be justices often decline to say how they would decide specific cases or issues , on the grounds that it would compromise their impartiality .
As a result , the hearings often become an endless loop of questions about Roe v. Wade @ @ @ @ @ @ @ carefully rehearsed answers designed to avoid answering those questions are offered in response .
( In Barrett ’ s case , this manner of interlocution may be even less useful than ever before . )
All of these factors , plus the immense stakes involved , make for a maddening and fruitless experience .
I ’ ve already proposed scrapping this system entirely : remove the president and the Senate from the process of selecting future Supreme Court justices , and instead choose them at random from among active federal judges to serve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ take a constitutional amendment , it ’ s more of a long-term solution than an immediate form of relief .
For now and going forward , it would be more useful if the senators avoided asking questions to which they won ’ t or can ’ t get any answers .
Instead , they should explore a judicial nominee ’ s approach to history—and the lessons that can be drawn from it .
How the justices understand American history can influence how they decide cases .
Instances abound just from the most recent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the court noted how white supremacists used nonunanimous verdicts in criminal cases to dilute African American influence on juries in its ruling that abolished the practice .
In Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue , some of the justices pointed to the anti-Catholic bigotry that inspired state-level “ Blaine amendments , ” which denied state funds to religious schools .
Justice Neil Gorsuch ’ s majority opinion in McGirt v. Oklahoma , which is perhaps one of the best-written decisions of the last decade , begins with an unforgettable opening line : “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Tears was a promise.
” I would like to know about how a nominee thinks about history itself .
A justice ’ s understanding of the revolutionary and founding eras can influence how they interpret the Constitution ’ s meaning today .
Their perception of the Reconstruction era , for example , might shape not only how they read the Fourteenth Amendment but also how they decide civil rights cases on every level .
And a would-be justice ’ s understanding of the Warren court could be instructive about their views on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and 1960s went too far or not far enough .

It’s particularly important to hear the nominee’s opinions on when the Supreme Court got something wrong. Legal scholars often write about what they call the “anti-canon” of American constitutional law—the cases universally denounced by judges and scholars as not just erroneous but morally and ethically repugnant. The four best-known examples are Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, Buck v. Bell, and Korematsu v. United States. Others, like Lochner v. New York, are often denounced in strong terms as well. I would like to hear about when and why a prospective justice thinks the Supreme Court made a mistake and what lessons can be learned in hindsight from those errors.
In terms of history and the Supreme Court, Reconstruction may loom largest of all. Historians have long compared it to a second American Revolution of sorts—a comparison that is particularly apt when it comes to constitutional law. The ratification of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments set the nation on a path toward multiracial democracy, albeit one that would not be more fully realized until the mid-twentieth century. A campaign of white supremacist terrorism in the South, coupled with growing indifference among Northern whites, led to nearly a century of Jim Crow laws and racial apartheid.
The Supreme Court, which played a central role in translating the dream of Reconstruction into reality in the 1950s and 1960s, helped doom it in the 1870s. In U.S. v. Cruikshank, the justices overturned a series of federal convictions against the perpetrators of the Colfax massacre in Louisiana, concluding that it was the responsibility of state governments to provide justice. In practical terms, the ruling defanged the federal government’s ability to suppress white supremacist terrorism, especially when Democrats seized control of state governments. Later, in the civil rights era, the court stripped Congress of its power to pass anti-discrimination laws under the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments.


newrepublic--2020-10-06--The Paradox of the Burmese Python

The Paradox of the Burmese Python

Samantha Smith first encountered PYBI029 in January 2019 after a farmer traced her tracks in the ash of a recently burned agricultural field on the outskirts of Sakaerat Biosphere Reserve , in Thailand .
She treated the snake ’ s burn injuries with Neosporin and nicknamed her Daenerys , after the fireproof Game of Thrones character .
A few weeks later , a veterinarian implanted the newly healed PYBI029 with a radio tracker , making her the fourth Burmese python in Smith ’ s study group of seven .
Seven may sound like a small number of subjects for a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Smith , a conservation biologist who ’ s been watching her serpentine subjects since 2018 , can ’ t afford to track 20 snakes ; she relies on donated or shared equipment .
“ No one wants to fund snakes , ” said Caesar Rahman , a conservation biologist working in Bangladesh .
“ It ’ s not a priority species.
” In its native range from southeastern China and Vietnam across much of Laos , Cambodia , Thailand , Myanmar , and Bangladesh to parts of Bhutan , Nepal , India , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as vulnerable , one step from official endangerment .
Habitat loss and degradation , the pet trade , and poaching have reduced the population by roughly a third over the past decade and more than half in 20 years .
With tigers and leopards hanging on last threads , the snakes are one of the few remaining large carnivores in the region—and a relative enigma : “ Not much is known about them , ” Rahman said .
The teams that have produced most of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ massive sums into the enterprise , operate halfway around the world , in Florida .
They aren ’ t trying to save their subjects .
They ’ re trying to kill them .
Rahman has been embedding radio trackers in Burmese pythons in Bangladesh ’ s Lawachara National Park since 2013 , to monitor their movement and answer basic questions about their biology .
How far can an individual python travel ?
What habitats do they prefer ?
What effect does relocating pythons from villages to forests have on their movement and survival @ @ @ @ @ @ @ information , but Burmese pythons ’ nocturnal and secretive lifestyle makes them tough to study .
Once during fieldwork , Rahman struggled to track down a Burmese python even with its GPS location in hand .
“ We didn ’ t realize it was right there , ” he told me .
“ We were practically standing on it.
” It ’ s a common experience among python researchers .
As Smith told me : “ It ’ s definitely made me more careful of where I put my feet .
”

As climate change redraws ecological boundaries and fuels mass extinction, paradoxical invasives like the Burmese python could become more common, presenting interesting philosophical and ethical questions for conservation biologists. If harmony exists only in places untouched by humans, then is ecological discord simply the new normal of a thoroughly disturbed planet? When the rules of entire ecosystems are rewritten, does anything belong anywhere? The Burmese python, both a villain and a victim, shows just how much we don’t know about our ever-changing world.
“Venerable, sometimes conflicting, traditions shape our views of nature,” Cornell University herpetologist Harry Greene wrote in 1997. For many, Burmese pythons epitomize all the qualities—slithering, voracious, secretive, dangerous—humans despise in animals. For others, Burms and their paradoxical brethren symbolize the folly of labeling certain species as “invasive” and bad and others as “endangered” and good. “They’re a gateway drug to discarding the whole paradigm,” said science writer Emma Marris, an early advocate of conservation without ecological purism in her 2011 book, Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World.
Historians and sociologists in recent decades have accused invasion biology of inheriting and enshrining the nativism, racism, and xenophobia of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century biologists and landscape architects, with terms like “aliens,” “exotics,” “outsiders,” and “invaders.” Within the field, there’s significant disagreement on basic tenets, like, for example, how long something has to be around to be “native.” Two hundred million years ago, with the continental drift? Thousands of years ago, when the first humans arrived in North America? Or several centuries ago, when European naturalists landed and documented what they saw? Is it “native” once other “native” species have adapted to eating it, perhaps? Sometimes that can happen rather quickly, and other times, biologists argue, it could take hundreds or even thousands of years for species to evolve to coexist with new arrivals.


newrepublic--2020-10-06--How the EPA Is Screwing Oklahoma’s Tribes

Jim Inhofe might be best known as the dipshit who brought a snowball to the floor of Congress as “ proof ” that climate change is not real .
But the Republican senator from Oklahoma is no fool .
In 2005 , Congress passed a bill ostensibly aimed at authorizing federal funds for the upkeep and creation of federally aided roads and highways .
At 836 pages long , it was an impressively boring bill , reading as little more than a list of construction projects in need of funding and designations and redesignations as to what roads fall under @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It was , in other words , the perfect place for Inhofe to hide some equally sterile lines protecting gas and oil interests against the peskiness of tribal sovereignty and land rights , to be employed if the worst came to pass and tribes in his state were able to reclaim their lands : Notwithstanding any other provision of law , if the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency ( referred to in this section as the ‘ ‘ Administrator ’ ’ ) determines that a regulatory program submitted by the State of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a law administered by the Administrator meets applicable requirements of the law , and the Administrator approves the State to administer the State program under the law with respect to areas in the State that are not Indian country , on request of the State , the Administrator shall approve the State to administer the State program in the areas of the State that are in Indian country , without any further demonstration of authority by the State .
In layman ’ s terms : If the state of Oklahoma asks , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ give the state government regulatory control over all environmental issues that take place on tribal lands in Oklahoma .
Now , 15 years later , this long-dormant rider has been activated , all because the U.S. government can ’ t decide whether it wants tribal sovereignty , and the people entrusted with enacting it , to exist .
On Monday , The Young Turks journalist Ti-Hua Chang reported that the Trump administration ’ s EPA , helmed by Andrew Wheeler , who worked for Inhofe for 14 years , cited the above rider @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state of Oklahoma ’ s request for regulatory control .
Given the cozy relationship between Oklahoma lawmakers and the gas and oil industry , the EPA ’ s decision effectively hands power over hazardous waste dumping , fracking , and the purposeful diversion of industrialized farm runoff on tribal lands to a slim number of industry executives .
This was not a random chess move .
It was an industry reacting to the prospect of having to consult tribal governments about what happens on their land .

Specifically, it’s a reaction to the Supreme Court’s 5–4 ruling this past July that the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s reservation, as detailed in its 1868 post–Civil War treaty with the United States, was never dissolved by an act of Congress and thus is still a legally active part of Indian Country. While the ruling only applied to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and concerned only crimes prosecuted under the Major Crimes Act, it was clear that McGirt v. Oklahoma, as the case was called, could pave the way for a multitude of similar cases.
With the reservation’s borders and sovereignty being upheld, the other tribes in Oklahoma, most of which claim similarly ignored but still intact treaties, have since been tacitly encouraged by the positive outcome to pursue legal challenges of their own to regain jurisdiction over their lands. Should all of the tribes successfully assert their treaty rights, roughly half of Oklahoma would cease to be state land and instead be what it always has been: Indian Country.
In the months since the McGirt decision, a whirlwind of studies and papers and talks have attempted to predict what kinds of jurisdictional powers could be wielded by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and any other tribes able to join them in upholding their reservations. Provided the right legal environment is attained, tribal governments overseeing reservations can wield the power to impose taxes and regulations on non-Native industries that want to operate within their boundaries. Most experts analyzing the legal implications agreed that the tribes would not be able to enforce regulations or tax nontribal citizens that own fee land (meaning it has been deeded to an individual and is not held in trust by the Department of the Interior) in the reservation—that is, tribal citizens would be the ones primarily affected by McGirt. But there are exceptions to this rule, namely for Oklahoma’s petroleum industry.


newrepublic--2020-10-06--The Religious Hijacking of the Supreme Court Doesn’t Require Amy Barrett

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett has already drawn a substantial amount of scrutiny for her conservative religious beliefs and her potential willingness to overturn Roe v. Wade .
An originalist in the mold of her mentor Justice Antonin Scalia , Barrett could hamper liberal causes for decades to come .
But it ’ s perhaps underappreciated just how much the conservative religious takeover of the court has long been underway .
If Barrett is confirmed , she will join a bench that has already tipped the balance of church and state toward the former .
Even if she isn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trajectory is already laid in .
The last Supreme Court term brought a landmark win for LGBTQ individuals in the United States , with the ruling that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity .
Liberals rightly celebrated the ruling as a substantial , and unexpected , victory .
But in three other cases that drew less coverage from the media—Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue , Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Agnes Morrissey-Berru , and Little Sisters of the Poor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ undermine those newly won rights .
In these matters , the majority of the court endorsed a growing and dangerous interpretation of religious freedom that leaves many Americans vulnerable to the discriminatory religious beliefs of others .
Columbia Law professor Katherine Franke describes the underlying ideas of the majority as “ free exercise supremacy.
” According to Franke , the court has created a tiered set of rights , where religious freedom is a first-class right , but sexual equality , LGBTQ rights , and reproductive rights are second-class .
Franke believes the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ As you read the opinions , what you have is a kind of sterile , mechanical reasoning in equality cases and a deep moral reasoning in religion cases , ” she said .
“ You get the sense that religious liberty is fundamental to American democracy , but equality is just reading a sentence in the statute.
” We may soon see this reasoning play out .
In a case coming up in November , the Supreme Court might grant a pass to religious government contractors who don ’ t want @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ’ s a ruling that could cement the legal weaponization of religious freedom that began more than five years ago , and the court ’ s current majority doesn ’ t require Barrett ’ s participation to see this through .
The contemporary period of errant religious freedom law kicked off with the Supreme Court ’ s 2014 Burwell v. Hobby Lobby ruling , which exempted the craft store from the Affordable Care Act ’ s contraception mandate because of its owners ’ religious views .
The ruling was a radical departure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protected the religious rights of churches and individuals but not for-profit corporations .

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett has already drawn a substantial amount of scrutiny for her conservative religious beliefs and her potential willingness to overturn Roe v. Wade. An originalist in the mold of her mentor Justice Antonin Scalia, Barrett could hamper liberal causes for decades to come. But it’s perhaps underappreciated just how much the conservative religious takeover of the court has long been underway. If Barrett is confirmed, she will join a bench that has already tipped the balance of church and state toward the former. Even if she isn’t confirmed, make no mistake—this trajectory is already laid in.
The last Supreme Court term brought a landmark win for LGBTQ individuals in the United States, with the ruling that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Liberals rightly celebrated the ruling as a substantial, and unexpected, victory. But in three other cases that drew less coverage from the media—Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Agnes Morrissey-Berru, and Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania—the court took positions that could undermine those newly won rights. In these matters, the majority of the court endorsed a growing and dangerous interpretation of religious freedom that leaves many Americans vulnerable to the discriminatory religious beliefs of others.


newrepublic--2020-10-06--Claudia Rankine Has a Few Questions

Claudia Rankine Has a Few Questions

In her newest book , Claudia Rankine takes on the oldest question in politics : How ought we to live together ?
Just Us completes Rankine ’ s trilogy of works on race in the United States , following Don ’ t Let Me Be Lonely : An American Lyric and Citizen : An American Lyric .
Published in 2014 , a year marred by police killings and sustained protests against police violence , Citizen found a way to describe the psychic violence of being Black in the U.S. Bending the genre of lyric poem just shy of breaking , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Zimmerman killing Trayvon Martin to Zinedine Zidane head-butting a fellow soccer player during the 2006 FIFA World Cup .
In a haunting piece about Hurricane Katrina , characteristic of Citizen ’ s tone , the speaker narrates : New Orleans in 2005 is not Ferguson in 2014 is not Los Angeles in 1992 .
One tragedy can ’ t be exchanged for another .
But Citizen suggested how violence—epistemic , political , environmental—never rested far from the Black experience .
Whereas that work explored the interiority of Black people who have had to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Us examines the attitudes of white people who take it for granted that their lives do .
In the new book , Rankine tries to account for norms and expectations she worries have escaped scrutiny .
She wants to “ know what it is to be white.
” She wonders why a stranger she ’ s talking to in an airport lounge thinks his son would ’ ve been accepted to Yale if only he had a “ diversity card ” to play .
She asks why her friend thinks he ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forefathers when he doesn ’ t get this job or that promotion .
She tries to understand what parts of whiteness ( blond hair , maybe ) can be snipped off and carried by anyone .
The psychology of white people is of particular interest for Rankine , since in order to find a politics that allows us to live together , we ’ re going to have to develop relationships that , she writes , “ all of history [ is ] against.
” That can ’ t happen without engaging white @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bore witness to systemic racism , Just Us is best understood as a possible model for the kind of relations Rankine thinks we need to cultivate .
As Rankine worked on the book , she began habitually transcribing her conversations with white people .
Then she would submit them to an independent fact-checker , responsible for culling the transcripts for anything that wasn ’ t strictly accurate .
And finally , Rankine would give the fact-checked transcripts back to whomever she ’ d had the conversation with and ask them to verify , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then to respond .
The magic of this process is that Rankine insists on dissolving any lingering uncertainty about these encounters .
Who among us has not wondered , after some white person ’ s offhand comment hits our ears the wrong way , How sure can I be of what she meant ?
… Am I projecting onto her without merit ?
This kind of second-guessing is almost second nature .
In a world that relies on the hesitation and self-doubt I just described , Rankine refuses .

The philosopher Lorna Finlayson wrote recently of feminist thought that “theory is always underdetermined by data, after all,” and it’s difficult not to see generalizable wisdom in her words when reading Just Us. It equivocates theoretically, because at a certain point, theory cannot encompass the infinite contingencies of life. It is easy in theory to describe Latinx folks as “junior partners in White supremacy,” as Wilderson does in his new book, Afropessimism. But it’s much more difficult to admit over hors d’oeuvres that you know nothing about José Martí because U.S.-centrism has blinded you to struggle and radicalism in Latin America. Theory can deftly explain why one’s “value in our culture’s eyes is determined by … skin color first and foremost,” but it’s much worse at making sense of that value when you’re sitting in first class on a transatlantic flight. And while that might sound like a criticism, Rankine’s theoretical ambivalence helps Just Us enact its central tension: between reason and reality, between our notions of justice and who we are.
It’s not that there’s no secret to living together, just that we exist at the ragged edge of what theory has to offer us.
Before I’d read the book, I thought the title Just Us meant that all we have to rely on, as we build a political life, is ourselves and our intuitions. That somehow everyone from Thucydides all the way down to Habermas was wrong to try to locate justice in governing regimes or bundles of rights and protections or institutional forms. At other times, closer to the middle of the book, I thought “just us” rang off the page with resignation. I understood it as Rankine’s way of saying that when you really start looking for justice, white people don’t want to be part of the conversation. It’s just us, where the “us” means Black people—though later in the book she’ll come to challenge even that assumption.
By the end, I’d returned to something like that first definition with a twist. It’s not that there’s no secret to living together, just that we exist at the ragged edge of what theory has to offer us. It offers us guidance, explanation, tools, language to make sense of a world we each had no hand in creating. Theory can help us to see new things and collate what we already knew. But at a certain point, that is no substitute for living in the world and offers only a balm against its cruelty. The phrase “ethical loneliness” is too polite to describe the stab of betrayal one feels when, over dinner with white friends, it occurs to you to wonder, am I being silenced? Knowing that “all of history” is against your marriage does not always make it easier to live in. Our “inchoate desire for a future other than the one that seems to be forming” needs something more than theory. It needs us.


newrepublic--2020-10-07--The Final Message of a Dying Campaign

The Final Message of a Dying Campaign

With a month to go before the November election , Donald Trump has returned to the Covid-19 message he , his administration , and his allies pushed in the early spring .
“ Don ’ t let it dominate you , ” Trump said in a video released Monday evening , shortly after he left Walter Reed Medical Center , where he had been treated for several days for Covid-19 .
“ Don ’ t be afraid .
You ’ re gon na beat it !
” Channeling Evita , he waved , maskless , from a White House balcony @ @ @ @ @ @ @ virus despite the fact that he was both very contagious and apparently very symptomatic .
The following day , he suggested that Covid-19 was no different from the flu , tweeting : “ Flu season is coming up !
Many people every year , sometimes over 100,000 , and despite the Vaccine , die from the Flu .
Are we going to close down our Country ?
No , we have learned to live with it , just like we are learning to live with Covid , in most populations far less lethal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this message and the one he pushed in February—that Covid-19 was overhyped , a “ hoax ” being built up to damage the economy—is not so much substance as context .
What we have experienced over the last seven months is not comparable in any way to flu season .
Over 200,000 Americans have died .
The economy has tanked , shedding tens of millions of jobs .
The White House itself is the center of a massive Covid-19 outbreak that has infected the president , the first lady , several senators , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ officials .
Far from a beacon of resilience , the president has become a symbol of just how deeply the country has been affected by the pandemic .
In public appearances since contracting the virus , he appears hoarse , shaky , and frightened ; reports of his hospitalization include at least two concerning drops in oxygen level and a cocktail of drugs that indicate pneumonia .
For the last four years , Trump ’ s supporters and detractors have retconned his 2016 victory , arguing that , having won an improbable election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ genius .
In this school of thought , Trump ’ s psychotic tweets and staggering incompetence are rendered into perverse strengths : We are playing checkers ; he is playing chess .
This narrative deserved to die an agonizing death years ago and should now be cast aside forever .
Trailing in the polls with only 30 days left before the 2020 election , the president has embraced a reelection strategy that is , even for him , profoundly stupid .
When Trump was initially diagnosed with Covid-19 , there was some speculation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him .
The president ’ s haphazard pandemic response has received abysmal marks : Here was an opportunity to change the narrative .
There could , some added , be a “ rally round the bedside ” effect , similar to what happened following U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson ’ s hospitalization for Covid-19 in the spring .
“ This moment is an opportunity for Trump to hit reset on his tone-deaf message on COVID that we are always on the cusp of seeing the definitive end of the virus , ” wrote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ His lack of realism during the pandemic is one reason his ratings on handling it are so low.
” Get the message right , this line of thinking goes , and Trump can save his campaign .

The last week of Trump’s campaign has been a greatest hits of his worst political instincts.
This argument assumed that Trump could adopt humility and use his physical weakness as a political strength—that he could even admit fault, recognizing his own failures and the importance of frontline workers and first responders. Voters didn’t think Trump was taking Covid-19 seriously; here was an opportunity to show them just how seriously he was taking the virus.
The president has—characteristically—taken the opposite path. Despite the fact that he is still obviously ill, he and his allies are insisting that he is not just fine but better than ever. Trump has said that he feels better than he has in “20 years” and speculated that he is “immune” to the virus. The message is not just that an unhealthy, out-of-his-depth president is an American ubermensch but that, by not dying, he has shown the country the way to beat the virus: change absolutely nothing and go about business as usual with a casual disdain for basic safety protocols.
The last week of Trump’s campaign has been a greatest hits of his worst political instincts. At last week’s debate, he failed to condemn the Proud Boys, a right-wing gang with ties to white nationalist groups. The moment echoed his “very fine people on both sides” comments in the wake of Charlottesville in 2017. On Tuesday, moreover, he announced that he was breaking off talks about a potential stimulus package until after the presidential election. The move tanked the stock market and further damaged his reelection chances. The author of The Art of the Deal was also making a basic and catastrophic negotiation error, accepting the blame for both the stock market collapse and the lack of stimulus.


newrepublic--2020-10-07--Our President Is Literally Toxic

Our President Is Literally Toxic

In 1978 , Susan Sontag published a famous essay titled “ Illness As Metaphor ” which argued against perceiving illness metaphorically .
“ Illness is not a metaphor , ” Sontag wrote , “ The most truthful way of regarding illness—and the healthiest way of being ill—is one most purified of , most resistant to , metaphoric thinking.
” Medical science has been unable to dispel the popular notion of disease as some black-hatted villain that the virtuous and strong will defeat .
Nor have the many medical patients who ’ ve pointed out what a cruel and victim-blaming delusion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The cruel truth is that misfortune doesn ’ t give a damn about the content of your character or the size of your biceps .
Everybody learns this sooner or later .
The president of the United States—the guy who entered the 2016 presidential race saying he didn ’ t think John McCain was a war hero because “ I like people who weren ’ t captured ” —has Covid .
He doesn ’ t see this as a misfortune .
He sees it as a challenge , one that demonstrates that he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anything , President Donald Trump sees Covid-19 as a metaphor .
It ’ s a school .
“ This is the real school , ” he said in a bizarre video tweeted from Walter Reed Army Medical Center .
“ This isn ’ t the ‘ let ’ s read the books school.
’ ” Covid-19 is also an athletic contest that casts Trump as a mighty wrestler slamming his adversary to the ground , or a wide receiver breaking through a pack of defenders to score a touchdown , to cite two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have circulated on social networks .

This figurative-to-literal alchemy is a clear theme of Trump’s public career. It’s been something of a mission for him to make the word flesh, so to speak. Remember the Access Hollywood tape that surfaced in the waning days of the 2016 campaign? It featured this exchange between candidate Trump and host Billy Bush:
Trump: I’m automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Bush: Whatever you want. Trump: Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.
A reasonable person (a reasonable male, anyway) might conclude that Trump was perhaps the sort of pig who would grab women and kiss them against their will but not the sort of pig who would grab women by the pussy, because who in hell does that? Obviously “grab ’em by the pussy” was, in Trump’s locution, a metaphor. Not a very nice metaphor, but a metaphor nonetheless.
But this reasonable male would be—indeed, was—almost certainly quite wrong. We know that because, in a 1997 lawsuit, later dropped, Trump was accused by Jill Harth Houraney, the girlfriend and later wife of a Trump business associate, of—on three separate occasions in 1992 and 1993—reaching for her crotch. A businesswoman named Jessica Leeds similarly recalled in 2016 that several decades earlier she was seated on an airline flight next to Trump, a complete stranger, and that the future president tried to put his hand up her skirt. According to these women, who had no obvious reason to lie, Trump literally tried to “grab ’em by the pussy.” (Trump denied both allegations.)


newrepublic--2020-10-07--Why Trump’s Experimental Covid-19 Treatment Could Be Bad News for Everyone Else

Soon after President Trump spiked a fever , shares of Regeneron , a pharmaceutical company he has previously invested in , also shot up—along with interest in the company ’ s experimental Covid-19 treatment .
The president , his doctor announced within hours of the public learning Trump tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 , had received the company ’ s monoclonal antibodies cocktail , which has not been fully tested in humans yet .
( His doctor initially incorrectly called the treatment a “ polyclonal antibody cocktail , ” but it ’ s actually a dose of two monoclonal antibodies—highly effective @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the virus . )
Trump has several ties to the company : He previously owned stock in both Regeneron and Gilead ( the maker of the antiviral remdesivir that Trump is also taking ) and Regeneron ’ s founder and CEO , Leonard S. Schleifer , belongs to Trump ’ s golf club in Westchester County , New York .
The announcement worried experts , and not just because of the potential side effects of taking untested treatments .
No matter the outcome of Trump ’ s illness , using an experimental treatment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it impossible to know whether and how the treatment actually works .
That ’ s particularly troubling in the case of cloned antibodies , which researchers had been particularly enthusiastic about testing , given their potential .
Yet Regeneron ’ s trial in human participants is nowhere near the end—in fact , it ’ s still enrolling people , Dr. Ellie Murray , an assistant professor of epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health , told me .
“ Having this be so much in the public eye could be really damaging @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after taking Regeneron ’ s treatment , people may be less likely to enroll in the trial for fear of getting the placebo , she said .
Dr. Angela Rasmussen , a virologist at Columbia University , agreed .
“ If Trump gets better , people may think that Regeneron ’ s drug works , especially if the president attributes his recovery to that medication , ” she told me in an email .
So far , the president has indeed trumpeted the easiness of his Covid-19 recovery , even if experts , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s too early to celebrate .
If Trump experiences side effects or takes a turn for the worse—as may yet happen—people might avoid enrolling in the trial because they believe the treatment won ’ t work or could even be harmful .
While monoclonal antibodies are usually safe in general , “ like all drugs , they can have adverse effects , including serious ones .
They can produce infusion reactions and may be associated with everything from mild fever or rashes to anaphylactic shock , ” Rasmussen said .
“ Either @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to enroll in a randomized controlled trial , it will make determining efficacy very difficult.
” These circumstances are “ unprecedented , ” she said .

If beliefs around monoclonal antibodies start circulating based on how Trump seems to be faring or based on his own assertions about the treatments he’s receiving, Murray said, it might affect all clinical trials for monoclonal antibody treatments, not just Regeneron’s. And if these treatments are approved for widespread compassionate use or authorized for emergency use, researchers might never learn in a randomized controlled trial what the best dose is, or whether it treats mild or severe illness better, or the best time to take it. That could have major consequences for treating and preventing the virus—especially among high-risk populations, in whom a vaccine may not work as well.
Monoclonal antibodies could prove useful in certain circumstances, especially when it comes to protecting those at high risk of contracting and dying from the virus. Several pharmaceutical companies have rushed to develop monoclonal antibody treatments for the coronavirus. But none have been approved for use, with several undergoing phase 3 clinical trials to see how well they work. Last week, Regeneron announced in a press release that its cocktail of two monoclonal antibodies seems to reduce viral load and improve symptoms in patients with mild Covid-19 who did not need to be hospitalized. It’s not clear, however, if this treatment would help Trump, who was hospitalized.
That also complicates the argument for compassionate use of the treatment with Trump, Murray pointed out. “Compassionate use usually means that a person is really quite severely ill, that there are no other treatments available to try, and that, in the absence of treatment, the person has a high risk of death,” Murray said. Either Trump is sicker than his doctors are letting on, or he’s receiving the medication outside of the usual recommendations. “It’s kind of shocking for researchers to hear that the president was given compassionate use of a drug.” Neither Murray nor Rasmussen has heard of a case where a president has publicly taken an experimental drug or qualified for compassionate use.


newrepublic--2020-10-07--Is California Doomed to Keep Burning?

Is California Doomed to Keep Burning?

What will it take to save California ?
Around the world , fire season is growing increasingly severe and increasingly @ @ @ @ @ wildfires have destroyed more than five million acres in the American West alone .
The @ @ @ @ @ is burning California ’ s Mendocino Forest , has become the largest in the state @ @ @ @ @ Episode 17 of The Politics of Everything , hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene speak @ @ @ @ @ theorist Mike Davis about the decades of poor decisions in residential development and fire management @ @ @ @ @ In the second segment , Naomi Klein , the author of On Fire : The @ @ @ @ @ a Green New Deal , explores how the converging disasters of 2020 should shape the @ @ @ @ @ Later in the episode , campaign reporter Walter Shapiro previews the vice presidential debate .
@ @ @ @ @ like past VP debates , it won ’ t alter the race and it ’ @ @ @ @ @ there other reasons to watch it ?

What will it take to save California? Around the world, fire season is growing increasingly severe and increasingly lethal. This year, wildfires have destroyed more than five million acres in the American West alone. The August Complex fire, which is burning in California’s Mendocino Forest, has become the largest in the state’s history. On Episode 17 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene speak with the historian and urban theorist Mike Davis about the decades of poor decisions in residential development and fire management that led us here. In the second segment, Naomi Klein, the author of On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal, explores how the converging disasters of 2020 should shape the future of climate policy.
Later in the episode, campaign reporter Walter Shapiro previews the vice presidential debate. If it’s anything like past VP debates, it won’t alter the race and it’ll be entirely forgettable—but are there other reasons to watch it?


newrepublic--2020-10-07--Imagining the Post-Trump Internet

Imagining the Post-Trump Internet

On Monday , Trump declared victory in his battle with the coronavirus .
By Tuesday , he had moved on , fighting the invisible enemy he apparently blames for keeping his ( false ) Covid-19 tweets from the public .
“ REPEAL SECTION 230 !
!
!
” he wrote , meaning Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act , which , in part , defines what kinds of user-generated content websites can host without facing legal liability .
In Trump ’ s mind , Section 230 is enabling platforms to remove his content or any material they find politically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what makes platforms like Twitter possible without opening the company up to liability for everything posted by every user .
Without 230 , platforms would have to act even more like censors , like police .
But focusing narrowly on 230 misses a significant point : While Trump may have been angered by his misinformation tweet being labeled as such , in truth , when a service like Twitter decides to crack down on content , it goes after those people who are far less powerful .
While Trump was hospitalized , Twitter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that wishes , hopes or expresses a desire for death , serious bodily harm or fatal disease against an individual is against our rules , ” and that it would remove tweets or put offending accounts into read-only mode .
The countless users who had experienced death threats on the platform quickly spotted the power play : When Black , trans , or Muslim people on the platform have been threatened with violence , Twitter has largely looked the other way .
Still , Trump is not alone in targeting this law , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over big tech ; content moderation ; and the unaccountable power of platforms like Twitter , Facebook , and YouTube .
The debate over tech platforms ’ power has drawn in civil rights activists who typically don ’ t touch internet policy .
It has put Facebook and the power held by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg under intense public scrutiny , though little has changed .
The fight has transcended party lines : Republicans and Democrats both compete , in congressional hearings , to rake tech executives over the viral @ @ @ @ @ @ @ social media platforms need to be made civilly or even criminally liable for harmful content appears to be gaining ground in Congress .
A new bill introduced last week by Senators Joe Manchin and John Cornyn , the See Something , Say Something Online Act of 2020 , joins a host of others introduced in the past year—bills with equally unwieldy titles like the PACT Act , EARN IT , and BAD ADS—all concerned with how these platforms are both empowered and protected by Section 230 of the CDA , which has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ internet as we know it possible or the law that made the internet a “ free for all.
” Senator Josh Hawley , a Republican from Missouri , has waged his own personal war on 230 based on the false premise that social media platforms have an anti-conservative bias , which has now become a rallying cry in venues from the Conservative Political Action Conference to Twitter itself .
In May , Trump posted a tweet that just said “ REVOKE 230 !
” —like Tuesday ’ s tweet , no further explanation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as the national uprising in the wake of Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd was just beginning , when social media again made it possible to share evidence of police violence and calls to action quickly and widely .
Attorney General Bill Barr issued guidance that people he deemed to be “ antifa ” should be regarded as domestic terrorists ; protest photos became bread crumbs for police looking to charge activists with rioting and other crimes .
Then came Barr ’ s recommendations on revoking 230 protections from “ bad actors who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ federal criminal law or are willfully blind to criminal content on their own services .
”

Oddly, or appropriately enough, it was a mid-1990s panic about online porn that prompted the CDA, a set of amendments to the more sweeping Telecommunications Act. Senator Ron Wyden, then a congressional representative, along with (now former) Representative Chris Cox, were concerned that efforts to regulate platforms would backfire, resulting in either platforms broadly suppressing content posted by users (so they could steer clear of any ambiguous cases) or in a complete hands-off approach (so they could claim they had no control at all over what their users post and thus were not liable as the publishers). In response to these issues, Wyden and Cox proposed what became Section 230 of the CDA, which states that an “interactive computer service” cannot be held liable for content posted by its users, whom the law considers to be responsible for their own content. Section 230 also protects platforms from being considered “publishers” should any try to moderate or remove content published by users. Since passage in 1996, the CDA’s “decency” provisions have been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but Section 230 remains.
Where Section 230 collides with the current conflict over harmful content is this: 230 is commonly cited as the reason that Facebook and other platforms have no reason to act to remove such content. That speaks to the one element of 230—platforms are not legally liable for content posted by their users—but it overlooks what’s critical about the other part, which was meant to keep platforms from throwing up their hands and doing nothing lest they lose legal protections themselves. Some critiques of 230 today say this provision is just too outdated to apply to our current experience of the internet, where social media platforms reign supreme and where both users and profits have soared. But understanding that concentration of power is key to understanding what 230 is and does.
Social media companies have used that power without any significant accountability to their users. Twitter enabled the coordinated harassment campaign known as GamerGate, targeting queer women and women of color, when users could swarm certain hashtags and bombard the people who used them with abuse. Facebook’s infamous “real names” policy locked drag performers and Indigenous people, among others, out of their accounts, because their names were deemed illegitimate. Sex workers have had their content removed or suppressed from just about every social media platform, according to a new report from the collective Hacking//Hustling. (In 2018, I helped the group organize a conference for sex workers, activists, and journalists, to address these issues.) When social media platforms targeted comparatively powerless and marginalized people, they mostly got away with it, and in some cases, still do. Their content bans and account deletions were not considered politically significant. Neither was the evidence Black feminists began collecting in 2014, after being targeted by mass impersonation and trolling campaigns, exposing nascent networks of men’s rights activists and white supremacists who engaged in coordinated harassment.


newrepublic--2020-10-07--Chaos Engulfs White House as Trump Learns That the Coronavirus is Contagious

The White House Coronavirus Superspreader Week is now among the biggest governmental outbreaks in the world , with the president ’ s residence ranking as one of the worst hot spots in the city of Washington .
Grim photos show custodial staff decontaminating the press briefing room , now clad in head-to-toe personal protective equipment as they work .
Trump , eager to appear healthy and vigorous , reportedly wants to work from the Oval Office today , which means that “ staff coming in contact with him will wear gowns , gloves , mask , [ and ] eye @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
A fun day at the office for everybody , all because the president wants to be photographed signing yet more blank pieces of paper in The Room Where President Stuff Happens .
The answer to the question of how we arrived at this bizarre point is that the president and his close associates have continuously acted as if the virus that has killed more than 210,000 Americans was not , in fact , a threat .
It honestly might be more remarkable that it took so long for the natural consequences of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the rest of the country understands that masks are a trivial burden that helps to limit the spread of the virus , and that things like standing at least six feet away from people and limiting indoor events are unfortunate but necessary measures to deal with this new and deadly disease that we barely understand .
Most people , even those whose class position has made them far more likely to lose income from the pandemic ’ s effects , understand that the virus can not be toughed out or wished away @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Facebook uncle who thinks his nephews are pussies for canceling their spring break trip .
Even now , with the virus still in his body and still at risk of killing him , he refuses to rest or stop pretending to work .
Just a couple days in a comfortable hospital were too much for him to bear .
His bizarre decisions can be partly explained by the fact that his particularly nasty interpretation of masculinity requires acting as if all threats can be dominated simply by being Strong , and partly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beneficial to broadcast a resolute dismissiveness of the virus ’ s threat .
This turned out not to be the case , but Trump has always been more attuned to the dark pathologies of those who support him , even as following these instincts increasingly alienates the rest of the country .
This stance has now come back to bite him and many people around him .
A more capably corrupt administration , wrestling with the need to extract a maximum political benefit from downplaying the pandemic , might put up a dismissive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to protect itself from the virus behind the scenes .
But one thing we have learned from this outbreak is that the Trump administration is not a capably corrupt one .
Rather , its utterly perplexing insistence on pretending that the pandemic isn ’ t that bad , that the disease isn ’ t that infectious , that protecting yourself and others with a mask is unnecessary or feminine all apparently stem from genuine beliefs .
It is hard to judge whether this is more or less disturbing than the Machiavellian alternative ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and wrong , and sincerely holding them makes these people no more defensible than if they were cynically acting as if the virus wasn ’ t a big deal for political or financial reasons .
Still , it is interesting , if not particularly useful , to know that these people really did think masks were for losers and that they couldn ’ t get the virus—or that if they did , it would be no worse than the flu , because it only kills old people .
Or something along those lines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their personal health decisions , let alone the knowledge that they are complicit in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans .
The point is that if they didn ’ t believe these things , you have to imagine that the basic human instinct of self-preservation would have kicked in at some point , and they would have started donning the ol ’ face cloth that the rest of us have gotten used to by now .
Not every worker who ’ s been forced to keep showing up at their job @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of protecting themselves .
If I were a well-paid staffer at the White House , expected to go into the office every day even as most other offices in Washington shut down , I would have been wearing an N95 every day .
( If anyone could get them—even at the height of the PPE crisis , you would imagine it would be these well-connected administration goblins .
What ’ s the point of Jared Kushner otherwise ? )

A more capably corrupt administration, wrestling with the need to extract a maximum political benefit from downplaying the pandemic, might put up a dismissive front for the camera while taking care to protect itself from the virus behind the scenes. But one thing we have learned from this outbreak is that the Trump administration is not a capably corrupt one. Rather, its utterly perplexing insistence on pretending that the pandemic isn’t that bad, that the disease isn’t that infectious, that protecting yourself and others with a mask is unnecessary or feminine all apparently stem from genuine beliefs. It is hard to judge whether this is more or less disturbing than the Machiavellian alternative; either way, those beliefs are insane and wrong, and sincerely holding them makes these people no more defensible than if they were cynically acting as if the virus wasn’t a big deal for political or financial reasons.
Still, it is interesting, if not particularly useful, to know that these people really did think masks were for losers and that they couldn’t get the virus—or that if they did, it would be no worse than the flu, because it only kills old people. Or something along those lines. Who knows exactly how they rationalize their personal health decisions, let alone the knowledge that they are complicit in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. The point is that if they didn’t believe these things, you have to imagine that the basic human instinct of self-preservation would have kicked in at some point, and they would have started donning the ol’ face cloth that the rest of us have gotten used to by now. Not every worker who’s been forced to keep showing up at their job throughout the pandemic has had the luxury of protecting themselves. If I were a well-paid staffer at the White House, expected to go into the office every day even as most other offices in Washington shut down, I would have been wearing an N95 every day. (If anyone could get them—even at the height of the PPE crisis, you would imagine it would be these well-connected administration goblins. What’s the point of Jared Kushner otherwise?)


newrepublic--2020-10-08--The Fatal Blind Spots of The Social Dilemma

The Social Dilemma , director Jeff Orlowski ’ s buzzworthy Netflix documentary about Big Tech , starts casually , with the interviewees settling down into their chairs , taking their last sips of coffee , and making small talk with faint voices offscreen .
It ’ s the part of the movie that is supposed to get cut in editing , but this is the film ’ s version of breaking the fourth wall , nudging us to see its subjects not as powerful and wealthy corporate leaders , but as normal guys getting jitters before appearing on camera .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ social media platforms that the movie dissects , but they aren ’ t the villains .
In fact , the only villain of the film is fictional—a personification of an AI algorithm in a storyline about a typical family ’ s struggles with social media , played by Mad Men actor Vincent Kartheiser .
Throughout the film , he and his two evil sidekicks use a cartoonish console to manipulate an awkward high schooler , the idea being that all of us are being controlled in the same way .
It seems like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actor to play the “ algorithm guy ” when there are actual algorithm creators being interviewed in the film .
But The Social Dilemma is loath to assign responsibility for the collective illness that is the internet , other than to go on about the big and bad and powerful “ system.
” As a result , the movie is less an indictment of Silicon Valley and its creators than a primary example of the way the profit-driven algorithm has come to govern not just our social lives , but also our relationship @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the information in the film is particularly new .
Most of us know about targeted ads and have noticed predictive algorithms reflecting our search history back at us .
We have read about fake news and Cambridge Analytica .
Social media is addictive , obviously , which is one of the film ’ s central themes .
What ’ s new are the purveyors of this information : the remorseful , self-aware warriors-turned-conscientious-objectors of Silicon Valley .
The film ’ s interviewees take turns lamenting the way their utopian dream of connecting people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ explaining , to an increasingly eerie musical score , how social media instead became an extractive , addictive , psychologically damaging , and politically dangerous force .
The problem is clear : Tech companies get their money from ads , making our online behavior their currency .
This leads them to carelessly feed us cocktails of clickable posts , full of cute animals and family members , but also far-right conspiracies and dysmorphia-inspiring images of beauty .

It’s not that The Social Dilemma, to borrow from its own alarmist tone, is secretly implanting us with some evil neoliberal agenda (though it does at times seem like an elaborate commercial for the Center for Humane Technology, a think tank founded by a handful of the interviewees). It’s that, for all its trappings of a liberal exposé, it lacks any substantive political message other than a nod at “regulation.” As Facebook and Google veteran Justin Rosenstein lamely concludes, “By having these conversations … we can start to change the conversation.”
The titular “dilemma,” then, isn’t Facebook or Twitter or Instagram’s to solve. It’s ours. Turn off your notifications! Delete some apps! Follow people you disagree with on Twitter! These are the solutions hastily fired off as the credits roll. The film’s website continues this list of inane suggestions on a page optimistically titled “TAKE ACTION,” including taking a “tech detox” and sharing the film on, yes, social media.
Under the thin veneer of an informative and activist message, The Social Dilemma betrays a reliance on emotional intensity, shock, and entertainment value to attract its viewers. The documentary genre fits awkwardly into this logic. Documentaries that aim to simply educate are decidedly not fun, and documentaries that reveal their main purpose to be a political agenda garner suspicion rather than large audiences. And yet, documentary’s proximity to reality has burdened it with these responsibilities, with the expectation that it can bring us closer to truth, to reveal something crucial that we hadn’t known before. If a film simply fulfills the need for immediate pleasure, is it still a documentary? Shows like Keeping Up With the Kardashians and Real Housewives certainly film “reality,” but we wouldn’t call them documentaries.


newrepublic--2020-10-08--The White House Coronavirus Outbreak Won’t Stop the Barrett Confirmation

Two weeks ago , the White House held an event with more than 200 attendees where President Donald Trump formally announced his nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court .
Since then , the coronavirus has sent the president to the hospital , infected some political allies and many of his top-level staffers , and forced multiple Republican senators into quarantine .
The Senate itself took a two-week hiatus in an attempt to slow down the spread .
That hiatus won ’ t affect one key body , however : the Senate Judiciary Committee , which plans to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ We ’ re going to have a hearing for Amy Barrett , the nominee to the Supreme Court , ” South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham , the committee ’ s chairman , told reporters earlier this week .
“ It will be done safely—but I ’ ve got a job to do , and I ’ m pressing on.
” Some committee members will participate remotely ; others will be on Capitol Hill in person .
The Covid-19 outbreak in Washington could yet delay the final vote on Barrett ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ positive for the virus over the past five days and entered isolation , temporarily sapping the three-seat GOP majority .
With Alaska ’ s Lisa Murkowski and Maine ’ s Susan Collins opposed to casting a vote before Election Day , McConnell could find it impossible to hold a floor vote if more senators are infected .
( Barrett herself was reportedly diagnosed with the virus over the summer and has already recovered from it . )
But even a pandemic is unlikely to derail the nomination altogether .
Faced with the growing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ elections , Senate Republicans have no incentive to slow down Barrett ’ s elevation to the high court as long as they have the votes to get it done .
Their strategy is driven by electoral pressure and ideological fervor , as well as a deep skepticism of public health measures .
Most importantly , however , it is about power—the power to keep shaping the nation ’ s fortunes and destiny long after the voters have replaced them .
Barrett ’ s impact on the court will be substantial once she is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , she will represent the greatest ideological shift in a single seat since Clarence Thomas replaced Thurgood Marshall in 1991 .
And while the Roberts court always trended to the right , it turned out to be less reliable over the past decade than many in the conservative legal movement had hoped .
Affirmative action programs in higher education survived multiple rounds of litigation .
Employers can no longer discriminate against gay and transgender workers .
Abortion rights , though under siege in the states , have not been dramatically curtailed in recent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Marriage equality is the law of the land .

Those victories may be at an end. Barrett is a former Antonin Scalia clerk who often praises him as her judicial role model. She is widely expected to trend closer to Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito than to Chief Justice John Roberts in major rulings. Many of the court’s most notable “liberal” rulings in recent years came in cases where the four liberal justices stuck together and pried away one of the five conservatives—usually Roberts or Anthony Kennedy, but occasionally one of the others. Once Barrett joins the court, however, conservatives can afford to lose a vote from Roberts or Justice Neil Gorsuch without losing the case itself.
Barrett’s confirmation brings legal conservatives closer to their dream of not just a conservative court but a reliably conservative court. It would be poised to deliver major blows not only to liberal social causes but also to the precedents and doctrines that support what they call the “administrative state” of federal agencies and their regulatory powers. A Supreme Court with six conservative justices would be far less likely to rule in favor of future Democratic policy proposals, such as Medicare for All or the Green New Deal, and far more likely to uphold conservative ones. Basic actuarial math also means that such a majority would likely hold sway for at least the next 15 to 20 years, even if the country takes a much different political direction.
Right-wing hopes that the federal courts will serve as a countermajoritarian backstop to Democratic presidents and lawmakers shaped conservatives’ approach to the judiciary for the past decade. Those hopes led Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, once a distrusted figure on the party’s hard right, to block almost all of Barack Obama’s lower-court nominees after 2014, as well as Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland in 2016. It also led McConnell and his allies to fill those vacancies with as many conservative jurists as they could after Trump took office in 2017. Even if Biden wins, he won’t be able to reverse Trump’s imprint on the courts through normal mechanisms.


newrepublic--2020-10-08--Maybe Trump Just Doesn’t Want to Be President

On Tuesday , not long after he had concluded an astonishing performance of dexamethasone-fueled theatrics from Walter Reed Hospital , President Donald Trump announced he would be quashing further negotiations on a new stimulus package intended to extend much-needed relief to those caught in the economic stresses of the failed response to the coronavirus pandemic .
Like so many of his haphazard decisions , there was an obvious and unsurprising cruelty underlying Trump ’ s out-of-the-blue pronouncement .
What made this one unique was that it was also remarkably dumb from a political standpoint .
The decision did succeed in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wide .
No new stimulus , the Fed warned , would spell a fresh round of swift economic disaster ; ever-watchful traders caused the stock market to plummet accordingly .
The capricious announcement also came right on the heels of Trump reaffirming that the same pandemic that had killed more than 200,000 Americans was no biggie .
“ We have the best medical equipment , we have the best medicines !
” he marveled , which , given his top-tier experimental treatments and the miserable state of health care in this country , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Regeneron.
” Over the last 72 hours , political commentators have been trying to make some sense of Trump ’ s seemingly impaired judgment .
I think it ’ s true , as The New York Times ’ Jamelle Bouie recently wrote , that Trump ’ s political shrewdness has always been vastly overstated , that he ascended to the presidency as an unfortunate circumstance of dumb luck and the inherently anti-democratic design of the Electoral College , and that this moment of crisis has illuminated his political ineptitude in all its jaw-dropping @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chaotic spectacle of the last few days , it ’ s also becoming difficult not to entertain the possibility that—after facing a near-constant stream of public hatred , an impeachment , bungling the pandemic response so disastrously that “ American exceptionalism ” took on a new meaning , blindly stumbling through the worst recession in a generation , fumbling wave after wave of national unrest over police brutality , killing Herman Cain , and contracting Covid-19—Trump simply doesn ’ t want to be president anymore .
A few years ago , author Michael @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which never expected to win , experienced bewilderment and terror in rapid succession on election night when it became clear that Trump had actually won the election .
( Which , if true , is probably the most they ’ ve ever had in common with the majority of Americans . )
Trump ’ s former lawyer , Michael Cohen , has similarly claimed that the president saw his 2016 campaign only as a madcap marketing strategy , or the “ greatest infomercial in political history.
” Trump was elected to office @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Clinton in a fluke election besieged by scandal from the start ; he swiftly displaced George W. Bush—noted dunce , instigator of the Iraq War , and late-life reader of The Very Hungry Caterpillar—as the worst-ever president in the popular imagination .
In the four years since , the country has been in a near-constant state of turmoil , but the coronavirus pandemic , a global catastrophe over which even the most experienced heads of state have lost sleep , has been a particularly disastrous burden to lay on a president who ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country with any degree of competence .
And Trump—who was so woefully underprepared for the presidency that he openly mused , “ Nobody knew health care could be so complicated , ” when his scheme to kill the Affordable Care Act flopped—has had to contend with widespread infection , equipment shortages , and mass unemployment while simultaneously broadcasting his nonchalance about the whole ordeal to keep the anti-mask , anti-lockdown portion of his base satisfied .
Honestly , who wouldn ’ t want to call it a day ?

The signs that Trump may pine for a return to the simpler days of hosting reality TV and stalking beauty pageants have perhaps been there all along. According to journalist Nancy Gibbs, who interviewed him a little after the 2016 election and brought up the possibility of visiting him at the White House in the future, he kidding-not-kiddingly replied, “What if I don’t like it? What if I don’t want to do it anymore?” Within one hundred days of taking office, Trump gave an interview to Reuters in which he expressed surprise that his new job was as difficult as it was, musing, “I loved my previous life. I had so many things going.… This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.”
More recently, The New York Times reported over the summer that a number of White House aides, worried that Trump was sabotaging his own reelection, had begged him to stop publicly advocating broadly unpopular policies such as opening fire on protesters, to which he apparently responded, “I have to be myself.” Has our president been desperately searching for an escape hatch this whole time?
That seems like one increasingly plausible explanation for Trump’s latest decision to single-handedly tank a new stimulus less than a week after the release of a troubling jobs report that all but guarantees prolonged economic hardship. While that move—which essentially amounts to issuing and stamping his name on a batch of $0 stimulus checks—could simply be a new level of political idiocy, it just might also be a ploy to get out of office without the humiliation of an outright resignation. After Trump’s many tribulations over the last four years, the least the American people can do is help him out.


newrepublic--2020-10-08--Donald Trump Has Lost His Ability to Short-Circuit the News

Twelve days ago , The New York Times published a story based on documents that reporters had wanted to see for years : Donald Trump ’ s tax returns .
The story revealed that the president was deeply in debt , that he rarely pays much tax at all , and that he is obligated to pay back $ 400 million to lenders in the next four years .
In any normal political environment , it would be the biggest story of the election , possibly even of an entire presidency .
It has , instead , passed almost entirely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s good reason for that .
Since the Times published that story—again : 12 days ago—Trump gave the most unhinged debate performance in American history .
Then he and more than two dozen administration and GOP officials contracted Covid-19 .
Trump spent three days in Walter Reed Medical Center ; his doctors have lied about his health and refused to provide basic information about his condition , including whether he has pneumonia .
Since returning to the White House , the president has been behaving like a mix of Howard Hughes and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all-caps tweets and sending mixed messages about crucial policy decisions , such as whether there will be a second stimulus before next month ’ s election .
There is , as the Columbia Journalism Review ’ s Jon Allsop has argued extensively , simply too much news .
The sheer number of insane , world-turning-on-its-axis stories circulating at once is impossible to hold together .
“ Events—some of them once-in-decades or once-in-a-century occurrences—now play out all in unison , ” The Washington Post ’ s Dan Balz , sounding uncharacteristically like Don DeLillo @ @ @ @ @ @ @ There is no respite .
If one ebbs another flows.
” Journalists are , for the second election cycle in a row , riding the hurricane .
In 2016 , this arguably played in Trump ’ s favor .
He could , with the help of a few fortuitous bits of breaking news , keep the focus on one story—Hillary Clinton ’ s emails and alleged corruption—while there were so many Trump scandals circulating at once that no single story could fell him .
This time is different : The scandals , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ improvements in media coverage and an overwhelming sense of exhaustion with the endless news cycle .

Twelve days ago, The New York Times published a story based on documents that reporters had wanted to see for years: Donald Trump’s tax returns. The story revealed that the president was deeply in debt, that he rarely pays much tax at all, and that he is obligated to pay back $400 million to lenders in the next four years. In any normal political environment, it would be the biggest story of the election, possibly even of an entire presidency. It has, instead, passed almost entirely from view.
One could argue there’s good reason for that. Since the Times published that story—again: 12 days ago—Trump gave the most unhinged debate performance in American history. Then he and more than two dozen administration and GOP officials contracted Covid-19. Trump spent three days in Walter Reed Medical Center; his doctors have lied about his health and refused to provide basic information about his condition, including whether he has pneumonia. Since returning to the White House, the president has been behaving like a mix of Howard Hughes and Jack Torrance, unleashing a horde of all-caps tweets and sending mixed messages about crucial policy decisions, such as whether there will be a second stimulus before next month’s election.


newrepublic--2020-10-08--Kamala Harris and Mike Pence Tried to Have a Normal Debate. It Didn’t Quite Work.

Believe it or not , while it seems like an eternity has passed since the first presidential debate , it was actually only eight days ago .
After the lights went down on that frenetic affair—which was marked by President Donald Trump ’ s raging abandonment of anything resembling decorum , a spectacle so grotesque that it left moderator Chris Wallace defeated and ashamed—you might have looked toward Wednesday night ’ s vice presidential debate as a respite of sorts .
Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris are , after all , comparatively conventional politicians who fit within @ @ @ @ @ @ @ neither of them prone to giving themselves over to Trump ’ s wild emotional heights .
Their face-off promised something blissfully and recognizably ordinary : a throwback to the Before Times .
Of course , a lot happened in the days that followed the first debate between Trump and Joe Biden , which inevitably colored Wednesday night ’ s proceedings .
Let ’ s recap : The president and seemingly his entire inner circle contracted Covid-19 , and the debate was suspected as being one of the places where the super-spreading took place @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center , grew bored almost immediately , potentially exposed members of his Secret Service retinue to the disease while joyriding around the medical campus , got more bored still , abandoned Walter Reed to demonstrate the triumph of his will on the White House balcony by gasping for breath in alarming fashion , and then decamped for his residence , leaving the media to contemplate just how far into the post-post-WTF era we may have strayed .
In the clearest sign that things had only proceeded in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Pence and Harris were arranged behind a set of hotly debated Plexiglass fortifications , a wan piece of hygiene theater that nevertheless managed to consume a considerable amount of the media ’ s time this week .
It ’ s not clear that their addition contributed much to anyone ’ s safety , but they did pay tribute to our New Normal—or if you prefer , the No Normal .
If Harris and Pence never quite succeeded in delivering an ordinary , pre-Covid debate experience , it wasn ’ t for want @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their face-off , they fell into comfortable rhythms and familiar rhetorical patterns .
Against these strange days , however , they never had a chance .
From the outset , moderator Susan Page asserted that “ coronavirus is not under control.
” Harris leapt at the gilt-edged offering , asserting that the “ American people have witnessed the greatest failure of any presidential administration in our history.
” She added , “ They knew what was happening and they didn ’ t tell you .
They knew and they covered it up.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ response is a particularly bad beat for Pence , as he is nominally the head of Trump ’ s coronavirus task force .
With the United States proving to be exceptionally incompetent among its peers on the world stage at fighting off the pandemic , it ’ s a significant cross for Pence to bear .
He bore it , however imperfectly , by simply insisting that the world of hurt America has spent the last year living within was a figment of our imagination .
In Pence ’ s telling , Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to mobilize the nation and save hundreds of thousands of lives .
Harris rather capably cut Pence ’ s trip to Cloudcuckooland short by reminding viewers of the depths of America ’ s tragedy—more than 210,000 largely unmourned dead—throwing in a reminder that Trump told Washington scribbler Bob Woodward that he ’ d wanted to play down the pandemic ’ s seriousness .
“ I still like playing it down , ” he told Woodward , “ because I don ’ t want to create a panic .
”

Believe it or not, while it seems like an eternity has passed since the first presidential debate, it was actually only eight days ago. After the lights went down on that frenetic affair—which was marked by President Donald Trump’s raging abandonment of anything resembling decorum, a spectacle so grotesque that it left moderator Chris Wallace defeated and ashamed—you might have looked toward Wednesday night’s vice presidential debate as a respite of sorts. Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris are, after all, comparatively conventional politicians who fit within a narrow band of political practices, neither of them prone to giving themselves over to Trump’s wild emotional heights. Their face-off promised something blissfully and recognizably ordinary: a throwback to the Before Times.
Of course, a lot happened in the days that followed the first debate between Trump and Joe Biden, which inevitably colored Wednesday night’s proceedings. Let’s recap: The president and seemingly his entire inner circle contracted Covid-19, and the debate was suspected of being one of the places where the superspreading took place. The president spent a few hours at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, grew bored almost immediately, potentially exposed members of his Secret Service retinue to the disease while joyriding around the medical campus, got more bored still, abandoned Walter Reed to demonstrate the triumph of his will on the White House balcony by gasping for breath in alarming fashion, and then decamped for his residence, leaving the media to contemplate just how far into the post-post-WTF era we may have strayed.