newrepublic--2020-10-19--Self-Help Hacks at the End of the World

Self-Help Hacks at the End of the World

I suspect the reason this type of structural analysis isn ’ t more popular is that it makes demands that are decidedly unpalatable to supporters of American capitalism .
Plus , it doesn ’ t make for particularly clicky articles .
Once one comes to the conclusion that mental health problems are structural , not individual , one must then propose solutions in the same vein .
If the problem is that people are stressed because they don ’ t have enough money , then it follows that wages should be raised and wealth taxed to more equitably distribute profits @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enough power in the workplace , perhaps sectoral unions are in order .
If people are anxious about paying for health care , perhaps we should have Medicare for All .
If people are overworked , perhaps there should be a federal mandate that all workers must receive five weeks of paid vacation , as France has .
The purpose of the Covid self-help genre , then , is to quell dissent by way of telling people that they can figure out how to cope all by themselves ( or perhaps with their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to afford one ) .
It ’ s incredibly patronizing .
The Wall Street Journal article that suggested wearing work clothes to work from home—or any number of stories just like it—was attempting to address a widespread problem : people can ’ t focus .
The reason people can ’ t focus is because they are stressed out .
Their brains are producing a lot of cortisol , which interferes with memory and attention .
A social determinants of health approach would ask why people are so stressed to begin with , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the root causes of this stress .
Primarily people are stressed about money .
They are stressed , perhaps , because they hate their job—which may have come to feel newly pointless in a pandemic .
And they are stressed because their job—pointless or not—might vanish in an instant , plunging them into a slack labor market .
In the United States , the stress of losing a job is largely the stress of losing a precarious grip on material stability that isn ’ t guaranteed by any other means .
If you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ health insurance , unless your spouse ( should you have one ) is fortunate enough to have employment-based health insurance of their own .
You probably can ’ t afford to make your rent or mortgage payments , which puts you at risk of eviction and homelessness .
After that , it is very difficult to get back on your feet .
Were we to take a social determinants of health approach to this problem , our solutions would probably not include telling people to wear a nice shirt on a Zoom call @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Our solutions would almost certainly include the issuance of monthly , living-wage stimulus checks to all Americans for the duration of the crisis , instead of a one-time $ 1,200 payment for people making under $ 99,000 a year ; or an unemployment insurance policy would provide generous , easy to obtain , guaranteed payments , instead of fluctuating at the whims of an indifferent legislature ; or rent cancelation so that tenants are relieved from the burden of rent and the growing burden of months of back rent .
There is no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cash welfare , free childcare—that would do much the same .
But such policy solutions are often seen as outside the realm of “ mental health .
”

This is not a novel proposition. There is a public health concept called “social determinants of health,” which refers to trends at the societal level that influence health outcomes at the individual level. For example, there are high levels of type 2 diabetes in poor communities. Like mental illness, type 2 diabetes is chemical in the sense that its cause is, technically speaking, related to a body’s inability to produce or process insulin. However, the risk of type 2 diabetes is increased with a poor diet and lack of exercise. And poverty almost categorically prevents people from having the time or money to eat nutritiously, get adequate exercise, or otherwise care for their bodies.
I suspect the reason this type of structural analysis isn’t more popular is that it makes demands that are decidedly unpalatable to supporters of American capitalism. Plus, it doesn’t make for particularly clicky articles. Once one comes to the conclusion that mental health problems are structural, not individual, one must then propose solutions in the same vein. If the problem is that people are stressed because they don’t have enough money, then it follows that wages should be raised and wealth taxed to more equitably distribute profits. If people don’t have enough power in the workplace, perhaps sectoral unions are in order. If people are anxious about paying for health care, perhaps we should have Medicare for All. If people are overworked, perhaps there should be a federal mandate that all workers must receive five weeks of paid vacation, as France has. The purpose of the Covid self-help genre, then, is to quell dissent by way of telling people that they can figure out how to cope all by themselves (or perhaps with their therapist, should they be lucky enough to afford one). It’s incredibly patronizing.
The Wall Street Journal article that suggested wearing work clothes to work from home—or any number of stories just like it—was attempting to address a widespread problem: People can’t focus. The reason people can’t focus is because they are stressed out. Their brains are producing a lot of cortisol, which interferes with memory and attention. A social determinants of health approach would ask why people are so stressed to begin with and then focus on finding solutions that address the root causes of this stress.


newrepublic--2020-10-19--The Constitution Is the Crisis

The Constitution Is the Crisis

Even novelties that were never part of the Constitution ’ s original design and which many of the Framers would have opposed , like the Senate ’ s legislative filibuster , aren ’ t really in major contradiction of it .
The Senate has the power to make and unmake such procedures ; the Democratic Party could have done away with the filibuster in 2009 and simply chose not to .
And the system simply kept chugging along .
It is smoothly , cleanly , and efficiently producing the appalling outcomes it was always capable of producing .
It is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ indifferent about Trump ’ s bigotry , would be disgusted instead by the lawlessness and corruption of his administration if they were around today ; the shamelessness and hypocrisy of the Republican Party ’ s effort to control the judiciary at all costs might have horrified them .
But they would likely be as or more horrified that the institutions they built have been largely useless against them—that the safeguards they erected to protect the republic from a demagogue have instead protected a demagogue from the republic .
The Barrett nomination hasn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ already plain .
And so the basic case for court-packing the left , liberals , and any Americans who hold democratic values should be making is precisely the same case that was worth making four weeks , months , or years ago .
The Supreme Court fundamentally is and has always been a highly politicized policymaking and policy-destroying institution .
As earnestly as legal scholars might debate matters of constitutional interpretation , much of our political discourse on the subject is aimed at obscuring that fact ; the supposedly neutral doctrines guiding conservative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crafted to legitimate rulings desired and pressed for by corporations and reactionary interest groups .
The process for replacing the participants in this charade is not only anti-democratic but comically medieval ; if Justice Ginsburg ’ s tenure really had been extended by the internal organs of her supporters , it would not have been a point in the system ’ s favor .
Modest reforms like judicial term limits wouldn ’ t fundamentally challenge the premise that the final say in our most consequential policy disputes should be left to a set @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the implicit principle of “ judicial supremacy ” —both completely apt phrases conservatives are fond of using when the court ’ s rulings do not suit them .
The remedy implied by the first is obvious : We should move at least a step closer to electing the justices .
This is court-packing .
The size of the Supreme Court , again , has been changed multiple times over the years ; as the political scientist David Faris said in a recent piece for this magazine , packing is “ gloriously legal.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ means at its disposal to win control over the bench .
That ’ s fine .
Democrats should do the same—not out of spite or in an empty tit for tat , but to protect sound policy that the American people desire , that the American people need , and that the American people have been denied by a political system whose counter-majoritarian features are no longer tolerable , provided that policy is in keeping with the very best and most essential portions of our Constitution and all the amendments and rulings that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fundamental rights it would also be a progressive court ’ s duty to secure .
It has been the conservative movement ’ s mission to weaken or demolish them , save for a few choice favorites .
The fact that characterizing the fight for the court as an “ existential ” one has become a cliché doesn ’ t make the assertion any less true .
As Kate Aronoff wrote last week , a conservative court could place a hard ceiling on climate policy .
The stability of this country and all civilization @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the federal government acting decisively on the matter as soon as possible ; its ability to do so should be absolutely guaranteed , not just as a moral imperative but a practical necessity .
All of this requires the addition of four like-minded justices , at minimum , not two—if the Supreme Court goes on to become a quasi-legislature as a result , so be it .
And although opponents of packing enjoy constructing scenarios where the court balloons explosively in size as control ping-pongs between Democrats and Republicans , the mandate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ size of the court is fairly significant .
Republicans would need to control the presidency , the Senate , and the House again to retaliate in kind ; if Democrats successfully pursue the full slate of structural reforms progressives have demanded , including automatic voter registration , the abolition of the Electoral College , and the addition of new states , that will be harder for the GOP to accomplish .

Modest reforms like judicial term limits wouldn’t fundamentally challenge the premise that the final say in our most consequential policy disputes should be left to a set of “unelected justices” operating under the implicit principle of “judicial supremacy”—both completely apt phrases conservatives are fond of using when the court’s rulings do not suit them. The remedy implied by the first is obvious: We should move at least a step closer to electing the justices. This is court-packing. The size of the Supreme Court, again, has been changed multiple times over the years; as the political scientist David Faris said in a recent piece for this magazine, packing is “gloriously legal.” The Republican Party has used every legal means at its disposal to win control over the bench. That’s fine. Democrats should do the same—not out of spite or in an empty tit for tat, but to protect sound policy that the American people desire, that the American people need, and that the American people have been denied by a political system whose counter-majoritarian features are no longer tolerable, provided that policy is in keeping with the very best and most essential portions of our Constitution and all the amendments and rulings that have improved it: a framework of fundamental rights it would also be a progressive court’s duty to secure. It has been the conservative movement’s mission to weaken or demolish them, save for a few choice favorites.
The fact that characterizing the fight for the court as an “existential” one has become a cliché doesn’t make the assertion any less true. As Kate Aronoff wrote last week, a conservative court could place a hard ceiling on climate policy. The stability of this country and all civilization in the years ahead will depend significantly on the federal government acting decisively on the matter as soon as possible; its ability to do so should be absolutely guaranteed, not just as a moral imperative but a practical necessity. All of this requires the addition of four like-minded justices, at minimum, not two—if the Supreme Court goes on to become a quasi-legislature as a result, so be it. And although opponents of packing enjoy constructing scenarios where the court balloons explosively in size as control ping-pongs between Democrats and Republicans, the mandate actually required to pass legislation changing the size of the court is fairly significant. Republicans would need to control the presidency, the Senate, and the House again to retaliate in kind; if Democrats successfully pursue the full slate of structural reforms progressives have demanded, including automatic voter registration, the abolition of the Electoral College, and the addition of new states, that will be harder for the GOP to accomplish.
Is this argument likely to prevail among Democrats in a Biden administration? Absolutely not. They’re likely to insist instead that what happened with Merrick Garland and what is about to happen with Barrett—functionally trivialities relative to the inherent defects of the court as an institution and our constitution as a whole—are affronts that justify a neutral rebalancing that might “depoliticize” the court while, in practice, maintaining the conservative majority on the bench: again, two justices, not four. And they might not attempt even this, Biden’s suggestive hedging on the question notwithstanding. Moderate and conservative Democrats in Congress might prevent any action at all and, as The New York Times’ Sydney Ember and Lisa Lerer reported last week, some in the party already view winning the presidency and the Senate as a potential “consolation prize for losing the court for a generation.”


newrepublic--2020-10-19--The Socialist Win in Bolivia and the New Era of Lithium Extraction

Just under a year after Evo Morales ’ s government was ousted by U.S.-backed far-right forces , his Movement Toward Socialism , or MAS , party looks almost certain to take back power after Sunday ’ s election .
Morales , the country ’ s first Indigenous president , remains in exile in Argentina .
His election in 2019 remains hotly debated : While the Electoral Observation Mission of the Organization of American States challenged the result due to a gap between preliminary and final results , subsequent analyses have argued that the gap was explainable and legitimate and that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and highly political .
Now , with an estimated 52.4 percent of the vote , Morales ’ s former finance minister , Luis Arce , is on track to become the country ’ s new leader after a deadly year of racist state repression under interim President Jeanine Añez Chávez .
Bolivia ’ s tumultuous past year also features a powdery white subplot with worldwide implications .
Not long after being forced out of the country , Morales and many of his supporters argued that he was ousted in part as a response @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s lithium—a mineral used in batteries that power various clean energy technologies , including electric cars .
“ My crime , my sin , is to be an Indian , ” he told American journalist Glenn Greenwald in an interview , “ and to have nationalized our natural resources , removed the transnational corporations from the hydrocarbon sector and mining.
” Morales had hoped that state-owned Yacimientos de Litio Boliviano , or YLB , would be able not just to mine lithium but refine it into lithium hydroxide and other compounds used @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Musk—whose renewables empire sources lithium mostly from Australia , not Bolivia—added to theories about a potential lithium coup this summer by tweeting , “ We will coup whoever we want !
Deal with it.
” While CIA documents 30 years on could certainly prove otherwise , there ’ s not much evidence as of now to suggest that Musk or other U.S. clean energy titans were actually involved in the plot to overthrow Morales ’ s government .
For one , political scientist and Resource Radicals author Thea Riofrancos explains , lithium isn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it weren ’ t being cut off from foreign investors .
“ Although Morales was pushed out in a coup , it wasn ’ t because of lithium .
There was no real obstacle facing capital investment in Bolivia , and Morales had never been opposed to that , ” she told me .
Arce ’ s platform on lithium is broadly similar to Morales ’ s , including the creation of some 130,000 jobs , with an openness to working with foreign companies .
But the fact that people are talking about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could preview a new era of extractive geopolitics .
Given its history of dealing with resource wealth abroad , it ’ s not irrational to think the United States might leverage its foreign intelligence apparatus to corner the lithium market .
The modern fossil fuel economy was built in no small part on imperial might , including that of the U.S. , which backed myriad challenges to governments that tried to nationalize their resources both in Latin America and around the world .
CIA meddling in foreign governments has been one of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to extractive industries , including tax breaks and cheap leases .
There are plenty of ways in which minerals needed for clean energy development could be bound up in the same sort of rank extractive politics that have defined the fossil fuel economy , and in some ways already are ; it ’ s why groups like Amnesty International have raised alarm bells about labor abuses in mineral mining , and called for the creation of an “ ethical battery.
” There are some important specifics , however , that distinguish clean energy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fuels .
Lithium isn ’ t nearly as geographically concentrated , for one .
And it isn ’ t currently scarce .
But the International Energy Agency projects lithium production will grow twice as fast in lower-emissions scenarios as a result of policies to scale up the production and use of cars and clean energy .
“ The fact that it ’ s abundant doesn ’ t tell you very much about how quickly that lithium can get to market and become an input in another industrial process .
What ’ s scarce @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s crust .
It ’ s financing for lithium projects that will quickly produce battery-grade lithium chemicals , ” Riofrancos said .

Just under a year after Evo Morales’s government was ousted by U.S.-backed far-right forces, his Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party looks almost certain to take back power after Sunday’s election. Morales, the country’s first Indigenous president, remains in exile in Argentina. His election in 2019 remains hotly debated: While the Electoral Observation Mission of the Organization of American States challenged the result due to a gap between preliminary and final results, subsequent analyses have argued that the gap was explainable and legitimate and that the OAS assessment was “flawed” and highly political. Now, with an estimated 52.4 percent of the vote, Morales’s former finance minister, Luis Arce, is on track to become the country’s new leader after a deadly year of racist state repression under interim President Jeanine Añez Chávez.
Bolivia’s tumultuous past year also features a powdery white subplot with worldwide implications. Not long after being forced out of the country, Morales and many of his supporters argued that he was ousted in part as a response to his attempts to nationalize the country’s lithium—a mineral used in batteries that power various clean energy technologies, including electric cars. “My crime, my sin, is to be an Indian,” he told American journalist Glenn Greenwald in an interview, “and to have nationalized our natural resources, removed the transnational corporations from the hydrocarbon sector and mining.” Morales had hoped that state-owned Yacimientos de Litio Boliviano, or YLB, would be able not just to mine lithium but refine it into lithium hydroxide and other compounds used in battery manufacturing. Tesla executive Elon Musk—whose renewables empire sources lithium mostly from Australia, not Bolivia—added to theories about a potential lithium coup this summer by tweeting, “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”


newrepublic--2020-10-19--I’m a Cleaner at a New York City Public School. The Pandemic Has Thrown My Plans Out the Window.

I ’ m a local guy from the Rockaways , and my school is located in Far Rockaway , Queens .
I ’ ve been in the system for 22 years .
I like my job ; some people try to put us down—They ’ re janitors—but I know we matter .
Over the summer , we stayed busy doing what we would normally do : deep-cleaning the buildings .
But we were just waiting .
Every time you turned around , you heard something different .
I am a very regimented and organized person , but we really couldn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ change on a dime .
If I knew what was going on , I could implement a plan—then a backup plan , then a backup plan .
This is what should have been talked about and discussed when we first had the shutdown in March : When September rolls around , if it ’ s really , really bad , this is what we ’ ll do .
If it ’ s not so bad , this is what we ’ ll do .
You should have had a couple of plans on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but what do I know , right ?
It felt rushed when they decided to reopen .
But over here at my school , I think the administration is doing a good job .
I feel safe .
I just go to work and home , work and home .
I ride my bike , and that ’ s it , really .
Once I ’ m in the house , I ’ m in the house .
The union has made sure we have PPE and what we need .
They @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , what ’ s not .
It ’ s just reassuring .
Of the staff members still here since we reopened—the kitchen , the security—it ’ s kind of like being snowed in .
You bond .
We ’ re all we ’ ve got in terms of human contact .
We talk about what we ’ ve heard , compare notes .
But it ’ s just so many less students , like a ghost town .
The kids are all spread out for social distancing .
I hardly see anyone .

Then we shut down again the other week, after a spike in new cases in the city. I came to work that Monday, and it was just a regular day. The teachers were here, the kids who were coming in were here. Then all of a sudden, I hear we are closing. Then I go to a news source and find out that we’re actually closing down.
I think that’s how it will go—we’re going to be tweaking how to open. You can put in these plans, but then you actually have to have bodies in the school and see how they’re going to act. It’s almost as if we’re guinea pigs in some way, and so we adjust it off that—from what we see.
In general, though, in my community, I’m just afraid. If you saw me, you’d say: He’s afraid? A big strong guy? It’s just so easily transmitted. I keep up with this—with the science, with the politics. There’s just so much going on. I feel it’s not going to get any better any time soon, but you can’t run from it. It’s not going away tomorrow, or the day after. With this president? Forget about it.


newrepublic--2020-10-19--Living With White Supremacy in a Swing State

For most of the summer , downtown Columbus , Ohio , looked like the downtown of many other cities .
Depending on the day , protesters might secure some small victory against the ever-growing presence of police officers .
They ’ d take over an intersection , and the police would let them occupy it for a few hours .
There were a few days in which no protesters were harmed or arrested .
But , as things can go in the streets , the small victories gave way to bigger violences .
Police grew reckless as the city ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ginther , held press conference after press conference claiming that his office would be reviewing videos from the protests for evidence of bad behavior by law enforcement .
Videos of police officers pepper-spraying people indiscriminately , or dragging street medics across a sidewalk , or ramming their bikes into crowds .
There would be an independent investigator , Ginther said .
A review board .
In the long arc of uprising , there have been many so-called victories , thrust upon the masses in the hopes of quieting them .
In Columbus , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Columbus statues being ceremoniously removed ( a third still stands ) .
One might think that the city was trending toward a new understanding of the legacy of slavery and colonialism in this country .
Perhaps the state , as well .
But when the marches began to spread into the city ’ s suburbs , the divide between Columbus and its surroundings was tangible .
Even homes with “ Black Lives Matter ” signs affixed to their lawns harbored concerned people behind screen doors , nervously watching noise-making marchers move down their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to their ears frantically , looking around .
Others gestured to the police lining the roads , as if to say , Do something about this .
The question of what Ohio is , politically speaking , can be boiled down to this dynamic .
It used to be considered a swing state and was carried by Barack Obama twice , but in a few short years , it has moved more firmly into the Republican column .
Hillary Clinton was trounced here in 2016 .
The New York Times declared that Ohio @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” —a lost cause .

For most of the summer, downtown Columbus, Ohio, looked like the downtown of many other cities. Depending on the day, protesters might secure some small victory against the ever-growing presence of police officers. They’d take over an intersection, and the police would let them occupy it for a few hours. There were a few days in which no protesters were harmed or arrested. But, as things can go in the streets, the small victories gave way to bigger violences.
Police grew reckless as the city’s mayor, a Democrat named Andrew Ginther, held press conference after press conference claiming that his office would be reviewing videos from the protests for evidence of bad behavior by law enforcement. Videos of police officers pepper-spraying people indiscriminately, or dragging street medics across a sidewalk, or ramming their bikes into crowds. There would be an independent investigator, Ginther said. A review board.
In the long arc of uprising, there have been many so-called victories, thrust upon the masses in the hopes of quieting them. In Columbus, this took the form of two Christopher Columbus statues being ceremoniously removed (a third still stands). One might think that the city was trending toward a new understanding of the legacy of slavery and colonialism in this country. Perhaps the state, as well.


newrepublic--2020-10-20--How Police Unions Bully Politicians

How Police Unions Bully Politicians

On May 31 , as another night of disruptive protest overtook New York City streets , the Sergeants Benevolent Association , one of the unions representing NYPD officers , posted a photo of an arrest record on Twitter .
Derived from an internal police database , the image revealed the protester ’ s height , weight , address , date of birth , and driver ’ s license information .
It also revealed her name : Chiara de Blasio , the 25-year-old daughter of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio .
“ How can the NYPD protect the city of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ object throwing daughter is one of them , ” the typo-laden caption read .
“ Now we know why he is forbidding Mounted Units to be mobilized and keeping the NYPD from doing their jobs.
” By morning , Twitter had removed the post , which violated its privacy rules , and temporarily suspended the union ’ s account .
But the message to the mayor had been delivered .
De Blasio called the move “ unconscionable ” and defended his daughter .
“ I admire that she was out there trying to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” he said .
But as protests continued , de Blasio often sided with the NYPD against the movement in the streets , insisting—despite plentiful video evidence to the contrary—that the NYPD was showing “ a lot of restraint.
” Meanwhile , the SBA president , Edward Mullins , stuck to his guns .
“ Our police department is being held back , ” Mullins told The New York Times .
His intended audience was clear : “ Is that why you ’ re tying our hands , because your daughter is out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ city granted Mullins ’ s wish for a mounted unit , and on June 3 , the NYPD deployed officers on horseback to protect “ high-risk areas ” from looters .
Mullins told me that he hadn ’ t realized the tweeted image revealed Chiara ’ s personal data .
“ In hindsight , I wish I looked at it closer , ” he said .
“ I certainly didn ’ t mean to cause her any harm.
” But he stood by his argument .
The mayor had said he didn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what ’ s the real truth ?
” Mullins asked .
“ I can tell you where my kids are every day of the week.
” The conflict between de Blasio and the city ’ s police unions is storied .
During two funerals for officers slain in 2014 in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests , members of the NYPD dramatically turned away from the mayor while he addressed them .
The relationship has been strained ever since .
Mullins , who has presided over the SBA for the past 18 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; he delights in provoking New York ’ s liberal political elite .
This February , after another pair of officers were shot , he announced on Twitter that the NYPD was “ declaring war ” on the mayor .
In May , he called the city ’ s health commissioner at the time a “ bitch.
” He calls himself a “ crazy Irish guy.
” These antics , he told me , get results .
“ If it didn ’ t work , we wouldn ’ t be talking about it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a new extreme to dox a mayor ’ s daughter for exercising her First Amendment rights , but the act is consistent with an increasingly aggressive strategy undertaken by police associations across the country to secure their political aims .
Police unions deploy ominous social media campaigns to vilify and intimidate reform-minded legislators .
They exploit racialized law-and-order rhetoric to polarize the public .
And they threaten liberal mayors with widespread civic chaos and destruction if their demands aren ’ t met .
The goal is to preserve the privileges—chiefly , job security @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of agitating and political accommodation .
The question is whether , amid widespread popular demonstrations against racist policing , the strategy will continue to work .

He was the third person shot to death by police in Hallandale Beach—a city of just under 40,000 residents—in five years. An investigation by New Times Broward-Palm Beach found the city’s SWAT team had conducted 33 similar raids in the neighborhood around Bowe’s house, a predominantly Black enclave in a majority white city, none of which resulted in a substantial drug bust. Javellana, who was 16 at the time and watched coverage of the raid on local news, was outraged. But she was not shocked. Javellana had already grown to mistrust the criminal justice system in south Florida. She’d seen police profile friends and throw them “face down on the pavement,” she told me. Her father spent two and half years in jail for a felony conviction that was overturned on appeal. And twice her brother was hauled away in handcuffs for involuntary psychiatric examination—under a controversial Florida law allowing minors to be involuntarily committed for up to 72 hours if a teacher, friend, or police officer suspects they’re mentally unwell. (Javellana says her brother has had depressive episodes, but none as traumatic as the days he spent in a psych ward because of the Baker Act.)
In 2016, a grand jury declined to charge Bowe’s killer, and an internal affairs review cleared him and the other officer under investigation for the raid. “The community never healed from it,” Javellana said. She started attending protests organized by Broward County’s Black Lives Matter Alliance, and in 2018 the city agreed to pay Bowe’s family $425,000 to settle a wrongful death suit. A few months later, with the support of the activist community, Javellana ran for a seat on the city commission. The police union backed her opponent, but Javellana won. Twenty-one years old, she became the only woman of color on the five-person board. At their first meeting, Javellana’s new colleagues elected her vice mayor, a largely symbolic position.
The comity didn’t last. Elevated by the movement, Javellana set about asking questions on police policy: Why had the department stopped issuing citations and resumed making arrests for low quantities of marijuana? What could be done about use-of-force rules? She met fierce opposition. “Our commission meetings are like WWE matches,” she told me. “Personal attacks and shouting and insanity.” Meanwhile, the city was negotiating a new contract with its police department. By May 2020, negotiations had stalled. The police union wanted larger cost-of-living adjustments than the other public-sector unions had assented to. The commissioners, even those who were pro-police, agreed that the city couldn’t afford it. When the nation convulsed in protest over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Hallandale’s own demons resurfaced. In early June, Javellana joined a march demanding the city reopen the investigation into Howard Bowe’s death. “We have our own George Floyds and Breonna Taylors in our own city,” Javellana told the local paper. During the march, Javellana kneeled with other marchers. Police Chief Sonia Quiñones took a knee as well.
The image enraged the police union. A day later, the city’s entire SWAT team resigned en masse. Among them were the union president, Sgt. Pietro Roccisano, and five other officers who took part in the raid on Howard Bowe’s house. (The 10 officers kept their jobs on the force; they only resigned their special detail to the tactical team.) The former SWAT team members blamed the 22-year-old vice mayor for stoking a “political climate” that was making them unsafe. “Sabrina Javellana has openly made ignorant and inaccurate statements attacking the lawful actions of the city’s officers,” they wrote in their resignation letter. The maneuver—which came days after 57 members of the Buffalo Police Department riot response team stepped down in solidarity with two officers who were suspended for shoving an elderly protester to the ground and seriously injuring him—made national news. Javellana went on CNN. The SWAT resignation, she explained, was a stunt, orchestrated by the union to generate sympathy from the city commission. And the stunt seemed to work. “You have received a lack of empathy from one of my colleagues,” Mayor Joy Cooper said to the SWAT team. “I want to apologize to you.”
For Javellana, the ordeal was just beginning. “I’m not thin-skinned,” she told me. “I get hate mail all the time and I’m just, like, ‘whatever.’” But after she was singled out by the union president in the SWAT team’s letter, the barrage of hostile comments, emails, and social media messages became more extreme, and she began to worry about the safety of her mother and brother. In June, Javellana learned of a public forum, LEO Affairs, where members of the city police department post anonymous messages. After the SWAT incident, she became a frequent topic of conversation on the platform. The posts, on threads about the Hallandale Beach Police Department, refer to Javellana as a “P.O.S.,” a “juice box,” and a “righteous slut.” Another stated that “if anybody deserves police brutality” it was her father. “No wonder you defend the NW drug dealers,” the poster wrote, referring to the part of town where Howard Bowe was killed. “You were raised by a criminal.” (As mentioned, Javellana’s father’s conviction was overturned.) “Don’t worry about her,” read another post. “Maybe at the next protest she attends, Ft Lauderdale [PD] will hit her with a rubber bullet, and she gets amnesia.” The commenter appended the post with a peace-sign emoji.
For Javellana, this last missive was particularly disturbing. It appeared a week after the protester LaToya Ratlieff was shot in the face by a rubber bullet, and nearly blinded, while marching in Fort Lauderdale. In body cam footage of the incident, officers can be seen laughing and celebrating after firing the barrage of bullets that hit Ratlieff and other marchers. Javellana had attended the same protest. (Ratlieff, who is the great-niece of civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer, testified before Congress in June about her experience.)
Another officer wrote, addressing Javellana, “Don’t call us when your s*** gets broken into.” “I don’t know if I’ve ever really felt safe calling the cops,” Javellana told me. But she said she certainly wouldn’t now. Javellana believes the police union has been monitoring her social media posts, investigating her, and looking for dirt. “I know I’m definitely a target of theirs, and I’m up for election in 2022.” (The police union did not respond to any of my requests for comment.) “I’ve started being more conscious about locking the doors to my house and being aware of my surroundings,” she said. “I don’t feel very trusting.”
In recent years, the image of police as impartial defenders of public safety has begun to unravel. But the idea of their neutrality is fairly new. American policing began as an explicitly partisan enterprise, openly aimed at protecting the interests of some and punishing others. For the first century of their history, police in Northern cities operated as appendages of competing political machines; graft and corruption were the norm. Often, companies enlisted them to violently break labor strikes. When an association of police officers petitioned to join the American Federation of Labor in 1897, they were rejected on the basis that police were “controlled by forces inimical to the labor movement.” In the South, policing originated as a method of enforcing white tyranny. The first policemen were the slave patrol, charged with ruthlessly controlling the movements of Black people.
These distinct Northern and Southern genealogies met in the years during and after the Great Migration (itself inspired by white racial terror and lynching, either inflicted or tolerated by Southern police), when African Americans settled in Northern and Midwestern cities. In New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, cops earned their status in the white imagination as disinterested peacekeepers—and not merely the quasi-legal muscle of ethnic organized crime—by policing Black neighborhoods. The largely Irish, Italian, and Polish ranks of policemen earned their “whiteness,” in other words, by inflicting violence on Black bodies.
Meanwhile, administrative reforms barred hiring through patronage channels, and, by the early 1960s, police had become disentangled from the partisan, ethnic alliances of machine politics. At the zenith of this process of “professionalization,” as Schrader terms it, police associations achieved the right to collectively bargain. For the next 10 years, the unions built up their political muscle by resisting civil rights–era reform efforts, while depicting themselves—to the white majority—as the singular bulwark against racial disorder. During the 1966 fight over New York City’s civilian review board, Police Benevolent Association president John Cassese said, “I’m sick and tired of giving in to minority groups with their whims and their gripes and shouting.” Bekemeyer describes their organizing efforts as a reactionary form of “social movement unionism”; the unions expanded the privileges of police officers by igniting and allying with a societywide politics of white backlash.
By the 1970s, police unions had become the pivotal force in American politics that they would remain for four decades. Despite pockets of animosity from those who encountered them most, police enjoyed an exalted moral and political status: as disinterested experts on crime, as neutral enforcers of state legitimacy, and as heroic “first responders” who put their lives on the line. Their budgets were largely insulated during eras of austerity and anti-labor backlash. In times of acute fiscal crisis, like the 1980s, they abjured salary increases in exchange for greater job security and freedom from public oversight, moves that contributed to the impunity they enjoy today.
Until recently, most politicians competed for police union endorsements, which functioned as an easy signifier of their commitments to public safety and blue-collar workers. Police organizations can direct significant resources to campaigns for mayor, city council, and district attorney. In 2019, police unions from all over the country together spent $700,000 in an effort to stop Chesa Boudin from becoming San Francisco’s district attorney. (Boudin, a former public defender and the son of Weather Underground activists involved in the deaths of two cops in 1981, nevertheless won.) And although police strikes are illegal, unions threaten informal slowdowns and sick-outs (known as “the blue flu”) to influence city leaders. Schrader notes that mayors listen when unions tell city hall, “‘If you don’t give us what we want, crime’s going to go up, and your mayoralty is going to go down the tubes.’”
But as the bipartisan law-and-order consensus crumbles, police increasingly betray the degree to which their interests—as self-conscious political and economic actors—are not coterminous with the public’s. And as the mask of neutrality slips, a siege mentality is taking hold, signaling a return to the early days of explicitly partisan and ideological policing. Perhaps in reaction to the mounting public pressure, police unions have gravitated toward Donald Trump and other right-wing politicians, who share their worldview and embrace ever darker and more conspiratorial premonitions of social breakdown. In August, on the final night of the Republican National Convention, Pat Lynch, president of the New York City Police Benevolent Association, praised Trump for “standing up for law and order” and accused Democrats of surrendering “our streets and our institutions” to “the mob.” In their rhetoric, union leaders often describe cops themselves as a targeted class in need of special protection. “Police officers are being discriminated against around the country simply because of their job,” a former president of the Broward County PBA said in 2015. “African Americans fought against discrimination using boycotts. We’re exercising our First Amendment right to do the same.”
Police increasingly betray the degree to which their interests are not coterminous with the public’s.
Leftists often speak of the police in mechanical terms, as fabricators of the capitalist social order: Police protect the propertied classes at the expense of workers, incarcerate lumpen surplus labor, and enforce a racialized spatial hierarchy, by treating certain areas as criminogenic and others as uncontaminated zones that must be quarantined from infection by crime. Yet police union activity in the current era represents not merely the reassertion of a ruling class or white hegemony, but police acting as a “dominating class for itself,” as Schrader puts it. Unable to recover their authority through ideological means—or restore the public’s faith in their impartial enforcement of the social contract—they instead assert it by cracking skulls. The police response to this latest round of protests, Schrader insists, “has been fully political.” Through their actions and words, police departments are not restoring order, as they would like people to believe; they are “responding to the content of the critique being voiced in the streets.” As activists call for the reduction of police budgets and the redistribution of those resources to other public services, the police aim to “refuse, reject, and crush a demand that they see as impinging on their livelihoods.”
Like Sabrina Javellana, Megan Green, who sits on the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, has become accustomed to death threats. In 2019, she ran to unseat the board president in a Democratic primary. A democratic socialist elected in 2014, Green has criticized St. Louis police for their behavior toward protesters, opposed a police salary increase, and sued the department for tear-gassing her at a march. A few days before the 2019 contest, a series of incendiary posts appeared on the Facebook page of the St. Louis Police Officers Association. The POA called Green a “Communist Cop-Hater” and an “anti-police radical,” and crudely photoshopped her head on a picture of Mao Zedong. The next day, the account posted a hammer and sickle crossed out by a bloody red circle. BETTER DEAD THAN RED! the caption read.
“That wasn’t terribly subtle,” Green remarked to me. The meme was shared widely, then deleted. Soon after, flyers appeared throughout Green’s district printed with the same slogan and a website for the white nationalist group Patriot Front. Threats of violence poured in over social media. “Kike aldermen should be raped to death by niggers,” read an email from a dummy account. Green forwarded it to the city’s director of public safety; nothing came of her report. For three days following the POA posts, she didn’t stay in her home. “I didn’t feel safe,” she explained. Green narrowly lost the election. Sometimes, depending on the rhetoric of the police union, the fear she felt then still flares up.


newrepublic--2020-10-20--The Overblown Alarmism About a Trump Coup

Signs of the apocalypse are everywhere .
It ’ s not just the worsening pandemic and Donald Trump ’ s determination to hold superspreader events in every swing state , but also the daily end-is-nigh stories about nightmare election scenarios , no matter how outlandish .
The Atlantic has released a slew of these pieces ever since it published Barton Gellman ’ s late-September article , “ What If Trump Refuses to Concede ?
” As Gellman wrote before launching into the details of his doomsday chronicle of remote possibility , “ Close students of election law and procedure are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ constitutional crisis that would leave the nation without an authoritative result .
We have no fail-safe against that calamity.
” The opening line of a recent BuzzFeed article by Paul McLeod evokes the same level of liberal hysteria as it conjures up an election in which “ the losing party refuses to concede , triggering a chaotic free-for-all in which Congress , the courts , and , in the most extreme case , the military could determine the winner.
” The Atlantic has also been brooding about “ The Fox News Power Keg @ @ @ @ @ @ @ article in which John Hendrickson mused that Fox News would prematurely and inaccurately call the race for Trump because , as he put it , “ It doesn ’ t matter how CNN and MSNBC play this election : Fox will control the narrative.
” Even political science professors have unleashed their inner Chicken Little as they shout , “ The sky is falling.
” Writing in The Guardian , 20 eminent academics warned that “ if , as many predict , the mail-in vote is heavily Democratic and the in-person vote is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many states with only a partial vote count .
If so , Trump will probably declare himself the winner and Fox News will announce this immediately .
”

The biggest factual problem with this common electoral nightmare scenario is that networks have never called swing states based on fragmentary—and misleading—early returns. In fact, only two of the last five presidential elections were even decided on election night. After 2000’s long count, the cautious networks only called the 2004 election for George W. Bush at midday on the Wednesday after the election, when Ohio finally went to the Republicans. Even Trump in 2016 was not anointed as the forty-fifth president until well after midnight.
With the conspicuous exceptions of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, swing states begin counting absentee ballots before Election Day. What that means is that many mail ballots will be reflected in the counts released immediately after the polls close. This is particularly true in states that backed Trump four years ago like Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, Ohio, and Georgia, all of which begin tallying absentee votes well in advance of Election Day. If Biden is winning in, say, two or three of these battleground states on election night, a second Trump term becomes close to a statistical impossibility.
Orson Welles during the downslide of his career made a series of TV ads for Paul Masson pledging to “sell no wine before its time.” That comes close to the mantra of the decision desks at all the TV networks, including Fox: “We call no state before its time.” In an online panel discussion last week, sponsored by the writers’ organization Pen America, election night data crunchers for CNN, Fox, and the Associated Press made this very point. As Arnon Mishkin, who heads the Fox News decision desk, put it, “This will be a high-visibility election, on which there will be a competition to try to tell the story as accurately as possible.”


newrepublic--2020-10-20--Meet Your New Would-Be Resistance Republicans, John Cornyn and Ben Sasse

If Donald Trump is voted out of office next month , expect the ranks of the Resistance to suddenly swell .
For all the chaos of the last four years , Republican support for President Trump has been steadfast and seemingly unshakable .
Now , with Trump trailing in some polls by as many as 15 points , some Republican senators are claiming that they not only never liked him , but have quietly done everything they could to thwart him .
Late last week , Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska lit into Trump for spending “ like a drunken @ @ @ @ @ @ @ butts , ” flirting “ with white supremacists , ” disdaining organized religion , and being wildly corrupt .
Over the weekend , Senator John Cornyn of Texas got in on the fun , telling the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that he had opposed the president ’ s spending , border wall , and Covid-19 response .
But he claimed he did so privately and in secret , noting that public opposition led to ridicule and barbed tweets .
As for the Trump presidency as a whole , it has been a disappointment .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a lot of women who get married and think they ’ re going to change their spouse , and that doesn ’ t usually work out very well.
” Sasse and Cornyn are both in the midst of re-election campaigns that may have influenced their decision to speak up .
Sasse , having survived a primary challenge , is coasting toward re-election , which means he can safely say whatever he wants about Trump .
Cornyn is fighting off Democrat M.J. Hegar , which means he ’ s feeling the need to distance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .

But both are also previewing an absurd line we’ll hear again and again during Biden’s first term, should it come to pass: that Republicans didn’t really back the president. They’ll say they quietly opposed him, even as they voted with him nearly 100 percent of the time and supported him through numerous self-inflicted crises. It’s not a question of if they’ll do this, but when, with Sasse and Cornyn showing us that some Republicans aren’t waiting for the results to come in on Election Day. The big question is whether they will get away with it.
The idea of a secret Trump resistance within the White House and Republican Party has been a minor subplot of the past four years. Bob Woodward’s Fear presented Gary Cohn as the republic’s last line of defense—he would pluck executive orders off the president’s desk, blocking trade wars that would have wrecked relationships with key allies and ratcheted up global tension. One still-anonymous administration official wrote a bombshell New York Times op-ed titled “I am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” as well as a book about the president’s unfitness for office.
A number of people who worked closely with Trump, including former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former Chief of Staff John Kelly, have brought their complaints to the press, calling the president everything from “a moron” to “the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.” Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security official, has appeared in ads for Joe Biden and written a Washington Post op-ed warning that “the country is less secure as a direct result of the president’s actions.”


newrepublic--2020-10-20--The Atlantic and the Limits of Reasonableness

The Atlantic is perhaps the quintessential American magazine .
Founded by Boston abolitionists in 1857 , its role in the media ecosystem stands in contrast to that of The New Yorker , which , despite regularly featuring excellent reporting , is first and foremost a literary magazine .
Among political magazines , it is neither overtly right-wing like the National Review nor overtly left-wing like The Nation ( or , for that matter , The New Republic ) .
The Atlantic is a magazine not precisely of the center but rather of a set of liberal civic ideals ; more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seems to be the continual renewal of educated Americans ’ commitment to high-mindedness .
The past four years have severely tested those ideals , and under the leadership of Jeffrey Goldberg , who became editor in chief the month before Donald Trump ’ s election , The Atlantic has dedicated itself to the defense of American liberalism in the face of Trump ’ s clownish barbarism .
Now , with the publication of The American Crisis : What Went Wrong .
How We Recover.—a 500-page collection of 40 articles published in print or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ curated a kind of museum of their efforts .
Although I had read many of these articles online , I dutifully went through the entirety of The American Crisis in the order in which it was intended to be read , including the introduction by Goldberg , the conclusion by staff writer Anne Applebaum , and the transitional sections between each article by editor-at-large Cullen Murphy .
While built from standalone pieces , the book is meant to tell a unified story , with the articles slotted thematically into four sections—one on America @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the failure of politics in general , one specifically focused on the Trump administration , and one calling for a civic renaissance .
On these narrow terms , it generally succeeds , but it does so in a way that can be exhausting to work through and unsatisfying to complete , doing justice neither to the best nor the worst writers the magazine employs .
More notable than the story the editors have tried to tell is the tone they have aimed to create , the parameters they believe appropriate for political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The book features contributions by Atlantic staffers such as Caitlin Flanagan , McKay Coppins , Annie Lowrey , Vann R. Newkirk II , George Packer , David Frum , Adam Serwer , and James Fallows , as well as some high-profile contributors like Drew Gilpin Faust , Angela Nagle , James Mattis , Ibram X. Kendi , and Lin-Manuel Miranda .
Ta-Nehisi Coates , who left The Atlantic in 2018 , has an article included , while some other prominent voices associated with the magazine , like Conor Friedersdorf or Yascha Mounk , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the right-wing troll who was controversially employed by The Atlantic for about two weeks in 2018 , is nowhere to be found .
By my very rough count , about one in three contributors are women and about one in five are people of color—both of which fractions , it ’ s only fair to acknowledge , are probably higher now than they would have been in any previous four-year period of the magazine ’ s history .
But what really comes through is the institutional voice of The Atlantic , which makes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clean , authoritative , high-minded , rigorously empirical , more than a bit self-righteous—and , once you ’ ve heard it enough times , utterly tedious .

To understand where that voice comes from, it helps to look at any job posting on the Atlantic Media website. The company looks for two “pillar gifts” from all its employees: “force of ideas” and “a spirit of generosity,” defining the latter as manifesting itself in writing that is “critical on the merits but informed by charity and forbearance in measuring motive and personal character.” This is not, in other words, a publication for alums of Gawker or The Baffler (which published what might be the single best read on The Atlantic back in 2012). This is a publication that selects for a certain mode of gentility and then further polices how its writers are permitted to express themselves.
To be spoken to in the Atlantic tone, and to adopt the Atlantic view on America’s problems, must be luxuriously comforting. The Atlantic believes our country is flawed and complex, born in slavery but always aspiring to a more inclusive definition of freedom. It believes that Trump presents an unprecedented authoritarian threat to America’s democratic institutions, a threat that has pre-Trumpian roots but is also singular and, we can only hope, temporary. It believes America has always held within it the capacity for rebirth and renewal; that in spite of our diversity and divisions, we can and must seek unity; that partisan strife can be overcome; that lessons from history, which seem to appear about 20 percent of the way through any given article, can inspire us to embrace our better angels; that old-fashioned concepts like honor and duty and fairness have a place in twenty-first-century America; and that our many pressing problems—inequality, a broken public health system, online radicalization, right-wing conspiracy theories, structural and environmental racism, climate change, all of it—can be dispassionately diagnosed and addressed. The Atlantic believes that you are a well-meaning, Ivy-educated white-collar professional, a member of what contributor Matthew Stewart calls “the 9.9 percent” and “the new American aristocracy”; that you listen to NPR and shop at Trader Joe’s and are vaguely embarrassed not to know any Trump supporters; that you are trying your best to understand how America has gone astray; and that you can do so without ever making yourself too uncomfortable.
It would be churlish not to acknowledge that there’s a lot of truth to the worldview I’ve outlined above, and that there’s a real audience it speaks to. Under Goldberg’s leadership, with Trump as a foil, and with the sponsorship of Laurene Powell Jobs, the billionaire widow of Steve Jobs, The Atlantic has set new subscription records—and the state of the media industry being what it is, it’s hard not to celebrate that.


newrepublic--2020-10-20--The Anguish of Watching the Election From the Purgatory of a Border Camp

It ’ s been nearly a year now that Luis Adrian Martinez Reyes has lived in a tent with his wife ( who is pregnant ) , child , and godchild in the migrant camp for asylum-seekers in Matamoros , Mexico , on the banks of the Rio Grande , which marks the U.S.-Mexico border .
Camp residents are mostly like him : young parents with children .
They cook on small clay stoves with wood provided by aid groups that also deliver three meals a day , along with supplies including masks , sanitizer , and baby items .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ hands in small sinks , and bathe in the muddy river .
It ’ s a life of waiting , the view of the opposite riverbank a constant reminder that the United States is out of reach .
I met Reyes in the camp in March , before the border closed , and we ’ ve stayed in touch on WhatsApp .
He fled Honduras , which has one of the highest murder rates in the world , in 2019 , after surviving a shooting that left him with a long red scar @ @ @ @ @ @ @ paid smugglers to take him and his family across the Rio Grande on an inflatable boat no larger than a mattress , but Border Patrol caught and detained them briefly before deporting them to Matamoros in December .
There , they waited in Mexico under a Trump administration policy known as the Migrant Protection Protocols .
It ’ s also called , perhaps more descriptively , the “ Remain in Mexico ” policy .
Since Vice President Mike Pence ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to close U.S. borders amid the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ agency officials , Reyes and others in the camp have waited for months as their asylum hearings have been pushed back again and again .
His court appearance is now scheduled for December 7 .
According to immigration lawyers who visited the camp , the number of people living there has shrunk from about 2,500 before the border closed to about 1,000 , as people give up on asylum and return home , or find work and settle in Mexico .
Those going home are returning to the violence , political persecution , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first place .
They ’ re returning out of desperation .
Others , like Reyes , choose to stay , hoping the border will reopen .
“ Right now , many dead migrants are appearing in the river , ” Reyes said in Spanish .
In one case , a Guatemalan man drowned while trying to help a pregnant woman who was crossing the river to reach the U.S .
They left dangerous situations in their home countries to seek safety in the U.S. , and now they don ’ t know if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cases heard .
Under the MPP , which will see its second anniversary in January , the U.S. has issued deportation orders for nearly 33,000 people , and another 23,000 cases are pending .
Immigration is not a major election issue in 2020 the way it was in 2016 .
While the spotlight has moved on for some voters , the outcome in November will have a profound impact on the lives of people living in the Matamoros camp—Biden and Trump have dramatically different plans for immigration : Trump would continue MPP , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ action to end the policy .
If Biden wins , immigration lawyers say he could quickly restore the border to the pre-Trump status quo using memos , executive orders , and settlement agreements .

It’s been nearly a year now that Luis Adrian Martinez Reyes has lived in a tent with his wife (who is pregnant), child, and godchild in the migrant camp for asylum-seekers in Matamoros, Mexico, on the banks of the Rio Grande, which marks the U.S.-Mexico border. Camp residents are mostly like him: young parents with children. They cook on small clay stoves with wood provided by aid groups that also deliver three meals a day, along with supplies including masks, sanitizer, and baby items. People use portable toilets, wash their hands in small sinks, and bathe in the muddy river. It’s a life of waiting, the view of the opposite riverbank a constant reminder that the United States is out of reach.
I met Reyes in the camp in March, before the border closed, and we’ve stayed in touch on WhatsApp. He fled Honduras, which has one of the highest murder rates in the world, in 2019, after surviving a shooting that left him with a long red scar running vertically along his torso. He paid smugglers to take him and his family across the Rio Grande on an inflatable boat no larger than a mattress, but Border Patrol caught and detained them briefly before deporting them to Matamoros in December. There, they waited in Mexico under a Trump administration policy known as the Migrant Protection Protocols. It’s also called, perhaps more descriptively, the “Remain in Mexico” policy. Since Vice President Mike Pence ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to close U.S. borders amid the Covid-19 crisis, against the objection of agency officials, Reyes and others in the camp have waited for months as their asylum hearings have been pushed back again and again. His court appearance is now scheduled for December 7.


newrepublic--2020-10-20--An Anti-Rape Movement Without Police

An Anti-Rape Movement Without Police

When a domestic violence organization in Wisconsin put up signs reading “ Black Lives Matter , ” they did not know that it would lead to a backlash from police and the loss of a $ 25,000 grant to provide services .
Embrace is the only domestic violence program for four counties , including part of a tribal reservation ; in Barron County , the group ’ s five law enforcement partners all withdrew .
The organization also lost two board members : the county sheriff and the county ’ s health and human services director ( after the county @ @ @ @ @ @ @ board ) .
Both acknowledged this was over Black Lives Matter .
“ We were some big supporters of Embrace and we felt that they were not supporting law enforcement and taking the side of some of the anti-law enforcement out there , ” Barron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald told Wisconsin Public Radio , which broke the story .
The law enforcement backlash against Embrace comes after an open letter signed by 47 sexual assault and domestic violence state and territorial coalitions , which publicly questioned the movement ’ s reliance on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in support of Black Lives Matter , called themselves and the broader movement out for failing to listen to Black feminists and others who have long cautioned against partnering with the carceral state in their fight for justice for survivors .
“ We must be responsible for the ways in which our movement work directly contradicts our values , ” their letter states .
Police retaliation against anti-violence groups who speak out against police violence is becoming a pattern .
Two coalitions that signed the letter faced law enforcement fallout to varying degrees @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The state sheriff ’ s association in Nebraska asked the coalition there to withdraw their signature ( they did not ) , and in Idaho , the state Chiefs of Police Association , Sheriffs Association , and the Prosecuting Attorneys Association withdrew support from their state ’ s coalition because they signed , too .
After what happened with Embrace in Wisconsin , the interim executive director of Wisconsin ’ s state coalition , End Domestic Abuse , told HuffPo , “ To me , it sounded like they were declaring war on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for victims and survivors.
” ( That state coalition also signed the letter . )
Embrace serves a majority white population across four Wisconsin counties , and according to their annual report , “ 15 percent of all survivors served in-person by Embrace were Black , Indigenous , and People of Color ( BIPOC ) .
” In turning their backs on programs like Embrace , that ’ s who will most likely face the consequences .

While we are now witnessing policing divest from anti-violence work, some activists in the anti-rape movement have been calling for a divestment from police for more than 40 years—just about as long as there has been a movement. In 1977, three members of Santa Cruz Women Against Rape—Robin McDuff, Deanne Pernell, and Karen Saunders—published “Letter to the Anti-Rape Movement” in the magazine off our backs. When the organized movement began, they wrote, “we were critics of the police, the courts, and the hospitals, the institutions that traditionally dealt with rape victims.” Within five years, they continued, the movement had shifted: They were now joined by groups that prioritized “getting rapists off the streets” by collaborating with the criminal justice system. They opposed this, the women wrote, in part because “no matter what our intentions are, the system is racist through and through.”
The letter, reprinted this year by organizer and educator Mariame Kaba, is both prescient and frustrating. The movement is still wrestling with the criminal legal system. In Wisconsin this September, the Embrace board debated a statement on these issues. What should it call what police did to Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man who was shot and seriously injured by police? The board rejected “attempted murder” and chose simply “shooting.” The statement also read, “Racism, police violence, sexual violence, and domestic violence all have the same root causes, and they interact and compound on each other both in society and within the survivors we serve.” Forty-four years ago, the Santa Cruz Women Against Rape letter told the movement, “We cannot turn our backs to the racism of the system when a Black man is being prosecuted and not expect that same racism to be used against Joann Little.”
Little, an incarcerated Black woman, was charged with murder in 1974. After a prison guard sexually assaulted her while threatening her with an ice pick, she later testified, she fought back and fled the jail. She didn’t know the wounds were fatal. She turned herself in. A grand jury indicted her on first-degree murder, a capital offense in North Carolina. Little’s case demonstrated how the carceral system was itself a place marked by sexual violence, how women—especially Black women like Little—had no right to self-defense, including in confined and surveilled settings where police were ostensibly there to protect them.


newrepublic--2020-10-20--Scientists Are Finally Denouncing Trump. What Took So Long?

Editors at the nation ’ s top science journals have been on a bit of a tear lately .
For months they ’ ve been working overtime to publish urgent research analyzing the coronavirus pandemic .
Now , in the final weeks leading up to the presidential election , several prestigious research journals and science magazines have delivered editorials excoriating President Trump for his reflexively anti-science approach to policy-making during a global health crisis .
Centuries of tradition have previously barred buttoned-up leaders of the scientific community from publicly opposing or endorsing presidential candidates .
Now , the white coats @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Dying in a Leadership Vacuum ” in early October , The New England Journal of Medicine , considered America ’ s premier clinical research journal , attacked President Trump ’ s pandemic response as dithering and incompetent .
“ Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences , ” the editors wrote .
Scientific American went a step further and outright endorsed Joe Biden for president , calling him a “ fact-based ” alternative to the dangers of Trump ’ s right-wing agenda aimed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ health care , and interfering in public research institutions like the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .
Both editorials were firsts for journals with 208-year and 175-year histories , respectively .
The Lancet Oncology , Nature , and the famed magazine Science have also staked out political stances .
H. Holden Thorp , editor-in-chief of Science ’ s family of journals , called this spate of dissent from the upper echelons of his field “ unprecedented.
” The pandemic has turned once obscure epidemiologists and other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Some in the scientific community worry these scathing editorials come at the risk of further eroding the public ’ s trust in scientific expertise .
“ I ’ m really of two minds about it , ” Harold Pollack , a professor focused on health policy at the University of Chicago , and a self-identified liberal Democrat , told me .
“ I think it ’ s important to be truthful and the institutions of civil society have to be straight forward and say , ‘ This is not ok. ’ But I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I do think that for many conservative people—many who are not particularly comfortable with President Trump—this will reinforce their view that elite research academia , public health and medicine , has disdain for their views.
” Argument and critique on thorny subjects is vital to scientific inquiry , however .
In this case , the United States ’ unusually high death rate from Covid-19 created unique conditions for science journals ’ decision to criticize a sitting president for the first time .
Whether he ’ s falsely comparing Covid-19 to the average @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disappear “ like a miracle ” when the weather gets warmer , or indulging the MyPillow guy ’ s snake oil cure , Trump continues to discuss the pandemic in the same blundering infomercial-speak that he brings to every other topic .
After being infected with Covid-19 , Trump vowed to kiss everyone in the audience at a recent rally .
Scientists should call this out .
But the right ’ s anti-science agenda and undermining of scientific expertise precedes the pandemic .
Denying evolution and climate change , rolling back environmental regulations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ curtailing women ’ s reproductive rights are staples of mainstream conservatism .
Trump ’ s agenda and rhetoric simply lack the polished veneer .
His approach isn ’ t much crueler—it ’ s just more obvious .

The history of science and medicine in America is replete with incidents where toxic ideologies infect research agendas and cause harm to vulnerable populations. Despite little scientific evidence, newspapers and magazines in the 1980s and ’90s cited expert opinions that a generation of “crack-babies” would grow up to become part of a “bio-underclass.” Around the same time, sociologists gave clout to the “superpredator” myth, which stigmatized disproportionately Black teenagers. Both of these false narratives came out of scientific disciplines and were used to justify uber-punitive, racist sentencing laws that fuel mass incarceration.
A more recent incident where “science” was used by a presidential administration to do harm was President George W. Bush’s torture program. It was revealed after Bush left office that the American Psychological Association secretly collaborated with the CIA to offer legal and ethical cover to torture prisoners at Abu Graib who were suspected of having ties to terrorist plots.
The politicization of science and research goes back much further in America. Perhaps the most infamous case is the horrific Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, in which the U.S. Public Health Service deliberately withheld treatment for syphilis from hundreds of Black men. There’s a common misconception that the Tuskegee study took place in secret. In fact, results from the study were published in academic journals. Black scientists were stunned when they saw these papers and tried to blow the whistle multiple times, but the 40-year study didn’t end until a white government researcher told a reporter to look into it. We now know that the architects of the Tuskegee study graduated from medical school at the University of Virginia, which at the time was a hotbed for eugenics, where students were trained to believe that race was a key factor in the etiology and treatment of disease.


newrepublic--2020-10-20--The Cruelty of Washington’s Cynical Stimulus War

Over the weekend , House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave the White House a deadline of 48 hours to complete negotiations on a new pandemic relief package to be passed before the election , which is now two weeks away .
This was the latest volley in the ongoing congressional wars over a much-needed stimulus bill , and Monday ’ s headlines buzzed with the appropriate alarms .
But for all the rhetoric of this time we mean it , it was easy enough to forget that Pelosi had previously announced ( then eventually jettisoned ) a similar deadline just last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ office had taken advantage of the ambiguity of when her countdown clock had started ticking on “ 48 hours ” to nudge the negotiations deadline to the end of Tuesday , rather than Monday .
House Democrats , who passed their own $ 3 trillion stimulus package back in May , are clearly in a difficult position .
Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans have repeatedly stonewalled that legislation in favor of a pared-down $ 500 billion “ skinny stimulus , ” which , among other miserable planks , would grant blanket protection to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ measures ( or lack thereof ) .
Republicans are essentially entirely to blame for the stalling of a second round of aid , but the entire spectacle performed by both camps—the showy proceduralism , the vague and arbitrary deadlines , the closed-door meetings between Pelosi and Steve Mnuchin—while people ’ s livelihoods are hanging on the line represents the worst of a political system run by the well-off and admired by few others .
And while the media has given the interminable fracas the lion ’ s share of its attention , if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s preventing a relief package from being enacted is winning fans and influencing people , they are sorely mistaken .
As political scientists Yanna Krupnikov and John Barry Ryan recently argued in The New York Times , it ’ s a very small segment of the American public that cares about the constant warring between Democrats and Republicans .
A staggering 80 to 85 percent of people , they found in their research , followed politics only casually or not at all .
“ For partisans , politics is a morality play @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” they wrote .
“ But most Americans just see two angry groups of people bickering over issues that may not always seem pressing or important.
” In the case of the stimulus wars , the interparty psychodrama , which has dragged on for months , has left the public hanging out to dry .
It ’ s been seven months since Congress passed the Cares Act , the first relief bill that established protections such as supplemental unemployment benefits , eviction protections , and stimulus checks .
Though several national polls @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the public , regardless of their political affiliation , wants a new relief package , Congress and the White House have enacted a drawn-out media battle for over half a year during a national crisis with nothing to show for it .
( Trump , who seems to have realized at some point during his coronavirus convalescence how wildly popular government aid is , went from disavowing new negotiations to promising an even bigger bill than the Democrats had proposed , in the span of just a few days , but probably won @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many concessions from his own party . )
Meanwhile , millions of these politicians ’ constituents are struggling to stay afloat .
“ I feel like we ’ re going to get an answer today , ” one Reddit user on a forum dedicated to monitoring stimulus check updates wrote on Monday .
“ Then again I ’ ve felt like that every day since September 8th.
” By Monday night , Pelosi and Mnuchin had had their meeting but had only “ narrowed their differences ” and would reconvene on Tuesday .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ who was laid off in March and is waiting on edge for a new stimulus check , told Marketwatch , “ It seems like people like us are getting forgotten about right now .
”

Over the weekend, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave the White House a deadline of 48 hours to complete negotiations on a new pandemic relief package to be passed before the election, which is now two weeks away. This was the latest volley in the ongoing congressional wars over a much-needed stimulus bill, and Monday’s headlines buzzed with the appropriate alarms. But for all the rhetoric of this time we mean it, it was easy enough to forget that Pelosi had previously announced (then eventually jettisoned) a similar deadline just last month. Even on Monday, her office had taken advantage of the ambiguity of when her countdown clock had started ticking on “48 hours” to nudge the negotiations deadline to the end of Tuesday, rather than Monday.
House Democrats, who passed their own $3 trillion stimulus package back in May, are clearly in a difficult position. Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans have repeatedly stonewalled that legislation in favor of a pared-down $500 billion “skinny stimulus,” which, among other miserable planks, would grant blanket protection to employers from liability lawsuits over Covid-19 safety measures (or lack thereof). Republicans are essentially entirely to blame for the stalling of a second round of aid, but the entire spectacle performed by both camps—the showy proceduralism, the vague and arbitrary deadlines, the closed-door meetings between Pelosi and Steve Mnuchin—while people’s livelihoods are hanging on the line represents the worst of a political system run by the well-off and admired by few others. And while the media has given the interminable fracas the lion’s share of its attention, if anyone thinks the constant political battling that’s preventing a relief package from being enacted is winning fans and influencing people, they are sorely mistaken.


newrepublic--2020-10-20--The Trump Case That Will Test the Supreme Court’s Newest Originalist

The Constitution is a remarkably vague document , and American courts have spent the last two hundred years trying to make it more specific .
What counts as “ cruel and unusual punishment , ” either in 1789 or in 2020 ?
What makes a search and seizure “ unreasonable ” when carried out by police ?
When does a person deprived of life , liberty , or property actually receive “ due process under law ” ?
Sometimes , the answers in these cases can be harder to find than they might seem .
Trump v. New York is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anything , it might even be one of the easiest cases taken up by the Supreme Court in recent memory .
Every 10 years , the Constitution requires the federal government to conduct a census that counts “ the whole number of persons ” in the United States .
In July , President Trump issued an order to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census results that are sent to Congress to reapportion House seats , even though the Constitution clearly requires their inclusion .
A special three-judge federal panel in New York unanimously @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Last Friday , the Supreme Court scheduled oral arguments for the case on November 30 , making it virtually certain that Judge Amy Coney Barrett , whose confirmation to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is expected within a week , will be part of the deliberations and the result .
Conservative legal scholars have long insisted , to plenty of liberal skepticism , that the judicial theory of originalism , which aims to interpret the Constitution based on its meaning at the time of adoption , is more than a means @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ It ’ s not the law of Amy , it ’ s the law of the American people , ” Barrett explained in her confirmation hearing last week .
“ And I think originalism and textualism , to me , boil down to that , to a commitment to the rule of law , to not disturbing or changing or updating or adjusting in line with my own policy preferences what that law required.
” If that ’ s true , then Trump v. New York may be the first opportunity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wrong about the motivations of conservative originalists—by roundly rejecting the president ’ s argument .
Because any honest originalist would acknowledge that the Constitution ’ s meaning on the matter—at the time of its adoption , and after subsequent amendments , and today—is crystal clear .
The census itself is a complex effort to answer a simple question : How many people are in the United States ?
The Constitution ’ s original text was fairly clear on how the process must work .
“ Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among @ @ @ @ @ @ @ respective Numbers , ” reads the provision in Article 1 .
Those numbers must be calculated , it stated , “ by adding to the whole Number of free Persons , including those bound to Service for a Term of Years , and excluding Indians not taxed , three fifths of all other Persons .
”

In its ruling, the panel specifically noted that there was no way lawfully to produce the numbers Trump wanted. “The presidential memorandum leaves it to [Ross] how to come up with those figures, but they will necessarily be derived from something other than the census itself, as the 2020 census is not gathering information concerning citizenship or immigration status, and the 2020 census is counting illegal aliens,” the panel wrote. “By doing so, the presidential memorandum violates Congress’s mandate to use the results of the census—and only the results of the census—in connection with the apportionment process and the counting of them pursuant the Residence Rule.”
This is not the first time that the Trump administration has tried to manipulate the census for Republican gain. In 2018, Ross tried to add a citizenship question to the list of queries asked of every American citizen, despite internal and external warnings that it would reduce the accuracy of the count. Critics warned that the reduction looked like a deliberate attempt to dissuade legal and undocumented immigrants alike from completing the census—a move that would, in turn, bolster white Americans’ political power even further for at least a decade. Last year, the Supreme Court narrowly effectively blocked the question after finding the administration’s stated reason for adding it—enforcing the Voting Rights Act of 1965—to be dubious at best.
What does it mean that the justices decided to review the panel’s decision in this case? Not much. Generally speaking, the court’s members have discretion over whether they hear a specific case or not. But federal law allows cases involving reapportionment to take place before a three-judge panel at a federal district court and then be sent directly to the Supreme Court for review, where it can’t be ignored. Though the justices have the option to summarily uphold or overturn the panel’s decision, they did not utilize it here. That leaves observers with less information about the justices’ intentions in this case than normal.


newrepublic--2020-10-20--The Media Is Falling for Republicans’ New Anti-Trump Narrative

If Donald Trump is voted out of office next month , expect the ranks of the Resistance to suddenly swell .
For all the chaos of the last four years , Republican support for President Trump has been steadfast and seemingly unshakable .
Now , with Trump trailing in some polls by as many as 15 points , some Republican senators are claiming that they not only never liked him but have quietly done everything they could to thwart him .
Late last week , Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska lit into Trump for spending “ like a drunken sailor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” flirting “ with white supremacists , ” disdaining organized religion , and being wildly corrupt .
Over the weekend , Senator John Cornyn of Texas got in on the fun , telling the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that he had opposed the president ’ s spending , border wall , and Covid-19 response .
But he claimed he did so privately and in secret , noting that public opposition led to ridicule and barbed tweets .
As for the Trump presidency as a whole , it has been a disappointment .
Cornyn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lot of women who get married and think they ’ re going to change their spouse , and that doesn ’ t usually work out very well.
” Sasse and Cornyn are both in the midst of reelection campaigns that may have influenced their decision to speak up .
Sasse , having survived a primary challenge , is coasting toward reelection , which means he can safely say whatever he wants about Trump .
Cornyn is fighting off Democrat M.J. Hegar , which means he ’ s feeling the need to distance himself @ @ @ @ @ @ @


newrepublic--2020-10-21--America Has No Duty to Rule the World

America Has No Duty to Rule the World

The United States is the world ’ s overwhelming military power , and it ’ s not even close .
The country controls about 750 overseas bases ( China , by comparison , has only one foreign base , in Djibouti ) .
It spends around $ 730 billion on its military , which is more than China , India , Russia , Saudi Arabia , France , Germany , the United Kingdom , Japan , South Korea , and Brazil combined .
It has over 190,000 soldiers deployed in approximately 140 foreign countries—around 70 percent of the world ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ foreigners alike , this power appears as a natural fact of international relations .
Very few people alive today can remember a time when the United States did not have the ability to destroy much of the globe .
There are various ways to narrate why the United States , a nation-state founded in an anti-colonial revolution , became the most powerful empire in history .
You may call it destiny , the fulfillment of the country ’ s millenarian promise to become , as the Puritan leader John Winthrop declared in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a hill ” for the world ’ s benighted .
Or you may claim it was the United States ’ vast material resources and its geographical luck , surrounded by two vast oceans and weak neighbors , that enabled it to develop its capacities to govern the world .
Perhaps if you ’ re a Marxist , you ’ ll insist it was capitalism ’ s unquenchable appetite that drove U.S. elites to expand from sea to shining sea before turning their gaze abroad in search of more territory to exploit .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. power , you can affirm that dominance was forced upon the United States by Europe ’ s two world wars , which impelled the mantle of “ Western civilization ” to pass from the Old World to the New , or by the attack at Pearl Harbor , to which any reasonable nation would have replied with force .
In Tomorrow , the World , historian Stephen Wertheim highlights an overlooked cause of the United States ’ ascendance : the fall of France in June 1940 .
When the French military collapsed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s blitzkrieg , a generation of American foreign policy elites worried that if the British Empire also fell , there would be no great power left to challenge Nazi dominance and ensure liberalism ’ s future .
The United States , they concluded , needed to fill that role , and the only way to do so was for it to become a major military power dedicated to protecting the free exchange of ideas , people , and , especially , goods .
At first , Americans mostly confined their vision of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But after the nation entered World War II in December 1941 , and Nazi success seemed less assured , those visions expanded to encompass most of the globe .
Peace , prosperity , and liberalism itself depended on world-spanning U.S. armed primacy .
This conviction became an essential component of the imperialist ideology that U.S. elites developed and institutionalized during the Cold War , and it remains widely held today .
Because Americans identify stability with dominance , the United States spends an unconscionable amount on its military and pursues a series of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , do nothing to improve the lives of Americans or those suffering abroad , and , ironically , engender instability .
Wertheim , one of the founders of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft , an anti-militarist think tank backed by George Soros and Charles Koch , has devoted his career to challenging the shibboleths that surround U.S. primacy .
Just as Americans once chose to rule , he argues , they can likewise choose not to .
The first centuries of U.S. history underline how strange the country ’ s bid for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ before the mid-twentieth century Americans tended to claim that “ their nation was exceptional because it did not covet armed supremacy over the rest of the world.
” They recoiled from foreign entanglements—imbrication in the power politics of other countries , especially in Europe .
This became such an important element of U.S. nationalism that even when Americans used their military for expressly political purposes—indigenous genocide , colonialism , resource extraction—they did so , Wertheim maintains , “ in the name of ending power politics .
”

The United States was not forced to build a global empire in reaction to a physical attack. It did so as the result of
an intellectual revolution.
This story of the United States’ bid for global power undermines the importance of the “Pearl Harbor” myth to American history. After 1945, apologists for American Empire have often argued that the surprise Japanese destruction of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor (and the simultaneous, if usually ignored, assaults on the U.S. territories of the Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island) justified the U.S. presence abroad: Didn’t the attack, after all, demonstrate what happened if the United States restrained its military power? Yet Wertheim shows that more than a year earlier, prominent members of the U.S. foreign policy establishment were already arguing that their nation needed to take a leading role in world affairs. Put another way, the United States was not forced to build its global empire in reaction to a physical attack, but did so as the result of an intellectual revolution that jettisoned the liberal premises of traditional internationalism.
In late 1940, the CFR’s Economic and Financial Group, headed by Viner and the economist Alvin Hansen, concluded that the Nazis would retain their hold on Europe (and parts of North Africa and the Middle East) for the foreseeable future. This, they determined, meant that the United States could compete with Hitler only if it controlled a “Grand Area” that connected the Americas to the British Empire and Pacific Basin. Linking these regions would provide the material basis for the United States and its junior partner, the United Kingdom, to compete with the emergent German economic juggernaut and continue to direct world history. In effect, the CFR planners were arguing that to challenge the Nazi empire, the United States needed to become the prime power everywhere else on the globe. Conceptually, they were also claiming that liberal exchange needed to be underwritten by military force. Gone was any Enlightenment-based notion that humans could overcome their differences through discussion. Instead, the planners embraced a Hobbesian theory of human nature in which people were selfish, greedy, and prone to war, and could only be governed through violence and its threat.
The CFR planners and fellow travelers like Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, however, did not want to simply assert that the power of the American-Anglo alliance justified its rule. For this reason, they laid a liberal ideology over great power dominance, avowing that the Americans and British would create and defend an international order devoted to liberal norms. This argument not only assuaged internationalists’ consciences; it also allowed them to sell U.S. global supremacy to the American public. The primary mechanism of this “liberal international order,” as it would later be called, was the United Nations. “By working through a universal body, with every nation as a member,” Wertheim maintains, “the United States would seem to lead an enlightened world order, bound by rules of law and respecting the equality of others.” By promoting the U.N., U.S. elites made armed primacy palatable to a public that had long rejected it.


newrepublic--2020-10-21--ExxonMobil’s Real Quid Pro Quo With the Government

Donald Trump didn ’ t actually give Exxon drilling permits in exchange for $ 25 million in campaign donations .
He just wants you to know that he could , if he wanted to .
That was the message behind a viral clip of the president at a rally on Monday , in which he said he ’ d “ call the head of Exxon , ” and say “ How are you doing , how ’ s energy coming ?
When are you doing the exploration ?
Oh , you need a couple of permits , huh ?
... @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you to send me $ 25 million for the campaign.
” He could say that .
As a # QuidProQuo hashtag materialized , many wondering whether the president had openly admitted to a crime , reporters pointed out that this extortion scenario had been phrased as a hypothetical .
“ We are aware of the President ’ s statement regarding a hypothetical call with our CEO , ” ExxonMobil ’ s official account tweeted Monday evening .
“ And just so we ’ re all clear it never happened.
” The tweet earned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for “ fact checking ” the president , and a few welcomed the company to the “ resistance.
” Beneath Trump ’ s hypothetical , though , lies an unsettling truth : The U.S. government has a toxic relationship with the fossil fuel industry .
The oil and gas sector was built and survives on a sturdy foundation of state support .
While Trump may not ( yet ) have openly extorted Exxon ’ s CEO , the government-corporate partnership is rotten to its core .
The Seven Sisters oil companies—now consolidated into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on imperial concessions throughout much of the Global South to maintain their cartel over some 85 percent of the world ’ s oil resources through much of the 20th century .
When local governments threatened that control , the companies turned to the CIA to help protect their property .
Nowadays those helping hands are a bit more subtle .
The Obama administration ’ s Global Shale Gas Initiative , for instance , deployed tremendous diplomatic resources to sell U.S. fossil fuels to the world as the shale boom took off .
After @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the industry—lifted a 40-year-old ban on crude oil exports to give them a second life .
In one particularly egregious example of government fossil fuel cheerleading at the state level , Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf is now under federal investigation for allegedly firing a top state environmental regulator who threatened to deny a permit to Energy Transfer LP for its Mariner East 2 Pipeline .
Wolf has continued to champion the pipeline throughout the investigation .

That’s all on top of the more obvious support those companies receive in the form of generous tax breaks and dirt-cheap leases on public lands, where existing drilling accounts for a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions produced in the United States. Researchers at the Stockholm Environmental Institute and EarthTrack found in 2017 that 45 percent of new crude oil resources would be unprofitable to develop without public subsidies. A 2019 paper in Nature found that just one type of subsidy—the subsidy that allows producers to write down costs from new wells—makes new drilling projects seem far cheaper than they appear, bringing down break-even costs by as much as $7 per barrel of oil. Removing that subsidy and making new drilling economically unviable could keep up to 300 million tons of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere in 2030.
To keep such a thing from happening, fossil fuel companies make generous contributions to lawmakers, particularly Republicans. Eighty-five percent of fossil fuel donations this cycle have gone to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. But companies are starting to spend more of their money courting Democrats. Exxon, for instance, has directed 41 percent of its political contributions this year to Democratic Party–aligned candidates and PACs, up from the 32.6 percent of funds it offered in 2016.
As a political entity, Exxon at this point is closer to a NeverTrump Republican than the cartoonish, climate-denying supervillain it was a decade ago, when it funded junk-science research into whether the sun was to blame for climate change and papers arguing that more carbon dioxide emissions might actually be good. Today, you’d be as hard-pressed to find a fossil fuel executive spouting Trump-like lines that climate change is a hoax as you would to find one pushing back against his regulatory rollbacks. Oil companies’ rhetorical shift, that is, hasn’t been accompanied by much substantive change in their business strategy. As Bloomberg reported recently, Exxon, despite its new green messaging, was planning as of this past January to increase its annual emissions by 17 percent by 2025 and is still giving lavishly to keep Republicans in control of the Senate.