newrepublic--2020-05-08--The Pandemic Surveillance State

The Pandemic Surveillance State

In late March , while many Florida beaches remained dangerously packed , Governor Ron DeSantis called for checkpoints along the state ’ s border for law enforcement to meet incoming travelers .
He refused to issue a statewide stay-at-home order for residents , instead mandating 14-day quarantines for all people traveling to Florida from a growing list of states—Louisiana , New York , New Jersey , Connecticut—and he threatened criminal action if the quarantines were violated .
( The president approved of Governor DeSantis ’ s performance , calling him “ a very tough guy.
” ) More governors joined @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Island Governor Gina Raimondo to stop people at the border if they had New York license plates , and the National Guard conducted house searches to enforce a quarantine on travelers from New York .
Texas Governor Greg Abbott had state troopers similarly enforce a quarantine .
In the checkpoints ’ first 12 days of existence , 3,700 people from the so-called “ high risk ” states were stopped and questioned , according to the Florida Department of Transportation .
None were turned away .
One highway checkpoint was temporarily abandoned , after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ To avoid that checkpoint , some drivers just drove off the road .
At the time , Dr. Farzad Mostashari , who worked as an epidemic intelligence service officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a national coordinator for health information technology in the Department of Health and Human Services during the Obama administration , called this “ containment theater.
” Containment theater , as Mostashari elaborated by phone , means “ taking steps that make you appear strong and decisive and ‘ doing something , ’ that plug into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ defended and protected during a time of crisis.
” Rather than take practical steps to protect people , said Mostarshi , containment theater instead “ is focusing on ‘ the other.
’ ” After so much misinformation and official neglect , with testing still scarce and care still stretched , the allure of this style of performance grows .
Americans are primed to demand someone do something .
In New York City , currently the epicenter of the global pandemic with nearly 20,000 reported deaths , Governor Andrew Cuomo is often given credit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the denial and neglect marking the Trump administration response .
Yet in the state , violating social distancing guidelines is now punishable by a $ 1,000 fine—as enforced by police officers who violate social distancing guidelines themselves to hand out tickets .
The fine itself presents its own kind of danger at a moment when millions are out of work , but in some cases , police are making arrests , sending people to crowded jails where the virus has spread faster than anywhere else in the city .
Officers have been recorded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arrests ; one officer is now on “ modified duty ” as a result .

What’s become clear by now is that this next stage in the coronavirus pandemic, the call to return to “normal life,” will play out in terms of surveillance, both in public health and law enforcement. Calls for tech platforms to step into the coronavirus fight have escalated, even positioning the crisis as an opportunity for platforms that have long operated with little accountability to burnish their reputations. Apple and Google announced plans to create “opt-in contact tracing technology” that would use Bluetooth to track and transmit proximity data from cell phones to inform people if they had contact with coronavirus patients. Trump son-in-law and unqualified coronavirus adviser Jared Kushner was reportedly considering a nationwide coronavirus tracking system, built by private health care technology companies; the Department of Health and Human Services has already debuted a coronavirus tracking system from the secretive, Trump-ally-backed technology company Palantir.
All this has public health, civil liberties, and privacy advocates concerned that in the premature desire to “reopen” the country, we will see a turn toward something like the response to 9/11 from the United States, something framed as being in the public interest, something made difficult to oppose in the moment. The Patriot Act for a pandemic. It’s a surveillance infrastructure we could be left with for decades to come. And it’s something that—given the combination of the unchecked power of American police and the unaccountable power of private tech companies, not to mention the federal government’s unwillingness to resource the communities hardest hit by the virus—might not even require the same scale of political overhaul to pull off. The methods to radically expand tech-based surveillance and criminalize our everyday life in the U.S. are there for the taking.
The Covid-19 crisis is currently concentrated in New York City and further concentrated in the borough of Queens—and there, in a handful of neighborhoods. This is dramatically illustrated in a map circulated in public health circles on social media, showing a strong overlap in reported Covid-19 cases and the neighborhoods home to the most service workers and the most rent-burdened people in the city.


newrepublic--2020-05-08--We’re All Preppers Now

We’re All Preppers Now

A few weeks ago , I became convinced I ought to buy a compass .
Also a tent , a LifeStraw , and solar chargers .
Was I embarrassed about this 48-hour panic ?
Yes .
But reading an op-ed at two in the morning about 40 percent unemployment predictions will do that to you—particularly after weeks of social curtailment .
I had already started buying more groceries and not going to the office or social events .
Most people were preparing in one way or another , some moving hundreds of miles to live with family , others stitching @ @ @ @ @ @ @ How do you decide what response is “ too much , ” when everything we ’ re currently doing would have been considered too much a few months ago ?
When Mark O ’ Connell was writing his new book , Notes From an Apocalypse , the subculture he was examining—people who prepare for catastrophes—was still considered niche .
Unsettled by a decade of worsening headlines and climate disruptions , O ’ Connell became preoccupied with the notion of looming crisis : What it should mean for individuals , and what it should @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Looking for answers , he set out on a tour of prepper culture , from the bowels of internet forums to a South Dakota bunker community ; from New Zealand , where Silicon Valley billionaires are busy setting up a country club for catastrophe season , to Los Angeles , where Mars enthusiasts prepare an even more drastic escape hatch ; from Scotland , where intellectuals wax philosophical about nature and the end of human civilization , to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone , to see what the sudden disappearance of humanity actually looks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that occupies an uneasy psychic space : The author is both attracted to disaster preparedness and repelled by it ; both anxious about the future and inclined to dismiss people with similar anxieties as being motivated by distasteful personal politics and irrational fantasies .
It ’ s hard to know the right tone for discussing odd people with extreme plans at a time when the sort of crisis they are preparing for seems increasingly likely .
Is smirking at their more absurd notions a useful way to reassert reality and stave off panic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ holding reality at arm ’ s length ?
A few months ago , it might have been easier to dismiss prepper culture and to read O ’ Connell ’ s book as an entertaining dispatch from the fringe .
But to read it now is to reckon with the ways in which disaster stalks the everyday , ever capable of surprising us .
Adapting to a catastrophic new normal—whether pandemic disease or global warming—can mean making drastic , nearly unthinkable choices .
Even one of our deepest impulses— “ I want to survive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ another , contradictory impulse : “ I don ’ t want to survive like that .
”

A major source of information for O’Connell is YouTube tutorials, made by “guys named Brandon or Kyle or Brent.” In these videos, preppers guide the audience through their “bug-out bags,” knapsacks that contain items essential for survival “in any scenario whereby they needed to head out into the wilderness and fend for themselves.” Disaster is probably going to strike cities hardest, these folks reason, so prepping means being ready to leave one’s home at a moment’s notice and find self-sufficient safety in the woods. Most of the videos, O’Connell observes, are made by white American men, more excited by TEOTWAWKI—the End of the World as We Know It—than panicked by it. Their headlamps, Kevlar cord, and magnesium fire starters provide them with a kind of masculine retail therapy. The women in these preppers’ lives, O’Connell notes, don’t seem as psyched.
Even one of our deepest impulses—“I want to survive”—for many of us summons up another, contradictory impulse: “I don’t want to survive like that.”
Nor, it turns out, is O’Connell. The preppers envision social collapse in crude terms: They foresee widespread looting and gang violence as supply chains break down, believe civilization is a “thin veneer” over humanity’s fundamental brutality, and think gun-toting Rotarians will restore law and order to the countryside when violent urban refugees arrive trying to steal resources. This disgusts O’Connell, who perceives its racial overtones and its pessimism about humanity. “This is a prediction of the future,” he concludes, “that could be offered only by someone who was never fully convinced by the idea of society in the first place.” And despite his own anxieties about the future, he is often moved to make flippant remarks about the preppers’ actual plans for survival. “If the choice on offer is between pasta primavera mix with freeze-dried chicken chunks and being among the first wave of deaths in the apocalypse,” he comments, “I hereby enthusiastically place my order for oblivion.”
Bug-out bags, however, are small-scale when it comes to end-times capitalism. In South Dakota, O’Connell meets with a man who once helped make the inflatable pilot for the movie Airplane! and is now head of a postapocalyptic real-estate company called Vivos. In the Black Hills, Vivos has developed a set of World War II–era bomb-storage facilities as $25,000-a-piece bunkers in which to survive various cataclysms. These, O’Connell explains, are for the “postapocalyptic petit bourgeoisie.” Unlike Vivos’s “flagship location” in Indiana (which features medical facilities, pet facilities, a “hydroponic miniature farm,” and a DNA vault), these Black Hills bunkers for the common man offer 2,200 square feet of customizable living quarters, the chief appeal of which seems to be that no one would ever think to drop a nuclear bomb anywhere near them. The facility also advertises a private security team.


newrepublic--2020-05-08--The Coronavirus Is Tearing Apart the American City

In early March , as Covid-19 became a national concern , the wealthy began fleeing the cities .
They lit out for their luxury cottages in the Scottish Highlands and to survivalist camps in rural South Dakota , where private companies are hawking luxe bunkers for the low , low price of $ 100,000 .
They fanned out to their vacation homes in the Catskills and the Hamptons , where they emptied the shelves of the small grocery stores and put locals at risk of contracting the disease .
Municipal airports were swarmed with private planes ; jet charters received @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rich fled because they could , while most Americans—those who lack second homes or private jets—stayed behind , in cities that suddenly looked like ghost towns , because they had no choice , and nowhere else to go .
The rich have always had what you might call a moat mentality , a need to barricade themselves away from the masses .
In the eighteenth century , they escaped to their estates in the French and English countrysides to hunt and cavort .
In the twentieth , they bought homes in the first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that were once colorful bastions of melding ethnicities and classes .
When city governments began passing inclusionary zoning codes to rectify the problem , developers created “ poor doors ” —concealed entryways by which underprivileged tenants could enter and exit without disturbing their wealthy neighbors .
Even contemporary projects like Manhattan ’ s Hudson Yards , which developers had pitched as “ urban placemaking ” —the craft of curating useful , equitable public space—turned out to be anything but ; the luxury condos ended up costing millions , and at one point , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a wall fencing the complex off from parts of the city .
( What ’ s worse , developers got more than $ 1 billion the state had earmarked for poor areas . )
With such developments and an army of delivery , shopping , and rideshare apps , it has never been easier for the rich to avoid the poor .
They have transformed our cities , and now they have fled them .
But what happens when they come back ?
Soon , corner stores and other local institutions will make @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The streets will be emptier than they were before—except , of course , for the bicycles and delivery trucks that fuel the gig economy .
Even our homes will change .
More than ever , the wealthy want to avoid being in contact with strangers , now seen as vectors of a decimating plague .
Apartment buildings , already sequestered off by locked call boxes rather than open lobbies , will soon feature even more private entrances to add yet another barrier to entry .
Cameras , private security forces , and other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is what many wealthy people have wanted all along ; the difference now is that they can disguise class conflict in the language of cleanliness and safety .

Soon, corner stores and other local institutions will make way for outposts of global chains. The streets will be emptier than they were before—except, of course, for the bicycles and delivery trucks that fuel the gig economy. Even our homes will change. More than ever, the wealthy want to avoid being in contact with strangers, now seen as vectors of a decimating plague. Apartment buildings, already sequestered off by locked call boxes rather than open lobbies, will soon feature even more private entrances to add yet another barrier to entry. Cameras, private security forces, and other surveillance state infrastructure will flourish. This is what many wealthy people have wanted all along; the difference now is that they can disguise class conflict in the language of cleanliness and safety.
Is solidarity possible in such an atomized environment? As public space becomes increasingly privatized through plans like Hudson Yards, there will be fewer places to protest, and as apps replace workplaces, there will be fewer opportunities for workers to organize. But despite social distancing, people are already fighting back against further erosion of civil society. Instacart workers are organizing against the abuse of their labor rights. Tenants in cities around the country, unable to pay their rent, are organizing rent strikes; they’re also putting the pressure on city officials to close rent courts and suspend evictions until the end of the crisis. By putting their foot down, the members of the urban precariat are showing that they, too, have a right to the city and its spaces. Imagine the possibilities if these efforts were made permanent. Imagine cities where the urban way of life is propped up not by opportunistic companies and individuals, but by us, its citizens. The rich may think they own the city, but when they leave, they expose the reality of the situation: They merely rent it—from all of us.


newrepublic--2020-05-08--Is 5G Going to Kill Us All?

Is 5G Going to Kill Us All?

The 2018 publication of the National Toxicology Program ’ s EMF study prompted considerable relief among researchers and public health advocates alarmed at the lack of discussion around the technology ’ s risks .
The findings of cancer and other effects in rats exposed to phone frequencies would , it was hoped , change the national conversation .
Dr. Ron Melnick , 76 , oversaw the design and protocols for the EMF rodent experiment .
He retired from the NTP in 2009 , having spent 28 years studying the toxicity of everything from perfluorinated chemicals , which leach from Teflon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chlorination .
One of his most consequential investigations involved butadiene , a compound found in cigarette smoke and tailpipe emissions .
In the wake of Melnick ’ s studies of the chemical , the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration reduced the permissible exposure by 99.9 percent .
The protocols that Melnick crafted for the rodent study—not least the reverberation chambers as an approximation of human exposure—came under rigorous review from officials at EPA , FDA , NIOSH , and the Bioelectromagnetics Society , among others .
From these peer reviewers the unanimous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most authoritative animal study yet conducted in the U.S. for assessing human risk .
It would also , as it happens , be the most expensive toxicity investigation that taxpayers ever funded , at a cost of $ 30 million .
Not long after the publication of the final results of the NTP study , a group of researchers at the Ramazzini Institute , a nonprofit cancer research lab in Bologna , Italy , released the findings of their own study of the health effects of EMF radiation .
The lead author of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had spent most of her 44-year career , like Melnick , looking at suspect agents—solvents , plastics , pesticides , fuel additives , and asbestos , among others—and now had turned her attention to the toxicity of microwave EMFs .
Rather than using Melnick ’ s custom-designed reverberation chambers to examine the effects of radiation from nearby sources , the Ramazzini team examined exposures from more distant “ farfield ” sources , such as cell towers .
But the results aligned .
“ They observed , as we did , an increase of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Schwann cell tumors of the heart , ” Belpoggi told me in an email .
“ Such rare tumors in the same strain of rats , in both studies statistically significant , at different levels of exposure—near-field and farfield—in two different laboratories , can not be just by chance.
” I asked Belpoggi about the significance of the NTP and Ramazzini studies for determining human safety exposure limits .
“ What I do not understand is why , for example , the chemical industry has to demonstrate the safety of a compound before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she replied , “ but the technology industry has no such rule , and they disseminate their products without any study of the impact on public health.
” She offered one theory to explain the discrepancy : “ The economic value of the telecom industry now is enormous.
” Like Martin Pall , Belpoggi called for application of the precautionary principle , both for exposure from current microwave systems and for the new system of 5G millimeter waves .
“ I can not affirm that millimeter waves are dangerous , ” she told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ affirm that they are not.
” In the United States , the FDA ignored the Ramazzini findings .
As for the NTP report , the agency issued a statement in 2018 denying the study ’ s validity for determining human safety , despite the fact that it had commissioned the study , and the federal government had lavishly funded it , for that very purpose .
Reaffirming the FCC ’ s 1996 exposure limits , the director of the Center for Devices and Radiological Health at the FDA , Jeffrey Shuren , wrote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ concluded that no changes to the current standards are warranted at this time , ” and stated flatly that “ NTP ’ s experimental findings should not be applied to human cell phone usage.
” The FDA assured the public , in direct contradiction of the NTP results , that “ the available scientific evidence to date does not support adverse health effects.
” Ron Melnick was shocked .
“ I ’ ve never experienced a government agency dismissing cancer results as was done by the FDA with cancer and cell phone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ FDA asked the NTP to assess human risk , the results were provided—and now they ’ re saying they don ’ t accept the results ?
” CTIA had asked Eric Swanson , the telecom consultant , to comment on the NTP study , which he attacked , in his emailed statement , for what he called the “ unreliable statistical significance of the…study conclusions.
” He warned of the likelihood of false positives due to “ obvious flaws in the study.
” Yet the putative flaws he identified , according to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ both former and present NTP staffers , among them Ron Melnick in an article for the journal Environmental Research , in which he refuted the “ unfounded criticisms ” one by one .
“ The methods employed by the NTP are considered by most toxicologists to be the gold standard , ” Moskowitz told me .
He called the FDA ’ s dismissal of the study “ a travesty ” and suggested that “ political considerations ” were likely to blame .
Political considerations—meaning industry influence—may be playing an outsize role in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ granted microwave telecom systems a clean bill of health .
The WHO ’ s conclusion that the systems are safe , for example , relies on exposure limits recommended by the International Commission for Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection ( ICNIRP ) , a non-governmental organization whose advising scientists on EMF issues are closely tied to telecom companies .
Last year , in a series titled “ The 5G Mass Experiment , ” a pan-European group of investigative journalists found that of the 14 chief scientists at ICNIRP who crafted cell phone EMF safety guidelines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The conclusion was that these ICNIRP members comprise a “ small circle of insiders who reject alarming research ” effectively serving their telecom paymasters by setting lax exposure limits .
The WHO itself appears to be divided on the issue .
Its own cancer research branch , the International Agency for Research on Cancer , classified microwave EMFs as “ possibly carcinogenic to humans ” in 2011 .
Last year an IARC advisory group of 29 scientists examined the peer-reviewed research on cancer risk , and then advised that IARC revisit its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ another review .
It is uncertain whether IARC will do so .
On my way to meet Debbie Persampire , riding the Long Island Rail Road from New York City , I sat in a car near a group of pre-teens , who each clutched a smartphone close to their bodies .
The kids giggled and swiped and played music and videos as their mothers sat silently nearby , mesmerized by their own phones .
Persampire picked me up at the train station , and I mentioned the scene in the car .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ devices are utterly dangerous , ” she said .
“ The combination of the danger with their clearly addictive nature—well , we need to start thinking about what we ’ re doing.
” Persampire ’ s answer was to start a grassroots coalition called Citizens for 5G Awareness , which has been busily agitating since its founding in 2018 .
They have pestered elected officials with email and letter-writing campaigns , testified before county commissions , organized street rallies and protests , hosted public screenings of their new favorite film , Generation Zapped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grim YouTube videos .
One documents an experiment conducted by schoolchildren who discovered that plants were unable to grow when placed near a wifi antenna .
Another shows a teenage girl in Eugene , Oregon , testifying that wifi exposure in her school made her sick .
At Persampire ’ s house , I met several of the group ’ s core members , including Fay Tsamis , a real estate manager who tried to convince the local school district to ban wifi from classrooms .
When school officials dismissed her concerns , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her kids from wifi exposure to homeschool them .
As I talked with these newly minted citizen activists , I was reminded that modern public health calamities , from asbestos to auto safety to leaded gasoline and tobacco , often follow a predictable narrative .
Industry dismisses the health risk , government regulators shrug and look away , and a beleaguered minority is left to sound the alarm .
Sometimes , as with the anti-vax movement , they ’ re proven wrong ; but sometimes their warnings are all too prescient .
According @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , designed to operate with 5G millimeter waves , have already been built in the Huntington municipality .
In 2017 , numerous signatories of the EMF Scientist Appeal called for a moratorium on the roll-out of fifth-generation wireless .
These scientists were so distressed by the technology ’ s risks that they invoked the principles of the Nuremberg Code regarding experimentation on unwitting subjects .
Our embrace of the wonders of wireless , they said , might someday prove to be a vast crime against humanity—one in which the telecom industry treats the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to our personalized toxic reverberation chambers .

CTIA had asked Eric Swanson, the telecom consultant, to comment on the NTP study, which he attacked, in his emailed statement, for what he called the “unreliable statistical significance of the … study conclusions.” He warned of the likelihood of false positives due to “obvious flaws in the study.” Yet the putative flaws he identified, according to Joel Moskowitz, had been debunked by both former and present NTP staffers, among them Ron Melnick in an article for the journal Environmental Research, in which he refuted the “unfounded criticisms” one by one. “The methods employed by the NTP are considered by most toxicologists to be the gold standard,” Moskowitz told me. He called the FDA’s dismissal of the study “a travesty” and suggested that “political considerations” were likely to blame.
Political considerations—meaning industry influence—may be playing an outsize role in the scientific determinations of other groups that have granted microwave telecom systems a clean bill of health. The WHO’s conclusion that the systems are safe, for example, relies on exposure limits recommended by the International Commission for Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, a nongovernmental organization whose advising scientists on EMF issues are closely tied to telecom companies. Last year, in a series titled “The 5G Mass Experiment,” a pan-European group of investigative journalists found that of the 14 chief scientists at ICNIRP who crafted cell phone EMF safety guidelines, 10 had received funding from industry. The conclusion was that these ICNIRP members comprise a “small circle of insiders who reject alarming research , ” effectively serving their telecom paymasters by setting lax exposure limits.
The WHO itself appears to be divided on the issue. Its own cancer research branch, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, classified microwave EMFs as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” in 2011. Last year, an IARC advisory group of 29 scientists examined the peer-reviewed research on cancer risk and then advised that IARC revisit its 2011 decision and prioritize microwave EMFs for another review. It is uncertain whether IARC will do so.
On my way to meet Debbie Persampire, riding the Long Island Rail Road from New York City, I sat in a car near a group of preteens, who each clutched a smartphone close to their body. The kids giggled and swiped and played music and videos as their mothers sat silently nearby, mesmerized by their own phones.
Our embrace of the wonders of wireless might someday prove to be a vast crime against humanity.
Persampire picked me up at the train station, and I mentioned the scene in the car. “The science is telling us the devices are utterly dangerous,” she said. “The combination of the danger with their clearly addictive nature—well, we need to start thinking about what we’re doing.”
Persampire’s answer was to start a grassroots coalition called Citizens for 5G Awareness, which has been busily agitating since its founding in 2018. It has pestered elected officials with email and letter-writing campaigns, testified before county commissions, organized street rallies and protests, hosted public screenings of its new favorite film, Generation Zapped, and, not least, shared grim YouTube videos. One documents an experiment conducted by schoolchildren who discovered that plants were unable to grow when placed near a Wi-Fi antenna. Another shows a teenage girl in Eugene, Oregon, testifying that Wi-Fi exposure in her school made her sick.
At Persampire’s house, I met several of the group’s core members, including Fay Tsamis, a real estate manager who tried to convince the local school district to ban Wi-Fi from classrooms. When school officials dismissed her concerns, Tsamis took the enormous step of removing her kids from Wi-Fi exposure to homeschool them.
As I talked with these newly minted citizen activists, I was reminded that modern public health calamities, from asbestos to auto safety to leaded gasoline and tobacco, often follow a predictable narrative. Industry dismisses the health risk, government regulators shrug and look away, and a beleaguered minority is left to sound the alarm. Sometimes, as with the anti-vax movement, they’re proven wrong; but sometimes their warnings are all too prescient. According to Persampire, some 200 new antennas, designed to operate with 5G millimeter waves, have already been built in the Huntington municipality.
In 2017, numerous signatories of the EMF Scientist Appeal called for a moratorium on the rollout of 5G wireless. These scientists were so distressed by the technology’s risks that they invoked the principles of the Nuremberg Code regarding experimentation on unwitting subjects. Our embrace of the wonders of wireless, they said, might someday prove to be a vast crime against humanity—one in which the telecom industry treats the public like so many lab rats confined to our personalized toxic reverberation chambers.


newrepublic--2020-05-08--A Presumption of Flynnocence

A Presumption of Flynnocence

If you ’ re charged with a serious crime in the United States , you have the right to legal counsel at every stage of the process .
If you ’ re a close political ally of President Donald Trump , you also get a second team of attorneys who will take up your cause .
Those who can ’ t afford a lawyer are represented by public defenders ; those whom the president can ’ t afford to let face consequences for their actions are represented by the Justice Department .
Michael Flynn , Trump ’ s former national @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of this corrupt arrangement .
On Thursday , the U.S. attorney ’ s office in D.C. filed a motion in federal court to dismiss charges that he lied to the FBI during the Russia investigation , bowing to pressure from Trump and his allies .
Flynn pleaded guilty to the charge in 2017 as part of a plea agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller .
Last year , the retired general reversed course and began to claim that he was the victim of prosecutorial misconduct .
Under Attorney General Bill Barr , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make the case against itself .
Dropping the Flynn case is a major step in Barr ’ s quest to wipe away the Russia investigation and the stain it has left on Trump ’ s presidency .
But its true significance may lie in what it portends for the future .
Thursday ’ s filing does not state outright that Flynn didn ’ t lie to FBI agents during an interview in the spring of 2017 .
Instead it argues that the agents didn ’ t have a lawful reason to investigate and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rendering it immaterial whether he lied or not .
The filing , which draws heavily upon a questionable version of events , is signed only by Timothy Shea , the acting U.S. attorney for D.C. and a close Barr ally .
DOJ ’ s inspector general found last year that the FBI had a lawful basis to investigate connections between Trump and his associates and the Russian government .
Barr disputed that assessment at the time , as did John Durham , his handpicked Russia investigation investigator , in an unusual public statement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Barr Justice Department moves away from advocating on behalf of Trump ’ s political allies and towards attacking Trump ’ s political adversaries .

Barr also signaled that more could be coming. “John Durham is still looking at all of this,” he told Herridge. “This is one particular episode, but we view it as part of a number of related acts. And we’re looking at the whole pattern of conduct.” Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, was tapped by Barr in the spring of 2019 to conduct a review of the Russia investigation. Last October, Barr reportedly upgraded the inquiry to a criminal investigation, suggesting that Durham had found evidence that could potentially justify charges. In a Fox News interview last month, Barr claimed that what Durham had found “shows that we’re not dealing with just mistakes or sloppiness, there was something far more troubling here; and we’re going to get to the bottom of it.”
One potential avenue would be inquiries into government officials who spoke to reporters. Flynn’s troubles began in early 2017, when David Ignatius, a columnist at The Washington Post with famously deep sources within the intelligence community, wrote about Flynn’s conversations with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the U.S., citing a “senior U.S. government official.” That public revelation, followed by the White House’s denials that Flynn had discussed sanctions, led FBI officials to pay greater attention to his conduct and ultimately led to that fateful interview. Last month, The New York Times reported that unearthing the identity of that anonymous official, as well as other “leakers,” is among Durham’s top priorities.
News reports have indicated that Barr and Durham are closely scrutinizing top law-enforcement and intelligence officials who were in charge during the 2016 election, as well as the CIA’s handling of Russian intelligence during the investigation. In the CBS interview, Barr also left open the possibility that former FBI Director James Comey and his staff could face potential prosecution. “And I’m gonna wait till all the evidence is [in], and I get [Durham’s] recommendations as to what they found and how serious it is,” he said. “But if, you know, if we were to find wrongdoing, in the sense of any criminal act, you know, obviously we would, we would follow through on that.”


newrepublic--2020-05-09--The Depressing Future of the #MeToo Movement

Unless some other major allegation or piece of confirming evidence comes out—which it could well do—it feels as if Joe Biden has successfully weathered the sexual harassment and assault accusations levied against him by former aide Tara Reade .
Democrats offered scant indication throughout the past few months that they ’ d be willing to choose another nominee .
The party ’ s most prominent women ( and vice presidential contenders ) made the rounds , dutifully reporting that Biden performed well during a Morning Joe appearance in which he denied the allegations , and groups like Emily ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s Up issued press releases thanking Biden for so forthrightly committing himself to the message that he didn ’ t do what was alleged .
Time ’ s Up , in particular , praised Biden for addressing “ the allegation against him with the seriousness it deserves , something that the current president has never done.
” The key takeaway was that style , not substance , mattered the most .
As long as Biden deployed the right tone—avoiding Brett Kavanaugh ’ s petulant whine or Trump ’ s bullying dismissiveness—we can all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ’ s almost as if there wasn ’ t an actual accusation at the center of this worth discussing , just an incidental plot device in the grander narrative .
As Susan Matthews wrote this week , even if Joe Biden was forceful in denying the allegations , he wasn ’ t “ convincing.
” But Biden ’ s campaign knows perfectly well that he didn ’ t need to be convincing .
He simply needed to say that he didn ’ t do it , loudly and clearly , like speaking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an actual human being at the cable company .
He needs to do just enough for liberal groups and politicians to say that he has taken it seriously and responded .
It doesn ’ t matter very much what he actually said , his composed rhetorical demeanor means more than the substance .
The memory of Kavanaugh ’ s dyspeptic rage and privileged fury here provides a comforting illusion that we would see right through a real rapist ’ s attempt to slip on the mask of the Good Male Ally .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Brett Kavanaugh swallows his pride and calmly follows the Biden playbook .
In a recent column for The New York Times , Michelle Goldberg ponders what she considers to be the essential concern from this whole episode : that the # MeToo movement now “ threatens to become a way to handicap one political faction in the middle of a partisan free-for-all.
” The piece leans heavily on the notion that Reade is less credible than Kavanaugh ’ s accuser , Christine Blasey Ford .
The anguish about squaring # MeToo and feminism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden is real , but it ’ s the ultimate answer , not the anguish , that tells you which is more important .
Goldberg ’ s piece is a nice example of how the great fear for liberals who are desperate to feel comfortable pulling the lever for Joe Biden in November is not that they might be supporting a sexual assaulter ( against another such candidate ) , but that their preferred candidate might be taken down by the very standards they ’ d so recently championed when it was politically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the # MeToo movement threatens Joe Biden—clearly , it doesn ’ t and won ’ t—but that the accusations against him have unraveled the fantasy that the better future # MeToo promised to provide women was possible .
It is increasingly clear that Tara Reade ’ s claim that she experienced harassment at Joe Biden ’ s Senate office is well-grounded and that , if we Believe Women , we have no good reason to discard it out of hand .
There is the newly-surfaced document , from Reade ’ s divorce @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Reade told her husband about “ a problem she was having at work regarding sexual harassment , in U.S .
Senator Joe Biden ’ s office.
” The document also said it “ was obvious that this event had a very traumatic effect on ( Reade ) , and that she is still sensitive and effected [ sic ] by it today.
” And there is the video of Reade ’ s mother calling into Larry King Live , asking a question about her daughter having a “ problem ” in a Senate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other than go to the press .
( It is perfectly plausible that such problems might involve sexual harassment , and that an older woman in 1993 wouldn ’ t want to specify that on national television . )

Reade’s accusation of assault made a far bigger impact and created an entirely different category of story than her previous account of experiencing harassment. Her harassment accusation was bundled in with several others and ignored; Biden weathered that story with a short video posted online that didn’t include an apology. Her assault accusation was, briefly, deemed too serious to let pass—that is, until Biden denied it again, and everyone agreed that he had Taken It Seriously. The lesson for women from all this: If you are raped, you better have evidence of it, proceed immediately with forensic precision to document your case, and be willing to share your pain over and over in hostile settings. If you aren’t raped but merely harassed—merely pushed out of your job because your boss doesn’t like that you complained about his treatment of you—that’s very sad for you, but it isn’t enough to derail a man’s career. At the very least, it depends on the man.
It’s important to think clearly about what standards have been applied to previous cases, both in the #MeToo era and before, when assessing Tara Reade’s allegations. What kind of evidence is acceptable? What is enough? Are we being fair to Tara Reade and to Joe Biden?
The sad fact about being a woman is that men have the upper hand in this situation. Statistically, he probably can rape you and get away with it. He can corner you in a dark room at a party, or in a hallway in the Senate, and as long as no one sees, it’s your word against his. He can take things too far at the end of a date. He can wear you down until you give up resisting, or if he likes, he might be able to just physically overcome you; you are probably physically weaker than him, and he can simply grab and push and invade in a way you might not be able to stop. Depending on the kind of acts he commits, you might be able to go to the police, get a rape kit, and be armed with physical evidence that you were raped. You might be able to file a complaint with your college.


newrepublic--2020-05-09--Michelle Obama Won’t Save Us

Michelle Obama Won’t Save Us

When the teenage Michelle Obama told her guidance counselor that she intended to apply to an Ivy League school , the counselor replied that she wasn ’ t sure Michelle was “ Princeton material.
” In her bestselling memoir , Becoming , Obama ( née Robinson ) acknowledged that she could not remember any more of the details of this moment , like the counselor ’ s face or race or outfit : “ I deliberately and almost instantly blotted this experience out.
” All of Becoming is like this : Obama presents her memories to the reader carefully and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the past while playing up others .
The anecdote appears again in different form in a new Netflix documentary , also called Becoming , that follows the former First Lady as she toured America on her arena-size book tour in 2018–19 , interviewed onstage by luminaries like Stephen Colbert and Oprah Winfrey .
There ’ s nothing melancholy about the stage shows , which were massive and consistently sold out .
So where the guidance counselor anecdote is a sad and reflective moment in the book , onstage , the counselor becomes a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not only went to Princeton and Harvard , of course , but also became one of the most popular and inspiring public figures on the face of the earth .
It ’ s obvious who won .
Or is it ?
Whether Obama recalls the story onstage in a glittering pantsuit or in the quieter register of memoir , her intended meaning remains the same : Young people , Obama believes , should never waste their time waiting for an unjust world to treat them fairly .
She wants people to see that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s an actual result , ” and that it was exactly that “ suggestion of failure ” that the counselor was trying to plant inside young Michelle .
If she could resist it , maybe you can , too .

That something else appears again when she recalls the extraordinary day in 2015 when Barack Obama sang “Amazing Grace” at a memorial for the victims of the mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, in the morning, and the White House celebrated marriage equality in rainbow lights in the evening. Michelle Obama tells us how she and her daughter Malia sneaked outside that night, needing to share in some public joy after all that terrible grief. The pair made it to a corner of the celebration outside and let jubilation soften their pain. But they did it in secret.
Though she smiles all the way through Becoming, you don’t have to look that hard to see the anger underneath. On the one hand, it feels good to watch Obama relax a little, to see her dress differently (more jeans offstage, fewer regulation blowouts) and get out from under the thousand-ton pressure that weighed on her family while “Dad” was in office. But it is also frustrating to see Obama stick so closely to one, relatively rigid version of her life story.
It’s almost as if the book was her final concession to self-mythologizing, to existing as a bit of public property, and now she’s done. We see the house in the South Shore that Obama told us about in the book but learn nothing new about it. We see her mother’s kind face, hear her brother’s laughing voice, and see photographs of her much-missed father but, again, learn nothing much new.


newrepublic--2020-05-10--Something’s Got to Give for the Work-From-Home Parent

During every conference call or video meeting , my anxiety goes up .
What if my son starts crying ?
What if he wants to be fed ?
What if he needs a diaper change ?
Am I being a bad mother if I ’ m not giving my son full attention ?
A bad employee ?
Both ?
The Covid-19 pandemic has meant that millions of parents are newly working from home across the United States , facing the same struggles and asking themselves the same questions .
Suddenly , there has been a revolution in remote work .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ percentage of people working remotely doubled in less than a month .
And in what Gallup Senior Editor Lydia Saad observed is a possible sign of changes to come in the post-Covid-19 era , the majority of these workers say they want to continue working from home as much as they can once their workplaces reopen .
With the sudden surge of workers at home , a number of already existing crises have come to a new head .
And with families across the nation struggling to make ends meet , parents lucky @ @ @ @ @ @ @ perform from home are scrambling to manage child care , too .
As Melissa Gira Grant wrote here last week , much of this labor has fallen to mothers , who are putting in 8 to 12 hours with their employers and then taking on the “ collapsed first and second shift ” of “ caring for everything ( and everyone ) else under your own roof.
” With the disease rate soaring , the public health crisis has magnified our country ’ s crisis of care .
Myra , who asked that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has a baby girl and had been working from home as a software developer for a bank before the pandemic hit .
When the pandemic hit , she approached her manager to talk about shifting her schedule outside the hours of 9 to 5 .
It ’ s been a huge relief , she said .

But the seamlessness of that transition is an outlier: Without having a uniform policy of allowing for flexible time across workplaces, most employees are at their bosses’ mercy to make room for family or other personal matters. In normal times, this has broad implications for working parents across the country: many working parents feel it is harder for them to advance in their job or career. During a pandemic, as many companies are turning to different modes of surveillance to enforce productivity even in highly unusual and distracting circumstances, it can make job stability feel tenuous as unemployment currently edges towards 35 million and a recession looms.
“There is no way moms can do this without external support,” Sarah, a project manager for an accounting company who also asked that I not use her real name, told me. She recently decided to take a three-month unpaid leave from her job as she experienced what she described as childcare burnout. “I didn’t want my career to be jeopardized,” she added. But now that she is preparing to transition back to work, “I am constantly feeling inadequate and mentally preparing myself to receive a notice of termination since I don’t always have the bandwidth to care for my children while simultaneously working,” she said. Her boss’ general response to conversations about child care, she said, has been to shrug her off.
Even as the present crisis feels virtually impossible to navigate, many working parents are just as uneasy about returning to “normal.” Child care workers will still need greater protection, better pay, and more respect. And working parents will once again return to a situation where childcare costs often surpass the costs of housing, tuition, transportation, and food. In 30 states and the District of Columbia childcare costs exceed the average cost of college tuition. Given all that, it’s no surprise, but no less unacceptable, that 83 percent of parents with children under the age of five struggle to access affordable, high-quality early learning programs for their children. In fact, the annual cost of infant care takes up more than half of a millennial’s median salary. And because many families are currently burning through savings, the tightrope walk of affordability will only become that much more complicated.


newrepublic--2020-05-11--No Vaccine in Sight

No Vaccine in Sight

Like state pharma sectors around the world , a U.S. Pharma could pay for itself , and possibly then some , through drug sales and savings to the government .
All revenue would flow back into the federal , state , and municipal entities that produced the medicines , as opposed to funding private pharma ’ s billion-dollar marketing campaigns and stock buybacks .
It would also ensure the revenue stayed inside the country .
As revealed by the Panama Papers , the 30 U.S. companies hiding the most money offshore included nine drugmakers shielding more than $ 500 billion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ alone operates 157 offshore subsidiaries hiding nearly $ 200 billion from the same Uncle Sam that signs its 20-year monopoly patents .
A public pharma sector would operate according to the norms and laws that have governed science for most of history .
Because the system would not be based on the maximum pricing of drugs artificially protected from competition , there would be no incentive to erect barriers to science .
Instead of licensing breakthroughs to private companies , U.S. labs could make contributions to global patent pools , not just when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of permanent policy .
While private industry might not survive government competition in , say , the insulin market , companies could focus on lifestyle drugs , or perform niche roles in the public production of essential medicines .
Pharma executives claim that the potential riches made possible by monopoly patents can alone incentivize innovation .
This understanding of science is belied by the millennia of discovery that occurred before hedge funds entered the medicine business , as well as the records of alternative R & D models already in use , from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protocols , to prize-based competitions and creative commons licenses .
“ Generations of scientists found cures without the hope of becoming billionaires , ” said Adam Gaffney , a Boston-area critical care doctor who teaches at Harvard Medical School and is president of Physicians for a National Health Program .
“ The public financing of pharmaceutical development will allow us to keep scientific knowledge in the public domain , ensure access , and shape research priorities , including therapies to fight the viruses of the future .
We ’ re pouring public money @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a system that can see it all the way through.
” Brown ’ s blueprint envisions a role for state and municipal authorities as well as federal institutions .
Larger states and cities are especially well positioned to quickly establish drug manufacturing industries , seeding them with state loans and voter-approved general obligation bonds .
This is how California raised $ 3 billion to launch the stem-cell–focused Institute for Regenerative Medicine , and how Texas raised the same amount for its prized Cancer Prevention and Research Institute .
There are examples across the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distribution logistics , including 18 states with monopoly control over the sale and distribution of beer , wine , and liquor .
Brown believes such precedents could provide the basis and inspiration for regional networks built around pharmaceutical production hubs .
These networks could coordinate the wholesale and retail sales of medicines with the U.S.P.S .
or the Department of Veterans Affairs .
The former is already the country ’ s biggest retail network ; the latter manages a national system of drug acquisition and storage .
( The conservative project to privatize @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unrelated to their strengths and uses in building up the public sector generally . )
Prices would be set according to an understanding of medicines as a public good , as they are in countries where public pharma sectors sell drugs at a fraction of the blood prices allowed under the U.S. system .
Establishing a public pharmaceutical archipelago within the current drug economy , said Brown , is “ a way to reclaim what medicine was always supposed to be about.
” This reclamation would not involve some distant , long-ago past @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Organization was founded in 1967 , no controversy surrounded the decision to exclude medical patents .
Even in this country , the patent regime is more of an alien presence than the drug companies would like us to know and remember .
“ For most of the nineteenth century , scientific innovation and the pursuit of profit were distinct domains for doctors and reputable drug manufacturers , ” said Joseph M. Gabriel , a historian at Florida State University and the author of Medical Monopoly : Intellectual Property and the Origins of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could not be joined without risking the destruction of one ’ s reputation and markets.
” Advocates of a parallel public system predict that the private drug industry would shrink with time under the pressure of competition , and lose the powerful grip over the political process it maintains with one of the richest lobbying operations in Washington .
Covid-19 has changed the way the industrialized West looks at outbreaks .
The same emergency teams of infectious disease specialists that formerly deployed to Central African villages have been dispatched to the cobble-stoned streets @ @ @ @ @ @ @ keep drug companies from devoting resources to “ poor-country ” diseases like malaria and tuberculosis—which kills two million people annually—also stop them from sustained research into “ once-a-century pandemics ” that threaten to become the new normal , equalizing rich and poor nations in the face of threats that mock the meaning of national borders .
This realization may come slower in the United States than elsewhere .
Under President Donald Trump ’ s direction , the country is pursuing zero-sum policies that compromise other countries ’ access to medicines , tests , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The administration ’ s reported effort to acquire a German company ’ s vaccine candidate was rebuffed , but has put other governments and international agencies on alert .
( The German company denied receiving any such offer from Trump or his administration . )
There are also signs of a U.S. media narrative emerging that heralds the contributions of a widely loathed industry .
In early April , multiple U.S. media outlets ran reports that cast Johnson & Johnson ’ s vaccine efforts in a carefully staged heroic light .
Seldom mentioned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first nine months of 2019 , the company spent more than $ 6 billion on stock buybacks to boost its share price , and issued more than $ 7 billion in stock payouts that year .
The company—now receiving a heavy stream of government funding , including $ 420 million from BARDA in March alone—promises that , should its candidate win the vaccine race , its announced price of $ 10 per shot will not turn a profit .
Advocates and longtime observers of the company , however , warn there is little @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Any assurances from J & J that its vaccine price is not-for-profit should be met with skepticism , ” said Rohit Malpani , the former Oxfam adviser .
“ The company has an abysmal track record in ensuring access to new HIV and tuberculosis medicines in poor countries , and has taken an approach to the cost of producing a key TB medicine that means it remains out of the reach of most people suffering from the disease.
” Telling this broader story will be essential to the political project of reforming how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ priced in the United States , still the world ’ s preeminent biomedical power .
The NIH is the world ’ s biggest funder of R & D ; the U.S. consumer market is the world ’ s largest and most lucrative ; and Washington remains a formidable , if no longer unchallenged , force in the shaping and enforcing of global intellectual property laws and norms .
It should not be difficult to tell this story .
The drug industry is one of the most hated sectors of the U.S. economy .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ production of pharmaceuticals .
In 2018 , two Democrats , Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Illinois Representative Jan Schakowsky , introduced legislation to establish an Office of Drug Manufacturing within HHS to oversee the production of affordable generic drugs .
Even the Trump administration has shown signs of being fed up .
Last year , it filed a lawsuit against Gilead for failing to obtain licenses and pay royalties on four government patents related to a drug combination to prevent HIV transmission , for which Gilead had charged excessive prices in the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government rightly complained that Gilead contributed very little to the development of the drugs , which have become a key tool in the global fight against HIV .
Like Brown ’ s R & D institute , the office proposed by Warren and Schakowsky could be the seed of a larger public drug sector , one freed from the frustrations and contradictions that have plagued attempts to square the public-private circle .
Perhaps the best-known of these attempts is the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation ( CEPI ) , launched in 2017 with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and foundation funding to address the yawning R & D gap between global public health threats and the priorities of drug company executives and shareholders .
The CEPI research agenda targets the world ’ s six most threatening infectious diseases , along with an unknown SARS-like pathogen called “ Disease X.
” Because governments no longer maintain their former research and production capabilities , CEPI contracted for development and testing with private companies , each of which signed the CEPI pledge assuring affordability .
But last year , the companies changed their minds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reworded and much weaker version of the original pricing pledge , unveiled three years ago to wide acclaim at , of all places , the World Economic Forum in Davos .
For advocates who have been fighting the drug industry for a quarter-century , the companies ’ pushback against CEPI ’ s price guarantee was no surprise .
They know the industry won ’ t willingly help erect ( or revive ) a rival system of drug production to replace the one that has made it a trillion-dollar business .
But as the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the coronavirus crisis , change threatens to upend the existing pharma business model , regardless of industry protest and resistance .
“ Interest is spreading in models of science that are open and collaborative and built around principles of equitable R & D that meet human needs and gathering threats , such as antimicrobial resistance , ” said Merith Basey , North American director for Universities Allied for Essential Medicines , a global network of academic scientists and medical students that is campaigning for Covid-19 vaccine access and mapping the public funds flowing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hope in the present crisis .
People are starting to understand there should be no going back .
”

Senator Birch Bayh (far left), seen here in 1976, co-sponsored legislation that accelerated the transfer of vaccine development to the private sector; the Bayh-Dole Act was signed by President Jimmy Carter (middle left) in 1980. NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty
Covid-19 has changed the way the industrialized West looks at outbreaks. The same emergency teams of infectious disease specialists that formerly deployed to Central African villages have been dispatched to the cobble-stoned streets of Rome. The same forces that keep drug companies from devoting resources to “poor-country” diseases like malaria and tuberculosis—which kills two million people annually—also stop them from sustained research into “once-a-century pandemics” that threaten to become the new normal, equalizing rich and poor nations in the face of threats that mock the meaning of national borders.
This realization may come slower in the United States than elsewhere. Under President Donald Trump’s direction, the country is pursuing zero-sum policies that compromise other countries’ access to medicines, tests, vaccines, and even face masks. The administration’s reported effort to acquire a German company’s vaccine candidate was rebuffed, but has put other governments and international agencies on alert. (The German company denied receiving any such offer from Trump or his administration.)
There are also signs of a U.S. media narrative emerging that heralds the contributions of a widely loathed industry. In early April, multiple U.S. media outlets ran reports that cast Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine efforts in a carefully staged heroic light. Seldom mentioned was the fact that, during the first nine months of 2019, the company spent more than $6 billion on stock buybacks to boost its share price, and issued more than $7 billion in stock payouts that year. The company—now receiving a heavy stream of government funding, including $420 million from BARDA in March alone—promises that, should its candidate win the vaccine race, its announced price of $10 per shot will not turn a profit. Advocates and longtime observers of the company, however, warn there is little basis for trusting the pledge.
“Any assurances from J&J that its vaccine price is not-for-profit should be met with skepticism,” said Rohit Malpani, the former Oxfam adviser. “The company has an abysmal track record in ensuring access to new HIV and tuberculosis medicines in poor countries, and has taken an approach to the cost of producing a key TB medicine that means it remains out of the reach of most people suffering from the disease.”
Telling this broader story will be essential to the political project of reforming how drugs are developed, manufactured, and priced in the United States, still the world’s preeminent biomedical power. The NIH is the world’s biggest funder of R&D; the U.S. consumer market is the world’s largest and most lucrative; and Washington remains a formidable, if no longer unchallenged, force in the shaping and enforcing of global intellectual property laws and norms.
It should not be difficult to tell this story. The drug industry is one of the most hated sectors of the U.S. economy. Polls show majority support for the public production of pharmaceuticals. In 2018, two Democrats, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Illinois Representative Jan Schakowsky, introduced legislation to establish an Office of Drug Manufacturing within HHS to oversee the production of affordable generic drugs.
Even the Trump administration has shown signs of being fed up. Last year, it filed a lawsuit against Gilead for failing to obtain licenses and pay royalties on four government patents related to a drug combination to prevent HIV transmission, for which Gilead had charged excessive prices in the United States for nearly a decade. The government rightly complained that Gilead contributed very little to the development of the drugs, which have become a key tool in the global fight against HIV.
Like Brown’s R&D institute, the office proposed by Warren and Schakowsky could be the seed of a larger public drug sector, one freed from the frustrations and contradictions that have plagued attempts to square the public-private circle.
Perhaps the best-known of these attempts is the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI), launched in 2017 with hundreds of millions of dollars in government and foundation funding to address the yawning R&D gap between global public health threats and the priorities of drug company executives and shareholders. The CEPI research agenda targets the world’s six most threatening infectious diseases, along with an unknown SARS-like pathogen called “Disease X.” Because governments no longer maintain their former research and production capabilities, CEPI contracted for development and testing with private companies, each of which signed the CEPI pledge assuring affordability. But last year, the companies changed their minds. They pressured CEPI to release a reworded and much weaker version of the original pricing pledge, unveiled three years ago to wide acclaim at, of all places, the World Economic Forum in Davos.
For advocates who have been fighting the drug industry for a quarter-century, the companies’ pushback against CEPI’s price guarantee was no surprise. They know the industry won’t willingly help erect (or revive) a rival system of drug production to replace the one that has made it a trillion-dollar business. But as the world continues to absorb the lessons of the coronavirus crisis, change threatens to upend the existing pharma business model, regardless of industry protest and resistance.
“Interest is spreading in models of science that are open and collaborative and built around principles of equitable R&D that meet human needs and gathering threats, such as antimicrobial resistance,” said Merith Basey, North American director for Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, a global network of academic scientists and medical students that is campaigning for Covid-19 vaccine access and mapping the public funds flowing through associated research.
“There is hope in the present crisis. People are starting to understand there should be no going back.”


newrepublic--2020-05-11--A Leftist Future for Asian American Politics

About 10 years ago , I worked for a small arts nonprofit for Asian American writers that embraced a delightfully expansive definition of its target demographic .
There , “ Asian American ” included not just people of South Asian and Southeast Asian descent—groups that tend to go missing from most Americans ’ conception of who counts as “ Asian ” —but also extended to people of West Asian or Middle Eastern descent , like Iranians , Syrians , and Yemenis .
( Once , while rummaging in a drawer at the office , I found some old internal correspondence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the continent of Asia , should be included , too . )
The result of that deliberately capacious identity was a vibrant series of readings and other events where Palestinian experimental poetry existed alongside Korean noir novels , Taiwanese New Wave cinema , photo exhibits documenting the gentrification of Chinatowns across America , and investigative reports on the state surveillance of Muslims after 9/11 .
The organization ’ s broad conception of “ Asian American ” was simultaneously a gesture of unity and , at least to me , a real-time demonstration of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ flux .
The term “ Asian American ” was first coined in 1968 by student activists inspired by the Black Power and Third World Liberation movements ; the Asian American Movement that grew out of it sought to bridge people of Asian descent across ethnic lines and promote solidarity with Black , Latinx , and Native Americans .
Though I think those of us who choose to call ourselves “ Asian American ” today still find that notion compelling , we ’ re also unfortunately a small group .
Some 40 years after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pew Research Center survey found that only one out of five people of Asian descent in the United States said they “ most often ” described themselves as “ Asian American ” or “ Asian.
” The vast majority instead chose to identify by their ethnic background .
It ’ s not entirely a surprise .
“ Asian American ” is now the demographic umbrella term for more than 20 million people from 45 Asian-origin groups speaking over a hundred languages .
Two-thirds of Asians in the U.S.—and four out of five adults—are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ staggering ethnic and linguistic diversity has also been underscored by profound socioeconomic stratification : Today , wealth and income inequality among Asians in this country is greater than it is among any other racial or ethnic group .
In 2016 , a rich Asian household was about 168 times wealthier than a poor Asian household .
In other words , there ’ s almost no material reality to the designation “ Asian American , ” which makes it all the more difficult to conceive of it as the potent political identity that its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is , though , a curious and recent phenomenon that illuminates a slightly different path toward the political mobilization of Asians in the U.S .
While the Asian American Movement assumed that the most straightforward way for people of Asian descent to form a political bloc was to claim a shared identity , Asians have grown more politically similar to each other , even as that notion of a collective identity remains elusive , particularly over the last decade .
As Karthick Ramakrishnan , a political scientist at the University of California , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Data , told me , Asians in the U.S. of all backgrounds tend to express similar preferences on a number of key political issues regardless of how they personally identify .
“ It turns out that politics—public policy and public opinion—is actually a relative unifier among Asian Americans , ” Ramakrishnan said .

Yet, at the same time, nearly 40 percent of Asians in the U.S. around the time of the 2018 midterms didn’t identify as either Democrat or Republican. Part of that lack of identification, said Jennifer Lee, a sociologist at Columbia University, is that the high proportion of first-generation immigrants among Asian Americans means that most are new to the American political system. But it’s also a failure of outreach. “Asian Americans are the group that is least likely to be contacted by either political party,” Lee said. In 2016, for instance, nearly 70 percent of Asian Americans said they had received no contact from either party that election year. “I see it as an enormous missed opportunity, not only on the part of Republicans—who often think of Asian Americans as prime conservative voters—but also by Democrats, whose programs really align more closely with Asian Americans’ attitudes,” Lee told me.
In recent years, the specter of a strain of Chinese American conservatism has further complicated the absence of an established political home for Asian Americans. Chinese conservatives have waged a new brand of culture war primarily through battles over race-based admissions to a handful of elite schools. The most prominent of those was a lawsuit filed against Harvard University in 2014 by the anti-affirmative action group Students for Fair Admissions on behalf of Asian parents and students, who alleged that the university had effectively discriminated against them in its race-conscious admissions process. Though the suit was dismissed last year, the group is now appealing the decision and hopes to see it go to the Supreme Court, which could determine the future of affirmative action in the country.
Around the same time of the Harvard lawsuit, a similar scenario unfolded in New York City when Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a plan to jettison the standardized test that had served as the sole criterion for admissions to eight specialized public high schools, including Stuyvesant High School, widely considered the top public school in the city and currently more than 70 percent Asian. The change, de Blasio argued, was a pro-diversity effort meant to increase the number of Black and Latinx students at those elite schools. But the overhaul also would have meant a sharp reduction in the number of Asian students admitted, and de Blasio’s administration had neglected to discuss the plan with Asian American community leaders before the announcement. To many Asian families and lawmakers, that oversight was symbolic of the city’s ongoing disregard for its Asian residents. “This cliché of, ‘If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu’ really felt like it rang true,” Grace Meng, a Congress member from Queens, told The New York Times.


newrepublic--2020-05-11--The Art of Staying Home

The Art of Staying Home

Writers make for remarkably talented shut-ins and isolates .
They ’ re famous for it—Proust sealed in his cork-lined room , Dickinson in her attic , Thoreau in his DIY cabin relying , or so he wrote , only on himself .
The life of the writer is narcissistically introverted , requiring a constant interrogation of fleeting thoughts and emotions ideally undertaken in a closed-off room of one ’ s own .
Writers are brains floating in space , living their truer lives in the virtual space of the page , existing in imaginary worlds .
Or at least that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exceptionalism .
If the writing life involves sitting at home , pursuing random urges , indulging in deep research of minutiae , and corresponding from afar with friends and intimates , then COVID-19 quarantine has created millions of literary superstars .
Quarantine is the collective experience of non-experience , and yet the pandemic is still so all-encompassing that it demands to be recorded , whether in diary entries , social-media posts , or just tallies of the endless days passed .
Kate Zambreno ’ s new novel Drifts was not written with a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But the pandemic might be the best context in which to read it .
An autofictional portrayal of stasis , indecision , and the difficulty of living in a civilization that seems to have passed its expiration date some years previously , the novel already exists in a hazy state of self-isolation .
Reading it now , you don ’ t have to be a published writer or an adjunct professor to identify deeply with the author-narrator as she works from home eternally supine , wanders the confines of her neighborhood , takes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ videos , and tries to figure out if creating anything is possible .
This spiky book , with its fragmented prose and Sebaldian black-and-white photos , has become unexpectedly relatable .
Relatability is not Zambreno ’ s goal : This is a depiction of a life committed to art to an extreme , almost unbearable degree .
She focuses on questions of how to maintain inspiration and artistic productivity , structuring everything else around the creative practice—neglecting the impossible bureaucracy of academia to prioritize writing that doesn ’ t happen either , justifying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ herself in an angel in an Albrecht Durer print .
There seems to be nothing that can not be part of the work of writing .
The result is not so different from any other slow , desperate search for a way to live within a set of limits : the constant need for new strategies , ways to trick yourself into action , or excuses for another short-term failure .
If we ’ re lucky enough to be working at home—and not out on the frontlines—our distress , like the narrator ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ traditionally novelistic dramatic break but the persistent grinding of the terrible everyday .

Part diary and part Künstlerroman, Drifts skips around, swapping one subject for the next when a thought trails off, when attention or concentration flags. These musings include running biographies of solitary writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Franz Kafka, and Robert Walser, who maintained his own quarantine in a sanatorium. Other strands take on domestic and work life: a sweet portrait of the narrator’s dog, Genet (who is the best dog in autofiction since Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend); the precarity and emotional drain of adjunct professorship; struggles with hierarchy in the publishing industry; and determining what the book at hand will be, as well as the odd bloggy yoga class anecdote. There’s an improvisatory quality to the text, like a wet-painted brushstroke.
A lot of the time, the narrator is restlessly wandering the internet, writing emails, googling herself, and avoiding news to stave off “ambient political depression.”
A lot of the time, the narrator is restlessly wandering the internet, writing emails, googling herself, and avoiding news to stave off “ambient political depression.” She conducts her life digitally, as many nonessential workers have had to do lately, physically alone but virtually communicating across a wide network. This is a newly mainstream kind of consciousness (the Very Online), the texture of which is rarely evoked so well in writing—the simultaneous overflow and undernourishment of information, the way in which just surfing can be fulfilling as a form of at-home flânerie.
The last third of Drifts describes a pregnancy and the eventual choice to have a child. The narrator’s anxiety about the child’s impact on her independent, artistic life is mitigated by the transformation of that process into art in the form of the book. The entirety of the text is split into stylish fragments, longer than Jenny Offill’s but looser than Eula Biss’s; each new passage begins with a soothing blank space from the top of the page. As the narrator’s pregnancy progresses, the fragments get shorter and shorter and the text draws closer to real time, symptoms of an increasingly fractured attention but also reminiscent of the blankness of too many days stuck at home, when you lose the ability to remember the alternative or to think much at all.


newrepublic--2020-05-11--Your Climate Anxiety Is Another Person’s Existential Crisis

“ I don ’ t know about changes in the atmosphere , but the science of climate change is something we actually experience , ” Philip Tioko , a 46-year-old fisherman , told me .
Tioko moved his family to be closer to the lake after his livestock was wiped out by Turkana ’ s increasingly common droughts .
At first , fishing filled the gaps , but as the lake has contracted , so too have fish stocks .
When I visited , the family hadn ’ t eaten in two days .
His children ’ s hair was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deficiency .
His seven-year-old limped because of a bone deformity likely caused by drinking Turkana ’ s highly fluorinated water .
A nurse at a local clinic suspected that fluoride concentrations were rising as the lake water reduced .
In one small village I visited , 11 people couldn ’ t walk at all due to these deformities .
“ How did this become my life ?
” one man asked me from the hut he hadn ’ t left since he lost his ability to walk years ago .
“ The thing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my heart and for me to rest.
” As with many communities on the front line of global warming , it ’ s difficult to extricate the effects of climate change from decades of poverty , colonialism , and extractive geopolitics .
The same year I visited , Ethiopia began to generate electricity from a dam choking the Omo River , Lake Turkana ’ s main source of water , causing lake levels to drop precipitously .
In Turkana , climate change is a new name for an old suffering .
It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the poorest county in Kenya .
British colonizers spent the first half of the twentieth century looting Turkana ’ s livestock and stealing land they described as “ the most worthless district in Kenya.
” When Turkana mounted a formidable resistance , the British doubled down on the dispossession , confining movement to smaller and smaller parcels of land .
It was a death sentence for untold numbers of pastoralists who needed to be able to roam long distances to keep their cattle , and themselves , alive .
Today , just over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and somewhere between 15 and 30 percent of children have acute malnutrition .
In recent decades , growing numbers of lapsed pastoralists like Tioko have gathered around the lake in an attempt to survive , stretching its resources to breaking point .
When the effects of climate change started to unfold , Turkana didn ’ t stand a chance .

I began reporting on climate change in 2015, when I flew to Turkana, Kenya’s parched northwestern corner. When you hear about “the front lines” of climate change, Turkana is it. Life there revolves around Lake Turkana, the largest desert lake in the world. At least 300,000 people depend on it for survival. The lake is drying up.
I had been living in East Africa for a few years at that point, reporting on childbirth injuries, terrorist attacks, even a failed coup, but I had never been anywhere like Turkana. I had never seen so many people living on the knife’s edge of existence, where it would take so little to push them over. In some places, lines in the sand show the lake a full half-mile in retreat from where it used to lie.
When I visited, the family hadn’t eaten in two days.
Signs of a coming apocalypse were everywhere: In one town, a graveyard of decaying fishing boats littered the ground with no water in sight, looking like they were about to set sail through the cracked earth. Animal carcasses weren’t uncommon—ribs escaping overstretched skin, with vultures circling overhead. There is something that feels extraterrestrial about a landscape so devoid of life. And it was still more jarring given that, with one of the richest fossil records of early humans, Turkana has been called “the cradle of mankind,” with human traces dating back four million years.


newrepublic--2020-05-11--The Bittersweet Return of Sports

The Bittersweet Return of Sports

Over the last couple of weeks , I have struggled to remember the last game I watched live .
Was it Atletico Madrid ’ s dastardly , heartbreaking victory over Liverpool in the Champions League on March 11 ?
I hope not .
It was , more likely , a quarter or two of a meaningless mid-season NBA game the same day—in retrospect , I should have known that something was wrong when the Knicks won , even if they were only playing the Atlanta Hawks .
That was , in any case , the last day with real sports @ @ @ @ @ @ @ season indefinitely after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for Covid-19 .
For me and many others , it was that moment—an announcement from NBA Commissioner Adam Silver , not the president or any other government official—that drove home the severity of the crisis .
Since then I have not left my neighborhood .
I have not taken the subway or , with one exception , seen anyone who does not live in my own building .
And I have not watched any live sports .
Once my social life revolved around @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Now , I live on Zoom calls where we discuss NBA Finals that aired before we were born .
There are times when rewatching an old game is transcendent .
I was too anxious during Game Seven of the 2016 NBA Finals to fully appreciate LeBron James ’ s performance ; too convinced that something would go wrong to relish Liverpool ’ s improbable 4–0 defeat of Barcelona in the Champions League a year ago .
But these games mostly feel like homework .
I can now speak with greater confidence about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cup , but revisiting those eras had little of the excitement or camaraderie of live sports .

On the advice of a South Korean friend, I have adopted the Doosan Bears as my team. The first KBO champion, they have featured in six of the last seven championship series. (If you’re going to pick a team to root for, you may as well pick a winner.) I am particularly fond of Yoo Hee-kwan, their portly star pitcher who is apparently incapable of throwing the ball faster than 83 miles per hour. No one would mistake the KBO for Major League Baseball, but it’s not bad—like watching Triple-A with Korean flair. (The most appealing aspect of South Korean baseball is that it is free of the oppressive dogmas that still govern baseball: Bat flipping, for example, is frowned on as flashy and unsportsmanlike in America but celebrated in South Korea.)
The Bundesliga’s return is an opportunity for the German league to capture a larger audience and to make a case for German leadership and ingenuity. Despite winning the World Cup in Brazil in 2014 (and absolutely demolishing the hosts 7–1 in one of the most shocking games in the tournament’s history), and despite having one of the most technically accomplished leagues in Europe, Germany hasn’t quite caught the soccer world’s imagination like England, Spain, or Italy.
I asked ESPN editor and Borussia Dortmund superfan Elaine Teng to make the case for Bundesliga. “A lot of the players and managers you love, like [Liverpool manager and greatest German in history] Jurgen Klopp, [Chelsea’s American winger] Christian Pulisic, and [Liverpool midfielder and underappreciated genius] Naby Keita started their careers in the Bundesliga, so it’s a great place to spot young talent,” she wrote in a Twitter DM. “There’s also more goals in the Bundesliga than the Premier League. And in this era of huge money and billionaires, German clubs have a rule that ensures fans hold the majority of voting rights. That’s why tickets are so cheap!”


newrepublic--2020-05-12--There Are Green Jobs Hiding in the Oilfields

Jobs and towns built on fossil fuel extraction appear to be headed for disaster .
The Trump administration seems inclined to respond by throwing aid at the oil and gas CEOs who helped to engineer the indebted industry ’ s current predicament .
The Resources for Workforce Investments , not Drilling ( ReWIND ) Act , introduced last week , would prevent an outright bailout for corporate polluters .
Less attention has been paid to how to protect the communities who stand to lose the most from plummeting oil prices , even as both drillers and oilfield services companies furlough @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people—moves that will wreak havoc on state and local tax bases .
Texas alone could shed a million jobs this year as a result of the downturn .
Capitol Hill still seems uninterested in imagining a future without fossil fuels .
But in April , drillers shut down more oil-drilling rigs in the United States than have been cut since the last price crash in 2015 .
Many will not come back online anytime soon .
More than half of oil and gas workers could lose their jobs .
To blunt the impact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ administration to pay laid off workers to start plugging the country ’ s roughly two million abandoned wells .
There would be some precedent for this , both abroad and domestically .
Canada announced the creation earlier this month of a $ 1.7 billion fund to clean up wells in Alberta , Saskatchewan and British Columbia .
The fund is expected to create 5,200 jobs in those three provinces .
And in the United States , the federal government already pays to clean up lots of bankrupt oil companies ’ abandoned wells .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a sunk cost , oil-producing states ’ request could present an opportunity for the federal government for a jobs program that will pass muster in red states .
Lawmakers could decide to put a few thousand people to work in some of the places where layoffs in the extractive sector are hitting hardest .
Whether through a federal job guarantee , or some sort of paycheck protection-like program that mandates fossil fuel companies pay workers to do something other than extract oil , the government might be able to address unemployment and help @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fossil fuel cleanup extends beyond the rigs being shut down this year .
A 2018 report by the Center for Western Priorities found that reclamation of all the usable oil and gas wells on federal lands will cost $ 6.1 billion , far outstripping the $ 162 million oil and gas producers have provided for such clean-up expenses under sixty-year-old federal mandates .
Beyond extraction sites , about half of the country ’ s 450,000 contaminated lands , known as brownfield sites , are believed to owe that designation to petroleum issues , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ buried under gas stations .
There ’ s a vast amount of work to be done not just plugging wells , but restoring landscapes scarred by fossil fuel development .

Relying on capturing carbon at all remains a massive gamble: Emissions-curbing policy should probably proceed on the assumption that it will never scale up to the staggering levels some models suggest will be needed. Still, there are relatively few of those models for keeping warming below two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or especially 1.5 degrees Celsius that don’t involve modestly negative emissions and capturing at least some industrial carbon, in tandem with more nature-based methods of sequestration like reforestation and regenerative agriculture. And the free market seems unlikely to supply that carbon capture: While there are other ways to utilize captured carbon that don’t involve drilling, for example for cement and steel production, there may not be profitable ways to use all the carbon many models suggest capturing, and simply storing it hasn’t been an option fossil fuel companies have found attractive. Addressing the shortfall would probably require government action.
The International Energy Agency has said that 3,500 CCUS plants would be needed by 2050 to keep warming below two degrees. Just 22 were expected, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, to be operational by the end of this year. Expanding carbon capture, University of California Los Angeles research fellow Holly Buck has written, would require “infrastructure on the same scale of today’s oil industry—but to put the carbon back underground.” This would probably involve long-term job creation: “The storage takes place in caverns underground, or in depleted oil wells. And then this carbon must be monitored, to make sure it is staying there.”
The labor-intensive side of carbon capture might be a saving grace for suffering oilfield communities. A 2013 report from the Rand Corporation found considerable overlap between the type of work done by workers in the extractive sector and that required to inject and maintain carbon underground. From geologists to pipe fitters to drill operators, “the types of firms and employees who are in the existing oil and gas sector could easily transition to building carbon dioxide pipelines and injecting carbon underground,” said Costa Samaras, a co-author on the report and a civil engineer at Carnegie Mellon University. “We do a lot of things underground that aren’t oil and gas drilling.”


newrepublic--2020-05-12--Work Requirements Have Always Been About Punishment

Last December , for instance , Trump had aggressively pursued more stringent work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ( SNAP ) , or food stamps , a move that stood to kick 700,000 recipients off the program .
As late as mid-March , even as the scope of the pandemic and its disastrous effects on the economy were apparent , the administration pressed to implement the new rule , which was only narrowly averted at the last minute by a federal court order and a Congressional decision to suspend work requirements for the duration of the pandemic .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ when the Trump administration encouraged states to adopt new work requirements for Medicaid , a push that resulted in more than 18,000 Arkansas residents losing Medicaid coverage that year .
Though a federal court ruling eventually blocked the change , Bloomberg Law recently noted some growing interest in the reinstatement of work requirements for Medicaid in the wake of the pandemic .
“ Work requirements will be needed at that time as a way of refocusing the programs on the truly needy , ” one free-market think tank spokesperson told Bloomberg .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coronavirus has made clear , it ’ s that unemployment is all too often the result of forces outside of workers ’ direct control .
Even barring cataclysmic events like a pandemic , weak labor markets ( and weaker labor laws ) , criminal records or low credit scores , racial discrimination , health problems or mental illness , obligations to care for family members , and a host of other factors can all prevent people from obtaining work .
The mass layoffs wrought by the pandemic lockdowns are just one extreme example @ @ @ @ @ @ @ market and individual circumstances .
As Rebecca Vallas put it , “ A critical lesson from this era should be the immense cruelty of tying something as essential as health insurance or food to employment in the first place.
” Even in theoretically prosperous times , work requirements have repeatedly failed to generate substantial increases in employment or reduce poverty , even as they purge needy people from program rolls .
In a 2018 analysis of the long-term effects of work requirements on recipients of cash assistance that were first implemented during Bill @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that those requirements led to negligible long-term gains in employment while also prolonging mass suffering .
As the researchers found , “ Most cash assistance recipients subject to work requirements stayed poor , and some became poorer.
” And as poverty scholars Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Schaefer have written , welfare reform , and the transition to work-based assistance in particular , led to a sharp increase in the number of people in the U.S. living in deep poverty , or trying to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ day .
The welfare reform era—or the period in the mid-90s when Clinton promised to “ end welfare as we have come to know it ” and when then-senator Joe Biden , among others , voted for the bill that eventually eviscerated cash assistance—also demonstrates that while work requirements are currently pushed most fervently by Republicans , they also have a not-terribly-distant history of bipartisan support .
In the months ahead , as legislators continue to squabble over stimulus packages and how best to rehabilitate the economy , more progressive members of Congress @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rising public support for government aid to fight for newer , better safety net measures .
At least one proposal so far calls for monthly payments of $ 2,000 to most adults in the U.S. for the duration of the crisis—a temporary reversal , in a certain sense , of decades of cash transfers predicated on punitive work rules .
As the bill ’ s co-sponsor Ro Khanna put it , you have to put people ’ s lives before their labor .
It just doesn ’ t work the other way around @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the duration of this crisis in order to come out on the other side alive , healthy and ready to get back to work .
”

But if there’s one thing the coronavirus has made clear, it’s that unemployment is all too often the result of forces outside of workers’ direct control. Even barring cataclysmic events like a pandemic, weak labor markets (and weaker labor laws), criminal records or low credit scores, racial discrimination, health problems or mental illness, obligations to care for family members, and a host of other factors can all prevent people from obtaining work. The mass layoffs wrought by the pandemic lockdowns are just one extreme example of the unpredictability of both the labor market and individual circumstances. As Rebecca Vallas put it, “A critical lesson from this era should be the immense cruelty of tying something as essential as health insurance or food to employment in the first place.”
Even in theoretically prosperous times, work requirements have repeatedly failed to generate substantial increases in employment or reduce poverty, even as they purge needy people from program rolls. In a 2018 analysis of the long-term effects of work requirements on recipients of cash assistance that were first implemented during Bill Clinton’s disastrous welfare reform bill, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that those requirements led to negligible long-term gains in employment while also prolonging mass suffering. As the researchers found, “Most cash assistance recipients subject to work requirements stayed poor, and some became poorer.” And as poverty scholars Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Schaefer have written, welfare reform, and the transition to work-based assistance in particular, led to a sharp increase in the number of people in the United States living in deep poverty or trying to survive on less than $2 per day.
The welfare reform era—or the period in the mid-1990s when Clinton promised to “end welfare as we have come to know it” and when then Senator Joe Biden, among others, voted for the bill that eventually eviscerated cash assistance—also demonstrates that while work requirements are currently pushed most fervently by Republicans, they also have a not terribly distant history of bipartisan support. In the months ahead, as legislators continue to squabble over stimulus packages and how best to rehabilitate the economy, more progressive members of Congress might have a rare chance to use rising public support for government aid to fight for newer, better safety net measures. At least one proposal so far calls for monthly payments of $2,000 to most adults in the U.S. for the duration of the crisis—a temporary reversal, in a certain sense, of decades of cash transfers predicated on punitive work rules. As the bill’s co-sponsor Ro Khanna put it, you have to put people’s lives before their labor. It just doesn’t work the other way around. “Americans need sustained cash infusions for the duration of this crisis in order to come out on the other side alive, healthy, and ready to get back to work.”