newrepublic--2020-11-16--“This Is Not a Silver Bullet for the Pandemic”

Another challenge : Nearly all of the vaccines in late stages of development require two doses , a few weeks apart , to work well .
“ How do I make sure that I ’ m getting inoculated with the same vaccine ’ s part two , and not a different one that might mess up the regimen ?
” Bay Nishi asked .
Careful tracking of who got which vaccine , and when , will be required , which can be difficult in countries like the U.S. with no centralized health-records system .
Once the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is developed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with how cold exactly it needs to be , Bay Nishi said .
They could work backward to improve thermostability , or the ability to withstand higher temperatures , once the vaccine passes regulatory hurdles .
“ The first-line vaccines are not necessarily going to be the best , ” she said .
“ It may be that the second line of Covid vaccines are the ones that are really going to be ultimately better.
” In addition to being more stable at higher temperatures , the second round of shots could be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dose .
But then there ’ s the issue of getting people to get the shots once they ’ re available .
“ I worry we get the freezer , we get [ the vaccine ] all the way to the patients ’ community , and people are hesitant to take it , ” Acharya said .
Dr. Angela Rasmussen , a virologist and affiliate of the Georgetown Center for Global Health Science and Security , is also concerned about vaccine hesitancy , a term for public worries about vaccine safety and efficacy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of all the vaccine candidates—there ’ s going to be a pretty steep hill to climb in terms of convincing people to actually get it , ” she told me .
“ When we get a vaccine , it ’ s going to be the beginning of the end .
But the end itself will take months—potentially years , if it takes a long time to convince people to actually get it.
” An important part of overcoming hesitancy will be transparency about how the vaccine works and what it does—and doesn ’ @ @ @

And while the pandemic has exposed and heightened worldwide inequalities, a vaccine could also deepen the divide between the rich and the poor, at least initially. Wealthy areas may receive batches of the vaccine first simply because they have the facilities to store them. That could mean that rural areas of the U.S., which are currently experiencing the worst of the pandemic, might never see the supercold vaccines at all. If the vaccines that are easier to store are less effective, it could perpetuate inequities, a major concern of many of the experts I spoke to.
Another challenge: Nearly all of the vaccines in late stages of development require two doses, a few weeks apart, to work well. “How do I make sure that I’m getting inoculated with the same vaccine’s part two, and not a different one that might mess up the regimen?” Bay Nishi asked. Careful tracking of who got which vaccine, and when, will be required, which can be difficult in countries like the U.S. with no centralized health-records system.
Once the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is developed, the vaccine makers will likely experiment with how cold exactly it needs to be, Bay Nishi said. They could work backward to improve thermostability, or the ability to withstand higher temperatures, once the vaccine passes regulatory hurdles. “The first-line vaccines are not necessarily going to be the best,” she said. “It may be that the second line of Covid vaccines are the ones that are really going to be ultimately better.” In addition to being more stable at higher temperatures, the second round of shots could be more effective, especially with a single dose.


newrepublic--2020-11-16--Blue States Will Have to Lead the Climate Fight Under Biden, Too

As Trump thumbed his nose at international cooperation on climate , state leaders formed networks that are now eager to help the Biden administration as it recommits to the Paris Agreement and dives back into international policy .
Organizations like the U.S .
Climate Alliance have grown to 25 governors ( including three Republicans ) , who say that “ states are showing the nation and the world that ambitious climate action is achievable.
” International leaders who otherwise might be skittish of the U.S. electing another climate denier in four years have since had the opportunity to work with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ saw “ unprecedented ” outreach from international leaders following Trump ’ s election .
( California , as Californians love to remind everyone , is larger and has a more powerful economy than all but a handful of nations . )
The other good news is that state-level climate work is going to become significantly easier with a friendly force in Washington .
One of the biggest climate actions Biden can take is on emissions from cars , an area where state and federal policy collide .
Before Trump took office , California @ @ @ @ @ @ @ market , had formed a coalition of states committed to holding cars to stricter emissions standards than the national rule required .
( For consumers , this has the added benefit of raising gas mileage . )
After taking power , the Trump administration promptly began an extensive and messy legal battle challenging California ’ s ability to set its own rules and aiming to tear down the efficiency standards .
A Biden presidency , experts say , means that not only will the legal challenge against auto emission standards end—and that these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rule for the rest of the country—but California and other states can look at similar ways to reduce emissions from other types of engines , like heavy-duty trucks and landscaping equipment .
( Lawn mowers might not sound threatening , but emissions from the unregulated landscaping sector are on track to surpass emissions from cars . )
“ Often , the federal government either collaborates with California or follows California ’ s lead once the state has shown that its regulations are workable , ” said Ann Carlson , a professor of environmental @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t regulate those small engines or truck engines while battling the federal government .
The Biden administration is going to be way more cooperative on that front .
”

Coastal states can take inspiration from New Jersey, which passed a first-of-its kind legislation earlier this year requiring builders to incorporate sea-level rise into their plans in order to get permits. Ten states have now banned or restricted offshore drilling, including five in 2018 alone; seven states have at least one restriction or ban before their legislatures in 2020. And a handful of states have begun enacting legislation to tackle the impacts of climate change on communities of color.
As Trump thumbed his nose at international cooperation on climate, state leaders formed networks that are now eager to help the Biden administration as it recommits to the Paris Agreement and dives back into international policy. Organizations like the U.S. Climate Alliance have grown to 25 governors (including three Republicans), who say that “states are showing the nation and the world that ambitious climate action is achievable.” International leaders who otherwise might be skittish of the U.S. electing another climate denier in four years have since had the opportunity to work with governors like Brown, whom Barnes said saw “unprecedented” outreach from international leaders following Trump’s election. (California, as Californians love to remind everyone, is larger and has a more powerful economy than all but a handful of nations.)
The other good news is that state-level climate work is going to become significantly easier with a friendly force in Washington. One of the biggest climate actions Biden can take is on emissions from cars, an area where state and federal policy collide. Before Trump took office, California, the nation’s biggest auto market, had formed a coalition of states committed to holding cars to stricter emissions standards than the national rule required. (For consumers, this has the added benefit of raising gas mileage.) After taking power, the Trump administration promptly began an extensive and messy legal battle challenging California’s ability to set its own rules and aiming to tear down the efficiency standards.


newrepublic--2020-11-16--The Republican Party Is Dead. It’s the Trump Cult Now.

Donald Trump will be the first former president not to retire , more or less , from political life since Teddy Roosevelt .
He will not repair to Mar-a-Lago , watch Shark Week , and get to work on his memoirs .
He has neither the financial nor psychological ability to do so .
Instead , Trump will tweet .
He will call into the cable shows .
He will cultivate an army of followers who can be mobilized and monetized .
What he will do with these followers is unclear , but also beside the point .
Whether he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ business , or a 2024 campaign , he will want mastery over as large an audience as possible .
And that is why he refused to concede the election .
His next move requires exporting tens of millions of followers with him to his new venture , and the way to do that is to keep pushing the notion that he was not defeated , that he has the secret truth , and that he will share it with his chosen elect for $ 9.95 a month .
You might laugh at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ election was stolen from him .
But consider that while a quarter of a million Americans died from the coronavirus , Trump had the vast majority of Republicans convinced the pandemic was “ overblown.
” If Trump can pull off such a shameless act of blatant trickery , he can sell the idea that a few hundred thousand ballots were illegitimate ; even Eric Trump—even Jared—could do it .

Donald Trump will be the first former president not to retire, more or less, from political life since Teddy Roosevelt. He will not repair to Mar-a-Lago, watch Shark Week, and get to work on his memoirs. He has neither the financial nor psychological ability to do so. Instead, Trump will tweet. He will call into the cable shows. He will cultivate an army of followers who can be mobilized and monetized. What he will do with these followers is unclear, but also beside the point. Whether he starts Trump TV, a new vitamin business, or a 2024 campaign, he will want mastery over as large an audience as possible.
There are still people who believe that the party can go back to what it was in 2014. These people are living in a fantasy.
And that is why he refused to concede the election. His next move requires exporting tens of millions of followers with him to his new venture, and the way to do that is to keep pushing the notion that he was not defeated, that he has the secret truth, and that he will share it with his chosen elect for $9.95 a month.
You might laugh at the idea that Trump can convince America the election was stolen from him. But consider that while a quarter of a million Americans died from the coronavirus, Trump had the vast majority of Republicans convinced the pandemic was “overblown.” If Trump can pull off such a shameless act of blatant trickery, he can sell the idea that a few hundred thousand ballots were illegitimate; even Eric Trump—even Jared—could do it.


newrepublic--2020-11-16--The Supreme Court’s Obamacare Bait and Switch

Immediately after the conclusion of Tuesday ’ s Supreme Court arguments concerning the bid of 18 red-state attorneys general , backed by the Trump administration , to strike the Affordable Care Act down in its entirety , the media—with uniformity—pronounced the law “ likely to survive.
” With a laser focus , these after-action accounts focused on strong indications that a majority , of at least five justices , is poised to hold that even if the Affordable Care Act ’ s “ individual mandate ” to purchase insurance is deemed unconstitutional , only that provision should be stricken .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ its remedy would “ sever ” the mandate provision and leave the rest of the statute intact .
In effect , this would not damage the law at all .
But that doesn ’ t mean the court ’ s conservative majority might not mete out some substantial harm .
The manner in which it “ saves ” Obamacare , in fact , may imperil the rest of President-elect Joe Biden ’ s agenda .
Here , it helps to look back over some moments that went unremarked upon by the commentariat .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ much of the justices ’ questioning concerned another legal issue— “ standing ” —which is equally wonky but potentially far more consequential than “ severability.
” Standing is a fundamental separation of powers doctrine designed , in the words of Justice Byron White , to ensure that , “ under our constitutional system , ” unelected , life-tenured judges do not become “ roving commissions assigned to pass judgment on the validity of the Nation ’ s laws ” except when compelled to do so “ out of the necessity of adjudicating rights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Constitution terms “ cases ” or “ controversies.
” In order to qualify a claim as such a matter—and indeed , get into court at all—would-be litigants must show that their grievance constitutes a “ concrete injury .
”

On this issue, the chief justice’s was not the only voice. Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Stephen Breyer, along with former Obama Solicitor General Don Verrilli, arguing for the House of Representatives to uphold the ACA, sought to reinforce this focus on standing. Echoing Roberts, Kagan admonished Trump’s Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall: “The United States is usually pretty stingy about standing law, so it did surprise me, in much the way that it surprised the Chief Justice, that you’re coming in here with a theory which, to my mind, threatens to kind of explode standing doctrine.” Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett also asked carefully prepared questions about standing, some of which appeared to suggest skepticism about ACA opponents’ work-around theory for evading Supreme Court standing doctrine.
Does it ultimately matter which hypertechnical jawbreaker the court invokes to save the ACA? Indeed, it could: If Roberts’s fellow conservatives accept his invitation to raise standing barriers, especially standing for state governments, that would signal that the newly right-shifted majority, going forward, is not comfortable serving as a transparently handy tool for its political allies on the right to advance their priorities. As you might imagine, those priorities will emphasize quashing high-profile Biden executive actions, on which the new administration will largely depend, unless Democrats next January win both Georgia Senate runoff elections and flip control of the Senate. If the other five conservative justices choose not to follow Roberts’s lead in this instance, however, it will signal an alliance with a larger universe of conservatives eager to stop, through litigation, the Biden administration’s governing agenda.
The pending challenge to the ACA is hardly the only example of how easy loose standing criteria can make it for political actors—state governors and attorneys general, in particular; especially the notoriously litigious Texas Office of the Attorney General—to forum-shop for partisan lower court judges, sometimes stalling administrative actions for months and years, or at least chilling or freezing in place threatened programs, and, ultimately, putting a steady diet of political hot potatoes on the Supreme Court’s calendar.


newrepublic--2020-11-16--Can Biden Keep His Promise to Make Farms Climate Friendly?

Last month , when asked on Pod Save America to name three or four things atop his first-term agenda , Joe Biden mentioned a surprising topic : farm policy .
“ I know it ’ s boring as hell , but it ’ s consequential , ” he said , adding that agriculture could be “ the first net-zero industry in America ” when it comes to carbon emissions .
The president-elect is right—it could be .
But that would require Biden and the Democrats to commit to that goal and to pick leaders who will guide agriculture policy away @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stuck in for years .
It ’ s far from clear they have the vision to do that .
If the country is serious about reducing carbon emissions , farm policy must play an essential role .
As a recent blockbuster study in Science made clear , even if we had the zero-emissions energy grid of our fantasies , greenhouse gases expelled during food production would still warm the planet past two degrees Celsius ( 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit ) , the Paris Agreement goal .
Livestock—mostly cows—belch a lot of methane , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and other crop chemicals require copious fossil fuels to produce , and when they get overused , nitrogen suffocates waterways and pumps the atmosphere with nitrous oxide , a potent greenhouse gas .
For the Biden administration to tackle these problems and achieve the goal he laid out on the podcast , it will have to veer sharply away from the plans his campaign laid out .
His agriculture policy , which appears primarily in his rural and climate plans , was influenced heavily by fellow Obama administration alum Tom Vilsack , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of agriculture from 2009 to 2017 .
After Vilsack left that post , he immediately took a million-dollar salary lobbying for the dairy industry , and since the Iowa caucuses , he ’ s been moonlighting as Biden ’ s rural campaign adviser and surrogate .
As a result , portions of Biden ’ s farm plans—particularly those that offer solutions to climate change—traffic in false solutions advanced by corporate interests .
The premier example of this is ethanol , a climate and policy disaster that Democrats have nonetheless refused to renounce .

Biden’s policy proposals include appending digesters to factory farms and making biogas out of their methane-heavy manure (which still emits carbon dioxide when burned)—a failing technology that accommodates rather than regulates the most pollutive farms. He backs the corporate campaign to create a market for carbon sequestered in farmland. “We could be spending billions of dollars paying farmers to do pretty much what they’re doing now, and the carbon sequestration benefits of that will be pretty minimal,” said Ken Cook, co-founder and president of the Environmental Working Group. Big Ag is smart enough to create excitement over solutions that never deliver—ethanol being one such boondoggle that haunts us today. There’s a gauntlet of others waiting down the line.
Biden’s farm policy plans may seem bleak to climate hawks, but they were not a surprise, given concerns about who the president-elect might appoint as secretary of agriculture. Heidi Heitkamp, Trump’s rumored top choice for the job in 2016, has been the most talked-about candidate on Biden’s list. The one-term North Dakota senator has taken millions in corporate money, notably large handfuls from the oil and gas industry and agribusiness; she supported the Keystone Pipeline and Dakota Access Pipeline and fought to roll back farm regulations, overall earning an abysmal environmental rating from conservation groups. “Her background … should be disqualifying for her to run a major agency that has to help Biden achieve his climate goals,” said Kari Hammerschlag, the deputy director of the Food and Environment program and Friends of the Earth.
For many climate and sustainable farm advocates (as well as the Congressional Black Caucus), the preferred choice for agriculture secretary is Marcia Fudge, a Black congresswoman representing Ohio’s 11th district in Cleveland and the subcommittee chair for nutrition and oversight on the House Agriculture Committee. Fudge could pivot the USDA’s focus from the agribusiness lobby toward the well-being of the broader public, dislodging a crucial roadblock to progress on climate through agriculture. She’s fought for smarter and increased investment in conservation before, which is what environmental advocates are prioritizing. “The only way that we are going to change the USDA is to bring in leadership that is not beholden to the corporate interests,” Hammerschlag said.


newrepublic--2020-11-16--Don’t Blame the Left for the Democrats’ Losses

The fight over who and what ’ s to blame for Democratic underperformance down ballot in the 2020 election is proceeding , for the most part , as though the election never really happened .
The arguments ought to sound familiar to anyone who ’ s followed the party ’ s internal debates over the last four years ; the names and faces involved mostly haven ’ t changed .
Moderates , naturally , are insisting the party has veered too far to the left and that it ’ s time for the House ’ s left-leaning stars to shut @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voices in their camp has been Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger , a member of 2018 ’ s freshman class from Virginia , who took House leadership to the woodshed in a now-infamous caucus call last week .
“ Don ’ t say ‘ socialism , ’ ” she yelled .
“ Don ’ t say ‘ defund the police ’ when that ’ s not what we mean.
” Those comments have been broadly seconded .
“ We ’ ve got to be clear that we ’ re not for defunding the police and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be out there , ” New York Congressman Greg Meeks recently told Politico .
“ We ’ re not for defunding the police , and we ’ re not socialists .
The language has to be clear.
” It goes without saying that the losing Democratic incumbents and the challengers that moderates are upset about didn ’ t actually run on defunding the police and socialism .
It would be hard to oppose both in clearer language than , say , the language New York City Congressman Max Rose used .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Rose implied , given DeBlasio ’ s proposed cuts at the NYPD and Trump ’ s order to review federal funding in Democratic cities , that the two were functionally in cahoots as police abolitionists .
“ With this order , President Trump is joining Mayor de Blasio in defunding the police , ” it read .
“ It was wrong then and it ’ s wrong now .
I don ’ t care whether you ’ re a Republican or a Democrat , I will not sit back if you ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ playing politics.
” Last week , his constituents voted him out .
Rose , like Spanberger , was one of the freshman House Democrats elected in 2018 ’ s blue wave .
The idea seemingly underpinning the week ’ s internecine squabbling is that the party faced more flak from the right this year than it did back then .
But this plainly isn ’ t so .
In the months before the midterms , President Trump and Republican candidates aggressively pushed messaging on a variety of subjects they hoped would rally the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , antifa demonstrations , restaurant confrontations , the Kavanaugh confirmation , confederate monuments , trans rights , and the migrant caravans .
The last of these was tethered to another controversial , headline-grabbing policy proposal pundits have already forgotten : abolishing ICE .
Polling that summer showed only 25 percent of Americans supported the idea ; unlike defunding the police , a number of mainstream and nationally prominent Democrats either backed it or signaled a willingness to take it seriously anyway .
And in the House , progressives , including current Congressional Progressive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a bill to dismantle the agency .
It was said by many that all this would be a death sentence for the party ’ s fortunes that year .
In the end , Democrats gained 41 seats .

Either way, the possibility that socialism and defunding the police might have kept some voters in some places in the Republican camp down ballot should not be discounted. But there is as yet no hard evidence that those issues were more significant to the electorate than the coronavirus and the state of the economy. It was widely expected that both would contribute to Democratic gains. But there were warning signs many months ago that Trump and Republicans wouldn’t be as damaged by the pandemic as Democrats assumed. And according to an NPR analysis, Trump improved on his 2016 numbers in 68 of the 100 counties with the highest Covid death rates per capita. Obviously, voters indifferent to Trump’s handling of the crisis wouldn’t have had much trouble giving their Republican members of Congress a pass on the issue.
The electorate’s outlook on the economy has been rosy for some time—despite our fall into a serious recession, Trump consistently led Biden on the issue in polls.
The electorate’s outlook on the economy has been rosy for some time—despite our fall into a serious recession, Trump consistently led Biden on the issue in polls. In hindsight, this shouldn’t have been all that surprising. Trump and the GOP crusaded against preventative lockdowns on shortsighted economic grounds. And as paltry as many journalists and policy analysts rightly believe the government’s stimulus efforts have been thus far, they’ve meaningfully improved the finances of many voters. “Disposable personal income (that is, income minus taxes) was 13 percent above normal in April and still about 5 percent above the pre-pandemic trend in July, when the full $600-weekly enhancement to unemployment benefits was still being paid,” New York’s Josh Barro noted in September. “Americans normally save about 7 to 8 percent of their disposable personal income, but that rate rose to 34 percent in April and was still 18 percent by July. As a result, American households set aside more than $1 trillion in additional savings from February through July, compared to what you would expect in a normal six months.”
That lift to incomes rested atop pre-pandemic growth trends for which voters had already been giving Trump credit. In September, Gallup found that 56 percent of Americans believed themselves to be better off than they were four years ago. In 2012, during the last incumbent reelection campaign, that number was 45 percent. That positivity didn’t make up for Trump’s vulnerability on other issues, but it might have helped Republicans down ballot, especially given Democrats’ inability or unwillingness to focus on a real economic counternarrative or counter-agenda. These are the matters analysts have tended to call “fundamentals.” Thanks to Trump’s awfulness on other fronts, they’ve been given short shrift throughout his term. “It’s the economy, stupid,” is practically contrarianism now.


newrepublic--2020-11-16--Why Attack on Titan Is the Alt-Right’s Favorite Manga

Isayama Hajime worked nights at an internet café .
He found the customers strange and often frightening .
Many wandered around aimlessly , struggled to communicate , were drunk and belligerent .
Inspired by these phantoms , Hajime , a quiet , polite man , wrote and illustrated Attack on Titan , one of the most popular manga to gain a following outside of Japan .
The series has sold over 100 million copies since Bessatsu Shonen Magazine released the first issue of Attack on Titan 11 years ago .
When its English-language televised adaptation debuted on Cartoon Network ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pilot drew more than 1.3 million viewers .
Hajime credits his work ’ s wide appeal to its simple premise : “ Humanity [ is ] on the verge of extinction due to the rise of man-eating giants.
” Yet over the past decade , the story has moved from a simple narrative of Humans Versus Monsters into an elaborate saga .
Though its creator insists that his work ’ s inspirations are apolitical , he has won acclaim from liberals and the alt-right alike for his story of armed revolution by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the left , of course , is in the interpretation of who is persecuted .
Attack on Titan begins in a city with three walls , surrounded by massive , mindless , near-invulnerable , human-eating monsters called Titans .
The city ’ s populace , stratified into castes and controlled by a repressive military regime , believe they are humanity ’ s last survivors .
At the start of the series , the military is divided into a corrupt , self-serving police force , a garrison that often drinks on the job @ @ @ @ @ @ @ never succeeded in its mission to take territory beyond the Walls .
Several years after Titans break into the outermost tier of the walls , our three main protagonists join the scouts , a unit that has a near–50 percent mortality rate .
( Spoilers follow . )

Not everyone sees Attack on Titan that way, however. On 4chan, a website now nearly synonymous with the alt-right, the rabid message board /pol/ has archived 57 distinct threads with Attack on Titan in the subject line since 2016 alone. And this is hardly an exhaustive list of racist threads citing or discussing the show. In 2014, a user with a Nazi flag described the series as “one of the most redpilled shows I have seen in a long time,” while people down the list said it was an endorsement of “the revival of National Socialism.” A more recent post from 2019, titled “Redpilling Propaganda in the Form of Movies, TV Programs,” used season three of Attack on Titan as its case study.
For white nationalist denizens of /pol/, Attack on Titan is a brilliant way of normalizing white supremacist ideology for a mainstream audience. In their eyes, the Eldians are a stand-in for white people in Western countries, punished for the crimes of their ancestors’ empires and besieged by subhuman monsters trying to enter their land. The Eldians, brainwashed by a state leader who renounced violence against non-Eldians, represent the white population indoctrinated by liberals to feel empathy for nonwhites. Marley, in this fevered telling, represents the Jews, convincing white people to hate themselves.
These interpretations are strong enough to withstand the actual themes of the show. Isayama takes pains to show that the Eldians are a deeply flawed people in their own right, but his alt-right fans still view the Eldians as members of a master race. Under this reading, the main characters’ heroism provides an example of white vitality and intelligence. The alt-right makes memes about Eren attacking Israel and joining Hitler, all while praising Isayama for including a protagonist who plans to ethnically cleanse the planet.


newrepublic--2020-11-16--The Brewing Democratic Fight Over Biden’s Cabinet

There was a moment this summer when Joe Biden ’ s promise to deliver an “ FDR-size ” presidency was almost credible .
Desperate to shore up his support from dejected Bernie voters and galvanized by Covid-19 and the cratering economy , Biden seemed to embrace , if somewhat sheepishly , a more transformative agenda .
His platform featured huge expansions of the welfare state , an ambitious climate plan , legislation to fuel unionization , and a major public sector role for job creation .
If you had squinted—and I mean really squinted—Bidenism looked a bit like social democracy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by way of Scranton .
Now summer feels far away .
With Republicans maintaining control of the Senate ( pending two runoffs in Georgia ) , there are signs that Biden might use divided government as an excuse to narrow his vision , play ball with the GOP , and appoint CEOs , high-level consultants , and corporate lobbyists to key Cabinet posts .
Earlier this month , Biden insiders leaked a preemptive surrender to Axios , indicating they would “ consider limiting prospective Cabinet nominees to those Mitch McConnell can live with.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a list of advisers to help with the transition at the Office of Management and Budget ; it included execs from Amazon , Lyft , and Airbnb .
This has happened before .
In 2008 , people of color , liberals , and union members powered Barack Obama to victory , only for him to fill his Cabinet with bankers , Wall Street–friendly lobbyists , and moderates who sabotaged a more aggressive response to the financial crisis and sanded the populist edges off Obama ’ s powerful campaign message .
“ We were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s when the die was cast , ” said David Segal , executive director of Demand Progress , a left group focused on combating corporate and monopoly power .
“ This time is different .
We ’ re watching .
We ’ re mobilized .
We can ’ t let this White House be staffed by the same plutocrats .
”

Biden may seek to use divided government as an excuse to scale back his ambitious economic agenda; he may allow climate change to continue unabated because Lisa Murkowski or Mitt Romney won’t vote for an EPA chief with a spine; and he may prefer to give over the reins of the rest of his Cabinet to self-dealing CEOs and lobbyists because, hey, that’s business, and these guys really know their industry—but that doesn’t mean liberals and leftists have to accept that fate. Not yet, anyway.
If Republicans maintain control of the Senate, the composition of the executive branch will be vitally important; executive power and agency rulemaking—rather than legislation—may be the easiest path to change. On Wednesday, the Sunrise Movement and Justice Democrats called on Biden to “seize the climate mandate” he received from American voters, create a White House Office of Climate Mobilization (one of the recommendations made by the policy task forces Biden put together this summer, with help from Bernie Sanders and others on the left), and appoint liberals to key leadership posts, including Elizabeth Warren to Treasury, Keith Ellison to attorney general, and Barbara Lee to secretary of state.
But getting left-leaning nominees confirmed by a chamber controlled by McConnell will not be easy. Biden clearly hopes that his long-standing relationship with McConnell will enable him to forge productive compromises with the notoriously obstructionist Kentucky senator. But even some moderate Democrats see the folly in that thinking. “McConnell will force Joe Biden to negotiate every single Cabinet secretary, every single district court judge, every single U.S. attorney with him,” Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy told Politico two days after the election. “My guess is we’ll have a constitutional crisis pretty immediately.”


The Littlest Prince

Donald Trump ’ s life , in and out of politics , has unfolded as a series of endless dreary compromises forced upon other people .
This has mostly worked out for him , at least insofar as he has been permitted to indulge in whatever stupid , grasping , childish cruelty he desires because it would have been much more annoying and difficult to forbid it .
There is not , and has never been , anything in the man that suggested he was qualified for any position of responsibility , but neither he nor anyone else has ever @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the most powerful office on Earth , where he sits every day scowling into his television .
It is hard to imagine any president whose life has changed less for having assumed the responsibilities of the office .
The rest of us can not say the same .
The whole country is trapped in Trump ’ s gilded and claustrophobic life ; the days repeat themselves , failures arriving first as tragedy , then as farce , and finally as some tonally confounding simultaneous expression of both .
Trump is who and how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ privilege and because of American culture ’ s reflexive deference toward men born into it .
This consideration for wealth has not just coddled but cultivated his every poisonous whim .
In that sense , his ham-handed flirtations with authoritarianism—the attempt to delegitimize the very idea of elections before and after the fact , the strange and worrying postelection installation of loyalists atop the Department of Defense , the refusal to go along with or even acknowledge the presidential transition process—are simply the result of him being afforded one more scoop of ice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time ?
No one seriously thinks the results will change , ” a “ senior Republican official ” told The Washington Post in the days after Trump refused to concede the election .
“ It ’ s not like he ’ s plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20 .
He ’ s tweeting about filing some lawsuits , those lawsuits will fail , then he ’ ll tweet some more about how the election was stolen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” The tension between Trump ’ s grandiose threats and signature soggy inertia has made for some uneasy days , and is in its way a fitting end to his presidency .
The relationship between Trump and the outrage industry that sustains him has finally and devastatingly slipped out of sync , and as a result the man has found himself too upset and too adrift to ascertain what he was even upset about in the first place .
Trump has surely done his part to hurry along the ongoing degeneration of American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t begin with him so much as it more fully and floridly realized itself through the example he set .
In a nation that was already forgetting how to read , Trump oversaw a wild and willful regression in which the sorts of skills that toddlers develop have been unlearned in real time , in public , on a massive scale .
These have inarguably and disastrously been terrible years for the national conceptions of object permanence and basic causality .
After Trump ’ s bleary and futile last thrash , we can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ capacity to calm down on its own after awakening in the night from unpleasant dreams—to that list .
But while Trump is symptomatic of some other , bigger issues , his towering personal smallness is a problem , too .
Even before Trump ’ s unconscionable and incompetent response to the pandemic stymied so much of public life , American politics had begun not just to reflect Trump ’ s own personal obsessions and shortcomings but to actively resemble them .
That ambient mirroring is familiar—think of the fatuous boomer triumphalism of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s blithe swaggering sadism , or Obama ’ s coolly virtuosic nihilism .
Trump ’ s overwhelming coarseness and avarice are shot through American politics , which now plays out as a series of taunts and muggings .
That ’ s his legacy , but it ’ s not what he wants .
The unreasoning battle that Trump is fighting , down to the last moment , is the one he has been fighting all his life—not to lead or rule but to displace whatever is not him with his own sour @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , if only to keep it from anyone else .
At the end , as at the beginning , it is either him or us .

This is Trump going out exactly as he governed—by telling someone whose name he’d soon forget to fix a problem he didn’t care enough about to understand, and then watching television to see how well he was doing. It’s axiomatic that the man doesn’t really understand what he’s mad about; Trump never really knows anything about anything. As wildly irresponsible as his behavior has been since the election, and as queasy as it is to watch him flail and fume and feint his way through what is either an exceptionally oafish attempted coup or the single most tasteless fundraising gambit in the history of American politics, the spectacle has mostly just been confounding. All these endlessly bruited breakthroughs-to-come and all that clock-killing bluster collapses at some point into a defiant and incoherent sheet of noise. Nothing about Trump ever improves or even changes; the end was always going to be a parodic reprise of the beginning.
Donald Trump’s life, in and out of politics, has unfolded as a series of endless dreary compromises forced upon other people. This has mostly worked out for him, at least insofar as he has been permitted to indulge in whatever stupid, grasping, childish cruelty he desires because it would have been much more annoying and difficult to forbid it. There is not, and has never been, anything in the man that suggested he was qualified for any position of responsibility, but neither he nor anyone else has ever let that prevent him from rising to the most powerful office on Earth, where he sits every day scowling into his television. It is hard to imagine any president whose life has changed less for having assumed the responsibilities of the office. The rest of us cannot say the same. The whole country is trapped in Trump’s gilded and claustrophobic life; the days repeat themselves, failures arriving first as tragedy, then as farce, and finally as some tonally confounding simultaneous expression of both.
Trump’s coarseness and avarice are shot through American politics, which now plays out as a series of taunts and muggings.
Trump is who and how he is both because of his financial privilege and because of American culture’s reflexive deference toward men born into it. This consideration for wealth has not just coddled but cultivated his every poisonous whim. In that sense, his ham-handed flirtations with authoritarianism—the attempt to delegitimize the very idea of elections before and after the fact, the strange and worrying postelection installation of loyalists atop the Department of Defense, the refusal to go along with or even acknowledge the presidential transition process—are simply the result of him being afforded one more scoop of ice cream just before bedtime. “What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change,” a “senior Republican official” told The Washington Post in the days after Trump refused to concede the election. “It’s not like he’s plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20. He’s tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he’ll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he’ll leave.”


newrepublic--2020-11-17--The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Put Japan’s Climate Policy in a Decade-Long Purgatory

The Fukushima Daiichi meltdown in Okuma , Japan , on March 11 , 2011 , was one of the worst nuclear disasters in history .
Some of the impacts can be easily quantified : 150,000 people were evacuated due to the threat of radioactivity , a forced migration that resulted in some 2,600 deaths ; a full cleanup could take $ 70 billion and more than 40 years ; 100 cubic meters of groundwater become contaminated at Fukushima every day ; according to Greenpeace , radiation levels near reopened areas reach 30 times the recommended exposure levels .
Other forms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stigma on the region and the psychological and mental health strain on evacuees , don ’ t show up in statistics .
But one of the most dramatic consequences of the disaster was that it overturned Japan ’ s energy policy—as well as the country ’ s prospects of swiftly countering climate change .
Pre-Fukushima , nuclear power represented the largest portion of Japan ’ s power-generation mix , at nearly 30 percent .
The government had planned to increase that share to 41 percent by 2017 and 50 percent by 2030 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ carbon emissions .
After 3/11 , as the disaster is commonly known , the nation instantly shut down 20 percent of its nuclear capacity , and by May 2012 , Japan was generating no nuclear power .
Fears of a repeat of Fukushima run so deep that today the country has only a single reactor in use .
And though nuclear power is controversial among environmentalists in Japan and around the world , what has replaced it is the dirtiest forms of energy generation .
Over the past decade , use of fossil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and now fossil fuels make up a larger proportion of Japan ’ s energy mix than they did in 2010 .
“ Three-eleven resulted in sidelining nuclear and a massive increase in fossil fuel use , ” said Andrew DeWit , a professor in the School of Economic Policy Studies at Rikkyo University .
“ It also derailed the plan to use nuclear to decarbonize and increase energy security .
”

The Fukushima Daiichi meltdown in Okuma, Japan, on March 11, 2011, was one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. Some of the impacts can be easily quantified: 150,000 people were evacuated due to the threat of radioactivity, a forced migration that resulted in some 2,600 deaths; a full cleanup could take $70 billion and more than 40 years; 100 cubic meters of groundwater become contaminated at Fukushima every day; according to Greenpeace, radiation levels near reopened areas reach 30 times the recommended exposure levels. Other forms of damage, such as the long-lasting stigma on the region and the psychological and mental health strain on evacuees, don’t show up in statistics.
But one of the most dramatic consequences of the disaster was that it overturned Japan’s energy policy—as well as the country’s prospects of swiftly countering climate change. Pre-Fukushima, nuclear power represented the largest portion of Japan’s power-generation mix, at nearly 30 percent. The government had planned to increase that share to 41 percent by 2017 and 50 percent by 2030, as part of a strategy to reduce carbon emissions. After 3/11, as the disaster is commonly known, the nation instantly shut down 20 percent of its nuclear capacity, and by May 2012, Japan was generating no nuclear power. Fears of a repeat of Fukushima run so deep that today the country has only a single reactor in use. And though nuclear power is controversial among environmentalists in Japan and around the world, what has replaced it is the dirtiest forms of energy generation. Over the past decade, use of fossil fuels, particularly coal, has leaped, and now fossil fuels make up a larger proportion of Japan’s energy mix than they did in 2010.


newrepublic--2020-11-17--The Supreme Court Versus the Coronavirus

Among the major issues that the Supreme Court could weigh in on over the next few months is the coronavirus pandemic , which has killed nearly a quarter-million Americans since March and now rages uncontrolled throughout most of the country .
Last week , the Roman Catholic Church ’ s Brooklyn diocese asked the justices to block new restrictions issued by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in what could be a key first test of how Justice Amy Coney Barrett will handle these cases .
Beyond that , the court ’ s decision could color future efforts to contain the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ term and the extent to which the state can respond to future public health emergencies thereafter .
The lawsuit , Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn , New York v. Cuomo , challenges Cuomo ’ s heightened restrictions on churches , synagogues , mosques , and the like as the second wave sweeps through American communities .
In the state of New York , houses of worship are limited to 10 to 25 people at any time , depending on whether they fall into a “ red zone ” or an “ orange zone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that those strict limits run afoul of the Constitution ’ s Free Exercise Clause , which limits the government ’ s ability to restrict religious practices .
A three-judge panel in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the diocese and other religious groups last month , instead siding with public health officials ’ broad powers to fight pandemics .
“ The Court fully understands the impact the executive order has had on houses of worship throughout the affected zones , ” the panel concluded .
“ Nevertheless , the Appellants can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ obtain an injunction pending appeal .
The challenged executive order establishes zones based on the severity of the COVID-19 outbreaks in different parts of New York .
Within each zone , the order subjects religious services to restrictions that are similar to or , indeed , less severe than those imposed on comparable secular gatherings .
”

At the same time, New York’s broad decree swept up religious communities that had faithfully followed public health officials’ instructions all along. In its brief for the court, the diocese noted that it had closed its doors during the first wave earlier this year before the state issued a sweeping order. “Thousands of the Diocese’s parishioners in Brooklyn and Queens will continue to be deprived of their core Free Exercise [Clause] rights on a daily basis until the matter is resolved in the lower courts—even though it is undisputed that the Diocese has complied with all prior public health regulations and operated safely without any COVID-19 spread since being permitted to reopen several months ago,” the diocese told the court.
New York will file its reply brief later this week; the Supreme Court could act any time after that. So far, the Supreme Court has turned down requests to block public health officials’ efforts to fight the pandemic. All of the cases that reached the court so far came through the court’s “shadow docket,” where it decides emergency motions and other consequential matters without oral arguments or full briefings. The closest that the justices came so far to issuing a comprehensive opinion on Covid-19 disputes was in South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, a case in May in which a local California church unsuccessfully fought restrictions issued by California Governor Gavin Newsom.
In that case, the court did not release a majority opinion that laid out its reasoning. But Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a brief concurring opinion with the majority’s decision that outlined his own thinking on the matter. “Although California’s guidelines place restrictions on places of worship, those restrictions appear consistent with the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment,” he wrote. “Similar or more severe restrictions apply to comparable secular gatherings, including lectures, concerts, movie showings, spectator sports, and theatrical performances, where large groups of people gather in close proximity for extended periods of time. And the order exempts or treats more leniently only dissimilar activities, such as operating grocery stores, banks, and laundromats, in which people neither congregate in large groups nor remain in close proximity for extended periods.”


newrepublic--2020-11-17--Kristi Noem’s War on Tribal Sovereignty Is Going to Get People Killed

South Dakota currently ranks second in the nation for Covid-19 cases , and first in hospitalizations .
On Saturday , the state reported its highest daily death total of the year .
Yet , as of writing , Republican Governor Kristi Noem has refused to take action in response to the uncontrolled spread in her state , rejecting measures as simple and effective as a mask mandate .
She described her decision to dig in on mass death as a matter of good manners and mutual respect .
“ If folks want to wear a mask , they are free @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the end of October .
“ Those who don ’ t want to wear a mask shouldn ’ t be shamed into it , and govt should not mandate it .
We need to respect each other ’ s decisions .
In SD , we know a little common courtesy can go a long way.
” Around the same time , the Indian Health Service ’ s Great Plains area , consisting of the Dakotas , Nebraska , and Iowa , posted its highest-yet increase in Covid-19 cases .
Unsurprisingly , while @ @ @ @ @ @ @ death toll , tribal governments and community leaders have taken matters into their own hands , enforcing checkpoints and lockdowns of their own .
This isn ’ t a power grab by tribes : It ’ s an act of survival .
“ The nearest health facility is a three-hour drive in Rapid City , for critical care .
And our health facility is basically just—we only have eight beds , ” Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Chairman Harold Frazier told NPR in May .
“ There ’ s only one respiratory therapist .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ about over 10,000 residents here that live on the reservation .
So if we were to have a massive outbreak , where are they going to go ?
” But as the tribes have moved to shield themselves against the irresponsibility of state and local governance , they have been met with outright hostility from leaders like Noem .
Hear that again—elected officials in South Dakota , operating out of a desire to make tribal communities effectively submissive to local and state governance , are working against their Native counterparts , who are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ middle of a pandemic .
There does not exist a descriptor that adequately captures the levels of cruelty and malice required to pursue such policies while South Dakotans die .
But , if pressed for one , “ fucking insane ” seems to do the trick .

For months, housing organizers across the country have been issuing warnings about how dangerous the pandemic winter will be for those without a steady housing situation. With Rapid City shelters operating at limited capacity and the pandemic forcing more people into poverty and situations of houselessness, the city has struggled to come up with the necessary solutions. Melanie Timm, the executive director of the Hope Center, which provides housing and accompanying services for the community, made as much clear when she spoke with KOTA TV, following the first snowfall in early September. “They just did not have the resources available to have a coat or long pants,” Timm said of the people that showed up at the Hope Center that week. “Their shoes and socks were soaking wet and very, very cold.”
Seeing a need in their community, Oglala Lakota organizers Hermus Bettelyoun and Lloyd Big Crow Sr., financed in part by the Native-led NDN Collective, turned what had started as a weekly food drive into Camp Mniluzahan, an encampment for Rapid City’s homeless Native population, outfitted with generators, a log-splitter, and a sweat lodge for those dealing with addiction or in need of spiritual healing. Camp Mniluzahan was initially located within Rapid City limits, near the fairgrounds. And like the CRST roadblocks, the camp was also immediately met with resistance, this time from the Rapid City government.
In late September, third-term Republican mayor and ex–police chief Steve Allender, making reference to the influx of homeless residents from the nearby Pine Ridge Reservation, told reporters, “The homeless that are here from out of town should go home immediately.” On the same night Camp Mniluzahan went up, Allender had police try to clear it out. The following morning, the mayor held a press conference in which he blew off a little steam. “I swear, every conversation about the homeless in the last month has been peppered with phrases like, ‘stolen land,’ and ‘treaty violations,’ and ‘getting land back,’” Allender said. He went on to accuse the organizers of wanting to “hold the government accountable for something that happened 150 years ago, or 500 years ago.”


newrepublic--2020-11-17--Charles Koch Got the Free-Market Dystopia He Wanted. Now He’d Like Your Approval.

Even the Kochs ’ interest in criminal justice reform , which emerged as one of their signature bipartisan “ unity ” causes over the last several years , has often been murky enough that advocates have worried that it could dovetail with their well-known affinity for privatization .
( One can imagine , perhaps , letting a few people out of prison only to shuffle them through “ reentry services ” owned by for-profit entities . )
And at the very least , Koch bipartisanship to date appears only to mean dedicating some money to researching prison reform while simultaneously @ @ @ @ @ @ @ run promotion for Trump ’ s 2017 tax cuts .
The Koch worldview , even as it may narrowly rebrand on some issues , is still the dystopian winner-take-all vision that has long animated its funding .
The problem , then , isn ’ t simply which horses a newly contrite Charles Koch chooses to back , but the extent to which his extreme wealth and his commitment to a system that enshrines the power of the rich has shaped the entire racetrack .
Without serious campaign finance reform to mitigate the kind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wield disproportionate influence over elections , all of Koch ’ s recent talk of “ unity ” is a mirage , at best .
And rather predictably , his nonpartisan interests don ’ t appear to include removing money from politics ; when The Wall Street Journal asked him about it , he simply said , “ Instead of limiting certain people ’ s ability to engage , we should do all we can to empower more people to get engaged.
” ( How convenient that political engagement post–Citizens United works out mostly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now regrets aligning himself almost exclusively with Republicans , it ’ s also the case that the Koch-funded group Americans for Prosperity helped tip the scales for Trump in a handful of swing states as recently as 2016 .
What ’ s to say he won ’ t change his mind again about his political priorities in another four years ?
Over the weekend , when asked on MSNBC about Koch ’ s recent pledge of unity , Bernie Sanders—depressingly still one of the few national politicians who ’ s consistently rejected big @ @ @ @ @ @ @ support for Citizens United and to direct his riches toward supporting economic , environmental , and social justice initiatives .
“ That ’ s an important way that he can undo the very serious damage that he did to this country , ” Sanders said .
I agree but would add that the simplest solution for Koch ’ s obscene wealth—and one that ’ s still antithetical to his very project , no matter what other political interests he ’ s picked up along the way—is probably a government that will relieve him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I don ’ t think that ’ s part of the rebrand .

Even the Kochs’ interest in criminal justice reform, which emerged as one of their signature bipartisan “unity” causes over the last several years, has often been murky enough that advocates have worried that it could dovetail with their well-known affinity for privatization. (One can imagine, perhaps, letting a few people out of prison only to shuffle them through “reentry services” owned by for-profit entities.) And at the very least, Koch bipartisanship to date appears only to mean dedicating some money to researching prison reform while simultaneously spending $40 million to back and run promotion for Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. The Koch worldview, even as it may narrowly rebrand on some issues, is still the dystopian winner-take-all vision that has long animated its funding.
The problem, then, isn’t simply which horses a newly contrite Charles Koch chooses to back, but the extent to which his extreme wealth and his commitment to a system that enshrines the power of the rich has shaped the entire racetrack. Without serious campaign finance reform to mitigate the kind of political inequality that allows him to wield disproportionate influence over elections, all of Koch’s recent talk of “unity” is a mirage, at best. And rather predictably, his nonpartisan interests don’t appear to include removing money from politics; when The Wall Street Journal asked him about it, he simply said, “Instead of limiting certain people’s ability to engage, we should do all we can to empower more people to get engaged.” (How convenient that political engagement post–Citizens United works out mostly for the rich.) If Koch now regrets aligning himself almost exclusively with Republicans, it’s also the case that the Koch-funded group Americans for Prosperity helped tip the scales for Trump in a handful of swing states as recently as 2016. What’s to say he won’t change his mind again about his political priorities in another four years?
Over the weekend, when asked on MSNBC about Koch’s recent pledge of unity, Bernie Sanders—depressingly still one of the few national politicians who’s consistently rejected big money—called for Koch both to rescind his support for Citizens United and to direct his riches toward supporting economic, environmental, and social justice initiatives. “That’s an important way that he can undo the very serious damage that he did to this country,” Sanders said. I agree but would add that the simplest solution for Koch’s obscene wealth—and one that’s still antithetical to his very project, no matter what other political interests he’s picked up along the way—is probably a government that will relieve him of some of it. Somehow, I don’t think that’s part of the rebrand.


newrepublic--2020-11-17--Scott Atlas, Star Disciple in Trump’s Covid Death Cult

On Sunday , as Covid-19 cases in Michigan surged , Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced a new set of temporary restrictions on certain indoor gatherings and activities .
The three-week pandemic order will shutter bowling alleys and movie theaters while leaving childcare facilities and in-person learning for preschool through eighth grade open .
In response , White House coronavirus task force adviser Dr. Scott Atlas—who , it should be noted , specializes in radiology , not virology—tweeted , “ The only way this stops is if people rise up .
You get what you accept.
” Coincidentally , it was just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ series of charges against members of a right-wing militia who , according to the criminal complaint , plotted to kidnap Whitmer for issuing a separate pandemic order over the summer .
“ I don ’ t know , boys , we got ta do something , ” one said on a Facebook livestream in response to gym closures .
A funny thing , right ?
Atlas initially breezed past reporters asking for comment before sitting down with Fox News to apologize—not for the clear implications of his post but for the fact that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on to explain , not very good at Twitter .
“ What I meant , and I ’ m sorry I ’ m not very articulate on Twitter , is that basically if you want to change things you have to have your voices heard , ” he said .
“ I didn ’ t mean anything more than that .
”

Atlas works on two levels as a blunt political instrument, though both are fundamentally about inciting Trump’s base: Some of the men arrested in the Michigan plot in October were discovered to have been among the hundreds who attended rallies at the state capitol in March, following executive action undertaken by Whitmer to help stop the further spread of the virus. People armed with assault rifles flooded the building and its front steps. You might even call what they did rising up.
In an interview with Nightline last month, Whitmer said that her experience this summer “kind of tells you how the rhetoric really can have horrible, disastrous, dangerous consequences for others,” and went on to cite Trump’s refusal to crack down on his white supremacist supporters as creating a void that has “made safe harbor for people that are engaged in these activities.” In his Fox News interview, Atlas said that he did not mean to “threaten or incite violence.”
But it’s not just about incitements to direct violence. Atlas is also there to facilitate the slow, deadly violence of a failed pandemic response. Described by The Washington Post as “Trump’s favored pandemic adviser,” Atlas, who was appointed in August, has spent his time in that role campaigning for a herd immunity approach and pushing for schools, restaurants, and other businesses to be allowed to fully reopen. He believes that young, ostensibly healthy people “don’t have a problem with the disease.” These aren’t just ideas being drunkenly cranked out by random fools looking for their Parler dopamine hit at 2 a.m. Atlas has been encouraging public officials for months to limit testing only to people showing symptoms—he even went on a tour with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in late August to spread that message to local leaders in the state. CNN reported that Florida’s testing efforts were halved between mid-July and early September as a result.


newrepublic--2020-11-17--Banal Smartphone Apps Are the New Surveillance State

Factual ’ s transformation is indicative of the gold rush in the location data industry .
In April , it , originally an app for documenting one ’ s own social life and connecting IRL with friends ( particularly at bars , restaurants , concerts , and the like ) .
Today , Foursquare is less a social network than one of the kings of the location data industry , devouring huge amounts of location data and packaging and selling it to partners .
As of last year , Foursquare was collecting data from in the United States each month @ @ @ @ @ @ @ everyday apps , from AccuWeather to Uber to WeChat .
Factual ’ s own code in apps made by Apple , Facebook , and Microsoft .
On a mass scale , this data can offer insights about whole populations , but on an individual level , it can reveal sensitive personal information : doctor ’ s visits , Alcoholics Anonymous meetings , even the .
These kinds of data streams hold great interest for law enforcement and government agencies , both in the U.S. and abroad .
Thanks to a series of important @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Vice—we know that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement , Customs and Border Protection , and other agencies have been buying up large amounts of location data from app-makers , data brokers , and various third parties enmeshed in a complicated array of partnerships , information sharing , and code-swapping .
The opacity extends to app-makers themselves : As Vice noted , some app-makers don ’ t even know where their data finally ends up ; they simply are paid to include third-party tracking code in their apps .
Others decide not to disclose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ go .
And then there are companies like Factual , which because of California privacy laws , states on that its customers include “ government , law enforcement , or regulatory bodies.
” That ’ s as much detail as the company offers .
( After this article ’ s publication , Foursquare spokesperson Emily Malcynsky said in an email that when it comes to government clients , “ We have worked with that general category on advertising campaigns ( e.g .
helping deliver ‘ Go Army ’ ads to devices that previously @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have not and do not plan to sell location data as described in your article.
” ) *

Factual’s transformation is indicative of the gold rush in the location data industry. In April, it merged with Foursquare , originally an app for documenting one’s own social life and connecting IRL with friends (particularly at bars, restaurants, concerts, and the like). Today, Foursquare is less a social network than one of the kings of the location data industry, devouring huge amounts of location data and packaging and selling it to partners. As of last year, Foursquare was collecting data from 100 million devices in the United States each month. Its code is included in numerous everyday apps, from AccuWeather to Uber to WeChat. Factual’s own code can be found in apps made by Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft.
On a mass scale, this data can offer insights about whole populations, but on an individual level, it can reveal sensitive personal information: doctor’s visits, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, even the movements of Secret Service agents . These kinds of data streams hold great interest for law enforcement and government agencies, both in the U.S. and abroad. Thanks to a series of important reports—in BuzzFeed , The Wall Street Journal , The New York Times , Protocol , and now Vice—we know that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and other agencies have been buying up large amounts of location data from app-makers, data brokers, and various third parties enmeshed in a complicated array of partnerships, information sharing, and code-swapping.


newrepublic--2020-11-17--Barack Obama, Media Critic

Barack Obama, Media Critic

We know that this is a difficult time for journalism .
Even as appetites for news and information grow , newsrooms are closing .
Despite the big stories of our era , serious journalists find themselves all too often without a beat .
Just as the news cycle has shrunk , so has the bottom line .
And too often , we fill that void with instant commentary and celebrity gossip and the softer stories that Walter disdained , rather than the hard news and investigative journalism he championed .
“ What happened today ?
” is replaced with “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ debate cheapens .
The public trust falters .
We fail to understand our world or one another as well as we should—and that has real consequences in our own lives and in the life of our nation .
We seem stuck with a choice between what cuts to our bottom line and what harms us as a society .
Which price is higher to pay ?
Which cost is harder to bear ?
Obama ’ s philosophy on the media is not hard to discern : Gatekeepers are good and serve as democratic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see why he ’ s a fan of The Atlantic , whose philosophy hews closely to his own .
The internet , in this formulation , is a Pandora ’ s box , introducing demons of partisanship and conflict that have deeply eroded public trust in democratic institutions .
( His criticism of HuffPost , in which he chides the outlet for not acting more like those on the right , feels more like sour grapes . )
Obama ’ s own vague fixes for this problem—he told 60 Minutes ’ Scott Pelley @ @ @ @ @ @ @ standards that ensure we can separate truth from fiction ” —reflect the vagueness of his criticisms .
It ’ s a classic Obama appeal to our better angels , but it ’ s also rooted in distrust for a new media environment that , while boisterous , has served to introduce voices that were previously silenced by traditional gatekeepers .
It ’ s also a reminder that the Obama administration was hardly a friend of the press .
Public records requests were rejected at a record clip .
The press was , by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s length , while the president embarked on more P.R.-friendly interviews .
Most disturbingly , his administration aggressively hunted leakers and used the Espionage Act against them—paving the way for Donald Trump ’ s own crackdowns—and got a federal appeals court to severely limit reporters ’ privileges when dealing with government sources .
As Columbia Journalism Review ’ s Jon Allsop wrote , “ Obama did not , as president , meaningfully crack down on the Big Tech firms whose platforms he now perceives as a danger to democracy ; on the whole @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” These platforms , moreover , have a virtual monopoly on online advertising , which has gutted the journalism industry at nearly every level .

We know that this is a difficult time for journalism. Even as appetites for news and information grow, newsrooms are closing. Despite the big stories of our era, serious journalists find themselves all too often without a beat. Just as the news cycle has shrunk, so has the bottom line. And too often, we fill that void with instant commentary and celebrity gossip and the softer stories that Walter disdained, rather than the hard news and investigative journalism he championed. “What happened today?” is replaced with “Who won today?” The public debate cheapens. The public trust falters. We fail to understand our world or one another as well as we should—and that has real consequences in our own lives and in the life of our nation. We seem stuck with a choice between what cuts to our bottom line and what harms us as a society. Which price is higher to pay? Which cost is harder to bear?
Obama’s philosophy on the media is not hard to discern: Gatekeepers are good and serve as democratic stewards. It’s easy to see why he’s a fan of The Atlantic, whose philosophy hews closely to his own. The internet, in this formulation, is a Pandora’s box, introducing demons of partisanship and conflict that have deeply eroded public trust in democratic institutions. (His criticism of HuffPost, in which he chides the outlet for not acting more like those on the right, feels more like sour grapes.) Obama’s own vague fixes for this problem—he told 60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley that we need to “bolster the standards that ensure we can separate truth from fiction”—reflect the vagueness of his criticisms. It’s a classic Obama appeal to our better angels, but it’s also rooted in distrust for a new media environment that, while boisterous, has served to introduce voices that were previously silenced by traditional gatekeepers.
It’s also a reminder that the Obama administration was hardly a friend of the press. Public records requests were rejected at a record clip. The press was, by and large, kept at arm’s length, while the president embarked on more P.R.-friendly interviews. Most disturbingly, his administration aggressively hunted leakers and used the Espionage Act against them—paving the way for Donald Trump’s own crackdowns—and got a federal appeals court to severely limit reporters’ privileges when dealing with government sources.
As Columbia Journalism Review’s Jon Allsop wrote, “Obama did not, as president, meaningfully crack down on the Big Tech firms whose platforms he now perceives as a danger to democracy; on the whole, his administration was friendly toward them.” These platforms, moreover, have a virtual monopoly on online advertising, which has gutted the journalism industry at nearly every level.


newrepublic--2020-11-18--When the Protagonist Is a Literal Man-Eater

The rendered fat of dead animals may seem like an unlikely aphrodisiac , but the scent adheres to a certain erotic memory for Dorothy Daniels , the narrator of Chelsea G. Summers ’ s new novel , A Certain Hunger .
The book takes the form of an extended monologue about her life of violent crime , as she serves life in prison .
When she was a teenager in 1980s Connecticut , Dorothy seduced a fry cook in the front seat of his Impala , having seen him flip burgers and feeling the need to “ to lose [ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stink of his skin , ” as a “ miasma of beef tallow , dirty corn oil , and unwashed man surrounded us.
” It ’ s a fragrant image , and characteristic of Dorothy , a wry and remorseless raconteur who takes her license to kill from her appreciation for the beauty of it all .
A self-described psychopath , Dorothy makes up for what she lacks in conscience with a talent for exulting in the tastes , smells , and lovers that come her way .
As the 1980s give way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fry cooks in low-slung Levi ’ s , moves to New York City , gets a job as a food critic at a glossy magazine , and somehow or other starts killing and eating men .
Adding to the charmingly improbable notion of a sexy professional journalist turning her boyfriends ’ corpses into gourmet meals for one , Summers studs Dorothy ’ s recollections with scenes of Manhattan indulgence a critic can only dream about today .
She lands the food critic job , for example , after shouting at a rich man @ @ @ @ @ @ @ + C Music Factory and a sea of upended vodka shots ” that “ the braised Malpeque in lemongrass crème tasted like a fifteen-year-old boy ’ s fantasy of cunnilingus.
” I wasn ’ t in New York in the 1990s , but this seems to be the way people used to get jobs as writers : being witty within earshot of someone rich .

Though Dorothy keeps her composure ironclad throughout the book, she is human, and her possible motives become clearer as the book goes on. In particular, she purports to be unmoved by the death of her mother, but it’s not long later that she starts wielding blades. Or is the sexual assault Dorothy describes experiencing in Italy as a student the precipitating factor in her homicidal streak? Instead of answers, Dorothy gives us sense-images: “A simple plate of cut tomatoes oozing their sun-warmed guts, drizzled with oil, and sprinkled with flaky diamond-white salt.” Tomato, lover, sentence: all equal sources of pleasure for our hedonist narrator, and all equally effective rebukes to boring questions.
The book’s jacket copy calls Dorothy Daniels “the epicurean lovechild of Elizabeth Báthory and the vampire Lestat, if they were fluent in New York media,” but I much prefer the elevator pitch she mentioned in a blog post once: “Eat, Pray, Love meets American Psycho.” She has plenty to say about women psychopaths like Báthory (her theory is that they exist as abundantly as the men only hide it better), but as a narrator, Dorothy does have more in common with murderer-narrators like Patrick Bateman, Tom Ripley, or Jean-Baptist Grenouille from Patrick Süskind’s influential novel Perfume.
This last is also the story of a lone-wolf killer gifted with an extraordinary sensory palate, which eggs him on to violent frenzy. In the eighteenth-century Paris of his birth, Grenouille basks in the disgusting intensity of the city’s smells the way that Summers recalls the smell of a decades-ago fry cook: “The heat lay leaden upon the graveyard, squeezing its putrefying vapor,” Süskind writes, “a blend of rotting melon and the fetid odor of burnt animal horn, out into the nearby alleys.” Dorothy also experiences flavor with this level of detail, and in both books the collective weight of sensory images slowly creates something like an ethic of murder, posing violence as a creative act with an inevitable relationship to other forms of art—murder as a tribute to beauty.


newrepublic--2020-11-18--The Unpardonable Sins of Lindsey Graham

The Unpardonable Sins of Lindsey Graham

Some Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill still aren ’ t quite willing to admit what was already obvious : President-elect Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election .
“ You ’ re going to play gotcha questions with me ?
” Colorado Senator Cory Gardner told reporters when asked if he thought Biden was the president-elect .
“ You guys , just come on .
I ’ m not going to play your gotcha questions .
I ’ m not going to play your games .
I ’ m tired of it.
” But a growing number of top Republicans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Politico noted this week that even as GOP senators accept President Donald Trump ’ s irregular legal warfare against the result , they acknowledge that it will likely fail to prevent Biden from securing a victory in the Electoral College .
Texas Senator John Cornyn said the next president “ will probably be Joe Biden.
” Florida Senator Marco Rubio , with either wry understatement or supine meekness , said a Biden victory was “ the highest likelihood at this point ” from the “ preliminary results.
” And then there ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ previously noted , the senior senator from South Carolina is remarkably honest about what drives his zealous personal support for Trump : an unquenchable thirst to be close to power , no matter what form it takes .
“ I have never been called this much by a president in my life , ” he once told The New York Times ’ Mark Leibovich with what the éminence grise of Beltway profilers described as “ a mixture of amazement and amusement , with perhaps a dash of awe.
” Now that hunger appears @ @ @ @ @ @ @ side of American democracy .

The reaction to Graham’s alleged comments came quickly from colleagues in Congress. “If all he’s trying to do is get information, people are entitled to do that,” Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse told reporters on Tuesday. “If he’s trying to influence the way they perform their duty, that becomes a bit problematic.” Graham suggested that he was merely trying to obtain information in exchanges with reporters on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, but Raffensperger said he drew a different conclusion. “It’s just an implication that, ‘Look hard and see how many ballots you can throw out,’” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer when asked about Graham’s denials.
Graham wouldn’t be the only one in Trumpworld looking for ways to throw out enough votes to tilt the election in Trump’s favor. Rudy Giuliani spent most of Tuesday in a court hearing in Pennsylvania, where he asked a federal judge to throw out hundreds of thousands of absentee votes in Democratic strongholds based on unproven and histrionic claims of mass voter fraud. Giuliani’s slapdash effort is unlikely to succeed for multiple reasons, up to and including his inability to understand basic election law.
At one point, he even appeared ignorant of strict scrutiny, a basic and fundamental concept for a practicing lawyer to know when arguing a case on Fourteenth Amendment grounds. Imagine if you were lying in an operating room, about to go under general anesthesia, and heard your surgeon ask, “Hey, what are all these knives for?” Now you are in the general orbit of whatever planet on which the former New York mayor happens to be residing.


newrepublic--2020-11-18--An FDR-Size Executive Order for Biden

An FDR-Size Executive Order for Biden

During his run for office , President-elect Joe Biden let out that he was aspiring to have an “ FDR-size presidency.
” But now that the dust has settled on the election , the Democrats ’ failure to retake the Senate has taken a considerable amount of wind from those sails .
Nevertheless , a nation rocked by the economic ravages of the coronavirus pandemic can ’ t wait for more elections .
Biden will have to make the best of what ’ s at hand .
The good news is that those hands are far from empty .
Even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at least one executive order that could do more to transform the country than single-payer health care or the Green New Deal—indeed , an order that could help pave the way toward those goals .
Biden could require as a condition in every federal contract that every supplier of a good or service have a collective bargaining agreement—unless there is no such supplier that can perform that contract at a reasonable cost or comparable quality .
Such an executive order would do more to revive the labor movement than many a federal law—and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s permission .
Even if the order is drafted as a nudge , instead of an iron-clad requirement , it would be one sizable nudge .
In fiscal year 2018 , the federal government spent more than $ 550 billion annually on these contracts—about $ 195.8 billion by civilian agencies and $ 358.3 billion by the Department of Defense .
That amount climbs every year—and Biden is proposing to spend another $ 2 trillion over four years for a clean-energy infrastructure .

The Clinton administration defended the suit primarily on the argument that the Chamber of Commerce had no right to sue the president himself, either under the Administrative Procedure Act or otherwise. That is to say, its argument was simply that the federal court had no jurisdiction. There was little attempt to claim the order would promote efficiency or cost savings for the purpose of the Procurement Act. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that in issuing the executive order to deny a right under labor law to fire strikers, the president was acting not in a “proprietary” capacity but in a “regulatory” capacity. That is, the president was not acting in the role of a customer, to achieve any cost saving or benefit to the government itself. In addition, the Clinton order was in conflict or at least “in tension” with the National Labor Relations Act, or NLRA, itself, which had been found to have an implied right to fire strikers.
In other words, there are two reasons the Clinton order went down: There was no cost saving or benefit to the federal government, or “nexus” to cost or efficiency, and it was in conflict with the NLRA by taking away a “right” to fire striking workers. In that respect, the Court held that the order was at odds with the purpose of the NLRA, and that such an order could not “alter the delicate balance of bargaining and economic power that the NLRA establishes.”
Still, the Court of Appeals in Reich said that it would be “deferential” to any claim of a “nexus” between a condition in an executive order like this and a legitimate objective under the Procurement Act, be it “efficiency” or “cost saving.”


newrepublic--2020-11-18--Fantasizing About Joe Biden’s Cabinet

Fantasizing About Joe Biden’s Cabinet

Who should President-elect Biden ask to join his Cabinet ?
Everyone has an opinion , and most of the opinions @ @ @ @ @ 20 of The Politics of Everything , hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene interpret our @ @ @ @ @ they say about us , and what do they say about Joe Biden ?
Jason @ @ @ @ @ at The New Republic , and Osita Nwanevu , a staff writer at the magazine @ @ @ @ @ Alex and Laura appoint their own fantasy Cabinet .

Who should President-elect Biden ask to join his Cabinet? Everyone has an opinion, and most of the opinions are terrible. On Episode 20 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene interpret our Cabinet dreams. What do they say about us, and what do they say about Joe Biden? Jason Linkins, a deputy editor at The New Republic, and Osita Nwanevu, a staff writer at the magazine, bravely join to help Alex and Laura appoint their own fantasy Cabinet.
Read a transcript of Episode 20.