newrepublic--2020-10-23--Has the Forest Service Been Making Wildfires Worse?

The Bear fire was one of the largest of the over 8,000 wildfires that have beset California this year .
Now incorporated into the still-burning North Complex Fire , the Bear started in the Plumas National Forest , sparked by a series of lightning strikes on August 17 across the northern Sierra Nevada .
It burned slowly at first , taking three weeks to grow to 12,000 acres .
Then , on September 9 , it transformed , traveling with such ferocity that it engulfed 183,000 acres in less than 24 hours , moving as fast as three miles an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Chad Hanson , a wildfire ecologist who has spent two decades studying fire in California , told me .
“ Most fires move at one-fiftieth that speed.
” Weather and climate—drought , high winds , heat waves with triple-digit temperatures—have exacerbated the Western wildfires .
But there ’ s also another factor that researchers and activists are calling for policymakers to recognize : commercial logging .
On September 9 , the Bear fire entered into an enormous tract of previously logged national forest and private commercial timberlands .
This , coupled with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lack of rain , set the stage for its monstrous expansion .
“ Logging , it turns out , makes fires bigger , hotter , and move faster , ” Hanson told me .
“ Almost all the major fires in forested ecosystems in California and Oregon are being intensified by logging.
” In 2015 , when Hanson approached the service to warn that logging would lead exactly to the explosion of a fire like the Bear , the agency ignored him .
The John Muir Project , a nonprofit Hanson co-founded in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to stop the agency ’ s so-called “ fuel-reduction ” logging program in California ’ s national forests , but the judge in the case deferred to the Forest Service—and the program continued unabated .
The Forest Service has long been a friend to the timber and paper products industries , as I documented in my 2019 book about public land management in the American West : For decades it has parroted the dubious claims of industry-funded scientists that intensified logging is needed to reduce the severity of wildfires .
Both Democratic and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decades—from Clinton to Bush to Obama to Trump—have bought into these claims .
Under Obama , the annual volume of trees felled in national forests was higher than in all the years during the George W. Bush administration but one .
In the year Obama took office , 2009 , the cut was about 1.9 billion board feet ( a billion board feet is roughly equivalent , depending on the ecosystem and the growth rate of trees , to one hundred thousand acres ) .
By the end of his administration , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ board feet , an increase of almost 30 percent—almost entirely justified with the misguided notion that logging can stop wildfire .
Donald Trump has followed in Obama ’ s footsteps , exploiting the public ’ s fear and confusion during wildfire season to call for still more logging of national forests .

Years of wildfire research, however, contradict the notion that logging helps suppress fire. As early as 2004, three researchers concluded in a paper for the Forest Service’s own symposium that “perhaps counter intuitively, heavy harvest can increase subsequent fire severity.” Chad Hanson was one of the lead authors of the most comprehensive study ever conducted on fire in the West, published in 2016 in the annals of the Ecological Society of America. Hanson and his colleagues found that wherever there is more logging with fewer environmental protections, there is higher fire intensity, as logging removes the mature, fire-resistant trees; reduces the shade of the forest canopy that otherwise keeps the floor cool and wet; opens the forest to more wind that drives fire; spreads flammable invasive grasses like cheatgrass; and leaves a combustible mosh of what’s called slash debris, piles of branches and treetops that act as kindling. The 2016 study—its findings reiterated and supported in a May 2020 letter from over two hundred scientists to Congress—elicited no response from the Forest Service.
Further evidence has come from abroad. In May, University of Queensland researchers argued in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution that logging probably exacerbated Australia’s disastrous bushfires in 2019 and early 2020. “There is no evidence whatsoever that forest thinning reduces the risk of wildfire,” Richard Hutto, a professor emeritus at the University of Montana who specializes in wildfire ecology, told me, summing up current research.
The logging industry and Forest Service have spread various “fire myths,” according to ecologist George Wuerther, who edited a 2006 book about fires and forest policy called The Wildfire Reader. While the most prominent of those myths is that big fires are the result of too much fuel, i.e., too much forest, others include that fire “sterilizes” the land and “destroys” wildlife, and that salvage logging after fire—essentially, removing the dead trees that remain—is necessary to “restore” forests.


newrepublic--2020-10-23--The Righteous Anger of Joe Biden

The Righteous Anger of Joe Biden

American political debates began in 1858 with Abraham Lincoln taking on Stephen Douglas over the future of slavery .
And 162 year later , in what will hopefully be the final debate of Donald Trump ’ s career , Lincoln again took center stage .
Trump , with the fact-free audacity that has characterized his entire career , claimed , “ Nobody has done more for the Black community than Donald Trump .
If you look , with the exception of Abraham Lincoln , possible exception , nobody has done what I ’ ve done.
” That boast had everything @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( “ Donald Trump ” ) to the hedge for Lincoln ( “ possible exception ” ) .
Joe Biden , who rarely used humor Thursday night , could not resist a mocking comment : “ Abraham Lincoln here is one of the most racist presidents we ’ ve had in modern history.
” The shorthand scoring for the debate is that Trump was on good behavior throughout much of it .
His performance may not have met the standard of traditional good behavior but it was far better than his bully-boy tactics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Trump epithets about “ Sleepy Joe , ” Biden was , for the most part , fine .
And with Biden ’ s double-digit lead in the many national polls , a fine performance was probably all he needed .
At this late stage , much of the remaining uncertainty about the election revolves around turnout .
There is some worry in the Biden camp about a decline in voter participation among young Black men , who are rightly cynical about politics and their future in the United States .
So the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of race was whether anything said would increase Black male turnout .

There are, of course, racist voters who will respond to such cues. But you would think that these MAGA-hat-wearing Americans are already voting for Trump. More relevant politically are the results of a CNN poll released in early September. It found that a majority of voters (51 percent) have a favorable impression of Black Lives Matter.
Biden’s strongest moment in the debate came when he allowed himself to show some righteous anger over the revelation that the Trump administration is unable to locate the parents of more than 500 children who were deliberately separated from their families at the border. After Trump claimed that these missing children were exploited by coyotes who brought them across the border, Biden exploded, “Their parents were with them. They got separated from their parents. And it makes us a laughingstock and violates every notion of who we are as a nation.”
It is so hard to avoid looking at a debate like this one through an entirely partisan lens. But it is possible to imagine an affluent suburban woman, tempted to vote for Trump because of the economy, who witnessed this moment and realized that she can’t support a president who rips children from the arms of their parents.


newrepublic--2020-10-23--The Working Class Goes Missing From Yet Another Debate

Earlier this month on the stump , Joe Biden tried some Bernie-style class war on for size .
“ If every investment banker in New York went on strike , nothing would much change in America , ” he said at a union hall event in Erie , Pennsylvania .
“ If every plumber decided to stop work , every electrician , the country comes to a halt.
” For a politician who ’ s happily rubbed elbows with that same investor class ( and once told them “ I need you very badly !
” ) there seemed to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ work .
But it was nevertheless a turn in the right direction for a Democratic Party that increasingly ignored its working-class wing for decades and was subsequently rebuked for that neglect four years ago .
As William J. Barber II and Liz Theoharis , the co-chairs of the Poor People ’ s Campaign , wrote on Wednesday , “ 63 million poor and low-income people are eligible voters , but many of their main concerns have not been addressed by either political party.
” The second and final presidential debate in Nashville was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to make a public appeal to working people—and particularly those struggling to stay afloat during a serious economic downturn—on a shared stage before the election .
Though whites without a college degree had helped carry Trump over the line in the Rust Belt in 2016 , this year , polling suggests that their support for the president has dropped precipitously , including by a staggering 20 points in Pennsylvania .
Biden , in other words , has a chance to woo back working class voters of all races to the Democrats .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ debate , the working class went largely unnoticed by the candidates yet again .
During the first presidential debate , issues like poverty ( currently on the rise ) and a second stimulus package ( all but guaranteed to die in the Republican-led Senate ) were swallowed by Trump ’ s unrestrained bellowing over Biden and moderator Chris Wallace .
In the second , despite the addition of a mute function on the candidates ’ microphones to keep Trump ’ s tantrums in check , the candidates offered only limited comments on unemployment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was a small window reserved in the debate for the candidates to discuss jobs and the economy ( designated “ American Families ” on the event ’ s official table of contents ) in which Biden criticized the president ’ s inability to wrest another stimulus bill from Congress , referred to health care as a right while pledging to institute a public option , and advocated a $ 15 minimum wage .
But most of the bread-and-butter talk quickly vanished in the froth over whose overseas business dealings were sleazier , how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whether Trump was the least—or , in fact , the most—racist person in the room .
There was no proposal to reinstate the weekly $ 600 unemployment insurance boost even though the unemployment rate remains around 8 percent , no mention of the still-spiking opioid deaths or the shortcomings of the Purdue Pharma settlement .
At one point , Trump lambasted Biden for invoking “ worried families sitting around the kitchen table ; ” the crassness of that particular sting was only somewhat lightened by that fact that Trump ’ s accusation—that Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ploy to change the subject from his son ’ s sundry controversies—appeared to be true .
Tonight ’ s proceedings were all the more dispiriting given that both candidates ’ appeals to the working class on the campaign trail this year have frequently been lifeless .
While Trump has famously dabbled in empty blue-collar pageantry—arranging photo ops on factory floors or in truck cabs , for instance—his administration has been an outright disaster for working people .
Biden occasionally flicked at the truth that working class fortunes have declined under Trump as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like , but he didn ’ t quite shed the skin of a fair-weather class warrior .
Prior to tonight , Biden managed to ruffle the feathers of the better-heeled by saying , “ I view this as a campaign between Scranton and Park Avenue ” —a sentiment he revived at the last debate in order to skewer the president as a mean-spirited billionaire .
But Biden also represents almost no threat whatsoever to Wall Street ( at least , that ’ s what Wall Streeters say ) , which naturally leads one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for Scranton he ’ s actually prepared to be .

There was a small window reserved in the debate for the candidates to discuss jobs and the economy (designated “American Families” on the event’s official table of contents), in which Biden criticized the president’s inability to wrest another stimulus bill from Congress, referred to health care as a right while pledging to institute a public option, and advocated a $15 minimum wage. But most of the bread-and-butter talk quickly vanished in the froth over whose overseas business dealings were sleazier, how China might best be vanquished, and whether Trump was the least—or, in fact, the most—racist person in the room. There was no proposal to reinstate the weekly $600 unemployment insurance boost, even though the unemployment rate remains around 8 percent, no mention of the still-spiking opioid deaths or the shortcomings of the Purdue Pharma settlement. At one point, Trump lambasted Biden for invoking “worried families sitting around the kitchen table”; the crassness of that particular sting was only somewhat lightened by that fact that Trump’s accusation—that Biden had mentioned working families as a cynical ploy to change the subject from his son’s sundry controversies—appeared to be true.
Thursday night’s proceedings were all the more dispiriting given that both candidates’ appeals to the working class on the campaign trail this year have frequently been lifeless. While Trump has famously dabbled in empty blue-collar pageantry—arranging photo ops on factory floors or in truck cabs, for instance—his administration has been an outright disaster for working people. Biden occasionally flicked at the truth that working-class fortunes have declined under Trump as a result of ill-conceived trade policies and the like, but he didn’t quite shed the skin of a fair-weather class warrior. Prior to Thursday, Biden managed to ruffle the feathers of the better-heeled by saying, “I view this as a campaign between Scranton and Park Avenue”—a sentiment he revived at the last debate in order to skewer the president as a mean-spirited billionaire. But Biden also represents almost no threat whatsoever to Wall Street (at least, that’s what Wall Streeters say), which naturally leads one to wonder how much of a champion for Scranton he’s actually prepared to be.


newrepublic--2020-10-23--In Memoriam: The Trump Pivot

In Memoriam: The Trump Pivot

For more than four years—ever since it became clear that Donald Trump would actually be the Republican nominee for president—pundits have fixated on one question : Is Donald Trump about to pivot to normalcy ?
Will he , at long last , stop behaving like a maniac and start acting like a president ?
Couldn ’ t he , at the very least , stop live-tweeting television fourteen hours a day ?
Is it coming , the pivot ?
The fastest way to make a fool of yourself in media in recent years was to proclaim that , at long @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jones set the standard when he declared that Trump “ became President of the United States ” after his first State of the Union , a deranged speech that got over because it was delivered in something approximating a Dilaudid haze , the president imitating calmness as if he ’ d taken a YouTube tutorial on the subject a half hour before he went on camera .
Numerous others followed in Jones ’ wake .
In the fall of 2017 , The New York Times ’ s Peter Baker wrote that Trump “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first independent to hold the presidency since the advent of the current two-party system around the time of the Civil War.
” Axios ’ s Mike Allen , like many of his ilk , declared that chief-of-staff John Kelly would bring some order and discipline to the West Wing .
“ Trump ’ s exposure to populist nationalism is now close to zero , ” Allen confidently wrote .
The Covid-19 crisis has brought a number of these takes— “ Trump changes his tone , gets real on the coronavirus threat , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while CNN ’ s Dana Bash took time to “ applaud ” a shift to a “ tone of calm and understanding ” that people “ yearn for in times of crisis and uncertainty.
” That ’ s a lot of human wreckage .
The idea of a Trump pivot was always absurd—the only constant about Donald Trump is that he never changes ; he can ’ t begin to fathom why he would ever do such a thing—but it served as an important security blanket for pundits .
Trump ’ s abnormalcy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decorum , and their sense of themselves as supreme knowers of American politics .
There are rules , after all !
And the rules say you must pivot !
As Jay Rosen noted about the press when he explained how they create “ Trump normalization ” : “ What they have to report brings ruin to what they have to respect .
So they occasionally revise it into something they can respect : at least a little.
” And yet , ahead of Thursday ’ s debate , there were still questions about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ News ’ s Alex Seitz-Wald noted that many Trump advisers wanted a disciplined performance and hoped the debate would mark a “ new tone ” for the president : “ Working in Trump ’ s favor is that expectations for his performance could hardly be lower , so even a modicum more restraint , focus and substance are likely to receive positive reviews.
” It ’ s basically the same play Trump ran during that first State of the Union .

It also, depressingly, may very well work in the same way. Trump, still hoarse from his bout with Covid-19, was much less rabid than in his deranged first debate performance. Baker, blogging for the Times, praised Trump for “sounding calm and measured compared to last time.” Bash observed that “Donald Trump listened to his advisers this time,” while CNN’s chyron noted, “TRUMP TAKES A LESS COMBATIVE APPROACH.” Axios strived for balance, writing, “A more disciplined President Trump held back from the rowdy interruptions at tonight’s debate in Nashville, while making some assertions so outlandish that Joe Biden chuckled and even closed his eyes.” The Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter tweeted that Trump was “very disciplined tonight,” and asked the question to which time and experience should have already provided an answer: “Can this hold for 10–11 more days?”
Gee, I wonder! With Trump setting the bar for himself at a subterranean level, his defenders may very well be joined by the pundit class in applauding him for—mostly—showing a modicum of strained discipline. Credit for the calmed tone might have been better given to the overdue decision to add a mute button to the candidates’ microphones, though the effectiveness of this innovation seemed to curiously wane as the night went on. Nevertheless, there was some strategy in play—Trump’s allies have wanted the president to sit back and let Biden ramble, cementing the campaign’s message that the former vice president is barely cogent, suffering from late-stage dementia.
But the truth is that while Trump didn’t foam at the mouth, his performance was still pathological. He lied about everything. He suggested that a vaccine would be ready in a matter of “weeks”—something he has been saying for months. He said he would release his tax returns soon—something he has been saying for more than four years. He suggested that the Mueller investigation looked at his tax returns and found no wrongdoing, something that never happened. He claimed his administration had a health care plan ready to go, should Obamacare be repealed. He said that Biden would abolish private health insurance and raise taxes for millions. He said, again and again, that his administration had done a terrific job slowing down the pandemic, saving millions of lives. As CNN’s resident rapid-fire fact-checker Daniel Dale tweeted, “From a lying perspective, Trump is even worse tonight than in the first debate.”


newrepublic--2020-10-23--Instead of Reengineering Cows, Just Eat Less Meat

The United States has a meat problem .
The average American will eat about 220 pounds of meat this year , including around 60 pounds of beef .
The cattle needed to support that consumption require vast amounts of land and feed .
They emit huge quantities of methane , which heats the planet .
The farms and feedlots they ’ re raised on pollute waterways , and deplete soils , and contribute to the rising threat of antibiotic-resistant bacteria .
The workers needed to process the meat toil in Covid-19-infested slaughterhouses , where tens of millions of animals are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The most obvious solution to these problems is pretty simple : produce and eat a lot less meat .
A recent report by the EAT-Lancet Commission , a group of leading global experts on food and climate , recommended a diet for optimal human and planetary health that includes 14 or fewer grams of beef per day , an 80 percent reduction from current U.S. consumption .
And recent research published in Science suggests that the U.S. could reduce its food-related emissions by almost three-quarters just through dietary change .
Instead of confronting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , however , many are holding out for a scientific silver bullet—no one more so than the meat industry itself .
This past week , The New York Times published a piece by longtime science reporter Henry Fountain chronicling efforts to reduce the ecological hoofprint of feedlots in the Texas Panhandle .
Industry experts , animal scientists , and feedlot managers talk about trying to cut down the methane emissions from cows ’ burps and the nitrous oxide emissions from their manure by changing cows ’ feed and fattening animals to slaughter weight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ carbon-emitting lives .
Beef gives people enjoyment , nutrition , and sometimes a sense of identity , and most people are loath to sacrifice such pleasures .
And the meat industry has profits to protect .
When the public started to get queasy about animal treatment , the meat and dairy industry advertised happy cows .
Now that attention has turned to cows ’ methane-rich burps , the meatpackers are hawking carbon-neutral cattle .
Whether this is possible is unclear .
It ’ s true that some feed additives , like algae , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by intervening in the biochemistry of the rumen , the first of four compartments of the cow ’ s stomach , where food is fermented .
It ’ s also obviously true that shortening cows ’ lives gives them less time to burp .

Feedlot beef cannot be made greenhouse gas neutral; it can be made less disastrous.
Unfortunately, there’s more than enough research at this point to know that clean beef is like clean coal: more an oxymoron than a practical solution. Feedlot beef cannot be made greenhouse gas neutral; it can be made less disastrous. As one of the researchers quoted in the article puts it, “We’re looking at mitigation strategies.” But the simple truth is that the only way to mitigate the impact of cattle is to produce and eat fewer cattle. This is as true in 2020 as it was in 1971, when Frances Moore Lappé published the cult classic paean to vegetarianism Diet for a Small Planet in response to the environmental impact of meat production.
Those who consider the broad impacts of food production, like the EAT-Lancet Commission, have concluded that “global food production threatens climate stability and ecosystem resilience and constitutes the single largest driver of environmental degradation and transgression of planetary boundaries.” Crucially, it notes the broader systemic costs that a narrow focus on emissions might miss. As a result, it urges bigger-picture thinking rather than siloed solutionism.
If anything, doubling down on feedlots forecloses some of the most promising strategies for emissions reduction and sequestration. In wonk-speak, it has significant opportunity costs. If land currently used for feed production were reforested (or rewilded) it would dramatically increase planetary biotic carbon-capture capacity. Shrinking feedlots would also introduce some exciting political possibilities for land use. In the U.S., land currently dedicated to feed production might be used for sustainable agriculture based on perennial polycultures. Or it could be returned to native peoples from whom it was forcibly taken. Or it could be used to support farmers from communities dispossessed by the Agriculture Department’s long history of racism. All of these ideas have merit, and none of them are possible in a world in which our addiction to beef is sustained.


newrepublic--2020-10-23--The Justice Department’s Very Convenient Corporate Crackdown

Just two weeks before the election , the Justice Department rolled out a series of high-profile white-collar cases and settlements that include an antitrust complaint against Google , a settlement with Purdue Pharma over its marketing of the drug OxyContin , and a global resolution with Goldman Sachs of a long-running bribery investigation .
It was enough to prompt Axios breathlessly to declare that this was the “ aggressive government crackdown on white-collar crime ” that “ America has waited a decade for.
” As I have written before , the Trump administration ’ s Justice Department has presided over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of white-collar malfeasance and historically low levels of white-collar prosecutions .
They did not start under Trump , but they have gotten sharply and unambiguously worse under his Justice Department .
( You don ’ t have to take my word for it .
For those interested in the subject , I highly recommend the recent and timely book Big Dirty Money , by law professor Jennifer Taub . )
You might explain the credulousness on the part of Axios as the simple result of a cognitive bias—the one that leads us to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prominent or easy to recall .
But there is good reason to believe that the headlines represent a deliberate effort by the Justice Department to influence voters ’ perceptions of its work by timing these cases so that they feature prominently in the news shortly before the election and by presenting many of them in ways that suggest they are more significant than they really are .
The Google antitrust case , for starters , reflects an investigation that has moved at the corporate investigation equivalent of warp speed .
It began just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you would expect an investigation this consequential—and into a company as large and complex as Google—to last years .
Instead , both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have been reporting since August that there was a push by Attorney General William Barr to get a complaint on file before Election Day .
He reportedly overruled objections by career prosecutors working on the investigation who thought that the department was moving too quickly .
The Google case is the biggest antitrust case in decades , and there may be considerable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ case was a terrible idea for anyone who wants it to succeed .
Google will have an army of lawyers , and major antitrust cases can easily be lost .
It was also completely unnecessary , since a Biden administration would have continued the investigation anyway .
So why the rush ?
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the announcement of the case could draw praise from both liberals , who want to constrain the power of major tech companies , and conservatives , who , like Barr and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and other tech companies are biased against them .

Far from representing a long-term change, it is likelier that the recent flurry of news is part of a larger trend in which the Justice Department, like other government agencies, has been doing part-time work as a de facto arm of the Trump campaign. At this point, it appears unlikely that the Justice Department will file any further charges in the probe of the Trump-Russia investigation being conducted by Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, but that has not stopped the department from doing whatever else it can for Trump’s campaign. It is one more element of what Politico recently called Trump’s “heavy reliance on federal resources and his own executive powers to win reelection.”
At its most benign, the department’s support has included press conferences held on comically thin pretexts to generate press coverage that might reflect positively on the administration, as when officials recently touted an initiative that had generated over 50 criminal prosecutions—an entirely made-up milestone that allowed department officials to pat themselves on the back for 45 uninterrupted minutes. (My favorite part of that session was when an official self-seriously declared that the department had been pursuing its work “without fear or favor.” The phrase sounds lofty, but it is not some prosecutorial mantra; it is the credo of The New York Times.) Other such appearances appear to have been designed with the hope that they might briefly distract some people from the catastrophic, government-wide failure to address the pandemic, as when Barr appeared at a White House coronavirus briefing earlier this year to provide a baffling update on international drug interdiction efforts.
But this campaign has also involved subtler and more provocative efforts to influence public opinion. Those include the department’s announcement in August that it had issued requests for information to four states run by Democratic governors concerning their handling of the coronavirus in nursing homes; its attempt in recent weeks to provide support for the administration’s baseless claims of rampant mail-in voter fraud; its “Operation Legend” campaign, which appears to be intended to persuade the public that the country has been enveloped by a crime spree conducted by members of antifa and Black Lives Matter; and a report, released just Wednesday, that touts the Trump administration’s efforts to combat MS-13, which may, in turn, remind many anti-immigration voters that Trump is their candidate. It is tempting to see all of this as directionless flailing on the part of desperate Justice Department and White House officials, but these efforts appear to represent a fairly sophisticated messaging project—one that appeals to different segments of potential Trump voters who have different interests in the work of federal law enforcement.


newrepublic--2020-10-26--The Republicans’ Familiar, Troubling Plan to Torpedo Biden’s Presidency

Like a phoenix , the deficit hawk will be back soon enough , as soon as it is politically convenient .
My party is very interested in deficits when there is a Democrat in the White House .
The worst thing in the whole world is deficits when Barack Obama was the president .
Then Donald Trump became president , and we ’ re a lot less interested as a party .
One reason Republicans are far more successful than Democrats in implementing their agenda is they have a long-term plan that actually anticipates Democratic victories from time to time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ victory is essential to its success .
The basic strategy here is called “ starve the beast ” : it involves big tax cuts when Republicans are in power and hardline deficit reduction when Democrats are in charge .
( Occasional Democratic control is actually essential to give Republicans political cover for spending cuts that might otherwise prove politically painful for them . )
It worked perfectly during the administrations of Bill Clinton , George W. Bush , Barack Obama , and Donald Trump , and Republicans are now preparing to keep it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The theory , which first emerged in the late 1970s , is to continuously shrink the size of government by denying it necessary revenue .
Ronald Reagan explained the basic principle of beast-starving succinctly in a February 5 , 1981 , address to the nation : Over the past decades we ’ ve talked of curtailing government spending so that we can then lower the tax burden .
Sometimes we ’ ve even taken a run at doing that .
But there were always those who told us that taxes couldn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Well , you know , we can lecture our children about extravagance until we run out of voice and breath .
Or we can cure their extravagance by simply reducing their allowance .
Tax cuts create budget deficits , which alarm Wall Street and put pressure on Congress to restrain and cut spending and raise taxes .
Since Democrats are dependent for campaign contributions on the same class of ultrawealthy individuals who fund the GOP , Democrats are always quick to take up deficit reduction when they are in power .
There @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than being branded a tax-and-spend liberal .
( The famous tax pledge that virtually every Republican officeholder has signed ensures that the bulk of deficit reduction will come on the spending side . )
Bob Woodward wrote a whole book , The Agenda , about how Bill Clinton pretty much abandoned all his campaign promises immediately upon taking office in favor of deficit reduction .
Clinton forced a number of Democrats in Congress to cast agonizing votes in favor of spending cuts , tax increases , and budget controls that led many to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in putting Republicans in control of Congress for the first time in 40 years .
Republicans voted against Clinton ’ s deficit-reduction package , all the while proclaiming their fealty to a balanced budget and eternal opposition to budget deficits .
Later , when the 1993 budget bill eliminated the deficit and created budget surpluses , Republicans falsely took credit .
The minute George W. Bush took office , his first order of business was a big tax cut .
Fortunately for him , Clinton had bequeathed him projected budget surpluses that Bush @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the tax cut .
It was possibly Clinton ’ s worst mistake in office to simply hoard the surpluses rather than using them to pay for Social Security or health reform , thus taking them off the table when Republicans regained power .
A long-term Democratic strategy would have locked up the surpluses so that Republicans couldn ’ t piss them away on tax cuts .

According to the Congressional Budget Office, if Bush had left fiscal policy on autopilot—no spending increases for stupid wars, no programs to buy the votes of the elderly with a Medicare drug benefit, no tax cuts—the national debt would have been entirely eliminated. Over 10 years, there would have been a surplus exactly equal to the $5.6 trillion national debt Bush inherited. But he raised spending by $5.6 trillion and reduced revenues by $6.1 trillion below baseline, thereby increasing the debt by $11.7 trillion. (The Congressional Budget Office carried Bush’s policies that remained in effect over into the Obama administration in order to arrive at this 10-year total.)
The extraordinarily hypocritical Republicans treated the vast rise in debt as if it were entirely Barack Obama’s fault when he took office in 2009. They even blamed him for spending programs they themselves had created, such as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which helped keep the economy afloat during the recession that began in December 2007—during the Bush administration—and didn’t end until June 2009. Republicans also voted en masse against Obama’s stimulus program in February 2009, illogically insisting that budget cuts would be more stimulative. (Notice that no Republican suggested that budget cuts would be stimulative when the coronavirus tanked the economy in early 2020.)
To his everlasting shame, Obama allowed himself to be railroaded into a budget deal in 2011. Vice President Joe Biden was his chief negotiator.
To his everlasting shame, Obama allowed himself to be railroaded into a budget deal in 2011. Vice President Joe Biden was his chief negotiator. At times, Obama and Biden were willing to go even further than Republicans toward the longtime conservative goal of cutting Social Security by altering the inflation formula that automatically increases benefits. In the end, Obama acceded to Republican demands that there be no increase in taxes. The Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner later said that he got 98 percent of what he wanted in the deal.


newrepublic--2020-10-26--Scott Pruitt Was Even More Selfish and Vengeful Than We Thought

When former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt resigned in July of 2018 amid a flurry of ethics scandals , he had already weathered months of inquiries into inappropriate use of the office for personal gain .
He had spent over $ 100,000 of taxpayer money on first class flights to Italy and Morocco .
He had installed a $ 43,000 private phonebooth in EPA headquarters .
He ordered the locks in EPA headquarters to be replaced with biometric locks even though he couldn ’ t explain to a member of Congress what biometric locks are .
And all the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ night for a condo on Capitol Hill owned by the wife of a lobbyist—a lobbyist whose clients are regulated by the EPA .
Even amid Pruitt ’ s nonstop public relations nightmares , he maintained President Trump ’ s support , which made it feel like Pruitt could get away with everything .
In the end , there wasn ’ t a single scandal , or final straw , that precipitated his downfall—it was the endless parade of them .
In his resignation letter , Pruitt said that he and his family were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , for his part , said that Pruitt told him he didn ’ t want to be a “ distraction ” for the administration .
The subtext , of course , was that if Pruitt had managed to keep his lavish spending and cozy relationship with lobbyists quiet , he could have stayed atop the EPA indefinitely .
Which explains why , days after Pruitt ’ s resignation , one of the EPA officials who blew the whistle on Pruitt ’ s behavior took credit for his departure .
“ I hate to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his job , but I guess I ’ d have to say that I take the credit , ” Kevin Chmielewski , a former EPA employee , told The Hill in July 2018 .
Chmielewski , who served as deputy chief of staff for operations at the agency throughout most of Pruitt ’ s tenure , took issue with what he saw as Pruitt ’ s “ chronic abuse of taxpayer dollars.
” Chmielewski took concerns about Pruitt directly to the White House and , eventually , to Congressional Democrats .
In response @ @ @ @ @ @ @ without pay .
He was one of four EPA officials who were reassigned , demoted , or left the agency because they flagged Pruitt ’ s ethical and financial misconduct .
Now comes the long-awaited postscript in this chaotic saga .
In a new lawsuit filed in federal court on October 20 , Chmielewski paints an even harsher picture of administrative retribution .
According to the lawsuit , on February 12 , 2018—the day after The Washington Post broke the story about Pruitt ’ s first-class travel habits—Chmielewski came to work only to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of his office .
He was subsequently escorted from the building and told that if he did not resign , he would be fired from the EPA .
Chmielewski did not resign , but a few months later , he was informed in a letter that he was considered to have had resigned from the EPA effective March 17 , 2018 .

Chmielewski’s lawsuit seems to confirm the toxic work environment previously reported at the EPA under Pruitt’s leadership. But the lawsuit also highlights, more specifically, the extent to which Pruitt’s tenure was driven by selfishness. The EPA’s mission is to protect human health and the environment; Scott Pruitt’s mission was to protect himself and his cronies.
“Our job is to enforce the law,” Pruitt told Time in October 2017, railing against the previous administration, which he said had “taken those statutes and stretched them so far.” But when it came time actually to enforce the law, Pruitt supported cutting funds to the EPA’s enforcement office. In the first two years of the Trump administration—the two years in which Pruitt was at the helm of the EPA—prosecutions of environmental crimes, which are investigated by the EPA and pursued by the Department of Justice, dropped precipitously. According to a recent study from the University of Michigan, prosecutions under the country’s two landmark environmental laws, the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, declined by 50 percent and 70 percent, respectively.
Instead, when Pruitt took action, it was always to protect himself and the industry-connected donors who had fueled his political rise. According to a since-deleted tweet Pruitt sent in January 2018, Trump’s deregulatory agenda, carried out at the EPA by Pruitt, saved industry $300 million in regulatory costs. That the repealed regulations would have prevented thousands of premature deaths, heart attacks, and asthma attacks received no mention in Pruitt’s tweet.


newrepublic--2020-10-26--The Future of the Democratic Party Is in Pennsylvania

The natural geography of Pennsylvania is not extraordinary .
Its major cities are situated near rivers , and it has mountains and miles of punishing greenness .
As a shape , Pennsylvania is a rectangle , one of only three of the original 13 colonies to be constructed so rationally—no ragged coastline , no islands .
But its political geography is fraught , craggy with sharp oppositions .
In 2020 , to identify as American is easier , conceptually , than to say , “ I am a Pennsylvanian.
” The metropolitan-rural divide asserts itself fiercely .
Residents of its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , often feel beset by its state government , which is overwhelmed by rural representation .
In addition , the cities are less major than they used to be : Philadelphia is large but shrunken from its peak size ; Pittsburgh ’ s population lies at a little over half its midcentury high-water mark .
( Philadelphia ’ s population only stabilized in 2007 ; Pittsburgh ’ s is still declining . )
Many of the state ’ s other cities , tied to industries that have either become less labor-intensive or fled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and investment .
Fifty-eight percent of the state is forest ; nearly a third of its residents live in rural counties .
In them , you will find support for President Trump and right-wing reaction as intense as in any region in the country .
You will also find anti-Trump organizing that is growing in strength—if not quickly enough to stop Trump from carrying those counties in November .
Between city and country lies a more variegated landscape of intermediates .
Travel in any direction from Center City , Philadelphia , and you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ collar counties ” —the Philadelphia suburbs , a mythic landscape that political journalists have interpreted as bellwethers of American political trends .
In recent years , those suburbs , redoubts of a middle- to higher-income Republican electorate , have been completing a years-long shift to the Democratic Party , reflected in congressional , state , and county legislative victories .
An equal part of the Pennsylvania electoral mythos is in the west , where Appalachia rears up ; where the steel mills are shuttered but the exurbs they built are white and increasingly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the northeast in a pointillist smear down to its southwest are clusters of Pennsylvania ’ s 7,000 or so active natural gas wells .
Since the late 2000s , fracking has transformed the state and the rest of the country along with it .
Pre-pandemic , Pennsylvania was slated to be the second-largest extractor of new oil and gas in the country .

In 2016, I was a lead volunteer on the Bernie Sanders campaign in South Philadelphia. I recruited and trained canvassers in my house and sent them out into the field. During lulls in the training sessions, I canvassed packets of “turf” myself, and a few bouts of this left me transformed. There was the rare pleasure of supporting a candidate whose beliefs and policies you more or less espoused without reservation: I could say what I meant. But there was the less expected pleasure of coming to know a shared world, right at my doorstep. Many of my neighbors agreed, or were close to agreeing; many more could be moved. For dozens of us, volunteers and staffers on the campaign, this experience left a powerful imprint.
We kept the gang together and formed Reclaim Philadelphia, filching our name from a sister group in Chicago. (This year, in an attendant spirit of copyleft, a group of friends in Rhode Island created Reclaim Rhode Island.) For a few months, our organization consisted of about 40 or 50 dues-paying members and volunteers. We took up a few causes: We protested the shady financing behind the Democratic National Convention and were arrested; we protested the financing of the Dakota Access Pipeline by TD Bank and were arrested. In the fall, we knocked on doors in Northeast Philadelphia for a state representative candidate, Joe Hohenstein, who was trying to flip one of the last remaining Republican legislative seats in the city, while also making the case for Hillary Clinton. It was tough territory: I remember one conversation where the homeowner, a Black veteran, warned me that sharia law was coming to this country. Forgetting myself, I angrily told him that it was indeed, and that I would be the one to bring it.
On November 8, 2016, I threw a party, the dumbest idea I’ve ever had, where we ended up watching John King on CNN color generous portions of Pennsylvania in red. Even parts of Philadelphia, such as the greater Northeast, and one ward in South Philadelphia, went for Trump. These areas, semi-suburban destinations of white flight, where the union members and their children grew up, are not so dissimilar from the western counties that turned out heavily for the president and will do so again.


newrepublic--2020-10-26--Doctors Are Appalled by White House’s “Barbaric” New Coronavirus Strategy

There are two things to understand about the “ herd immunity ” strategy the White House has reportedly “ embraced ” in the past month .
The first is that the term , which originally refers to the protection a community gets from high vaccination rates , in this case is being used as shorthand for letting the coronavirus rampage through the nation until those who haven ’ t died have developed antibodies .
The second is that health experts hate it .
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the approach “ simply unethical ” earlier this month @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus task force , has called it “ ridiculous ” and “ total nonsense.
” “ It ’ s barbaric , ” Dr. Gregg Gonsalves , an assistant professor in epidemiology at Yale School of Medicine , told me .
“ You ’ re going to let millions die for some notion of herd immunity ?
” It ’ s a particularly bad strategy with coronaviruses , he said .
“ Who knows how potent and how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Yet doctors worry that the White House is still officially or unofficially implementing this idea—particularly given statements like White House chief of staff Mark Meadows ’ announcement on Sunday that “ we are not going to control the pandemic.
” And considering the time they ’ ve spent saving lives and combating misinformation over the past year , the fact that this strategy is even being considered feels , to some , like a betrayal .
The “ herd immunity ” approach—also called “ targeted protection ” —would somehow focus on protecting those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the virus , like elderly people living in nursing homes , while encouraging everyone else to stop taking protective measures and succumb to the virus in order to achieve eventually some temporary form of immunity .
“ What we need to do is make sure that we have the proper mitigation factors , whether it ’ s therapies or vaccines or treatments to make sure that people don ’ t die from this , ” Meadows added Sunday , without elaborating on how exactly a virus that ’ s so far killed some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rendered non-fatal .
It ’ s unclear how the vulnerable would be shielded from the less-vulnerable .
It ’ s also unclear who belongs in which group .
Plus , no one even really knows how immunity to the virus works yet—whether it lasts a few months or a few years .
Millions could die without communities ever reaching the goal of high levels of immunity .
Doctors , nurses , health specialists , first responders , food providers , and hospital cleaning staff have been working long hours , often without adequate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ across the country have mounted .
By July , they were tired .
Now they ’ re beyond weary .
“ For many , if not all , of us working in public health and healthcare , we are truly exhausted and frustrated , ” Dr. Saskia Popescu , a hospital epidemiologist and infection preventionist , told me .
“ A push for herd immunity is not only dangerous and unethical , but feels almost a slap in the face for those who have been working tirelessly to care for patients and provide @ @ @ @ @

We have never reached herd immunity for a disease without a vaccine in the past; without one, cases rise and fall each year. It’s not clear how long natural immunity from being infected with the virus lasts. Right now, experts think it’s likely a few months. That means even if you survive the virus and have some immunity to it, you could be just as vulnerable—and maybe even more so, depending on how this virus works—in the future. Humans haven’t been around this virus long enough to know the answers to these questions yet.
“You could argue that it’s a distraction from the fact that we in the U.S. have been unable to control transmission of the virus.”
“You’re essentially saying that we are going to commit ourselves to a substantial number of people becoming sick, potentially with long-term complications of the virus, and a lot of people dying unnecessarily because we’ve chosen not to do the hard work of controlling transmission in the community,” Dr. Rajeev Venkayya, president of the global vaccine business unit at Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, told me. “You could argue that it’s a distraction from the fact that we in the U.S. have been unable to control transmission of the virus, and so we would effectively be throwing up our hands and saying that we’re going to find a way to justify our failure.”
Even if the strategy were implemented, Venkayya said, “we don’t even know who the vulnerable are, because those who have preexisting conditions may not be aware of it.” And although adults 65 or older account for eight out of 10 confirmed Covid-19 deaths in the United States, leading the elderly to be dubbed an at-risk population, many young, healthy people experience long-term effects of the illness. People who have long been marginalized, including people of color, have experienced higher rates of contracting the virus because their communities have frequently been neglected and mistreated for generations. Will there be attempts to protect these communities if this strategy is adopted? If so, how? Will at-risk essential workers be paid to stay at home? Will nursing-home workers have access to universal sick leave? And how would we control people’s movements such that the less vulnerable, who are supposed to contract the disease, never interact with the vulnerable?


newrepublic--2020-10-26--The Legend of Roy Cooper

The Legend of Roy Cooper

Roy Cooper will be the next governor of North Carolina .
That ’ s exactly the kind of declarative boast that would never come from the careful Cooper .
Yet , as of the fourth week of October , the Democratic chief executive of the Tar Heel State has all but cemented a second four-year stay in the governor ’ s mansion .
The latest polling has Cooper thumping his opponent , far-right Republican and current Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest , by a commanding 9.5 points , a lead that has remained steady for the past six months .
This @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state featuring dead-heat races for the Oval Office and a coveted spot in the Senate .
There are plenty of reasons for Cooper ’ s dominance in this solidly purple state .
For one , Forest is , as North Carolina historian and journalist Rob Christensen told me , “ the wrong kind of Republican ” for the challenge .
Rather than being a “ Chamber of Commerce Republican , ” Christensen said , one with more moderate social views who could continue the fiscal policies in Cooper ’ s proposed budgets , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sense .
His ability to appeal to the more moderate voters and donors is nullified by his dedication to saying things like , “ There is no doubt that when Planned Parenthood was created , it was created to destroy the entire Black race.
” Cooper , on the other hand , is the living , breathing antonym of controversy .
A soft-spoken , salt-and-peppered licensed attorney whose drawl alone tells any born-and-bred North Carolinian that he came up well east of the capital of Raleigh , Cooper never deviates from his path @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to split the difference in a state home to both a healthy contingency of rural Republican districts and growing , liberal-leaning ones in urban , suburban , and exurban areas .

In a full term, McCrory vetoed just six bills brought to him by the legislature; Cooper racked up 28 in less than two years. Twenty-three of these vetoes were overridden, but Cooper made his point: He would not be a rubber stamp. He used this period to hit the campaign trail for candidates running for the legislature in the 2018 midterms, tapping into a pool of liberals and moderates boiling with contempt for both the General Assembly and the president. When Election Day finally arrived, the strategy paid off. Although Republicans still maintained their majorities in both chambers, their supermajority was killed—overnight, Cooper’s veto reverted from prop to weapon.
The past two years haven’t featured some miraculous turnaround for the state. Republicans still rule the roost; they just don’t have the freedom they enjoyed in prior years. As a result, Cooper has to be strategic about where he picks his battles. One critical fight has been over Medicaid expansion. North Carolina is one of 12 states left in the nation that has yet to accept federal funding provided by the Affordable Care Act to expand the Medicaid program in the state. (Surprise, surprise: McCrory actually joined the legislature in blocking expansion efforts in 2013.) As a result, nearly 13 percent of all North Carolinians, or roughly one million people, do not have health insurance when they could have it tomorrow, if the government just took the money—a fact that Cooper has underscored throughout the pandemic, featuring expansion as part of his recent budget proposal.
Cooper’s also waging a high-profile fight over public school funding—and the state budget more broadly. The austerity policies of the Recession-era legislature gutted the state’s school systems, and despite the state bouncing back economically (prior to the pandemic) the per-capita funding levels are still well below their pre-recession rates. Teachers and students alike have spent the past few years storming the state capitol to demand more equitable funding, only to be called “union thugs,” even though by North Carolina law, public employees cannot unionize. In 2019, Cooper vetoed the legislature’s two-year budget, citing the lack of Medicaid expansion and adequate raises for public school teachers, leading to a months-long political stalemate.


newrepublic--2020-10-26--How to Steal an Election

How to Steal an Election

I never left .
Physically at least .
Like a lot of people , a short stay became permanent , a miscalculation of how easy it is to jump out when you ’ re standing in a swamp .
Like Al Gore , I expected to be long gone from Florida by the end of 2000 .
Earlier in the year , I ’ d watched the crisis unfold over a boy named Elian Gonzales , whose mother died in their attempt to flee Cuba , whose father remained on the island and demanded his return , which his family @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ d seen a version of it , muted both by the self-absorption of college , and by native-born Cuban-American peers , for whom Cuba as a place and Cuba as a past were another country , not something that guided a life lived in this one .
Even those who reflexively wanted him to stay in the United States struggled to reconcile that with spending the preceding decade watching the nation repatriate every Haitian in sight with all the solemnity of the Adam West Batman sprinting through the streets trying to dispose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wick the size of a Twizzler throwing festive Fourth of July sparks in its wake .
Before 20 years of increasingly ostentatious GOP corruption , it was easier for people to sigh and concede that we live in a society of laws without feeling like a Comeyesque herb about it .
I watched the election and then The Recount and then the gradual synonymization of a state and a punchline from a Sarasota bar where the drinks were dirt cheap but the extra cost was made up by having to deal with a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And then I spent the next two decades here , watching as journalists who knew better depicted Florida as a producer of uniquely stupid stories and uniquely stupid people , rather than a state with uniquely robust public records laws that made their jobs much easier ; watching as people in one breath derided Florida as an inauthentic place because nobody is “ from ” there , and in the next breath acted as if none of the stupid people here had been grown back home ; watching as every dad in America @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bluntest , dullest form .
Although ultimately the joke is about democracy and civil society , so maybe it ’ s time to recalibrate who it ’ s actually on .
My reflexive fondness for and defensiveness about Florida and the character of Florida—even while constantly struggling to redefine the latter as new waves of people change it—isn ’ t unique .
Carl Hiaasen , the Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist for the Miami Herald , has wrestled with the subject over 15 novels and 34 years .
And it ’ s a process that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s documentaries , from 2006 ’ s Cocaine Cowboys , about the Miami drug war , to 2015 ’ s Dawg Fight , about a dubiously legal Miami-area bare-knuckle boxing federation .
( I wound up covering the fed ’ s debut PPV , which , in true Florida form , was to be held on a boat in international waters , was canceled by the threat of hurricane , and ultimately was filmed in secret in a shipping warehouse . )
537 Votes makes explicit what Corben and all the other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a state full of crooks and lunatics , half of whom were shipped here by the rest of y ’ all : This thing , this Florida thing with this misbegotten landmass , is a two-way street .
The story we like to tell about 2000 is that Florida happened to the rest of America—not that America , as it can anywhere else , happened to us .

I never left. Physically at least. Like a lot of people, a short stay became permanent, a miscalculation of how easy it is to jump out when you’re standing in a swamp. Like Al Gore, I expected to be long gone from Florida by the end of 2000.
Earlier in the year, I’d watched the crisis unfold over a boy named Elián Gonzáles, whose mother died in their attempt to flee Cuba, whose father remained on the island and demanded his return, which his family in Miami bitterly opposed. Or I’d seen a version of it, muted both by the self-absorption of college and by native-born Cuban-American peers, for whom Cuba as a place and Cuba as a past were another country, not something that guided a life lived in this one. Even those who reflexively wanted him to stay in the United States struggled to reconcile that with spending the preceding decade watching the nation repatriate every Haitian in sight with all the solemnity of the Adam West Batman sprinting through the streets trying to dispose of a spherical black bomb with a wick the size of a Twizzler throwing festive Fourth of July sparks in its wake. Before 20 years of increasingly ostentatious GOP corruption, it was easier for people to sigh and concede that we live in a society of laws without feeling like a Comeyesque herb about it.
I watched the election and then The Recount and then the gradual synonymization of a state and a punchline from a Sarasota bar where the drinks were dirt cheap but the extra cost was made up by having to deal with a bartender who was thoroughly politely racist. And then I spent the next two decades here, watching as journalists who knew better depicted Florida as a producer of uniquely stupid stories and uniquely stupid people, rather than a state with uniquely robust public records laws that made their jobs much easier; watching as people in one breath derided Florida as an inauthentic place because nobody is “from” there and in the next breath acted as if none of the stupid people here had been grown back home; watching as every dad in America reworked The One Florida Joke into its bluntest, dullest form. Although ultimately the joke is about democracy and civil society, so maybe it’s time to recalibrate who it’s actually on.


newrepublic--2020-10-27--Amy Coney Barrett Will Upend American Life as We Know It

There was never much doubt that the Republican-led Senate would confirm Amy Coney Barrett ’ s nomination to the Supreme Court .
In the immediate wake of Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’ s death last month , some Republican senators said they would support the confirmation even before President Donald Trump selected a nominee .
So influential is the conservative legal movement and Trump himself that no name was needed before committing to one of the most consequential votes of those senators ’ careers .
As expected , the final vote for Barrett fell along strict party lines , making her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years to not receive bipartisan support .
That distinction marks a fitting end to the high court ’ s balance-of-power era of the past quarter-century , in which the court drifted rightward under moderates like Sandra Day O ’ Connor and Anthony Kennedy while still handing victories to liberals on abortion , LGBT rights , and affirmative action .
Chief Justice John Roberts has lost his often-decisive vote ; a conservative supermajority is likely here to stay for at least a generation unless Congress adds more seats .
A new justice changes not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but also what sort of cases reach the court in the first place .
Litigants often tailor their strategy with the court ’ s composition in mind .
If there were a majority of five liberal justices on the court , liberal legal activists would likely push for expansive rulings on voting rights , labor issues , and campaign finance .
Their conservative counterparts , however , have a much different agenda in mind for a post-Barrett Supreme Court .
The clearest area where Barrett ’ s impact will be felt is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ certainly cement an anti-abortion majority on the high court .
Technically , the abortion-rights framework of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey lost its fifth vote in 2018 with the retirement of Anthony Kennedy .
But the court ’ s conservatives have yet to strike a major blow against abortion rights .
Earlier this year , Chief Justice John Roberts joined with the court ’ s four liberals in a Louisiana case to narrowly uphold a 2016 ruling on similar grounds , steering the court away from handing down a major @ @ @ @ @ @ @ With Barrett on the court , however , Roberts likely won ’ t be able to play the same role in future abortion-related cases .
Barrett insisted throughout her confirmation hearing that her past statements against Roe v. Wade didn ’ t necessarily reflect how she would rule as a justice , an argument that persuaded few people from either side .
“ This is the most openly pro-life judicial nominee to the Supreme Court in my lifetime , ” Missouri Senator Josh Hawley , who previously said he would only vote for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , said on Monday .
This is an individual who has been open in her criticism of that illegitimate decision Roe v. Wade .
”

Most of Barrett’s confirmation hearing also centered on California v. Texas, an upcoming Supreme Court case on the Affordable Care Act. A group of Republican-led states is asking the court to uphold a lower-court decision that found the individual mandate to be unconstitutional after Congress zeroed out the penalty for violating it in 2017. If the justices agreed, they could theoretically nullify the mandate and leave the rest of the ACA intact. But Republicans are aggressively pressing the court to scrap the entire law in its ruling, accomplishing through litigation what they failed to do through legislation.
“I hope that they end it,” Trump said in a CBS interview last week, in reference to the upcoming case. “It would be so good if they end it.” The court scheduled oral arguments to take place on November 10, exactly one week after the presidential election. How Barrett would rule on this exact case is unclear: She declined to say one way or the other during her confirmation hearings. But she is among the many legal conservatives who criticized Roberts for his vote to uphold the individual mandate as a tax in 2012, writing in early 2017 that the chief justice had “pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute.”
Even before the ACA case, however, Barrett will play an immediate role in litigation surrounding the November election. The rule of thumb is that justices take part in cases as soon as they join the court unless oral arguments were already heard. Since Barrett plans to take her oaths of office immediately, she could start voting in matters before the justices as soon as this week. That will likely gladden Republicans who accelerated her confirmation process so she could be on the court before Election Day and hope she will tip cases in their favor. “I think this will end up in the Supreme Court,” Trump told reporters last month, referring to the election.


newrepublic--2020-10-26--Blue States Suppress the Vote, Too

Blue States Suppress the Vote, Too

Standing in front of a gaggle of press on a New York City sidewalk , Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez assessed the situation playing out during the city ’ s first three days of early voting in the 2020 general election—lines wrapping around the block , people being forced to stand for hours just to cast their ballot—and called the mess for what it was : voter suppression .
“ There is no place in America that two- , three- , four-hour waits to vote is acceptable , ” Ocasio-Cortez said .
“ Just because it ’ s happening in a blue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s not voter suppression.
” The pandemic has upended all kinds of otherwise mundane activities , including how we vote .
Already , voters in major swing states and elsewhere have turned in absentee ballots and showed up for early voting at record rates .
And it would be nice , relatively speaking , to believe that the pandemic was the main reason voting is such a slog this year .
But this isn ’ t a new problem .
Disenfranchisement and voter suppression have been a consistent issue for years in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rampant throughout New York City ’ s Board of Elections .
It ’ s part of the same anti-democratic tendency that animates conservatives in red states , but with a liberal twist : Low turnout serves Democratic incumbents well in safely blue states .
That ’ s why we ’ re in this mess .
In January 2019 , New York Governor Andrew Cuomo finally put his pen to voter-participation legislation drawn up by the state Assembly .
With his signature , the state enacted a series of bills aimed at opening up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the option of in-person early voting up to 10 days before an election .
Others preregistered teenagers applying for a drivers ’ permit , automatically transitioned voters who moved in-state , moved the primaries up three months , and limited LLC campaign contributions .
In effect , the New York election systems were given a decades-overdue overhaul .
It couldn ’ t have come soon enough .
The year before , in 2018 , New York ’ s byzantine system was on full display .
The primary elections for state and federal offices @ @ @ @ @ @ @ York the only state in the nation to follow such a calendar .
The state also didn ’ t have an early voting program in place , one of just a dozen states on that list , leading to monstrous lines on Election Day .
There were also widespread reports of broken voting machines , further extending the process for voters .
The same was true for the 2016 elections .
This had become the norm for New Yorkers , a necessary evil that voters in the city had to learn to live @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forgo their participation .
Prior to the election of President Trump in 2016 , it was difficult to imagine the electoral calculus in the state Assembly changing in a drastic enough manner to result in the updates .

Standing in front of a gaggle of press on a New York City sidewalk, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez assessed the situation playing out during the city’s first three days of early voting in the 2020 general election—lines wrapping around the block, people being forced to stand for hours just to cast their ballot—and called the mess for what it was: voter suppression. “There is no place in America that two-, three-, four-hour waits to vote is acceptable,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Just because it’s happening in a blue state doesn’t mean that it’s not voter suppression.”
The pandemic has upended all kinds of otherwise mundane activities, including how we vote. Already, voters in major swing states and elsewhere have turned in absentee ballots and showed up for early voting at record rates. And it would be nice, relatively speaking, to believe that the pandemic was the main reason voting is such a slog this year. But this isn’t a new problem. Disenfranchisement and voter suppression have been a consistent issue for years in New York, and mismanagement has run rampant throughout New York City’s Board of Elections. It’s part of the same anti-democratic tendency that animates conservatives in red states, but with a liberal twist: Low turnout serves Democratic incumbents well in safely blue states. That’s why we’re in this mess.


newrepublic--2020-10-26--Bob Murray Was Vicious to Both Workers and the Environment

Fossil fuel interests have long argued that environmental rules kill jobs .
Not having such rules , though , kills people .
And that ’ s particularly clear when it comes to the coal industry .
Bob Murray , the 80-year-old coal baron who fought against safety and environmental regulations that would affect his mining empire , presided over several deadly mining disasters , and sued people who pointed that out , died this weekend .
In the last years of his life , Murray—whose coal company was the eleventh to file for bankruptcy during the Trump administration—waged a fierce @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lung , a painful , incurable disease , also known as coal workers ’ pneumoconiosis , that affects a tenth of veteran coal miners in the United States .
Last month , Murray filed an application with the U.S. Department of Labor for precisely the kind of black lung benefits he ’ d fought paying into for years .
Last fall , he had conversely told NPR that his respiratory ailment didn ’ t have “ anything to do with working in the coal mines.
” An exact cause of death has not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis , another lung disease common among coal miners .
As black lung cases ticked upward in 2014 , Murray filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration over a regulation curbing coal dust in underground mines , claiming that the rule intended to protect employees from irreversible lung scarring would cost the company billions .
Weeks after Trump ’ s inauguration , which he helped fund , he handed the new administration an “ action plan ” that included calls to gut the Mine Safety and Health Administration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dust rules he ’ d been battling for years .
He also pleaded for a federal bailout that would keep him from having to pay for health care and pensions of retired United Mine Workers of America miners ; like many other coal barons , he attempted to shirk such obligations in bankruptcy court .
After reviewing Murray Energy ’ s bankruptcy filings , several of its creditors alleged that Bob Murray and his family had treated the company as a personal “ piggy bank , ” awarding themselves exorbitant pay amid layoffs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in one year as the company ’ s debts mounted .
During the same period , The New York Times reported , he earmarked $ 1 million for climate denial outfits like the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Heartland Institute .
As the company navigated bankruptcy , it spent $ 100,000 in the first quarter of 2020 lobbying to—among other things—further slash the 50 cent excise tax on coal mined underground that funds the Black Lung Trust Fund .
Justifying its ongoing assault on the tax , the National Mining Association cited hardships imposed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ miners afflicted with black lung at higher risk of death .
( Industry lobbyists had already succeeded in cutting the excise tax down from $ 1.10 per ton in 2018 and slashed the one on surface mining down to 25 cents . )
Murray repeatedly put what his company owed mine workers onto the government ’ s tab instead .
Murray owed as much as $ 155 million to fund worker disabilities and treatment under the Black Lung Act but had put up just $ 1.1 million in collateral .
When Murray Energy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Consolidated Natural Resources , the settlement declared that ACNR wasn ’ t responsible for claims against Murray under the Black Lung Benefit Act .
Its $ 74.4 million worth of liability under that law was shifted to the Department of Labor ’ s Black Lung Disability Trust Fund , established under the BLBA .

Murray Energy had also been the last major contributor to the 1974 UMWA Pension Plan, providing what is often the sole source of income to some 92,000 miners and their families. Not long after Murray Energy filed for bankruptcy, Congress—under pressure from the UMWA—agreed to keep the fund solvent to preserve health care benefits for 13,000 miners. Murray wasn’t alone in trying to socialize the debts of his flailing company and privatize the rewards. In a Stanford Law Review article published just before Murray Energy’s and other high-profile coal bankruptcies, researchers Joshua Macey and Jackson Salovaara found that four of the country’s largest coal producers had used bankruptcy to shed $5.2 billion of employee and environmental obligations between 2012 and 2017.
Murray consistently rallied resources toward electing politicians who would keep him from having to pay anything more than the bare minimum to the people who built his fortune. Watchdog groups have raised questions over whether Murray coerced salaried employees to donate to Murray Energy’s Political Action Committee, which donated $1.4 million to almost invariably Republican politicians between 2007 and 2012. “We have only a little over a month left to go in this election fight,” one internal memo Murray sent out to employees, reported by The New Republic, warned. “If we do not win it, the coal industry will be eliminated and so will your job, if you want to remain in this industry.” A Murray foreman later sued over what she alleged was a wrongful firing after she declined to give to the Murray Energy PAC.
Murray frequently required miners to attend Republican political functions, where they would serve as political props, including for Donald Trump. He bussed miners up to Washington, D.C., to support EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt during his Senate confirmation hearing in 2017, as well. Rounding out an illustrious career, Murray was also sued by two female employees in 2019 for sexual harassment. And he waged brutal legal battles against his critics in the media, including a well-publicized spat with Last Week Tonight host John Oliver for daring to point out that the 2007 Crandall Canyon collapses that killed nine people were probably caused by Murray Energy safety violations and not, as Murray had claimed, an earthquake. As news of Murray’s death spread on social media Monday, the song Oliver had dedicated to the coal baron recirculated as well: “Eat Shit, Bob.”


newrepublic--2020-10-27--Grassroots Democrats Are Preparing to Swarm the Biden Administration

For the last few months , a team on Joe Biden ’ s campaign has been drawing up plans for the transition , compiling lists , and vetting potential appointees .
Meanwhile , a network of left-wing organizers , operating under the maxim “ personnel is policy , ” has been doing opposition research on a prospective Biden White House .
In some cases , they ’ ve run public campaigns against people like Lawrence Summers , director of Barack Obama ’ s National Economic Council , trying to ensure that 2020 isn ’ t a repeat of 2008 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Streeters .
This quiet struggle for the future heart of a Biden administration is of momentous importance .
But it ’ s only half the story , because administrations are shaped not just by their personnel but also by the political forces they have to contend with , and the many grassroots Democrats now working tirelessly to replace Trump with Biden have expectations , too .
In 2008 , millions of people volunteered for Obama , many believing their movement for change would keep going once he was elected .
However , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years ago , after Obama won , he promptly demobilized his volunteer army .
On top of that , he corralled the many organizations capable of independently activating the Democratic grassroots into the “ Common Purpose Project , ” an exclusive White House weekly confab .
White House officials derided anyone who ventured outside that framework .
Liberal blogger Jane Hamsher called the weekly confabs the “ veal pen ” for good reason : It kept the interest groups who had helped elect Obama hemmed in while feeding them enough scraps to live @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this approach ruefully , believing that it served their agenda poorly .
By bottling up pressure for stronger reform in everything from health care to the banking crisis , Obama was able to spend his first two years courting supposedly moderate Republicans in Congress .
The result was a collapse of Democratic enthusiasm in 2010 and the loss of the House that fall .
There will be no veal pen under Biden .
In part because of Covid , his campaign is tiny compared to its predecessors .
In September , the campaign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ since the start of August .
By the end of September , by my count , only about 330,000 people had joined one of its “ virtual field offices.
” This is not a juggernaut like Obama for America , which had two million active volunteers .
But neither is it a sign of Democratic weakness .
Rather than an army loyal to one charismatic leader , the Democratic base is now a swarm with many independent , interlocking actors , more dynamic and more capable of robust public engagement than it has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to wither during Obama ’ s eight years , the grassroots is now mending .
And this means that if a President Biden wants to enact his agenda , he will have to find a different way of coming to terms with the revitalized Democratic base—one that is far more collaborative and accommodating than the approach adopted by his old boss , Obama .
These are not the Democrats of a generation ago .
There are national groups with volunteer chapters , like Sister District Project , which builds relationships among activist teams @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or Moms Demand Action , the gun control group , which has hundreds of local chapters .
There are local groups that operate under a shared national brand , like Indivisible , which claims several thousand chapters , and national organizations with huge email lists , like Daily Kos , Demand Progress , and MoveOn .
Lala Wu , the cofounder of Sister District , called this emerging coalition a “ multiheaded hydra .
”

There will be no veal pen under Biden. In part because of Covid, his campaign is tiny compared to its predecessors. In September, the campaign reported having signed up about 183,000 volunteers since the start of August. By the end of September, by my count, only about 330,000 people had joined one of its “virtual field offices.” This is not a juggernaut like Obama for America, which had two million active volunteers. But neither is it a sign of Democratic weakness. Rather than an army loyal to one charismatic leader, the Democratic base is now a swarm with many independent, interlocking actors, more dynamic and more capable of robust public engagement than it has been in decades. Neglected and left to wither during Obama’s eight years, the grassroots is now mending. And this means that if a President Biden wants to enact his agenda, he will have to find a different way of coming to terms with the revitalized Democratic base—one that is far more collaborative and accommodating than the approach adopted by his old boss, Obama.
These are not the Democrats of a generation ago. There are national groups with volunteer chapters, like Sister District Project, which builds relationships among activist teams in both red and blue districts; or Moms Demand Action, the gun control group, which has hundreds of local chapters. There are local groups that operate under a shared national brand, like Indivisible, which claims several thousand chapters, and national organizations with huge email lists, like Daily Kos, Demand Progress, and MoveOn. Lala Wu, the cofounder of Sister District, called this emerging coalition a “multiheaded hydra.”


newrepublic--2020-10-27--How Don Jr. Became the Future of Trumpism

It is someone ’ s birthday , and everybody is dressed up .
At the business end of an expansive buffet , an exhausted lump of beef perspires as if under great duress beneath a heat lamp ; a man in a chef ’ s hat saws flaps from it until guests signal him to stop .
A pale tide of mashed potatoes ripples thickly from within a chafing dish ; the long-handled spoon that revelers use to serve themselves sits on a little plate in front of it , next to a sign attesting in flouncy cursive that those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bed of ice cubes , oysters puddle in their shells next to a sliding pinkish moraine of shrimp .
It is quite a room , so painstakingly grandiose that it looks somehow like an expensive stage set of itself .
The environs are so ferociously air-conditioned that it could be described as windy .
There are columns everywhere , and a huge chandelier squats over everything , leering .
The president of the United States is there—this party is not necessarily for him , but it is in every meaningful sense his party—and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ jokes that mostly scan like insults , about how much the guests have all paid him for the privilege of being there .
They don ’ t mind , and laugh as much out of reflex as anything else .
The faces look up at him , powdered or dusty or unaccountably wet , and President Donald Trump lets those people thank him—for his hard work , for saving the country , for whatever they can think of to thank him for in that moment .
They don ’ t really know , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ either .
They are mostly thanking him for being there , in the room with them .
Great to see you , he says .
Enjoy .
And then he moves on to some other pod of swells , all waiting to thank him , too .
The party is the same every time because the sameness is the whole purpose .
Everyone there honors Trump not just with their words and applause and fulsome laughter but through the shape their celebration takes .
Every bit of venal gossip shared between guests about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rehash of some vague outrage they saw on television or scrolled past online or heard through the grapevine , every urgent and heated personal taking of offense at some faraway abstraction—all of that is a tribute to Trump .
It ’ s a tribute both because this type of instinctive mirroring really is the sincerest form of flattery , but mostly because every line of that conversation , every toast made ostensibly in someone else ’ s honor , will invariably wind up being about Trump .
The thing celebrated , on Christmas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some random Friday in April , is victory , and the ultimate winner—the one no one thought would win , the one they all wanted to lose—is always the same .
There ’ s nothing and no one else to talk about , by definition and by design .
When Trump brings this party elsewhere and shows up gleaming to some swing-state rally , he generally talks about what ’ s troubling his damp and roiling mind—what he saw on television last , how unfair his enemies are to him , whatever lines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pauses fall .
At a rally on September 10 , when he reached the end of a meandering riff about the miraculous effects of Sending in the Authorities to quell protests in cities around the country , the crowd began chanting , “ We love you.
” Trump pantomimed wiping away tears and told the crowd they were going to make him cry , then noted that crying would be bad for his image .
In its coverage of the event , Fox News described the moment like this : “ Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emotion , could be seen taking a step back from the rostrum while he seems to collect himself.
” The story also noted that Democrats criticized Trump for holding the rally , at which few attendees wore masks , during the coronavirus pandemic .
This is Trumpism as it exists at the end of Trump ’ s first term in office .
The long victory party continues even as the country is everywhere sickened , burning , drowning , starving , poisoned , bludgeoned , evicted .
Actions and their consequences seem to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there is a level of irresponsibility so profound that it threatens a baseline understanding of causality .
The problems are ignored or exacerbated by the state , and the chaos that results is haphazardly leveraged by powerful people for advantage and profit .
On conservative television , the very existence of the problems is qualified or dismissed , with a furious but deeply sincere cynicism that reflects Trump ’ s own , as the dark work of the president ’ s many enemies .
The country is failing in terrifying and undeniable ways @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or an ideology so much as it is the belief that nothing matters beyond how it relates to Donald Trump himself—remains unscathed .

For all the hopeful sounds that Democrats make about working with Republicans in the future, it might be that the Republicans have dispensed with masks and euphemism forever, and will set themselves to openly taking what they want from people they believe don’t deserve to have anything. There is a darkly comforting misconception that the sound of jackboots will give away fascism as it approaches. The sound of that is unmistakably audible at this moment, rattling the windows in the cities where various cadres of state violence do Trump’s work by night behind riot shields and truncheons and indiscriminate clouds of gas. It rings through the dehumanizing and blearily apocalyptic rhetoric that Trump has turned to on the campaign trail in response to the threat of electoral defeat in November. But while Trump and his acolytes thrill to all this—the drama, the action—what they truly celebrate together is their own impunity. It’s the right to say and do what they want without consequence, while armed state agents do the dirty work necessary to keep the party going and ward off any gate-crashers. The bar is open and busy, but only for invited guests.
What are generally understood as the aesthetics of fascism—“The color is black, the material is leather, the seduction is beauty, the justification is honesty, the aim is ecstasy, the fantasy is death,” as Susan Sontag put it in her 1975 essay “Fascinating Fascism”—are more a reflection of its aspirations than its mundane and deceptively familiar essence. The public expression of Trump’s fascism is butched up in all the old Sontag-ian ways. Think of the logo of the Marvel Comics antihero the Punisher worn on a policeman’s riot gear, or of police in Cincinnati replacing the American flag with a Blue Lives Matter flag. Or think of Donald Trump Jr. posing with a $2,000 customized AR-15 that had the Crusaders’ Jerusalem cross on the magazine well and an image of an imprisoned Hillary Clinton on the magazine itself. Trump himself delights in the dark fantasy of other people doing violence on his behalf, and has talked about it for years with undisguised giddiness. “I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump—I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough,” he told Breitbart News in 2019. “Until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”
But the ideology that has assumed Trump’s image and energy—and, in the process, effectively replaced the coded version of it that was once understood as conservative politics—is grounded in a very specific and very deep sense of entitlement. Where conservative politics formerly wrapped that entitlement in layers of facile meritocratic rhetoric and free-market mysticism, Trumpism more aptly made his demands at gunpoint. It is the divine right for those with means to take and keep everything that they want, and it is the demand that everyone else deal with it without complaint or recourse. Trump didn’t invent this worldview, but he did inhabit it better—and, hilariously, more honestly—than any other conservative politician. He succeeded in co-opting the Republican Party simply by hammering away at the text instead of dutifully nuancing the subtext.


newrepublic--2020-10-27--We Can’t Trust Cops to Protect the Polls

Police are struggling “ to protect voters and avoid intimidation at the polls , ” The Wall Street Journal reported Monday , by which they meant that at least some of the law enforcement officers they spoke to understood that police presence could itself be a tool of voter suppression .
“ I feel like I ’ m walking on the edge of a razor blade , ” a rural Virginia police chief told NBC News which noted , “ He ’ s spent the past several weeks trying to figure out how to provide security at the polls amid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ away the kind of voters who might be put off by the sight of uniformed policemen.
” Nevertheless , as a retired police chief of Montgomery County , Maryland said to the WSJ , the only response to such violence from private actors that police can conceive of is the threat of violence they can wield .
“ The question is , are you going to have people who are self-appointed security people who just show up to these places with guns ?
... That is just a nightmare for police to handle.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ speculate .
In St. Petersburg , Florida , two armed people wearing private security guard uniforms who said they were working for Trump showed up at a polling place .
“ I noticed his gun , that was the first thing that I noticed as a voter was that this man was carrying a weapon , ” one voter told the local news .
“ He wasn ’ t there to vote , he was standing there to make his presence known.
” The Pinellas County sheriff said he didn ’ t think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ guards were standing outside the no-electioneering zone .
( The Trump campaign denies involvement , and a representative for the private security firm where the guards worked did the same . )
In Fairfax , Virginia , Trump supporters with big Trump flags , part of a “ Trump Train ” car parade , also stayed outside the zone , chanting “ four more years , ” lined up outside an early polling place .
Polling staff felt intimidated , election officials said , and had to open up more indoor space so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Given reports of “ inappropriate campaigning and possible voter intimidation ” in at least 14 states , according to the The Washington Post , perhaps police are not—in this case , anyway—over-stating the threat .
And they were not wrong , either , to admit that they could also be the election threat .
In Miami , a uniformed officer inside a polling station wore a “ Trump 2020 ” mask .
Another cop , on the first day of early voting in New York this weekend , used his patrol car @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people in the street , taunting them for recording it .
The city ’ s largest police union , which has endorsed Trump , blasted the city and police officials after that officer was suspended without pay .
Most tactics to challenge voter intimidation take for granted that it is coming from private actors without the tacit support of public officials .
Election officials tell polling place staff to call the police if they need them to respond to voter intimidation .
Yet what about those officers who may plausibly believe they are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ side with the Trump supporters trying to intimidate voters ?
After all , Trump promised that law enforcement would be dispatched as poll watchers .
It ’ s clear this is a partisan effort for Trump , who sees the police as “ his ” police .
But neither is it outside his party ’ s purview—a Republican election 2020 plan reported earlier this year included dispatching retired military and law enforcement officers as poll watchers .
It ’ s long past time for election officials to reckon with the reality that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and fair elections .
Any effort to challenge voter intimidation has to account for that .
Who are voters supposed to report voter intimidation , then , particularly when police are part of the problem ?
Representative Elissa Slotkin of Michigan told Politico that she is getting calls from people concerned that local sheriffs won ’ t respond to armed people at the polls—and some elections officials say they are hearing the same thing from their respective city and county officials .
The response from the state attorney general ?
If local police @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state police .

A few things are at least clear. The president does not have the authority to send law enforcement to the polls, as voting rights attorneys have been asked to affirm repeatedly this election. Police who show up to polling places without first being requested by election officials may themselves be breaking the law, according to the Brennan Center, and when they are there, they are subject to some restrictions. As for people purporting to be poll watchers, that’s not something just anyone can show up and claim, said Bob Brandon, president of the Fair Elections Center, by phone Monday. Laws vary by state, but in many they must be registered. Regarding armed civilians, laws protecting voters from intimidation apply even in states where carrying a gun to the polls is legal, Brandon told me.
Challenging voter intimidation without the police is mostly going to be left to the voters. Brandon suggested that people voting in large numbers, as they have been, “may make it more unlikely” that intimidation succeeds. He and other voting rights advocates encourage anyone who sees voter intimidation—which isn’t always easy to identify—to first report it to polling place staff, as well as the national nonpartisan Election Protection Hotline (866-OUR-VOTE). But as far as what role police have after that, it will really depend more on what election officials decide than what voters may have asked for.
Is there a reality in which voters don’t have to depend on election officials—and police—to protect their rights? A new group called Election Defenders aims to motivate people to vote with what looks like care work, to “provide safe supports for voting (such as PPE and water), and election and voter defense, de-escalating right-wing intimidation tactics and signaling to a network of groups and lawyers if and where trouble breaks out.” (The Working Families Organization, the Working Families Party, and the Movement for Black Lives Electoral Justice Project are behind the effort.) Nelini Stamp, an Election Defenders organizer, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that they are there “to stop the demobilization efforts,” and to do so with “joy and love.” What that has looked like so far, most prominently, is a much-retweeted dance party in Philadelphia on Saturday. It’s an alternative to the images of battalions of Blue Lives Matter flags. But no one should have to rely on a DJ to keep people in line for hours to vote, as Stamp has pointed out. And no dance party can carry the burden of ensuring people can exercise their right to vote.