theintercept--2020-05-12--Federal Whistleblower Says Boss Pushed Him to Purchase Drugs That Hadn’t Been Tested in Humans

Rick Bright , then head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority , was asked to spend millions of taxpayer dollars purchasing a drug that was presented as a “ miracle cure ” for viral diseases .
BARDA , a division of the Department of Health and Human Services , is responsible for purchasing treatments , vaccines , and other medical products to protect the U.S. during public health emergencies .
And the drug could be “ a great asset to national security , ” as one of the drug ’ s developers , George Painter , told Bright @ @ @ @ @ @ @ detailed in a whistleblower complaint filed last week , he didn ’ t think that BARDA should purchase the drug , known as EIDD-2801 .
A trained virologist who has decades of experience in government disaster preparedness , Bright had reason to worry that EIDD-2801 might be dangerous .
The antiviral hadn ’ t undergone basic safety testing in humans , as is typically required of drugs that BARDA purchases .
And similar drugs in the same class had caused serious reproductive problems in animals , with animals exposed in the womb born @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Bright stood his ground , according to the complaint , which alleges that he was forced out of his job in April because of his resistance to pressure that BARDA purchase EIDD-2801 and other drugs pushed by industry consultants .
Because of his insistence that the drug needed to be proven safe before he would discuss its purchase , the issue was temporarily tabled at the end of last year .
The episode shines a light on the muddy intersection of the pharmaceutical industry and government .
It also underscores how longstanding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shaped the office tasked with equipping the U.S. to confront public health crises .
Bright is scheduled to testify before a House committee on Thursday .
Central to Bright ’ s whistleblower complaint is Robert Kadlec , the assistant secretary for disaster preparedness , who proved to be a major obstacle in Bright ’ s efforts to ramp up the production of N95 masks .
Before joining HHS in August 2017 , Kadlec served as a consultant for more than a dozen companies , including Emergent BioSolutions , which received a contract worth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ plasma-based treatment for Covid-19 in April .
In 2018 , Kadlec helped Emergent get a deal worth up to $ 2.8 billion for a smallpox vaccine , as the Washington Post recently reported .
That contract covered a longer period of time than a previous contract and charged an increased price per dose for the vaccine , according to the story .
The basis for the pricing of the plasma-based Covid-19 treatment , for which Emergent received $ 14.5 million , is unclear .
At press time , HHS had not responded to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s enthusiasm for EIDD-2801 is perhaps understandable .
He had helped develop the drug and , as president and chief executive officer of Drug Innovation Ventures at Emory University , known as DRIVE , stood to profit handsomely if Bright OK ’ d its purchase with federal dollars .
A consultant named John Clerici , who was also central in a campaign to promote a drug made by Aeolus , a company run by an associate of Jared Kushner , had his own personal stake in the EIDD-2801 deal .
Clerici was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the complaint , which describes him as persistently pushing for BARDA to adopt it .
Clerici ’ s bio on the website of Tiber Creek Partners , a firm he co-founded that helps biotech companies obtain government contracts , identifies him as both “ instrumental in the passage of legislation ” that created BARDA in 2004 and central in helping pharmaceutical companies obtain funds made available through the law .
“ He has assisted more than three dozen companies in obtaining over four billion dollars in funding for the research , development @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the federal government , ” according to the page , which also specified Clerici ’ s critical role in getting funding for “ the majority of awards ” under Project BioShield , a $ 5.6 billion program designed to accelerate the development and purchase of medical products that could be needed in the case of biological , chemical , radiological , and nuclear crises .
“ I am saddened that during this crisis that critical public heath leaders are being distracted by politically motivated allegations , dangerously and needlessly taking attention off @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wrote in a statement to The Intercept .
“ I unequivocally deny the reckless insinuations in Dr.
Bright ’ s complaint.
” Painter and Clerici weren ’ t the only people whose business interests seemed to be driving efforts to get BARDA funding for EIDD-2801 despite the health concerns .
Kadlec , described in the complaint as a friend of both Painter and Clerici , also insisted that Bright didn ’ t need to wait for human safety studies before purchasing doses of the drug for the American public .
Kadlec “ repeatedly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his staff to ask whether BARDA was going to support EIDD-2801 , according to Bright ’ s complaint , and brought the drug up in various staff meetings , asking if BARDA had taken any steps to move forward with it and making it clear “ that he intended to push the funding through for this contract despite Dr.
Bright ’ s objections.
” The case of EIDD-2801 is just one of several instances in which Bright faced pressure not just from lobbyists , but also from Kadlec and others on his staff @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as “ all well-connected , having worked with or for Republican members of Congress.
” Kadlec served as staff director of North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr ’ s Subcommittee on Bioterrorism and Public Health Preparedness from 2005 to 2007 .
Jennifer Alton , before serving at HHS under Kadlec while the Aeolus contract was under consideration , had also worked for Burr and for Bavarian Nordic while Kadlec was a consultant to the biotech company .
Chris Meekins , who left HHS for the private sector last year , worked on biodefense @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , before serving as Kadlec ’ s chief of staff .
The coronavirus crisis has brought long-simmering conflicts of interest in the defense preparedness realm to the fore .
Disputes about hydroxychloroquine , which Trump has hyped as a treatment for Covid-19 , seem to have spurred Bright ’ s damning complaint .
The public health emergency has also dramatically increased the number of products BARDA is considering .
One of them is EIDD-2801 .
According to the whistleblower report , although human testing had still yet to be completed , Painter again @ @ @ @ @ @ @ BARDA in late February , this time as a treatment for Covid-19 .
In an emailed statement , Emory spokesperson Laura Diamond acknowledged that Painter met with BARDA in both November and February .
While the whistleblower complaint described Painter as “ deliberately circumventing ” a submissions process designed to streamline Covid-19-specific funding requests , Diamond wrote that Painter followed BARDA guidelines and process and noted that DRIVE has not received funding as the result of either meeting .

In November, Rick Bright, then head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, was asked to spend millions of taxpayer dollars purchasing a drug that was presented as a “miracle cure” for viral diseases. BARDA, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, is responsible for purchasing treatments, vaccines, and other medical products to protect the U.S. during public health emergencies. And the drug could be “a great asset to national security,” as one of the drug’s developers, George Painter, told Bright at the time.
But as Bright detailed in a whistleblower complaint filed last week, he didn’t think that BARDA should purchase the drug, known as EIDD-2801. A trained virologist who has decades of experience in government disaster preparedness, Bright had reason to worry that EIDD-2801 might be dangerous. The antiviral hadn’t undergone basic safety testing in humans, as is typically required of drugs that BARDA purchases. And similar drugs in the same class had caused serious reproductive problems in animals, with animals exposed in the womb born without teeth and with partially formed skulls.
Bright stood his ground, according to the complaint, which alleges that he was forced out of his job in April because of his resistance to pressure that BARDA purchase EIDD-2801 and other drugs pushed by industry consultants. Because of his insistence that the drug needed to be proven safe before he would discuss its purchase, the issue was temporarily tabled at the end of last year.
The episode shines a light on the muddy intersection of the pharmaceutical industry and government. It also underscores how longstanding greed and business concerns seem to have shaped the office tasked with equipping the U.S. to confront public health crises. Bright is scheduled to testify before a House committee on Thursday.
Central to Bright’s whistleblower complaint is Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for disaster preparedness, who proved to be a major obstacle in Bright’s efforts to ramp up the production of N95 masks. Before joining HHS in August 2017, Kadlec served as a consultant for more than a dozen companies, including Emergent BioSolutions, which received a contract worth up to $36 million for a plasma-based treatment for Covid-19 in April.
In 2018, Kadlec helped Emergent get a deal worth up to $2.8 billion for a smallpox vaccine, as the Washington Post recently reported. That contract covered a longer period of time than a previous contract and charged an increased price per dose for the vaccine, according to the story.
The basis for the pricing of the plasma-based Covid-19 treatment, for which Emergent received $14.5 million, is unclear. At press time, HHS had not responded to an inquiry about the contract.
Painter’s enthusiasm for EIDD-2801 is perhaps understandable. He had helped develop the drug and, as president and chief executive officer of Drug Innovation Ventures at Emory University, known as DRIVE, stood to profit handsomely if Bright OK’d its purchase with federal dollars.
A consultant named John Clerici, who was also central in a campaign to promote a drug made by Aeolus, a company run by an associate of Jared Kushner, had his own personal stake in the EIDD-2801 deal. Clerici was representing DRIVE as a consultant, according to the complaint, which describes him as persistently pushing for BARDA to adopt it.
Clerici’s bio on the website of Tiber Creek Partners, a firm he co-founded that helps biotech companies obtain government contracts, identifies him as both “instrumental in the passage of legislation” that created BARDA in 2004 and central in helping pharmaceutical companies obtain funds made available through the law.
“He has assisted more than three dozen companies in obtaining over four billion dollars in funding for the research, development, and procurement of public health countermeasures to the federal government,” according to the page, which also specified Clerici’s critical role in getting funding for “the majority of awards” under Project BioShield, a $5.6 billion program designed to accelerate the development and purchase of medical products that could be needed in the case of biological, chemical, radiological, and nuclear crises.
“I am saddened that during this crisis that critical public heath leaders are being distracted by politically motivated allegations, dangerously and needlessly taking attention off of the pandemic response,” Clerici wrote in a statement to The Intercept. “I unequivocally deny the reckless insinuations in Dr. Bright’s complaint.”
Read Our Complete Coverage The Coronavirus Crisis
Painter and Clerici weren’t the only people whose business interests seemed to be driving efforts to get BARDA funding for EIDD-2801 despite the health concerns. Kadlec, described in the complaint as a friend of both Painter and Clerici, also insisted that Bright didn’t need to wait for human safety studies before purchasing doses of the drug for the American public. Kadlec “repeatedly called” Bright and another member of his staff to ask whether BARDA was going to support EIDD-2801, according to Bright’s complaint, and brought the drug up in various staff meetings, asking if BARDA had taken any steps to move forward with it and making it clear “that he intended to push the funding through for this contract despite Dr. Bright’s objections.”
The case of EIDD-2801 is just one of several instances in which Bright faced pressure not just from lobbyists, but also from Kadlec and others on his staff described in the whistleblower’s complaint as “all well-connected, having worked with or for Republican members of Congress.” Kadlec served as staff director of North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr’s Subcommittee on Bioterrorism and Public Health Preparedness from 2005 to 2007. Jennifer Alton, before serving at HHS under Kadlec while the Aeolus contract was under consideration, had also worked for Burr and for Bavarian Nordic while Kadlec was a consultant to the biotech company. Chris Meekins, who left HHS for the private sector last year, worked on biodefense stockpiles for Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., before serving as Kadlec’s chief of staff.
The coronavirus crisis has brought long-simmering conflicts of interest in the defense preparedness realm to the fore. Disputes about hydroxychloroquine, which Trump has hyped as a treatment for Covid-19, seem to have spurred Bright’s damning complaint. The public health emergency has also dramatically increased the number of products BARDA is considering. One of them is EIDD-2801. According to the whistleblower report, although human testing had still yet to be completed, Painter again sought federal funding for the drug from BARDA in late February, this time as a treatment for Covid-19.
In an emailed statement, Emory spokesperson Laura Diamond acknowledged that Painter met with BARDA in both November and February. While the whistleblower complaint described Painter as “deliberately circumventing” a submissions process designed to streamline Covid-19-specific funding requests, Diamond wrote that Painter followed BARDA guidelines and process and noted that DRIVE has not received funding as the result of either meeting.


theintercept--2020-05-12--Religious Freedom Demands That Women Be Denied Birth Control, Trump Administration Tells Supreme Cou

Religious Freedom Demands That Women Be Denied Birth Control, Trump Administration Tells Supreme Court

on May 6 , before a U.S. Supreme Court working remotely amid the coronavirus crisis , Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had one question on her mind : What about the women ?
It ’ s a question that was never really answered in more than an hour and a half of back and forth about statutory construction , administrative rule-making , and religious freedom .
And yet it sits at the heart of a legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act ’ s mandate that women be provided no-cost contraceptives — a provision that provides birth control access to millions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ case is whether the Trump administration can exempt any employer that objects on religious or moral grounds from having to provide insurance that covers the full range of birth control .
According to the administration , the religious freedom of employers would be unconstitutionally trampled upon unless they ’ re exempted from the requirement .
According to the state of Pennsylvania , which defended the birth control mandate before the court , the administration ’ s rules were improperly enacted and go far beyond protecting religious beliefs to the potential detriment of millions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the groundbreaking achievements of the Affordable Care Act was that it required basic health services to be provided at no cost .
The Women ’ s Health Amendment specifically extended the mandate to a suite of reproductive health services , including access to all Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives .
Prior to the ACA , which also prohibits sex discrimination in health care , women had long paid more in insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs , particularly for birth control .
Because of the law , more than 61 million women have access @ @ @ @ @ @ @ saves women roughly $ 1.4 billion per year .
And it makes sense to cover contraceptives .
They reduce unintended pregnancy and encourage birth spacing ; they promote gender equality and are linked to higher educational attainment and increased earnings for women — outcomes that directly impact children and families .
Nonetheless , from the start , churches were exempt from having to provide the coverage .
Religiously affiliated nonprofits like hospitals and universities subsequently said they should be exempt too .
The Obama administration disagreed , saying that exempting them would subject @ @ @ @ @ @ @ employers .
But his administration devised a workaround : An affiliated organization could submit a form to its insurance provider or the federal government saying that it objected to the coverage , which in turn would allow the insurer to provide it directly to the employee .
( The accommodation was later extended to closely held for-profit companies after Hobby Lobby sued . )
But many religious organizations still balked .
Requiring them to formally object , they argued , would jumpstart a process to provide the coverage they objected to , making @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The ongoing dispute bounced around in the courts until the spring of 2017 , when the Trump administration announced that it would fix things — with a clear indication that it would endeavor to give the objectors exactly what they wanted : a way to disregard the birth control mandate .
But the administration — via various departments that play a role in the ACA , including Health and Human Services — ultimately went further .
Under rules rolled out that fall , religious organizations would be allowed to opt out without ever @ @ @ @ @ @ @ women in the lurch with no notice that their birth control would no longer be covered .
On top of that , the administration crafted a second carve-out that allows nearly any employer in the country to deny coverage based on “ moral objections , ” which could encompass pretty much anything .
That is a big problem , the National Women ’ s Law Center and a contingent of 54 other organizations argue in an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court .
The moral exemption “ does nothing to circumscribe what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ invoke the exemption , nor does it have any mechanism to permit oversight , ” the brief reads .
The rule would allow “ an employer with a sincerely held moral conviction that women do not have a place in the workplace to simply stop providing contraceptive coverage.
” The 2017 rules sparked a whole new wave of lawsuits , culminating in two that were consolidated for the Supreme Court , which conducted the hearing by teleconference last week .
Arguing on behalf of the Trump administration was Solicitor General Noel Francisco , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attorney general had not “ identified anyone who would actually lose access to contraception as a result of these rules , I think presumably because … access to contraception is widely available in this country through many other means.
” The government estimates that somewhere between 75,000 and 125,000 women would lose coverage , though the assumptions underlying that estimate are flawed , in part because the courts have so far blocked the rules from taking full effect .
And given that the rules also give a green light to any employer to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ advocates say the actual number of women impacted could be far higher .
“ The Departments ’ many faulty assumptions result in a grievous failure to capture the full scale and scope of harm.
” The NWLC notes that the government ’ s assertion that birth control is widely available is misleading at best since access can be cost-prohibitive , particularly for young people , people of color , and those with low incomes — part of the reason the mandate was developed in the first place .
They point to studies that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 39 percent of black women , and nearly 50 percent of black mothers say they could only afford $ 10 or less for contraceptives if required to pay for them , which is far below their actual cost — particularly for highly effective forms of contraception like the intrauterine device , the use of which has significantly increased since the ACA ’ s mandate took effect .
“ Before the ACA , women spent between 30 percent and 44 percent of their out-of-pocket health costs just on contraception , ” the NWLC brief @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will make contraceptive coverage all the more critical as people become even more sensitive to cost constraints.
” Despite the real-world harms to women that would arise from denying access to no-cost birth control , the oral arguments largely focused on other issues , including the role of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in constraining coverage requirements and whether an arm of HHS can decide , at will , to exempt employers — and as such , hold power over who will receive birth control .
Which brings us back to Ginsburg ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the lawyers before the court : “ You have just tossed entirely to the wind what Congress thought was essential , that is , that women be provided these … services , with no hassle , no cost to them , ” she posited to Francisco .
“ Instead , you are shifting the employer ’ s religious beliefs , the cost of that , on to these employees who do not share those religious beliefs.
” “ And I did not understand RFRA to authorize harm to other people , which is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ end up getting nothing , ” she continued .
“ They are required to do just what Congress didn ’ t want.
” “ I would disagree with the premise of your question because there ’ s nothing in the ACA … that requires contraceptive coverage , ” Francisco responded .
“ Rather , it delegated to the agencies the discretion to decide whether or not to cover it in the first place.
” Indeed , a main thrust of the government ’ s argument is that Congress didn ’ t require birth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s health services be provided — Congress directed the health agency to come up with the list of essential services .
The government apparently believes that whether contraceptives are essential is a matter of debate , perhaps unsurprising for an administration that has elevated birth control skeptics and proponents of abstinence education to policymaking positions .
Still , the argument seems to have resonated with the newest justice , Brett Kavanaugh , whose hostility to women ’ s reproductive rights was among the assets that got him the job .
There are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sides ” of the case , he said .
Kavanaugh suggested that each administration should be free to use its discretion to decide how birth control should be covered since Congress didn ’ t lay out any particular requirement in the main text of the ACA .
“ It seems to me the judicial role is not to put limits on the agency discretion that Congress has not put there.
” Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Stephen Breyer seemed frustrated by the arguments and in search of some middle ground .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can ’ t be worked out , ” Breyer said .
Several justices expressed concern that Trump ’ s legal justifications for the rules “ sweep too broadly , ” as Roberts put it .
Certainly , there is an argument to be made that the new rules are less about religious freedom and more about an overly broad power grab .
The second of the two consolidated cases , Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania , lends some credence to this idea .
The Little Sisters of the Poor are a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ homes .
They were among the first to balk at the contraceptive mandate — and the Obama-era workaround — and quickly sued , asking for an exemption .
They lost their bid in several courts before their case , consolidated with five others , made it to the Supreme Court in 2016 .
In its ruling , the court sent all the parties back to the drawing board to try to work out yet another accommodation ; that process had stalled until the Trump administration came in and posted its sweeping new rules @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had any skin in the game .
For starters , their insurance is covered by a “ church plan , ” which was always exempt from providing the coverage .
But even if that weren ’ t the case , the nuns ’ underlying legal challenge to the mandate was resolved in their favor back in 2018 , when a judge granted a permanent injunction barring the government from ever requiring them to provide the coverage .
So , even though the Little Sisters were arguing before the Supreme Court last week as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , they aren ’ t at all impacted by the ongoing legal dispute , a fact that Michael Fischer , Pennsylvania ’ s chief deputy attorney general , pointed out to Justice Sonia Sotomayor .
“ Because it ’ s a church plan , ” he said , “ the government can not enforce it .
So even if they didn ’ t have their injunction , their employees would not receive contraception.
” “ That ’ s an interesting point .
I didn ’ t know that .
So , the Little @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
” Sotomayor replied .
“ They lack … standing because they don ’ t have to provide it ; neither does their insurance carrier , correct ?
” The Little Sisters may not have a legal role , but they do provide a sympathetic narrative with which to rally support for the broader rule changes .
The nuns staged a spirited , well-organized photo-op outside the Supreme Court in 2016 , and their supporters rallied again last week on the court steps amid the pandemic .
In other words , focusing on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ against the contraceptive mandate — which isn ’ t actually an issue — has done well to obscure the problem with a rule that allows employers to opt out of coverage for any alleged moral objection .
Indeed , just two justices — Ginsburg and Sotomayor — specifically mentioned the moral objection rule , and only one lawyer , Fischer , tried to focus the justices ’ attention on it .
Neither Solicitor General Francisco nor Paul Clement , the lawyer representing the Little Sisters , mentioned it .
That lack of attention @ @ @ @ @ @ @ impacted if the rules are upheld , stood out for Brigitte Amiri , deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union ’ s Reproductive Freedom Project .
“ Really , what ’ s at issue is the human impact of denying contraception coverage to hundreds of thousands of women , ” she said .
“ And Justice Ginsburg rightly focused in on that .
”

During oral arguments on May 6, before a U.S. Supreme Court working remotely amid the coronavirus crisis, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had one question on her mind: What about the women?
It’s a question that was never really answered in more than an hour and a half of back and forth about statutory construction, administrative rule-making, and religious freedom. And yet it sits at the heart of a legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that women be provided no-cost contraceptives — a provision that provides birth control access to millions of women.
At issue in the case is whether the Trump administration can exempt any employer that objects on religious or moral grounds from having to provide insurance that covers the full range of birth control.
According to the administration, the religious freedom of employers would be unconstitutionally trampled upon unless they’re exempted from the requirement. According to the state of Pennsylvania, which defended the birth control mandate before the court, the administration’s rules were improperly enacted and go far beyond protecting religious beliefs to the potential detriment of millions.
The Right to Deny Coverage
Among the groundbreaking achievements of the Affordable Care Act was that it required basic health services to be provided at no cost. The Women’s Health Amendment specifically extended the mandate to a suite of reproductive health services, including access to all Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives.
Prior to the ACA, which also prohibits sex discrimination in health care, women had long paid more in insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs, particularly for birth control. Because of the law, more than 61 million women have access to no-cost contraceptives, a mandate that saves women roughly $1.4 billion per year.
And it makes sense to cover contraceptives. They reduce unintended pregnancy and encourage birth spacing; they promote gender equality and are linked to higher educational attainment and increased earnings for women — outcomes that directly impact children and families.
Nonetheless, from the start, churches were exempt from having to provide the coverage. Religiously affiliated nonprofits like hospitals and universities subsequently said they should be exempt too. The Obama administration disagreed, saying that exempting them would subject employees to the religious views of their employers. But his administration devised a workaround: An affiliated organization could submit a form to its insurance provider or the federal government saying that it objected to the coverage, which in turn would allow the insurer to provide it directly to the employee. (The accommodation was later extended to closely held for-profit companies after Hobby Lobby sued.)
But many religious organizations still balked. Requiring them to formally object, they argued, would jumpstart a process to provide the coverage they objected to, making them complicit in providing that coverage. The ongoing dispute bounced around in the courts until the spring of 2017, when the Trump administration announced that it would fix things — with a clear indication that it would endeavor to give the objectors exactly what they wanted: a way to disregard the birth control mandate.
But the administration — via various departments that play a role in the ACA, including Health and Human Services — ultimately went further. Under rules rolled out that fall, religious organizations would be allowed to opt out without ever notifying anyone of their intentions — leaving women in the lurch with no notice that their birth control would no longer be covered. On top of that, the administration crafted a second carve-out that allows nearly any employer in the country to deny coverage based on “moral objections,” which could encompass pretty much anything.
That is a big problem, the National Women’s Law Center and a contingent of 54 other organizations argue in an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court. The moral exemption “does nothing to circumscribe what types of convictions may be used to invoke the exemption, nor does it have any mechanism to permit oversight,” the brief reads. The rule would allow “an employer with a sincerely held moral conviction that women do not have a place in the workplace to simply stop providing contraceptive coverage.”
Women Get Nothing
The 2017 rules sparked a whole new wave of lawsuits, culminating in two that were consolidated for the Supreme Court, which conducted the hearing by teleconference last week.
Arguing on behalf of the Trump administration was Solicitor General Noel Francisco, who told the justices that the Pennsylvania attorney general had not “identified anyone who would actually lose access to contraception as a result of these rules, I think presumably because … access to contraception is widely available in this country through many other means.”
The government estimates that somewhere between 75,000 and 125,000 women would lose coverage, though the assumptions underlying that estimate are flawed, in part because the courts have so far blocked the rules from taking full effect. And given that the rules also give a green light to any employer to deny coverage, the NWLC and other advocates say the actual number of women impacted could be far higher. “The Departments’ many faulty assumptions result in a grievous failure to capture the full scale and scope of harm.”
“The impending coronavirus-driven recession will make contraceptive coverage all the more critical as people become even more sensitive to cost constraints.”
The NWLC notes that the government’s assertion that birth control is widely available is misleading at best since access can be cost-prohibitive, particularly for young people, people of color, and those with low incomes — part of the reason the mandate was developed in the first place. They point to studies that reveal that 33 percent of Latinas, 39 percent of black women, and nearly 50 percent of black mothers say they could only afford $10 or less for contraceptives if required to pay for them, which is far below their actual cost — particularly for highly effective forms of contraception like the intrauterine device, the use of which has significantly increased since the ACA’s mandate took effect. “Before the ACA, women spent between 30 percent and 44 percent of their out-of-pocket health costs just on contraception,” the NWLC brief reads. “The impending coronavirus-driven recession will make contraceptive coverage all the more critical as people become even more sensitive to cost constraints.”
Despite the real-world harms to women that would arise from denying access to no-cost birth control, the oral arguments largely focused on other issues, including the role of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in constraining coverage requirements and whether an arm of HHS can decide, at will, to exempt employers — and as such, hold power over who will receive birth control.
Which brings us back to Ginsburg’s question, aimed at each of the lawyers before the court: “You have just tossed entirely to the wind what Congress thought was essential, that is, that women be provided these … services, with no hassle, no cost to them,” she posited to Francisco. “Instead, you are shifting the employer’s religious beliefs, the cost of that, on to these employees who do not share those religious beliefs.”
“And I did not understand RFRA to authorize harm to other people, which is evident here, that … the women end up getting nothing,” she continued. “They are required to do just what Congress didn’t want.”
“I would disagree with the premise of your question because there’s nothing in the ACA … that requires contraceptive coverage,” Francisco responded. “Rather, it delegated to the agencies the discretion to decide whether or not to cover it in the first place.”
The government apparently believes that whether contraceptives are essential is a matter of debate.
Indeed, a main thrust of the government’s argument is that Congress didn’t require birth control coverage specifically, only that women’s health services be provided — Congress directed the health agency to come up with the list of essential services. The government apparently believes that whether contraceptives are essential is a matter of debate, perhaps unsurprising for an administration that has elevated birth control skeptics and proponents of abstinence education to policymaking positions.
Still, the argument seems to have resonated with the newest justice, Brett Kavanaugh, whose hostility to women’s reproductive rights was among the assets that got him the job. There are certainly “very strong interests on both sides” of the case, he said. Kavanaugh suggested that each administration should be free to use its discretion to decide how birth control should be covered since Congress didn’t lay out any particular requirement in the main text of the ACA. “It seems to me the judicial role is not to put limits on the agency discretion that Congress has not put there.”
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Stephen Breyer seemed frustrated by the arguments and in search of some middle ground. “I don’t understand why this can’t be worked out,” Breyer said. Several justices expressed concern that Trump’s legal justifications for the rules “sweep too broadly,” as Roberts put it.
Mother Loraine Marie Maguire, center, of the Little Sisters of the Poor, speaks to the media after arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court on March 23, 2016, in Washington, D.C. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Certainly, there is an argument to be made that the new rules are less about religious freedom and more about an overly broad power grab. The second of the two consolidated cases, Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania, lends some credence to this idea.
The Little Sisters of the Poor are a Catholic order of nuns who run nursing homes. They were among the first to balk at the contraceptive mandate — and the Obama-era workaround — and quickly sued, asking for an exemption. They lost their bid in several courts before their case, consolidated with five others, made it to the Supreme Court in 2016. In its ruling, the court sent all the parties back to the drawing board to try to work out yet another accommodation; that process had stalled until the Trump administration came in and posted its sweeping new rules.
However, the nuns never really had any skin in the game. For starters, their insurance is covered by a “church plan,” which was always exempt from providing the coverage. But even if that weren’t the case, the nuns’ underlying legal challenge to the mandate was resolved in their favor back in 2018, when a judge granted a permanent injunction barring the government from ever requiring them to provide the coverage.
So, even though the Little Sisters were arguing before the Supreme Court last week as though they had some beef to settle, they aren’t at all impacted by the ongoing legal dispute, a fact that Michael Fischer, Pennsylvania’s chief deputy attorney general, pointed out to Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “Because it’s a church plan,” he said, “the government cannot enforce it. So even if they didn’t have their injunction, their employees would not receive contraception.”
“That’s an interesting point. I didn’t know that. So, the Little Sisters’ claim is actually moot here?” Sotomayor replied. “They lack … standing because they don’t have to provide it; neither does their insurance carrier, correct?”
“That’s correct,” Fischer said.
The Little Sisters may not have a legal role, but they do provide a sympathetic narrative with which to rally support for the broader rule changes. The nuns staged a spirited, well-organized photo-op outside the Supreme Court in 2016, and their supporters rallied again last week on the court steps amid the pandemic. In other words, focusing on the religious plight of nuns facing off against the contraceptive mandate — which isn’t actually an issue — has done well to obscure the problem with a rule that allows employers to opt out of coverage for any alleged moral objection. Indeed, just two justices — Ginsburg and Sotomayor — specifically mentioned the moral objection rule, and only one lawyer, Fischer, tried to focus the justices’ attention on it. Neither Solicitor General Francisco nor Paul Clement, the lawyer representing the Little Sisters, mentioned it.
That lack of attention, and the women who would be impacted if the rules are upheld, stood out for Brigitte Amiri, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Reproductive Freedom Project. “Really, what’s at issue is the human impact of denying contraception coverage to hundreds of thousands of women,” she said. “And Justice Ginsburg rightly focused in on that.”


theintercept--2020-05-12--There’s No One Worse Than Trump on Climate and War

responsibilities of the executive office do not appear to have aged President Donald Trump much .
Unlike past presidents who have grown visibly wearier on the job , Trump seems to have not aged much over his four years in office .
Even in the face of a historic pandemic that has , at the time of this writing , killed over 80,000 people in his country , the president has projected an unflappable vanity .
Questioned about the rising death toll at an April press conference , Trump boasted , “ You can ’ t mourn it any stronger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Most people no longer seem to be sharing this ghoulishly upbeat attitude .
Recent polls show that Trump ’ s support has declined over the past few months , as a wave of suffering from the pandemic ripples across the United States .
The administration is widely seen as having botched the response to the coronavirus .
And the president himself has compounded the sense of chaos with his incoherent and disturbing messaging during the crisis .
Trump has been saying insane things for years , of course , but with tens of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tens of millions more out of work and facing an uncertain future , the joke finally appears to be wearing thin .
Every day seems to be a pivotal turning point for American society lately , but it ’ s hard not to look ahead to one autumn day in particular as a momentous occasion that will shape this country ’ s future : Election Day .
There is not much reason to believe that the United States will have recovered by the time of the vote .
Under normal circumstances , after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ office would be all but assured .
But Trump also happens to be facing off against a Democratic Party that is bitterly divided — and with good reason .
The Democratic split can be attributed both to structural differences as well as those of personality , divisions that have been pored over ad nauseam and need not be relitigated here .
What should be considered is that , one way or another , this election will really be a matter of life and death for millions of people .
This is particularly the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ developing countries whose voices are not heard in the electoral process , even though its outcome affects them .
The question of whether Trump would be worse on balance than any Democratic candidate is worth sincerely asking .
But , when you analyze both Trump ’ s record in office and future trajectory , it hardly seems debatable .
In addition to its hideous response to the coronavirus pandemic — the suffering of which is falling overwhelmingly on the working poor and minorities — the Trump administration is willfully laying the groundwork for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be unprecedented .
Trump ran on a platform that made vaguely populist gestures at times .
But in office , he has served as a human ventilator keeping the terminally ill ideologies of neoliberal economics and neoconservative foreign policy alive — both in their most rapacious forms .
If the forces that latched onto him get another four-year extension , we could pass beyond a point where we have much less left to rescue .
There are several fronts on which a second Trump term would guarantee escalated suffering for innocent people , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policy , income inequality , and the courts .
For purposes of illustration however , let me focus on two issues that I follow closely , and which progressives have historically expressed concern about : climate change and war .
has warned that major cuts in emissions need to take place within the next decade in order to avert calamity .
An administration interested in even the minimalist goal of keeping civilization functioning in the medium term should feel compelled to register a response .
Yet the Trump administration has made it a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of what is necessary as aggressively as possible .
Many of its environmental policies seem to have little apparent logic beyond killing endangered species and ramping up CO2 emissions to trigger the libs .
The direst warnings from scientists seem incapable of shaking the administration off its current course .
And this problem is time-sensitive : Within roughly a decade on our present course , we will have likely passed a point beyond which catastrophic harm is unavoidable .
To be fair to Trump , past presidents had environmental policies that also brought @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s reasonable to ask , then , whether his approach is meaningfully worse .
But , according to climate experts who have tracked this subject for years , it is .
Trump ’ s environmental positions go beyond even those of the conservative establishment and corporate America .
They align instead with the most extreme fringe of right-wing activists and libertarians opposed to any type of regulatory action to stave off climate disaster .
“ In 2012 , the Obama administration was doing better on climate policy than a Republican administration would have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not completely terrible on climate .
He would ’ ve enacted some policies , he wasn ’ t totally retrograde or an outright denialist , ” said Kert Davies , the founder and director of Climate Investigations Center .
“ When Trump ditched the Paris accords , many major corporations came out and said that this is a bad idea because they had already begun planning for a reduced-carbon future .
It tells you a lot about how fringe the president is on this issue that he ’ s not even in line @ @ @ @ @ @ @ few years , in part because of the alarm over the Trump administration ’ s policies , a powerful grassroots movement has grown to force the issue on climate change .
It is having an impact .
Whereas in previous elections , it was a struggle for activists to get a single question about the issue addressed , climate policy was one of the major topics of discussion during the last set of Democratic primary debates .
The current likely Democratic nominee , Joe Biden , has made weaker commitments on this subject @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and been justly criticized for his shortcomings by activists .
But there is significant reason to believe that he or any Democratic president would do more than Trump on climate and also be susceptible to pressure to improve their stance in office .
On this issue , even marginal improvements happen to matter a lot .
Even with great effort , we are likely pass the red line that scientists have set : 2 degrees Celsius warming above preindustrial levels .
But keeping emissions at a point that takes us up to 2.5 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more warming would make a difference — and accelerate the severity of our catastrophe .
It ’ s not hyperbole to say that every marginal increase in emissions means death and misery for millions of the most vulnerable around the world .
The absolute intransigence of the Trump administration on climate is particularly galling since there is a lot that could easily be done with a little bit of political will .
“ There is an ocean of difference between what a Trump presidency and a Biden presidency would do on climate policy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one you ’ d do zero , even continue moving backwards , while on the other we ’ d at least be moving forward again .
Even if people don ’ t think Biden ’ s policies are up to Bernie ’ s ” — Biden ’ s progressive rival , Sen. Bernie Sanders , who ended his presidential campaign in April — “ there ’ s a much higher bar now.
” Davies added , “ People have woken up on this issue in a way that could not have been foreseen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ climate policy will be a significant node of the Democratic platform in November , and that it ’ ll be something beyond getting back into the Paris accords .
The dialogue has moved way past that.
” Party ’ s legacy on war is an ugly one .
President Barack Obama was responsible for putting in place a drone warfare program that frequently killed innocent people around the world .
After he left office , the terrifying executive powers over life and death that Obama created were then handed over to a man @ @ @ @ @ @ @ temperamentally fit to wield them .
While Trump occasionally expressed skepticism of U.S. militarism during his first presidential campaign , in practice he has governed with callous brutality , behaving like the ugliest imperialist possible .
Under Trump , strikes in Somalia have ramped up eight times over what they were under Obama .
In all battlefields , he has loosened rules of engagement to allow the greater killing of civilians in American wars .
Thousands have died in needlessly brutal operations in Iraq and Syria as a result of slackened targeting standards @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out of his way to encourage war crimes and even celebrate those who commit them .
Harming innocent civilians is one issue , at least , where he has been keeping his campaign promise .
Trump ’ s foreign policy doesn ’ t get any better when you zoom out from the actual business of killing people .
His administration has given an unprecedented blank check for unilateral Israeli land grabs in the Palestinian territories , setting the stage for institutionalized oppression unseen in the past seven decades of conflict .
Trump has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the hidden infrastructure preventing the outbreak of nuclear wars .
His retrograde approach to these agreements is setting the stage for the renewal of a Cold War-style arms race .
Even a relatively small decision to remove restrictions on land mines will likely kill and maim innocents pointlessly for years to come .
But perhaps the single most aggressive policy Trump is still playing out is his approach toward Iran .
After tearing up the Obama-era nuclear agreement , which , whatever its shortcomings , was the most significant step to extricating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the region , Trump brought the two countries within inches of war this January after illegally assassinating an Iranian general in Iraq .
Even more shockingly , the president has maintained crushing sanctions on that country during the Covid-19 pandemic over the pleas of Iranian human rights activists , Democratic senators , and former high-ranking world officials .
A leaked Pentagon document reported in April said that these sanctions had “ crippled ” the Iranian health care system ’ s ability to respond to the disease , a development that has made even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ president ’ s Iran policy has already resulted in the deaths of innocent people .
In a second term , worse is almost assured .
On this issue alone , there is a staggering difference with even the most flawed Democratic position on this issue .
Anyone looking to express moral outrage over the suffering of civilians due to U.S. foreign policy need look no further than Iran today .
“ The risk of war with Iran is an issue where there is a huge partisan split , ” said Stephen Wertheim , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and author of the forthcoming book “ Tomorrow , the World : The Birth of U.S .
Global Supremacy.
” “ Trump has had many years to pivot from maximum pressure to dialogue and he has not done that with Iran , he has not selected advisers that would allow him to do that .
The Democrats , on the other hand , started out as the party that supported the nuclear deal and are likely to try to return to it once in office.
” Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some type of economic-nationalist retrenchment of American resources away from foreign conflicts .
His thoughts on this issue have never been systematized in any clear way .
But his rhetoric has sometimes given those who hope for such a policy enough material to project an image onto him as an isolationist , despite daily accumulating evidence to the contrary .
It has taken the Covid-19 pandemic and his response — blaming it almost entirely on China instead of using it to make the case for domestic retrenchment — to put the final lie @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were an isolationist , if he were in favor of ‘ Fortress America , ’ he would be focused right now on building defenses in America against future pandemics , ” said Wertheim .
“ That is not what we are seeing .
The Democratic Party has also been historically invested in the dubious goal of U.S. global primacy .
Unlike in the GOP , however , there seems to be a meaningful constituency growing against the hawkishness of previous decades , at least on some important issues .
The nuclear deal negotiated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most significant step taken to extricate the U.S. from the cycle of endless war in the Middle East .
In general , though deeply flawed and deserving harsh criticism , the Democratic Party consensus is still less hawkish than Trump ’ s , who has served as an empty cipher for the most unhinged extremists in Washington , D.C. “ Retrenchment in some fashion is the direction the U.S. should be heading , and the public debate reflects that , ” said Wertheim , who is a critic of the so-called blob foreign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ No one in the Democratic primaries was trying to sound more hawkish on foreign policy ; it was all a contest to say who was going to end endless wars .
Regardless of what happens , this is how the debate is being framed now.
” indictment of the status quo that preceded Trump is that it ultimately gave rise to his presidency .
The proposition of simply returning back to those days and calling it a job well done is untenable .
But when it comes to the question of a second @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lesson we can take from history , including recent history , it ’ s that even when things are bad , they can still become much , much worse without getting better again .
The “ accelerationist ” dream of tearing things down so that something better just might be built in its place is a folly that sacrifices the weakest among us for uncertain gains .
Unless you have great personal wealth and are benefiting from Trump ’ s eye-watering tax cuts on the rich , there will not be any safe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mean .
Electoral politics are not the sum total of political engagement , of course .
Mutual aid and local democracy can flourish without getting involved in the dispiriting business of national elections .
For anyone who cares about large structural issues like climate change and foreign policy , however , it ’ s worth considering how a second Trump term would preclude even a long-term future that is progressive in any sense .
From a strategic perspective is also political capital in appearing to be on the right side of history at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ overcome the pandemic to win the election and , as would be likely , takes the world further down the path of ruin , amid the pain that ensues it would be good for progressives to look like they had done everything in their power to stop him .
One of my favorite books is the Austrian-Jewish writer Stefan Zweig ’ s 1942 memoir , “ The World of Yesterday.
” In that book , written shortly before his death at the height of World War II , Zweig decried how the world @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suddenly been shattered by politics , “ as if it were a hollow clay pot breaking into a thousand pieces.
” Our world is no less fragile .
People can reasonably disagree over the perennial question of “ what is to be done.
” But , at the very least , as this pandemic is emphasizing , we should never let the delicacy of the things we take for granted slip from mind .

Photo: Photo by Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images
The staggering responsibilities of the executive office do not appear to have aged President Donald Trump much. Unlike past presidents who have grown visibly wearier on the job, Trump seems to have not aged much over his four years in office. Even in the face of a historic pandemic that has, at the time of this writing, killed over 80,000 people in his country, the president has projected an unflappable vanity. Questioned about the rising death toll at an April press conference, Trump boasted, “You can’t mourn it any stronger than we’re mourning it.”
Most people no longer seem to be sharing this ghoulishly upbeat attitude. Recent polls show that Trump’s support has declined over the past few months, as a wave of suffering from the pandemic ripples across the United States. The administration is widely seen as having botched the response to the coronavirus. And the president himself has compounded the sense of chaos with his incoherent and disturbing messaging during the crisis. Trump has been saying insane things for years, of course, but with tens of thousands of Americans killed by disease and tens of millions more out of work and facing an uncertain future, the joke finally appears to be wearing thin.
Every day seems to be a pivotal turning point for American society lately, but it’s hard not to look ahead to one autumn day in particular as a momentous occasion that will shape this country’s future: Election Day. There is not much reason to believe that the United States will have recovered by the time of the vote. Under normal circumstances, after such a disaster, the incumbent losing office would be all but assured. But Trump also happens to be facing off against a Democratic Party that is bitterly divided — and with good reason. The Democratic split can be attributed both to structural differences as well as those of personality, divisions that have been pored over ad nauseam and need not be relitigated here.
What should be considered is that, one way or another, this election will really be a matter of life and death for millions of people. This is particularly the case for the poor and people in developing countries whose voices are not heard in the electoral process, even though its outcome affects them. The question of whether Trump would be worse on balance than any Democratic candidate is worth sincerely asking. But, when you analyze both Trump’s record in office and future trajectory, it hardly seems debatable. In addition to its hideous response to the coronavirus pandemic — the suffering of which is falling overwhelmingly on the working poor and minorities — the Trump administration is willfully laying the groundwork for global suffering on a scale that will be unprecedented.
Trump ran on a platform that made vaguely populist gestures at times. But in office, he has served as a human ventilator keeping the terminally ill ideologies of neoliberal economics and neoconservative foreign policy alive — both in their most rapacious forms. If the forces that latched onto him get another four-year extension, we could pass beyond a point where we have much less left to rescue. There are several fronts on which a second Trump term would guarantee escalated suffering for innocent people, including health care, xenophobia, immigration policy, income inequality, and the courts. For purposes of illustration however, let me focus on two issues that I follow closely, and which progressives have historically expressed concern about: climate change and war.
Every expert has warned that major cuts in emissions need to take place within the next decade in order to avert calamity. An administration interested in even the minimalist goal of keeping civilization functioning in the medium term should feel compelled to register a response. Yet the Trump administration has made it a point of pride to do the opposite of what is necessary as aggressively as possible. Many of its environmental policies seem to have little apparent logic beyond killing endangered species and ramping up CO2 emissions to trigger the libs. The direst warnings from scientists seem incapable of shaking the administration off its current course. And this problem is time-sensitive: Within roughly a decade on our present course, we will have likely passed a point beyond which catastrophic harm is unavoidable.
To be fair to Trump, past presidents had environmental policies that also brought us to this point. It’s reasonable to ask, then, whether his approach is meaningfully worse. But, according to climate experts who have tracked this subject for years, it is. Trump’s environmental positions go beyond even those of the conservative establishment and corporate America. They align instead with the most extreme fringe of right-wing activists and libertarians opposed to any type of regulatory action to stave off climate disaster.
“In 2012, the Obama administration was doing better on climate policy than a Republican administration would have done. But even Mitt Romney was not completely terrible on climate. He would’ve enacted some policies, he wasn’t totally retrograde or an outright denialist,” said Kert Davies, the founder and director of Climate Investigations Center. “When Trump ditched the Paris accords, many major corporations came out and said that this is a bad idea because they had already begun planning for a reduced-carbon future. It tells you a lot about how fringe the president is on this issue that he’s not even in line with corporate America.”
Over the past few years, in part because of the alarm over the Trump administration’s policies, a powerful grassroots movement has grown to force the issue on climate change. It is having an impact. Whereas in previous elections, it was a struggle for activists to get a single question about the issue addressed, climate policy was one of the major topics of discussion during the last set of Democratic primary debates.
The current likely Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, has made weaker commitments on this subject so far than some of his challengers and been justly criticized for his shortcomings by activists. But there is significant reason to believe that he or any Democratic president would do more than Trump on climate and also be susceptible to pressure to improve their stance in office. On this issue, even marginal improvements happen to matter a lot. Even with great effort, we are likely pass the red line that scientists have set: 2 degrees Celsius warming above preindustrial levels. But keeping emissions at a point that takes us up to 2.5 degrees, 3 degrees, or even more warming would make a difference — and accelerate the severity of our catastrophe. It’s not hyperbole to say that every marginal increase in emissions means death and misery for millions of the most vulnerable around the world. The absolute intransigence of the Trump administration on climate is particularly galling since there is a lot that could easily be done with a little bit of political will.
Photo: AFP/Getty Images
“There is an ocean of difference between what a Trump presidency and a Biden presidency would do on climate policy,” Davies said. “In one you’d do zero, even continue moving backwards, while on the other we’d at least be moving forward again. Even if people don’t think Biden’s policies are up to Bernie’s” — Biden’s progressive rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, who ended his presidential campaign in April — “there’s a much higher bar now.”
Davies added, “People have woken up on this issue in a way that could not have been foreseen years ago. It is likely that climate policy will be a significant node of the Democratic platform in November, and that it’ll be something beyond getting back into the Paris accords. The dialogue has moved way past that.”
The Democratic Party’s legacy on war is an ugly one. President Barack Obama was responsible for putting in place a drone warfare program that frequently killed innocent people around the world. After he left office, the terrifying executive powers over life and death that Obama created were then handed over to a man who was perhaps the least morally or temperamentally fit to wield them. While Trump occasionally expressed skepticism of U.S. militarism during his first presidential campaign, in practice he has governed with callous brutality, behaving like the ugliest imperialist possible.
Under Trump, strikes in Somalia have ramped up eight times over what they were under Obama. In all battlefields, he has loosened rules of engagement to allow the greater killing of civilians in American wars. Thousands have died in needlessly brutal operations in Iraq and Syria as a result of slackened targeting standards. As commander-in-chief, Trump has gone out of his way to encourage war crimes and even celebrate those who commit them. Harming innocent civilians is one issue, at least, where he has been keeping his campaign promise.
Trump’s foreign policy doesn’t get any better when you zoom out from the actual business of killing people. His administration has given an unprecedented blank check for unilateral Israeli land grabs in the Palestinian territories, setting the stage for institutionalized oppression unseen in the past seven decades of conflict. Trump has revoked arms control treaties that form part of the hidden infrastructure preventing the outbreak of nuclear wars. His retrograde approach to these agreements is setting the stage for the renewal of a Cold War-style arms race. Even a relatively small decision to remove restrictions on land mines will likely kill and maim innocents pointlessly for years to come.
But perhaps the single most aggressive policy Trump is still playing out is his approach toward Iran. After tearing up the Obama-era nuclear agreement, which, whatever its shortcomings, was the most significant step to extricating the U.S. from its endless wars in the region, Trump brought the two countries within inches of war this January after illegally assassinating an Iranian general in Iraq. Even more shockingly, the president has maintained crushing sanctions on that country during the Covid-19 pandemic over the pleas of Iranian human rights activists, Democratic senators, and former high-ranking world officials. A leaked Pentagon document reported in April said that these sanctions had “crippled” the Iranian health care system’s ability to respond to the disease, a development that has made even some hawkish anti-Iran figures queasy.
The president’s Iran policy has already resulted in the deaths of innocent people. In a second term, worse is almost assured. On this issue alone, there is a staggering difference with even the most flawed Democratic position on this issue. Anyone looking to express moral outrage over the suffering of civilians due to U.S. foreign policy need look no further than Iran today.
“The risk of war with Iran is an issue where there is a huge partisan split,” said Stephen Wertheim, deputy director of research and policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and author of the forthcoming book “Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy.” “Trump has had many years to pivot from maximum pressure to dialogue and he has not done that with Iran, he has not selected advisers that would allow him to do that. The Democrats, on the other hand, started out as the party that supported the nuclear deal and are likely to try to return to it once in office.”
Trump has periodically given hints that he favors some type of economic-nationalist retrenchment of American resources away from foreign conflicts. His thoughts on this issue have never been systematized in any clear way. But his rhetoric has sometimes given those who hope for such a policy enough material to project an image onto him as an isolationist, despite daily accumulating evidence to the contrary. It has taken the Covid-19 pandemic and his response — blaming it almost entirely on China instead of using it to make the case for domestic retrenchment — to put the final lie to this claim.
“If Trump were an isolationist, if he were in favor of ‘Fortress America,’ he would be focused right now on building defenses in America against future pandemics,” said Wertheim. “That is not what we are seeing.
The Democratic Party has also been historically invested in the dubious goal of U.S. global primacy. Unlike in the GOP, however, there seems to be a meaningful constituency growing against the hawkishness of previous decades, at least on some important issues. The nuclear deal negotiated by the Democrats in particular was the most significant step taken to extricate the U.S. from the cycle of endless war in the Middle East. In general, though deeply flawed and deserving harsh criticism, the Democratic Party consensus is still less hawkish than Trump’s, who has served as an empty cipher for the most unhinged extremists in Washington, D.C.
“Retrenchment in some fashion is the direction the U.S. should be heading, and the public debate reflects that,” said Wertheim, who is a critic of the so-called blob foreign policy consensus in both parties. “No one in the Democratic primaries was trying to sound more hawkish on foreign policy; it was all a contest to say who was going to end endless wars. Regardless of what happens, this is how the debate is being framed now.”
The most damning indictment of the status quo that preceded Trump is that it ultimately gave rise to his presidency. The proposition of simply returning back to those days and calling it a job well done is untenable. But when it comes to the question of a second Trump term, if there is a lesson we can take from history, including recent history, it’s that even when things are bad, they can still become much, much worse without getting better again. The “accelerationist” dream of tearing things down so that something better just might be built in its place is a folly that sacrifices the weakest among us for uncertain gains. Unless you have great personal wealth and are benefiting from Trump’s eye-watering tax cuts on the rich, there will not be any safe haven from what a second term will mean.
Electoral politics are not the sum total of political engagement, of course. Mutual aid and local democracy can flourish without getting involved in the dispiriting business of national elections. For anyone who cares about large structural issues like climate change and foreign policy, however, it’s worth considering how a second Trump term would preclude even a long-term future that is progressive in any sense. From a strategic perspective is also political capital in appearing to be on the right side of history at a pivotal moment. If Trump does overcome the pandemic to win the election and, as would be likely, takes the world further down the path of ruin, amid the pain that ensues it would be good for progressives to look like they had done everything in their power to stop him.
One of my favorite books is the Austrian-Jewish writer Stefan Zweig’s 1942 memoir, “The World of Yesterday.” In that book, written shortly before his death at the height of World War II, Zweig decried how the world that he had grown up in had suddenly been shattered by politics, “as if it were a hollow clay pot breaking into a thousand pieces.” Our world is no less fragile. People can reasonably disagree over the perennial question of “what is to be done.” But, at the very least, as this pandemic is emphasizing, we should never let the delicacy of the things we take for granted slip from mind.