Chris Hedges's Blog, page 114

Margaret Atwood’s Powerful Antidote to Civilizational Collapse

“The Testaments”

A book by Margaret Atwood

Time and time again, the author Margaret Atwood has reiterated that everything in “The Handmaid’s Tale” has a historical precedent. Atwood might not be able to predict the future, but she can remind us of the old adage: “History doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes.” She described “The Handmaid’s Tale” as an “anti-prediction,” a template for what not to do. In “The Testaments,” Atwood’s sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the writer again projects the past into the future. This sequel focuses less on violence and the perversity of society in Gilead, and more on daily life among the more privileged classes, as well as how experience and stories shape characters. Here is a story to learn from.

“The Testaments” is told through three overlapping firsthand stories told by three women, which together explain a chain of events that occurred 15 years after Offred’s final scene. One of these stories is Baby Nicole’s, who is now 16 years old and living in Canada, protected with a different name. One is Agnes’s—better known to Hulu show fans as Hannah—who was snatched from her parents Offred and Luke and raised by the regime. The other testimony comes from Aunt Lydia, the iron-fisted enforcer of the new ideology who retrains handmaids in the infamous Red Center. Each story is propulsive and distinct in voice. Agnes’s story, in particular, has the flavor of a Gothic Victorian novel.

We last saw Offred at the end of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Her fate was uncertain. She was getting into a car, and it was unclear whether the drivers were Eyes, members of the secret police coming to arrest her, or members of the Mayday resistance, set to free her. Ambiguous endings fuel our imagination and can distinguish pessimists from optimists, though in hard times many of us look to stories for hope. Stories tell us that monsters can be vanquished and freedom attained by those who persevere, retaining their humanity; they reassure us that justice will prevail. Margaret Atwood said one inspiration for “The Testaments” was the many questions from voracious fans. This sequel delivers the promised answers and closure.

Click here to read long excerpts from “The Testaments” at Google Books.

The importance of storytelling is a major theme in the novel. Storytelling has the capacity to forge chains and to break them, to shape identities and make people cooperate. Like in other oppressive states where books were burned or heavily censored, Gilead doesn’t like its citizens to have free access to stories—in fact, women are not allowed to read at all. Reading and writing are dangerous; both can sow the seeds of doubt that encourage free-thinking and, in turn, rebellion or revolution. Only those with power have access to the forbidden knowledge. The regime also recognizes that stories underpin and buttress belief—the right stories, if edited to fit the political agenda, can be used for propaganda.

In Gilead, women are supposed to be silent, illiterate witnesses, passive beyond domesticity. In writing their testimonies, our three female sources offer an alternative narrative to the patriarchal one offered by the state. They are the echoes of people saying “my life mattered” when their names and agency was erased. Female testimonies might not be deemed important in this tyranny, but they are integral to our understanding of the greater story. Women may have been instrumental in forging Gilead, but they are also instrumental in demolishing it.

Many fans thought the 1985 novel prescient when Trump came into power. In the last decade, we’ve witnessed threats to bodily autonomy and Planned Parenthood, all while the climate crisis has become more urgent. The second inspiration for “The Testaments,” says Atwood, came as a response to the parallels between Gilead and the world we’re living in today. In newspapers, we still see images of refugees in lifeboats on rough seas, stories of human trafficking and victim-blaming, struggles over abortion rights, and climate change denial.

A knowledge of history enables Aunt Lydia—as she is known in Gilead—to anticipate coming events after an unexpected coup in the United States. The Hulu series writers provided their motives for Aunt Lydia’s complex cruelty. In “The Testaments,” Atwood provides her own. Well versed in literature and history, she bemoans how tedious tyranny is “in the throes of enactment,” how the plot is always the same. Tedious though it may be, this knowledge endows her with agency—she knows which roles to assume to survive.

The Aunt Lydia presented here is not wholly unsympathetic. We learn she was a family court judge and the first of her family, all trailer dwellers, to attend college. Given a choice, she has no intention of falling from the ladder she has climbed. “I’d been in tight corners before. I had prevailed. That was my story to myself.”

“The Wheel of Fortune rotates, fickle as the moon,” she says, elsewhere. “Soon those who were down will move upwards. And vice versa, of course.” The celestial body that looms in the night sky presents the perfect allegory for understanding history—and other stories. The Moon is ever changing, but predictable in its fickleness. The Moon cycle has an inevitable trajectory, as it ripens and shrinks in the night sky. History too will keep turning and turning, like the Moon that waxes and wanes. The Moon reappears in the narrative in different parts of its cycle. There is a full Moon near the beginning, which reminds Aunt Lydia of Easter and forgotten Neolithic fertility goddesses, while the closure we seek is also witnessed by a full Moon.

Aunt Lydia’s nature-inspired worldview likely comes from Atwood’s own childhood in rural Canada, where there was no electricity and people used the Moon to predict the weather, as she recalled at the Moon Festival earlier this year. Rather than fall prey to fortune, Aunt Lydia wants to be instrumental in turning the wheel; she wants to hold on to power.

Yet never does she let go of her judicial need for retribution. She is pragmatic and utilitarian, at least in her testimony. She is conscious, too, that she has almost succumbed to the lust for power, and seeks redemption. She has faith in the knowledge that all civilizations collapse—that the future will rhyme with the present and the past. Dancing and nail polish will return, she says, they always do.

Aunt Lydia’s greatest asset in surviving—and keeping a grip on power—is her knowledge of history and stories. Reading has equipped her with Machiavellian cunning. She knows how to play the cards right. She knows you can never be certain of loyalties, that her best bet is to divide and conquer. Like others in “The Testaments,” she lies to provide people the story they need to cooperate. The new mythology of the world she co-creates is so convincing, she too almost believes it.

Next to Aunt Lydia, Nicole and Agnes know very little about the world. In their respective testimonies, they divulge coming-of-age stories from two sides of the border. Both are lied to (for protection and oppression) and begin to question things. Many adults lie in “The Testaments,” and in that sense, many tell stories to comfort (others or themselves), to protect, or to encourage cooperation.

Agnes from a young age was told fairy tales to explain her situation. Initially she believes them, but children are smarter than we give them credit; they too, in time, might seek to interrogate plot holes. “Once a story you’ve regarded as true has turned false,” Agnes says, “you begin suspecting all stories.”

As we mature as readers, we (hopefully) lose our binary vision. We learn that there is a whole dimension of gray territory between the two polarized dualities of good and evil that exist within fairy tales. Life is more nuanced. When Nicole learns of the death of a Gilead missionary, she is initially pleased, while her foster parents show more compassion. When she later encounters loss firsthand, she develops a more nuanced view.

That is what “The Testaments” presents us with: a nuanced view. In “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Aunt Lydia notes: “Ordinary […] is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.” Gilead is still a totalitarian state. There are still public executions. Women are still raped. Baby Nicole and Aunt Lydia have become icons—their photos in public spaces are eerily similar to the Cult of Personality used in regimes such as North Korea. Even an escape from Gilead does not mean freedom. Its escapees struggle to find peace, and like other oppressive states, Gilead has its spies beyond its territories. As is the case in times of scarcity, all in Gilead are losers, male and female—except those who wield power—though possessing power is a hazardous affair, as we learn from Lydia’s testimony.

Divisive politics in Gilead helps strengthen people’s beliefs in borders and the regime, as it does in the United States at present. At a protest in Canada between both sides, there are no conversations, but eggs are thrown at Gilead missionaries. These actions likely only confirm what Gilead tells its citizens about the “barbarians” outside. The regime too, divides and conquers from within. Gilead, with its new stories, presents new roles for its actors to assume: Aunts are sinister and all-seeing; Handmaids are scary and cunning; Marthas are all the same. Through Agnes, we can see how a kind person can inherit convictions of an oppressive state or family. At what point are we responsible for a worldview we have inherited? And how can we dismantle oppressive beliefs? In “The Testaments,” we are reminded that friendship—and sisterhood—have the power to unite people. Through conversations and storytelling, we can gain empathy, learn and unlearn.

There is still violence and inequality and oppression, but there are moments of normalcy amid it all; North Korean defectors often speak with nostalgia about their childhoods. So do Gilead’s children. Much of “The Testaments” centers on that normalcy in the interval between bombs.

There are, dare I say, some things we can learn from Gilead, particularly as we seek solutions for tackling the climate crisis. Gilead is against food waste, and its citizens are generally more conscious consumers, grateful for hand-me-downs and bland food. At school, they have nature appreciation classes—the unspecified nuclear disaster is still fresh in their collective mind. Agnes recalls some of the gentler learnings she encountered in schools, when Aunts weren’t teaching her and her classmates how to be good wives and avoid tempting men: “Animals had died for us, Aunt Lise reminded us, and vegetables too.”

From the members of the Mayday resistance, we’re reminded of the power of brave acts of activism, many of which put the activists at risk. From stories, and history, we can take the good and reject the bad. Effective dystopian fiction is terrifying, propulsive reading because it resonates. Because we’re living in difficult times, and it feels ordinary. Women’s rights are under threat. So is our planet. Sometimes we need to see things in a different context—with a different narrative—to see that not all is right in this strange reality we have created for ourselves today. This is not the story we want to live. A number of social commentators, among whom are Adam Curtis and Yuval Noah Harari, have speculated that the antidote to civilizational collapse might lie in religion or new myths, which provide narrative in the chaos.

In “The Testaments,” Commander Judd, in a misogynistic rant, recognized this need for stories and saw it as an opening for attaining power:

We have seen the results of too much laxity, too much hunger for material luxuries, and the absence of the meaningful structures that lead to a balanced and stable society. Our birth rate—for various reasons, but most significantly through the selfish choices of women—is in free fall. You do agree that most human beings are at their most unhappy when in the midst of chaos? That rules and boundaries promote stability and thus happiness?

This could be considered a prediction, if a prediction is calculated based on historical precedents.

The culture we live in exists because someone once told a story, or many stories. So does Gilead. This is how things become ordinary. We collectively tell ourselves stories to explain our situation, create it, protect it. In this need for stories, we leave ourselves vulnerable to abuse, or to becoming unwillingly complicit in a system that abuses others. Thankfully, even in a totalitarian state like Gilead, nothing is impermeable. Freedom and power can be gained and lost. There is still movement across borders.

Turning and turning, the wheel of fortune keeps spinning. Can we ever escape it? Are we circling or spiraling? Whatever the answer, Atwood’s references to the moon cycle remind us this cycle of fortune is inevitable, too. Telling stories helps us find an anchor in this chaos and navigate difficult circumstances. We can learn to work with nature rather than resist it. “The Testaments” is also a rallying cry to become conscious of the stories we are told, and tell, and the roles we assume. Which choices would we make if in Aunt Lydia’s shoes? Which parts of history do we wish to claim as our own? Which do we reject? Becoming aware of the mythos that constrains us also means we can collectively help dismantle it. As readers, we can imagine and work toward a better world.

This article originally appeared on the Los Angeles Review of Books .

 

 

Google Buys Fitbit for $2.1 Billion, Vows to Protect Health Data

Google is buying Fitbit for about $2.1 billion, enabling the internet company to step back into the hotly contested market for smartwatches and health trackers.

Fitbit is a pioneer in wearable fitness technology, but it’s been shredded by that competition. Google, meanwhile, has been developing Wear OS software for other manufacturers to build wearable devices, but they haven’t gained much traction in the face of competition from Fitbit, Apple, Samsung and others.

The deal to buy Fitbit could give Google a needed boost.

“Google doesn’t want to be left out of the party,” said analyst Daniel Ives of Wedbush Securities. “If you look at what Apple has done with wearables, it’s a missing piece of the puzzle for Google.”

Matt Stoller of the Open Markets Institute, a research group that focuses on competition and consolidation, said health care is one of the few industries big enough to help a company as large as Google keep growing.

The deal, expected to close next year, will likely face scrutiny from federal and state antitrust investigators that have launched probes this year. “It’s obviously embarrassing to enforcers if they allow it without any sort of scrutiny,” Stoller said.

Fitbit makes a range of devices, from basic trackers that mostly count steps to smartwatches that can display messages and notifications from phones.

They can track a range of fitness activities, such as running, cycling and swimming, along with heart rates and nightly sleep patterns. Fitbit typically asks for date of birth, gender, height and weight to help with calorie and other calculations. Some users also use Fitbit devices and its app to track food and water intake. Women can also track their periods.

Google said it won’t sell ads using the sensitive health data that Fitbit devices collect, continuing promises made by Fitbit.

But that likely won’t stop Google from sucking up other personal data from Fitbit devices. Fitbit also has GPS models that could track users’ locations. That could help Google know that a runner stopped at a coffee shop on the way back, allowing Google to then display ads for rival coffee shops.

More importantly, having a Google device on the wrist could drive its wearers to use Google services even more — giving Google more ways to collect data and sell ads.

Google’s announcement suggests that Fitbit will be absorbed into Google’s main business, rather than staying as an independent subsidiary of parent company Alphabet. That follows the trend of smart home device maker Nest, which was folded back into Google in 2018 after being a stand-alone company under Alphabet.

Fitbit has 28 million active users worldwide and has sold more than 100 million devices.

Its market capitalization soared to just under $10 billion after becoming a public company in 2015. But its value this week is well below $2 billion. When rumors of a potential buyout by Google surfaced earlier this week, Fitbit shares soared almost 30%. The stock jumped another 15% in morning trading Friday.

Alphabet said it will pay $7.35 per share for the company, which were trading at $7.20 each after the deal was announced. Alphabet shares gained less than 1% in morning trading.

“With Google’s resources and global platform, Fitbit will be able to accelerate innovation in the wearables category, scale faster, and make health even more accessible to everyone,” Fitbit co-founder and CEO James Park said in a statement.

Fitbit has been expanding its partnerships with major health care companies such as Humana to encourage healthier living and disease management. John Hancock announced incentives last year on all its policies for people willing to share data gathered by health-monitoring devices and offers Fitbits for free to active participants.

Last year, Fitbit acquired a cloud-based health coaching platform used to help manage conditions including diabetes and hypertension.

Research firm IDC ranks Fitbit fourth in global shipments of digital watches, fitness trackers and other wrist-worn devices, behind second-place Apple, and Chinese companies Xiaomi and Huawei, which took the first and third positions. Samsung came in fifth.

IDC noted that Fitbit pioneered the market but has suffered from poor reception this year to the Versa Lite smartwatch, though that was offset by the popularity of its newly launched Inspire wristbands. A study by Canalys, focused on the North American market, showed Fitbit second behind Apple and ahead of Samsung, though Apple and Samsung experienced the most gains.

Google’s lack of wearables has been a blind spot that it is fixing with the Fitbit purchase and the upcoming launch of its earbuds, the Pixel Buds, this spring, UBS analyst Eric Sheridan said in a research note.

Sheridan said that health, fitness and wellness were a key focus for tech platforms. He predicted that Google would integrate its answer to Apple’s Siri, called Assistant, with Fitbit along with its watch software.

___

AP Technology Writers Tali Arbel and Frank Bajak contributed to this report.

China Can Sanction $3.6 Billion in U.S. Trade, WTO Says

GENEVA — The World Trade Organization said Friday that China can impose tariffs on up to $3.6 billion worth of U.S. goods over the American government’s failure to abide by anti-dumping rules with regard to Chinese products.

The move hands China its first such payout at the WTO at a time when it is engaged in a big dispute with the United States. The two sides have recently imposed tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of goods, but did not do so through the WTO, which helps solve trade disputes.

Friday’s announcement from a WTO arbitrator centers on a case with origins long before the current trade standoff: a Chinese complaint filed nearly six years ago seeking over $7 billion in retaliation.

The decision means China can impose higher tariffs against the United States than China is currently allowed under WTO rules, and will be given leeway as to the U.S. products and sectors it would like to target.

Parts of a WTO ruling in May 2017 went in favor of China in its case against some 40 U.S. anti-dumping rulings, involving trade limits on Chinese products that the United States says are or were sold below market value.

However, the WTO arbitrator honed down the award to base it on some 25 Chinese products — including diamond sawblades, furniture, shrimp, solar panels, automotive tires and a series of steel products — that were affected by U.S. anti-dumping measures. That explains why the award was less than the sum China had sought.

The decision comes as the United States is fresh off a high-profile WTO award against the European Union over subsidies given to European plane maker Airbus, which has let Washington slap tariffs on $7.5 billion worth of EU goods including Italian cheese, Scottish whiskey and olives from Spain.

That was a record award from a WTO arbitrator in the trade body’s nearly quarter-century history. The award announced Friday ranks as the third-largest.

In the Chinese anti-dumping ruling, the WTO faulted two techniques that the United States uses to set penalties for dumping. Its so-called “zeroing methodology” — long a problem for the trade body — involves cherry-picking violators and neglecting law-abiding producers in a way that lets U.S. officials artificially inflate the penalties imposed.

The other technique involves treating multiple Chinese companies of a product as a single entity, in essence penalizing some producers that do not violate anti-dumping rules along with those that do.

While these tariffs are allowed by the WTO under international trade law, the Trump administration has in its disputes with China and other commercial partners exchanged tariffs unilaterally, without any green light from the WTO.

The U.S. and China have filed a number of complaints with the WTO against each others’ tariffs, but dispute resolution can take years.

Elizabeth Warren Answers Critics by ‘Paying for Medicare for All’

It won’t be a burden. It will be a relief. And for the large majority of those living in the United States—a huge tax break.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren released a “Paying for Medicare for All” proposal on Friday morning, laying out her detailed approach to financing a federal health care plan that would provide comprehensive coverage to all Americans by demanding the top 1% and corporations take the brunt of the costs while promising “not one penny” more in taxes for working-class and middle-class families.

“No middle class tax increases,” Warren said of her plan in a detailed blog post as she vowed to put “$11 trillion in household expenses back in the pockets” of U.S. families. That figure, she said, is “substantially larger than the largest tax cut” in the nation’s history.

“When it comes to health care, what’s broken is obvious,” Warren explained. “A fractured system that allows private interests to profiteer off the health crises of the American people. A system that crushes our families with costs they can’t possibly bear, forcing tens of millions to go without coverage or to choose between basic necessities like food, rent, and health—or bankruptcy.”

Under pressure to explain how she would pay for Medicare for All, Warren’s anticipated release of her plan arrives in the midst of a heated debate within the Democratic primary over the way forward on U.S. healthcare. Having repeatedly said “I’m with Bernie” on Medicare for All—and being a vocal co-sponsor of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ legislation in the U.S. Senate—Warren has cut a different line in terms of how she talks about paying for it.

“A key step in winning the public debate over Medicare for All will be explaining what this plan costs—and how to pay for it,” Warren said Friday. “This task is made a hundred times harder by powerful health insurance and drug companies that make billions of dollars off the current bloated, inadequate system—and would be perfectly happy to leave things exactly the way they are.”

Today, I’m releasing my plan to pay for #MedicareForAll. Here’s the headline: My plan won’t raise taxes one penny on middle-class families. In fact, we’ll return about $11 TRILLION to the American people. That’s bigger than the biggest tax cut in our history. Here’s how:

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) November 1, 2019

According to the basic layout put out by her campaign, Warren’s vision for Medicare for All—which her campaign estimate would cost under $52 trillion over ten years, notably less than the status quo for-profit system—includes:

Every person in America—all 331 million people—will have full health coverage, and coverage for long-term care
Everybody gets the doctors and the treatments they need, when they need them. No more restrictive provider networks, no more insurance companies denying coverage for prescribed treatments, and no more going broke over medical bills
The $11 trillion in household insurance and out-of-pocket expenses projected under our current system goes right back into the pockets of America’s working people. And we make up the difference with targeted spending cuts, new taxes on giant corporations and the richest 1% of Americans, and by cracking down on tax evasion and fraud. Not one penny in middle-class tax increases.

As summarized by CNN, Warren would pay for her plan in the following ways:

Employer contributions: Instead of paying premiums to insurers, companies would send an estimated $8.8 trillion over 10 years to the federal government as an “Employer Medicare Contribution.”
Taxes on the wealthy: Billionaires would be subject to a new tax of three cents on the dollar on net worth above $1 billion. This is in addition to the wealth tax she announced earlier this year, which would also place a 3 percentage point levy on billionaires. Also, the wealthiest 1% would be taxed on capital gains income annually, rather than at the time of sale, and the capital gains rate would be raised to match income tax rates. Combined, this would raise $3 trillion.
Reducing tax evasion: Warren argues that she can collect $2.3 trillion by empowering the Internal Revenue Service to crack down on tax evasion and fraud, redirecting the agency’s focus to high-income earners.
Levies on financial sector and large corporations: Warren would impose a financial transaction tax of .01% on the sale of stocks, bonds and derivatives. She would also make several significant changes to corporate tax law. All together, these would generate $3.8 trillion.
Taxing additional take-home pay: Since employees would no longer have to pay their share of health care premiums, their take-home pay would go up. This would raise $1.4 trillion.

Dying healthcare activist Ady Barkan—who has interviewed all the leading Democratic candidates save for Joe Biden, who has refused the invitation, on their healthcare ideas—praised Warren’s detailed “pay-for” plan as a “massive win for the Medicare-for-all movement” that has been led by Sanders in recent years.

In an op-ed for The Intercept posted Friday morning praising the plan, as well as Warren’s “public policy jujitsu,” Barkan writes:

Her plan doesn’t raise taxes on working families. Lately, debate moderators have been salivating at the idea of getting Warren to admit that her plan will be paid for by creating a new employer-side tax. (Bernie has already said as much — because he’s a no-bullshit, courageous guy, and everyone has been assuming that it would be necessary.) And her debate-stage admission would then be the subject of a billion dollars in Republican advertisements. This was the trap that was being set for Warren, according smart observers like Paul Krugman and Zach Carter, and it could have disastrous political consequences. (They even had me worried. Honestly.)

But then Warren did what she does best: her fucking homework. She consulted the experts, she double-checked the numbers, and she dropped a codex of wisdom right in the middle of the teacher’s desk. And the political reverberations may be felt for decades.

Just imagine what will happen when the debate moderators ask her next time how she’ll pay for her plan. She can answer honestly and with authority that Medicare for All will mean zero health care costs and no increases in taxes for all but the wealthiest Americans.

In her statement on Friday, Warren said there is “a reason former President Barack Obama has called Medicare for All a good idea. There’s a reason the American people support it. It’s because when it comes to the cost of health care, we are in the middle of a full-blown crisis.”

In the U.S., Warren continued, “we are paying twice as much as any other major nation for care—even as tens of millions lack coverage, and even as family after family sees its finances destroyed by a health issue. And the American people know that in the long-term, a simple system that covers everybody, provides the care they need when they need it, puts $11 trillion back in their pockets and uses all of the public’s leverage to keep costs as low as possible is the best option for their family budgets and for the health of their loved ones.

And if elected as president, she concluded, “I’ll fight to get it done.”

Trump Changes Primary Residence From New York to Florida

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will follow in the well-trod path of many other septuagenarian New Yorkers who have been drawn to Florida’s year-round warmth, sunshine and low taxes.

Trump tweeted late Thursday that he will make Palm Beach, Florida, his permanent residence after leaving the White House, rather than returning to Trump Tower in New York. The move also safely ensconces Trump in the glitzy world of Palm Beach and away from the protests of solidly Democratic Manhattan.

Trump, who was born in New York and whose developer-turned-reality-star persona was honed there, said the city “will always have a special place in my heart!” But he complained that he had been “treated very badly by the political leaders of both the city and state” despite paying “millions of dollars in city, state and local taxes each year.”

“In the end it will be best for all concerned,” he tweeted.

The move marked the first concrete step by Trump to contemplate his post-presidency at a time when he is embroiled in an impeachment fight in Washington and a trying reelection campaign next year. Trump said he hopes the White House remains his home for another five years, but that Florida would be his primary residence.

The New York Times reported that Trump had filed “declaration of domicile” paperwork changing his “predominant and principal home” to his Mar-a-Lago resort.

Trump won Florida’s 29 electoral votes in 2016 by just over 110,000 voters, less than 1% of the state’s total. Aides believe his likeliest path to a second term in 2020 relies on a repeat victory in the swing state and have invested millions to shore up support.

The move brings Trump to year-round golf climes and a state with no income or inheritance taxes — likely providing substantial savings to the president and his heirs.

The move was met with derision by many New York Democrats, including the city’s mayor, Bill De Blasio, who tweeted his “deepest condolences to the good people of Florida.”

And New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo bid Trump “good riddance” in a statement. The Democrat added, “It’s not like Mr. Trump paid taxes here anyway. He’s all yours, Florida.”

Florida Democratic Party Chairman Terrie Rizzo responded with a statement detailing the organization’s drive to counter Trump in 2020. The effort has raised $5.2 million so far and hired 91 employees.

“He is not the first person to move to Florida to retire,” Rizzo said.

Robert Reich: Democrats Reject Oligarchy or Else

In the conventional view of American politics, Joe Biden is a moderate while Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are on the left and Donald Trump is on the right.

This conventional view is rubbish. Today’s great divide is not between left and right. It’s between democracy and oligarchy.

There are no longer “moderates.” There’s no longer a “center.” The most powerful force in American politics today is anti-establishment fury at a rigged system.

Four decades ago, when America had a large and growing middle class, the left wanted stronger social safety nets and more public investment in schools, roads and research. The right sought greater reliance on the free market.

In those days, a general election was like a competition between two hotdog vendors on a long boardwalk extending from left to right. To maximize sales, each had to move to the middle. If one strayed too far left or right, the other would move beside him and take all sales from the rest of the boardwalk.

This older American politics is now obsolete. As wealth and power have moved to the top and the middle class has shrunk, more Americans have joined the ranks of the working class and poor.

Most Americans – regardless of whether they were once on the left or right – have become politically disempowered and economically insecure. Nowadays it’s the boardwalk versus private jets on their way to the Hamptons.

As Rahm Emmanuel, Barack Obama’s chief of staff and former mayor of Chicago, told the New York Times: “This is really the crack-up. Usually, fights are Democrats versus Republicans, one end of Pennsylvania versus the other, or the left versus the right. Today’s squabbles are internal between the establishment versus the people that are storming the barricades.”

In 2016, Trump harnessed many of these frustrations, as did Sanders.

The frustrations today are larger than they were in 2016. Corporate profits are higher, as is CEO pay. Markets are more monopolized. Wealth is more concentrated at the top. Although the official unemployment rate is lower, most peoples’ incomes have gone nowhere and they have even less job security.

Meanwhile, Washington has become even swampier. Big corporations, Wall Street and billionaires have flooded it with money and lobbyists. Trump has given out all the tax cuts, regulatory rollbacks and subsidies they have ever wanted. The oligarchy is in charge.

Why hasn’t America risen up in protest? Because American democracy was dysfunctional even before Trump ran for president. The moneyed interests had already taken over much of it.

It’s hard for people to get very excited about returning to the widening inequalities and growing corruption of the decades before Trump. Which partly explains why Biden is foundering.

At the same time, Trump and his propagandists at Fox News have channeled working-class rage against the establishment into fears of imaginary threats such as immigrants, socialists and a “deep state.”

But a large majority of Americans – right and left, Republican as well as Democrat – could get excited about moving toward a real democracy and economy that worked for the many.

This is why the oligarchy is so worried about Warren’s rise to frontrunner status in some polls.

Politico reports that Democratic-leaning executives on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley and across the corporate world are watching her with increasing panic.

“Ninety-seven percent of the people I know in my world are really, really fearful of her,” billionaire Michael Novogratz told Bloomberg.

These Democratic oligarchs hope Biden, or perhaps Pete Buttigieg or Amy Klobuchar, can still take Warren out.

In just the third quarter, Buttigieg raised about $25,000 from executives at Wall Street firms including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and hedge fund giants like Bridgewater, Renaissance Technologies and Elliott Management. And another $150,000 from donors who described their occupation as “investor”.

If Biden implodes and neither Buttigieg nor Klobuchar takes the lead from Warren, Wall Street and corporate Democrats hope former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg will ride into the primary at the last minute.

It won’t work. The stark reality is that Democrats cannot defeat Trump’s authoritarian populism with an establishment candidate who fronts for the oligarchy.

The only way Democrats win is with an agenda of fundamental democratic and economic reform, such as provided by Warren and also by Sanders.

Unless Democrats stand squarely on the side of democracy against oligarchy, the risk on election day is that too many Americans will either stand with Trump or stay home.

Border Patrol Is Being Endowed With Frightening Powers

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for ProPublica’s Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox as soon as they are published.

Pushing further toward its goal of “extreme vetting,” the Trump administration is creating a new center in suburban Virginia that will allow immigration agents to access, for the first time, the sprawling array of information scooped up by America’s intelligence agencies, from phone calls intercepted by the National Security Agency to material gathered by the CIA’s spies overseas to tips from informants in Central America.

This classified, potentially derogatory, information will eventually be used to screen everyone seeking to enter the United States, including foreign vacationers seeking travel visas, people applying for permanent residency or immigrants requesting asylum at the Mexican border.

Legal experts worry that immigration agents could potentially use this secret data to flag entire categories of people that fit “suspect” profiles and potentially bar them from entering the U.S., or prompt them to be tracked while they’re here. It could also be nearly impossible for those denied entry to challenge faulty information if wrongly accused, they say, since most of it is classified.

In an interview, the director of the new National Vetting Center, which is being overseen by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, was vague about the types of classified information that may be shared with immigration agencies but said the vetting center’s privacy and legal experts will make sure it conforms with the law.

“Right now, we’re still trying to get off the ground and are still focused on counterterrorism information which has already been used for vetting in the past,” said Monte Hawkins, a former National Security Council staffer who now works for CBP. “But as we fold in new types of derogatory information, yes, there’s potentially places where that type of information was never available before to make decisions.”

Hawkins, who helped write President Donald Trump’s February 2018 national security memo calling for the center’s creation, said that’s when the center’s lawyers will step in to “make sure” agents with agencies like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and CBP “are allowed to use that information or have the proper authority to do so.”

Spokespeople for the CIA, NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence all declined to comment and referred questions back to the Department of Homeland Security, CBP’s parent agency, which did not respond to a request for comment.

The creation of the vetting center, particularly under the control of CBP and DHS, has alarmed civil rights and privacy experts as well as some who work in national security. They worry that CBP and ICE will use classified information to justify the surveillance of whole populations. And they worry that the center, once fully up and running, could allow the agencies to create their own de facto immigration policies through selective enforcement.

Rachel Levinson-Waldman, senior counsel for the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, said the mere fact that the directive to build the center came from the same memo that called for the “Muslim travel ban” is cause for concern. “I think there’s a real worry about this new center expanding and growing,” she said. “Especially since it’s been created with the same discriminatory animus that’s behind extreme vetting and the Muslim ban. It’s not hard to see where this might end up.”

Levinson-Waldman and others also questioned putting classified intelligence information under the control of an agency like CBP, which has been criticized for a host of troubling behavior, including the targeting of activists, lawyers and journalists, and DHS, which has had three secretaries in three years and is currently waiting for Trump to appoint a fourth.

“You have an acting secretary who could be gone in an hour by tweet,” said Carrie Cordero, a senior fellow with the Washington-based bipartisan think tank Center for a New American Security. “The general counsel for DHS, who ultimately has the responsibility for making sure that oversight rules are followed, was just fired. So, there’s real questions as to what kind of management decisions are being made.”

Brian Katz, a former CIA analyst and now a fellow with the foreign policy think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, said some members of the intelligence community are wary of DHS overseeing such a program because the agency is largely run by political appointees, who can be influenced by whatever agenda is being pushed by the president. “I think that’s particularly acute in this administration given the policies that DHS leadership has either been advocating or executing,” he said.

Both DHS and CBP, as well as ICE, have been scrutinized by a number of media outlets for their increasing reliance on algorithm-driven analytics and big data mining for immigration enforcement.

In August, ProPublica wrote about a 36-year-old Salvadoran man seeking asylum who was separated from his two children and thrown in jail for six months based on faulty gang intelligence provided by a State Department-funded fusion center called the Grupo Conjunto de Inteligencia Fronteriza, or GCIF. The center, which gathers information provided by police and the military in several countries, including El Salvador, shared the intelligence with CBP agents who were vetting asylum seekers at the border. The man’s attorney only learned of the existence of the fusion center after several months of litigation. But the exact nature of the faulty evidence provided by GCIF — or where it came from — has never been revealed because the government maintains that it is classified.

The case is exceptional because a team of high-profile law firms volunteered to litigate the complicated asylum case, which forced the government to provide at least some answers.

In the future, the new vetting center also could be used by CBP to vet asylum-seekers at the border, disguising even further the source of any faulty information.

“They’ll have no idea where the information is coming from,” Levinson-Waldman said of individuals trying to appeal their cases. “And this new vetting center will be artificially invested with this patina of accuracy that it may or may not deserve.”

The drive by CBP and ICE to collect large amounts of data began under the Obama administration, but it has grown exponentially under the Trump administration, which has pushed aggressively for the continuous monitoring of immigrants. Budgets for each agency have increased by more than $2 billion since Trump took office, according to a new report by the international think tank Transnational Institute. A substantial portion of this funding is being used to carry out new extreme vetting initiatives, such as the National Vetting Center.

CBP and ICE already collect vast amounts of unclassified personal information through intelligence gathering, social media web scraping, the collection of biographic and biometric data, and by purchasing access to local government or corporate databases that include information such as license plate numbers or whether someone receives food stamps.

All of this data is analyzed by computer programs that search for “contextual information” to help analysts build a profile on whomever they are investigating. A number of recent media reports have illustrated in detail how ICE and CBP have tracked and targeted immigrants for deportation using these methods.

Chinmayi Sharma, a former software developer who worked on government contracts and is now a lawyer specializing in technology and privacy, said what Trump is doing — through a series of presidential directives — is rapidly transforming immigration enforcement from a largely human interaction to computer analytics-based enforcement. Sharma wrote about the National Vetting Center and technology’s impact on enforcement for the national security blog Lawfare.

Ultimately, she said, the vetting center could usurp much of Congress’ oversight over immigration. Based on information from the center, immigration agents and consular officials could unilaterally grant or deny entry to the United States, perhaps excluding groups of people without having to account for their reasoning. “A lot of the president’s executive orders talk about ‘risky populations’ that aren’t even necessarily country related,” Sharma said. “Is it age group, is it religion, is it someone who identifies a certain way politically?”

“Someone who was legally in the country might not be allowed back into the United States now because they’re part of that risky population,” Sharma said. “All of a sudden something that used to be based on an individual assessment is now a population-based assessment.”

In an interview, Hawkins said the ways in which agents with CBP, ICE and other agencies ultimately use the vetting center is speculative at this point, since it’s currently only working on one program with CBP. But he said the agencies have legal guidelines they have to abide by before they can deny someone admission. “We’re giving them more information that might help them meet that bar, but there’s still a legal bar that has to be met.”

Also unclear is whether the nation’s intelligence agencies will welcome CBP to their community. Congress has previously said CBP and ICE are domestic law enforcement, not spy agencies. But Trump’s memo requires even the most sensitive intelligence agencies, including the NSA and the CIA, to share classified intelligence with the CBP-run center. It also requires the center to expand vetting beyond counterterrorism into new areas such as transnational crime and counterintelligence.

Some security experts like Katz, the former CIA analyst, are skeptical that it will succeed. “Obviously, this is an ambitious project on paper,” he said. “But counterintelligence is some of the most sensitive information the U.S. government collects, and there’s going to be reluctance to share that information.”

Katz wonders whether the vetting center is being created to solve a problem or merely to fulfill political ambitions. “If this is truly an intelligence or law enforcement-driven operation, then that bodes well for the idea of actually achieving its mission,” he said. “But if it’s not, and it’s just being built to sort of cherry-pick intelligence to achieve certain political goals, then this project will be ineffective and likely doomed to fail.”

Hawkins said that the intelligence community has been supportive, but that he couldn’t discuss the scope of their participation, since much of what the center does is classified.

“We’re not getting pushback in terms of the concept, really,” Hawkins said of the intelligence community. Most of the conversations have been about funding because their resources are limited, Hawkins said.

Another concern, he said, is what vetting will look like once it expands beyond counterterrorism.

In the counterterrorism world, analysts identify terrorists and then prevent them from coming in, Hawkins said. “But in counterintelligence that’s probably not the answer. Maybe you allow them to come in and track them or whatever,” he said. “So, we have to define for folks what we mean by vetting, because it’s different from counterterrorism.”

For now, he said, the vetting center is focused on counterterrorism and assisting CBP’s National Targeting Center in vetting applicants in its Electronic System for Travel Authorization program. Travelers from countries that don’t need a visa, such as Germany and the United Kingdom, must apply to ESTA before coming to the United States. In June, CBP began asking these visitors to list all of their social media accounts for the last five years. At the moment, the requirement is optional. But for travelers from countries that require a visa, it is already mandatory.

A look at the ESTA program provides a glimpse of how the center could work in vetting migrants on the nation’s borders.

Hawkins said the center takes the information provided by ESTA applicants and sends it to intelligence agencies, which then return any derogatory information they find. “That might be an ESTA applicant’s phone number that matches a phone number in a cable that [the intelligence agency] wrote and here’s all this bad stuff around that phone number that we think might be the same person, for example,” Hawkins said. “And they give us that cable to look at. Or it might be a link to a [terrorist] watch listed record … and so they say, ‘OK, you know this person seems to be this person on the watch list, here’s the link to that.’”

The center doesn’t have its own analysts, nor does it collect its own intelligence. For the ESTA program, CBP analysts are on site to receive the information. Hawkins said the center is designed to vet large numbers of applicants on a daily basis, which requires some automation but not entirely, he said.

“What we target are entire populations, or entire programs. We’re going to be looking at every single applicant … we’re not looking at subsets. So that our customer, be it ICE, CBP or USCIS, comes to us to get that classified information in real time or near real time to support their operation.” But, he said, “there’s always people looking at it, so it isn’t based on computers deciding who is good to go.”

Still, as these categories of information and potential threats expand, so does the number of people under suspicion and surveillance. “We know that DHS has targeted domestic protests and people providing legal services at the border,” Levinson-Waldman said. “As the scope of the National Vetting Center expands, it will be interesting to see whether it has a hand in the targeting that we know DHS is doing.”

Hawkins acknowledged that as the center takes on more vetting programs, privacy and civil liberties issues will need to be reviewed, especially if the center is allowed to add counterintelligence to its vetting pipeline by next summer. But, he said, before each new program is rolled out, the center’s lawyers will examine the program’s legality and release a privacy impact statement to the public.

Patrick Toomey, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project, said that because everything is assessed by the center’s own attorneys, there’s no way to truly evaluate the impact it will have on the privacy of U.S. citizens and noncitizens.

“It really raises a lot of questions, because there’s so few specifics,” Toomey said. “What type of classified information is being shared for instance? None of that is explained.”

Hawkins acknowledged another conundrum at the heart of the new center: In the future, he said, if asylum-seekers, migrants or even visitors to the U.S. want to challenge decisions based on allegedly faulty intelligence provided through the center, they’ll have to appeal to the original agency where the information came from. Trouble is, the name of the agency providing the intelligence will likely be classified.

The National Vetting Center doesn’t have a redress system in place, he said. “We want to plug into whatever exists at these agencies. But we aren’t creating our own.”

None of this is reassuring to privacy and civil rights experts or to immigration attorneys and advocates.

“Right now, it’s a black box,” Levinson-Waldman said of the new center. “It’s hard not to be skeptical. Because there are plenty of examples from the past on how this could go wrong.”

Joint Turkish and Russian Patrols Begin in Syrian Region

SEVIMLI, Turkey — Turkey and Russia launched joint patrols Friday in northeastern Syria, under a deal that halted a Turkish offensive against Syrian Kurdish fighters who were forced to withdraw from the border area following Ankara’s incursion.

The Turkish Defense Ministry said an initial patrol covered an area 87 kilometers (54 miles) long and 10 kilometers (6 miles) deep in the al-Darbasiyah region, assisted by drones. “The first joint patrol was completed as planned,” the statement said.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the joint patrol included nine military vehicles, including a Russian armored personnel carrier.

Turkey and Russia have agreed the patrols would cover two sections, in the west and east of Turkey’s operation zone in Syria. Turkish troops and allied Syrian opposition fighters now control the border towns of Tal Abyad, Ras al-Ayn and nearby villages. The deal on the patrols excludes the city of Qamishli, according to the ministry’s statement on Tuesday.

The first joint patrol did not fly Russian and Turkish flags on their armored vehicles Friday but once the patrol was completed, Russian flags were seen. An Associated Press journalist at the Turkey-Syria border could see the Syrian flag hoisted on a building on the Syrian side. Syrian government troops moved into Kurdish-held areas following an agreement in October.

Turkey last month invaded northeastern Syria to push out Syrian Kurdish fighters, who it considers terrorists for their links to a Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey.

But the U.S. had partnered with the Syrian Kurdish fighters, their top allies in the war against the Islamic State group. The relationship has strained ties between Washington and Ankara who are NATO allies.

After an abrupt and widely criticized decision by President Donald Trump to withdraw American troops from this part of Syria, the Kurdish forces approached the Syrian government and Russia for protection. Syrian government troops and Russian military police subsequently moved into areas along the border.

Two cease-fire agreements -brokered by the U.S. and Russia- paused Turkey’s operation to allow the Syrian Kurdish fighters withdraw 30 kilometers (about 19 miles) from the border.

Russia told Turkey at the end of the 150-hour cease-fire on Tuesday that the Syrian Kurdish fighters were out of the strip of territory, as well as out of the towns of Manbij and Tal Rifaat, west of the Euphrates River.

A Kurdish news agency and a war monitor reported clashes Friday between Kurdish fighters and Turkey-backed opposition gunmen.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting concentrated near the town of Ein Issa and near the town of Zirkan in the northeastern province of Hassakeh. The group said four people were wounded in the Zirkan area.

The Kurdish Hawar news agency reported clashes between the two sides near the northern region of Afrin, that Turkey-backed opposition fighters last year.

Also on Friday, Turkey’s Defense Ministry announced that a Turkish soldier was killed after an improvised explosive device detonated on Thursday, bringing the Turkish military’s death toll to 13 since the start Ankara’s invasion in northeastern Syria on Oct. 9. Mortars fired from Syria during the early phases of the operation killed 21 civilians in Turkey.

Though the truce has mostly held, it has been marred by accusations of violations from both sides and occasional clashes. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to resume the offensive if deemed necessary.

___

Associated Press writers Zeynep Bilginsoy in Istanbul, Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.

Despite Stable Costs, More Are Uninsured as ‘Obamacare’ Sign-ups Open

WASHINGTON—More Americans are going without health insurance, and stable premiums plus greater choice next year under the Obama health law aren’t likely to reverse that.

As sign-up season starts on Friday, the Affordable Care Act has shown remarkable resiliency, but it has also fallen short of expectations. Even many Democrats want to move on.

President Donald Trump doesn’t conceal his disdain for “Obamacare” and keeps trying to dismantle the program.

Related Articles











No Country for the Sick and Poor



by

















The Obvious Reason Congress Is in No Rush to Make Health Care Universal



by

















Why Are Democrats Afraid to End Private Health Insurance?



by Ilana Novick

During President Barack Obama’s tenure, open enrollment involved a national campaign to get people signed up. The program’s complexity was always a problem, and many lower-income people still don’t understand they can get financial help with premiums.

That can translate to several million uninsured people unaware they qualify for help. An analysis Thursday from the consulting firm Avalere Health found that low-income residents in 96% of counties served by HealthCare.gov can find a basic “bronze” plan at no cost to them, factoring in subsidies. Bronze plans are skimpy, but experts say it beats going uninsured.

Standard “silver” plans are available at no additional cost in 25% of counties, and people eligible for generous subsidies can find more robust “gold” plans for zero premium in 23% of counties, the study found.

But the Trump administration says it’s not specifically advertising that. Early on, it slashed the Obamacare ad budget. Officials say they’re focused on providing a quality sign-up experience and keeping the HealthCare.gov website running smoothly.

Democrats who once touted the health overhaul as a generational achievement now see it as a stepping stone, not the final word.

Presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren would bring the 20 million people covered under the law into a new government-run system for all Americans. “It’s time for the next step,” says Warren.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, who asserts “Obamacare is working,” is proposing a major expansion of current ACA subsidies and a whole new “public option” insurance program.

For John Gold, a self-employed graphic designer from Maine, health care that’s stable, affordable and comprehensive still feels more like a goal than a reality. He’s been covered by the ACA since 2014.

“It’s a great start, but it’s not the be-all and end-all of health care,” he said.

Health care “takes up too much of my budget, and it doesn’t need to,” explained Gold, who lives near Portland. “There are appointments my doctor suggests, that I turn down because it’s going to cost me $300.”

Gold’s income fluctuates, and when he makes too much to qualify for subsidized premiums, he must pay full freight. He’s in his 50s, so his monthly cost is higher, about $700. On top of that, the plan comes with a $4,000 deductible and an $8,000 out-of-pocket limit, potentially leaving him on the hook for a lot more.

Nonetheless, Gold said he hasn’t looked at the cheaper alternative the Trump administration is touting, though it can cost up to 60% less. One reason is “short-term plans” don’t have to cover pre-existing medical conditions.

With the economy strong, it’s unusual for progress to falter on America’s uninsured rate. Yet the Census Bureau reported that 27.5 million people were uninsured in 2018, an increase of nearly 1.9 million from 2017, and the first time the rate went up in a decade.

Caroline Pearson, a health insurance expert with NORC at the University of Chicago, a nonpartisan research organization, said she doesn’t expect to see ACA coverage gains in 2020.

“Premiums are still expensive for people who have other costs,” said Pearson. “It’s a challenging proposition unless you are getting a big subsidy or really need insurance.”

Enrollment has been slowly eroding since Trump took office, from 12.2 million in 2017 to 11.4 million this year. The drop has come mainly in HealthCare.gov states, where the federal government runs sign-up season. State-run insurance markets have held their own.

But Trump administration officials say they’re doing just fine managing Obamacare. They recently announced that premiums for a hypothetical 27-year-old choosing a standard plan will decline 4% on average in 2020 in HealthCare.gov states.

Despite relatively good news on premiums, Trump’s actions still cast a shadow over the ACA’s future.

His administration is asking a federal appeals court in New Orleans to strike down the entire law as unconstitutional. The White House has released no plans to replace it.

Seema Verma, the top administration official overseeing the health law, sounded confident in a recent appearance before a House committee.

“The president has made clear that we will have a plan of action to make sure Americans will have access to health care,” Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said when asked about the court case. But she added, “I’m not going to get into any specifics.”

A decision in the court case could come any day. Whatever they decide, it’s likely to go to the Supreme Court.

Gold, the graphic designer from Maine, is worried. “I do not trust them to replace it with something better,” he said.

Sign-up season ends Dec. 15 in most states. Coverage starts Jan. 1.

Facebook Under Pressure to Follow Twitter Lead on Political Ads

SAN FRANCISCO—Twitter’s ban on political advertising is ratcheting up pressure on Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg to follow suit. But so far, that doesn’t appear likely to happen.

Facebook’s policy is to accept paid political ads from candidates without fact-checking them or censoring them, even if they contain lies.

And Zuckerberg doubled down on that stand Wednesday following Twitter’s announcement, reiterating that “political speech is important” and that Facebook is loath to interfere with it.

Related Articles











'The Great Hack' Shows How Facebook Got Your Number



by Jordan Riefe

















Mark Zuckerberg Faces Employee Backlash Over Political Ads



by Ilana Novick

















Facebook CEO Cozies up to Conservatives at Private Dinners



by Ilana Novick

Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites have come under fire over Russia’s use of such platforms to spread misinformation and sow political division in the U.S. during the 2016 presidential campaign. That debate has heated up again in recent weeks along with the 2020 race for the White house.

Twitter chose to respond with a ban on all political advertising, suggesting that social media is so powerful that false or misleading messages pose a risk to democracy.

The timing of the announcement, the same day as Facebook’s quarterly earnings report, seemed designed to goad Zuckerberg.

“The pressure is going to be extremely strong on Facebook to do something similar, and if they don’t, the criticism of Facebook will only increase,” said Tim Bajarin, president of consultancy Creative Strategies.

In fact, some of the Democratic presidential candidates immediately suggested Facebook follow Twitter’s lead.

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock tweeted: “Good. Your turn, Facebook.” And Pete Buttigieg said, “I think other online platforms would do well to either accept their responsibility for truth or question whether they should be in the business at all.”

But Zuckerberg stood firm.

“This is complex stuff. Anyone who says the answer is simple hasn’t thought about the nuances and downstream challenges,” the Facebook CEO said. “I don’t think anyone can say that we are not doing what we believe or we haven’t thought hard about these issues.”

As for refusing to fact-check political ads, Facebook has said it wants to provide politicians with a “level playing field” for communication and not intervene when they speak, regardless of what they’re saying.

Banning political ads has its own challenges, starting with defining what exactly is political. For example, Greenpeace might not be able to buy an ad urging people to support legislation to fight climate change. But what if an oil company wanted to run an ad for its products that also seemed to come out against such legislation?

Twitter and Facebook already take steps to prevent political manipulation by verifying the identities of political advertisers — measures prompted by the furor over Moscow’s interference. But the verifying systems, which rely on both humans and automated systems, have not been perfect.

In one case, Facebook mistakenly took down ads for  because they contained the word “Bush” and the food company was not registered with Facebook as a political advertiser. Media organizations have also seen their ads flagged for review when they promoted news stories about candidates or important issues.

And then there’s the question of what to do with individual posts from politicians or other opinion makers, which can carry political messages and be shared widely even though they are not paid ads.

Details about Twitter’s new policy won’t be released until Nov. 15, a week before it takes effect. But Twitter does call for removing not just campaign advertisements but also ads on issues of legislative importance. That could include such topics as climate change, gun control and immigration.

EMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson said Zuckerberg’s stance probably isn’t a financial decision, since political ads aren’t big moneymakers.

Facebook, which had 2018 revenue of $55.8 billion, said Wednesday that it expects ads from politicians to account for less than 0.5% of its revenue next year.

Twitter, which had revenue last year of about $3 billion, is thought to make even less from the ads; it said it brought in only $3 million from political ads during the 2018 midterms.

“It is a really complicated decision,” Williamson said. “I think that Mark Zuckerberg is truly struggling with figuring out what is the best thing to do for the company and Facebook users.”

Wedbush Securities managing director Michael Pachter likewise said the Facebook founder is trying to pull off a tricky balancing act.

“Zuckerberg is trying to satisfy investors by growing revenues and satisfy regulators and legislators by cracking down on false and misleading ads, while maintaining the virtuous stance of being a defender of free speech,” Pachter said.

Daniel Kreiss, a journalism professor at the University of North Carolina, said that a middle ground for Twitter and Facebook might be to allow political ads but to prohibit targeting, or showing them only to specific groups of people.

If campaigns aren’t allowed to target, he said, messages will become broader and perhaps less misleading.

Laura Packard, a partner at PowerThru, a digital consulting firm that works with left-of-center campaigns and advocacy groups, said Twitter’s ban was the right decision for voters.

“This might make my work harder,” she said. “But in general, I think that if any platform cannot police misinformation and lies, then they shouldn’t offer paid advertising.”

___

AP reporter David Klepper in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report. Mae Anderson reported from Atlanta.