Chris Hedges's Blog, page 396

Kevin Hart Steps Down as Oscar Host Over Homophobic Tweets

NEW YORK — Just two days after being named host of the Academy Awards, Kevin Hart stepped down following an outcry over past homophobic tweets by the comedian.

Capping a swift and dramatic fallout, Hart wrote on Twitter just after midnight Friday that he was withdrawing as Oscars host because he didn’t want to be a distraction. “I sincerely apologize to the LGBTQ community for my insensitive words from my past,” wrote Hart.

Hart, who is in Australia for a comedy tour, also tweeted Friday morning: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. Martin Luther King, Jr.”

Earlier Thursday evening, the comedian had refused to apologize for tweets that resurfaced after he was announced as Oscars host on Tuesday. In a video on Instagram, Hart said the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences gave him an ultimatum: apologize or “we’re going to have to move on and find another host.”

“I chose to pass on the apology,” Hart said. “The reason why I passed is because I’ve addressed this several times.”

The film academy didn’t respond to messages Thursday evening.

Hart has since deleted some of the anti-gay tweets, mostly dated from 2009-2011. But they had already been screen-captured and been shared online. In 2011, he wrote in a since-deleted tweet: “Yo if my son comes home & try’s 2 play with my daughters doll house I’m going 2 break it over his head & say n my voice ‘stop that’s gay.’”

In an earlier post Thursday, Hart wrote on Instagram that critics should “stop being negative” about his earlier anti-gay remarks.

“I’m almost 40 years old. If you don’t believe that people change, grow, evolve? I don’t know what to tell you,” said Hart, who added, in all-caps: “I love everybody.”

Hart’s attitudes about homosexuality were also a well-known part of his stand-up act. In the 2010 special “Seriously Funny,” he said “one of my biggest fears is my son growing up and being gay.”

“Keep in mind, I’m not homophobic, I have nothing against gay people, do what you want to do, but me, being a heterosexual male, if I can prevent my son from being gay, I will,” Hart said.

GLAAD, the advocacy group for LGBTQ rights, said Thursday that it reached out to Oscars broadcaster ABC, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and Hart’s management to “discuss Kevin’s anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and record.”

Comedian and actor Billy Eichner said “a simple, authentic apology showing any bit of understanding or remorse would have been so simple.”

It’s not the first time an Oscars host has been derailed by anti-gay remarks. Ahead of the 2012 Academy Awards, producer Brett Ratner, who had been paired with host Eddie Murphy, resigned days after using a gay slur at a film screening. Murphy soon after exited, as well.

That year, a tried-and-true Oscars veteran — Billy Crystal — jumped in to save the show, hosting for his eighth time. This time, speculation has already been rampant that few in Hollywood want the gig, for which few win glowing reviews.

The film academy moved up this year’s ceremony to Feb. 24, giving producers little time to find a replacement.

At a Hollywood event Thursday night, comedian Kathy Griffin, whose career suffered last year when she posted a photo on social media that looked like a beheaded President Donald Trump, said Hart messed up, yet had empathy for the situation.

“He wrote that tweet eight years ago when gay marriage wasn’t even legal yet, so we all do things. God knows in my 23 specials I’ve said heinously inappropriate things,” she said.

Griffin hoped Hart’s departure would open the door for a woman comedian to host the show.

“I want more women to host the Oscars and in the entire history of the Oscars, they’ve only been hosted by three women, three times and so we haven’t leveled the playing field yet,” she said.

Terry Crews, who described Hart as a “brother,” said he respected Hart’s decision to walk away from the show.

“I’m thankful that he acknowledged things that maybe weren’t right, and he’ll come back from this,” Crews said. “We do have to admit our guilt and say, ‘Hey I messed up and let’s fix this thing.’ I think that he will do that, and he has always done that.”

Bomb Threat Forces Evacuation of CNN Offices

NEW YORK — Police have given the all-clear after a phoned in bomb threat forced the evacuation of CNN’s offices in New York.

Police said a man with a southern accent called CNN just after 10 p.m. Thursday and said five bombs had been placed throughout the facility inside the Time Warner building at Columbus Circle.

Police said the building was evacuated and building security did a preliminary search. Police units then swept the building with the NYPD bomb squad on standby.

Outside the building, CNN’s Brian Stelter and Don Lemon continued to broadcast. Lemon said fire alarms rang and a loudspeaker told them they needed to evacuate during his live show.

In October, the building was partially evacuated after a suspicious package containing a crude pipe bomb was delivered to the company.

Bernie Sanders: Billionaires Are Destroying the Fabric of Our Country

What follows is a conversation between Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Paul Jay of the Real News Network. Read a transcript of their interview below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

PAUL JAY: Welcome back to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay. We’re in Burlington, Vermont at the Sanders Institute Gathering. And once again, we’re joined by Senator Bernie Sanders. Thanks for joining us.

BERNIE SANDERS: My pleasure.

PAUL JAY: In one of the panels yesterday you said it’s not just about concentration of wealth and how the inequality, how unfair that is, the suffering it causes. But concentration of wealth means concentration of power. How do you challenge that power?

BERNIE SANDERS: This is not easy stuff. But we are certainly not going to deal with it if we don’t discuss it. And one of the crises that we face right now is that you’ve got a media that will not talk about this issue. And you’ve got, essentially, two parties that don’t talk about it very much. And I think one of the things that I wanted to do in my presidential campaign is kind of bust this whole thing open. Let’s talk about the real issues. You know, whether CBS likes it or not.

So what you have here is, first of all, massive income and wealth inequality. And as a nation we have got to think from a moral perspective and an economic perspective whether we think it is appropriate that three people, one, two, three, own more wealth than the bottom half of the American society. You know, that’s really quite outrageous, and it’s appropriate that we take a hard look at that. But it is not just that the one tenth of 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. They don’t put their wealth underneath their mattresses, right. They use that wealth to perpetrate, perpetuate their power. And they do that politically. So you have the Koch brothers and a handful of billionaires who pour hundreds of millions of dollars into elections, because their Supreme Court gutted the campaign finance laws that were in existence, and now allow billionaires quite openly to buy elections.

So wealth equals power, politically. Wealth means that if I own a company in the United States, I own a GE plant, where there may be hundreds or thousands of workers, and that plant may be making money, but not as much money as it could make if I took it to China or to Mexico, I have the power to do that. Because politicians are not going to stop me. Because we have disastrous trade laws. If I am a billionaire, it is likely that I will have control over media, as well. So you have a handful of media conglomerates owned by some of the wealthiest people in this country and in the world determining what the news is; what is appropriate for the American people to discuss and not to discuss.

Now what–my wife Jane, she put this thing together, I’m a guest here. But what she understood is that when we deal with climate change, when we deal with the economy, when we deal with housing, when we deal with criminal justice or immigration issues, we have got to deal with those in a holistic way, and understand why all of that is happening. Not see them as separate issues. And a lot of that has to do that we live in a nation owned and controlled by a small number of multi-billionaires whose greed, incredible greed, insatiable greed, is having an unbelievably negative impact on the fabric of our entire country.

PAUL JAY: The process of financialization that’s taken place over the whole 20th century, especially since World War II, where finance, Wall Street is so dominant in the economy. And this concentration of ownership and concentration of power is, nowhere is that more important than in the financial sector, because it permeates everything.

BERNIE SANDERS: Yes.

PAUL JAY: But every attempt to regulate finance has been without much success at best, and currently whatever there was is being dismantled. Doesn’t there needs to also be a building up of the public sector, starting with banking? Some kind of public banking? Because you can’t really reform these guys, because they all-

BERNIE SANDERS: I don’t know that you can’t reform them. And I think your point is, though, very well taken. What we need–look, let’s be clear. You have … I will never forget, Lloyd Blankfein, the head of Goldman Sachs, came to Congress a few years ago. And this is after the taxpayers of this country bailed them out because of their greed and their illegal behavior. This is chutzpah. These guys, after being bailed out by the middle class and working families of this country, after causing incalculable harm, which–the Wall Street crash cost us millions of jobs, people lost their homes, they lost their life savings. These guys, after getting bailed out, they come to Congress. They say, you know, what we think Congress should do is you gotta cut Social Security, and Medicare, and Medicaid. And by the way, lower corporate tax rates and give more tax breaks to the wealthy. That’s power. That’s chutzpah. We have it all, we can do whatever we want to do. And I think the power of Wall Street.–you’ve got a half a dozen banks that own over 50 percent, equivalent to 50 percent of the assets in our GDP. And we have got to stand up to them.

Now, your point is, OK, while we try to do that, are there other alternative models? And right here in the state of Vermont I am a strong advocate of a state bank, for example, where we can use the tax revenue that comes in for the public good, to help us create jobs, deal with agriculture, deal with the environment and climate change, and so forth.

PAUL JAY: Because the blackmail that happened in ’07-’08, too big to fail, and too big to go to jail. And-

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s right. And we have–but I don’t want to give up that fight. We have legislation in that is so–commonsense legislation, that when you have a handful of banks that have such incredible control over our economy that when they agreed destroys the economy they have to be bailed out because they’re too big to fail. But it also gives them unbelievable political power. You gotta break them up. And we have legislation in there that would break up the largest banks and financial institutions in this country. And that’s what we should do.

PAUL JAY: But aren’t you concerned that, like when the telecoms were broken up, they reassemble. The capital behind the big banks are still there. And I’m not suggesting breaking up the big banks isn’t a good thing. But don’t you need a public bank at a scale that next time there’s, there’s this blackmail, you can say, you know, go speculate. If you go down, you go down.

BERNIE SANDERS: I’m not arguing with you, I agree with you. And I think right here in Vermont right now there are a number of people in our legislature, and I support this effort, that want to see a public bank. Ironically enough, you know what the oldest state public bank in the country is?

PAUL JAY: North Dakota.

BERNIE SANDERS: North Dakota. They’ve had it, I think, since the ’20s. And it’s worked pretty well for them. You know, we’re trying to strengthen credit unions, as well. And since the Wall Street crash, by the way, I think credit unions have seen a lot more capital coming in and a lot more growth.

PAUL JAY: Just finally–I know you have to run. The primary in 2016 got quite bitter. We know that whoever, whoever released these emails, and all the rest–we know the DNC was manipulating things in favor of Hillary Clinton and against you. This fight heading into 2020, whether you’re the candidate or there is a candidate that’s on the Sanders-esque kind of platform … This fight in the Democratic Party is not, in my opinion, just a difference of opinion how to get to the same place, which is sometimes framed that way. There’s a real struggle of interest here. The fight against the oligarchy–well, there’s an oligarchy in the Democratic Party. And there’s a fight there. How do you see this campaign unfolding?

BERNIE SANDERS: I’m proud that out of our campaign, I think, we have seen a significant increase–not just out of our campaign–but a great deal of grassroots activism all across this country. This new incoming freshman class in the Congress is not only going to be the most progressive freshman class in a very long time, but the most diverse. More women, more people of color, et cetera. Also, I think what is happening in this country is that to a significant degree we are winning the ideological struggle. Three years ago, as you recall, Medicare for All was seen to be a radical, fringe idea. Last polls that I saw, 70 percent of the American people support Medicare for All. And more and more Democrats are coming on board. Raising the minimum wage, 15 bucks an hour. Radical idea a few years ago; kind of mainstream today. Rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, making public colleges and universities tuition-free, dealing with student debt, dealing in an aggressive way with the unbelievably dangerous challenge of climate change. I think more and more people understand that. Criminal justice reform. Immigration reform.

So many of the ideas that we campaigned on have now gotten broad support throughout the country and within the Democratic Party. But as, I think, your point makes, look. There is an establishment within the Democratic Party. There are Wall Street contributors in the Democratic Party, corporate contributors in the Democratic Party. And they have a very different and more conservative vision for the future of the Democratic Party than I do. My vision is pretty simple. My vision is that we have got to have the guts to take on Wall Street, take on the pharmaceutical industry, take on the insurance industry, take on the 1 percent, create an economy that works for all. And while we do that, we bring our people, and that is black, and white, and Latino, and Native American, and Asian American together. I think that’s the way you do it. And we’re beginning, beginning, beginning to see that. We’re seeing great young candidates who didn’t wait on line for 20 years to get permission to run, but kind of jumped in and beat some long-term incumbents. They’re saying, hey, I come from the community. I know what’s going on in this community, and I’m going to fight for working people, and I’m not afraid to take on big money. We’re seeing that. We got to see more of that.

So a two-part approach. Number one, we need to fight for our agenda. We need to elect candidates from the grassroots who are going to, are going to implement that agenda.

PAUL JAY: All right, thanks very much for joining us.

BERNIE SANDERS: Thank you very much.

PAUL JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

Progressives Pull Back the Curtain on Congress’ Corporate Influence

Pulling back the curtain on the ostensibly “bipartisan” orientation for newly elected members of Congress at Harvard’s Kennedy School in Boston, Reps.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) informed the public through live social media updates on Thursday that—contrary to the ideologically neutral advertising—the private conference featured a heavy dose of speeches by corporate CEOs and completely shut out organized labor and members of the progressive community.

“Our ‘bipartisan’ congressional orientation is co-hosted by a corporate lobbyist group,” Ocasio-Cortez noted, likely referring to the Koch-funded American Enterprise Institute, which is co-sponsoring the event. “Other members have quietly expressed to me their concern that this wasn’t told to us in advance. Lobbyists are here. Goldman Sachs is here. Where’s labor? Activists? Frontline community leaders?”

Right now Freshman members of Congress are at a “Bipartisan” orientation w/ briefings on issues.

Invited panelists offer insights to inform new Congressmembers‘ views as they prepare to legislate.

# of Corporate CEOs we’ve listened to here: 4

# of Labor leaders: 0

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) December 6, 2018

Tlaib, for her part, called attention to a speech by Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs president who left his post as President Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser earlier this year.

According to Tlaib, Cohn condescendingly told the freshman members, “You guys are way over your head, you don’t know how the game is played.”

“No, Gary,” Tlaib responded, “you don’t know what’s coming—a revolutionary Congress that puts people over profits.”

Gary Cohen, former CEO Goldman Sachs addressing new members of Congress today: “You guys are way over your head, you don’t know how the game is played.”

No Gary, YOU don’t know what’s coming – a revolutionary Congress that puts people over profits. https://t.co/ZLML2qzAW6

— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) December 6, 2018

Journalists and progressives were quick to praise both Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib for their commitment to transparency and their willingness to offer the public a behind-the-scenes look at the corporate-dominated event that typically goes entirely undiscussed by members of Congress and the press.

“One of the best parts of Ocasio-Cortez’s arrival in D.C. as a new leader is that she notices, and is revolted by, the corrupt, corporatist rituals that are so embedded in D.C. culture that most politicians and journalists barely notice them, let alone find them objectionable or odd,” noted The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald.

Others echoed Greenwald’s praise of Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib, both of whom rejected corporate PAC during their campaigns and ran on platforms demanding bold progressive change:

AOC’s twitter feed gives a fantastic insight into the entire process, and makes you realize how disconnected we usually are from what our reps are up to. Transparency is a great thing. https://t.co/QrXZcuaEWo

— Josh Olson (@joshuarolson) December 6, 2018

I cannot say enough how inspiring and illuminating it is to watch these women heading to the Hill and immediately puncturing gaping holes in the gilded, ossified norms that have prevented Congress from working for the people. https://t.co/KHiKTAMxfu

— Brian Merchant (@bcmerchant) December 6, 2018

“Democratic leadership signs off on these events,” observed Huffington Post reporter Zach Carter. “The new class isn’t having it.”

According to the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics (IOP), which is hosting the orientation, the event is designed to give newly elected members of Congress “insights on governing from former elected office holders, current and former senior White House and administration officials, diplomats, economists, business leaders, lobbyists, and academics.”

Below is a list of speakers who are participating in the event. Conspicuously absent, as Ocasio-Cortez pointed out, are any representatives of organized labor, environmental groups, other public interest advocates, or anyone who could reasonably be considered a progressive:

Hon. Elaine Chao, U.S. Secretary of Transportation, former Secretary of Labor and Director of the Peace Corps
Hon. Ash Carter, former U.S. Secretary of Defense, Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and Belfer Professor of Technology and Global Affairs
Hon. Mitch Landrieu, former Mayor of New Orleans, IOP Visiting Fellow
Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University, and Director of Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics.
Mary Barra, Chairman and CEO of General Motors
Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute, Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School
Gary Cohn, former Director of the National Economic Council
Douglas Elmendorf, former Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Dean of Harvard Kennedy School
David Gergen, former Presidential adviser, Public Service Professor of Public Leadership, Director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School
Alex Gorsky, Chairman and CEO of Johnson & Johnson

Wall Street’s Corruption Runs Deeper Than You Can Fathom

Of the myriad policy decisions that have brought us to our current precipice, from the signing of the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to the invasion of Iraq and the gerrymandering of House districts across the country, few have proven as consequential as the demise of Glass-Steagall. Signed into law as the U.S.A. Banking Act of 1933, the legislation had been crucial to safeguarding the financial industry in the wake of the Great Depression. But with its repeal in 1999, the barriers separating commercial and investment banking collapsed, creating the preconditions for an economic crisis from whose shadow we have yet to emerge.

Carmen Segarra might have predicted as much. As an employee at the Federal Reserve in 2011, three years after the dissolution of Lehman Brothers, she witnessed the results of this deregulation firsthand. In her new book, “Noncompliant: A Lone Whistleblower Exposes the Giants of Wall Street,” she chronicles the recklessness of institutions like Goldman Sachs and the stunning lengths the United States government went to to accommodate them, even as they authored one of the worst crashes in our nation’s history.

“They didn’t want to hear what I had to say,” she tells Robert Scheer in the latest installment of “Scheer Intelligence.” “And so I think what we have in terms of this story is really not just a failure of the banks and the regulators, but also a failure of our prosecutors. I mean, a lot of the statutes that could be used—criminal statutes, even, that could be used to hold these executives accountable are not being used, and they have not expired; we could have prosecutors holding these people accountable.”

Segarra also explains why she decided to blow the whistle on the Fed, and what she ultimately hopes to accomplish by telling her story. “I don’t like to let the bad guys win,” she says. “I’d rather go down swinging. So for me, I saw it as an opportunity to do my civic duty and rebuild my life. … I was very lucky to be blessed by so many people who I shared the story to, especially lawyers who were so concerned about what I was reporting, who thought that the Federal Reserve was above this, who thought that the government would not fail us after the financial crisis, and who were livid.”

“Noncompliant” explores one of the darkest chapters in modern American history, but with a crook and unabashed narcissist occupying the Oval Office, its lessons are proving remarkably timely. “We live in a culture where we reward bad behavior, we worship bad behavior, and it’s something that needs to stop,” she cautions. “Changing the regulatory culture on [a] U.S. governmental level is something that’s going to take a decade, maybe two. And we need to start now, before things get worse.”

Listen to Segarra’s interview with Scheer or read a transcript of their conversation below:

Robert Scheer: Hi, I’m Robert Scheer, and this is another edition of “Scheer Intelligence,” where the intelligence comes from my guests. Today, Carmen Segarra. She’s written a book, just came out, called “Noncompliant: A Lone Whistleblower Exposes the Giants of Wall Street.” And boy, did she ever. Perhaps you remember this case; it was in 2011, two, three years into the Great Recession. There was a lot of pressure from Congress that these banks be regulated in a more serious way. As a result, Carmen Segarra, someone of considerable education, was brought in. And she was assigned to do a survey of Goldman Sachs, to go over to Goldman Sachs. And I just want to preface this, people have to understand that not only is the Federal Reserve an incredibly—the most important economic institution in the United States, but the New York Federal Reserve plays a special role being in New York. And they are basically entrusted with regulating the banks, and they are the institution that most definitely failed in that task, and helped bring about the Great Recession. Would you agree with that assessment?

Carmen Segarra: Yes, I would agree with that assessment. When I joined the Federal Reserve, as you pointed out, I was hired from outside the regulatory world, but within the legal and compliance banking world, to help fix its problems. And I was well aware of the problems that existed. And scoping the problems itself was relatively easy; I mean, within days of arriving, I had participated in meetings where you had Goldman Sachs executives, you know, lying, doublespeaking, and misrepresenting to regulatory agencies without fear of repercussions. And where I saw Federal Reserve regulators actively working to suppress and expunge from the record evidence of wrongdoing that could be used by regulatory agencies, prosecutors, and even the Federal Reserve itself to hold Goldman Sachs accountable. The question was, when I arrived, you know, are these problems fixable? And, spoiler alert: I don’t think so.

RS: Well, your book really is a compelling read on, really, what one could consider the dark culture of finance capital. Most of us know very little about it; we think it’s boring, it’s detailed and so forth. And I was thinking of another woman observer of great education and experience, who first tipped me off as a journalist when I was trying to cover the stuff about banking deregulation and so forth, and when Clinton was president and they did the basic financial deregulation. A woman named Brooksley Born, who was head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and she had your kind of background, you know; a leading lawyer with the banks, and so forth. Understood this a lot better than most of the men who were powerful, including Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin; Lawrence Summers, who took over from him and went on to be the head of Harvard; Alan Greenspan–none of them really understood these collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps; she did. She blew the whistle on it, and they basically destroyed her. She was forced out of the Clinton administration, and what have you. Did you know about Brooksley Born’s work when you got into this? Do you have any sense? I mean, this was really sort of the first major whistleblower, and she was, as you have been, basically pushed aside.

CS: Yes. I definitely knew about her. And you know, I have to say that I was, you know, just taking that historical perspective, which I think is an important point of view through which we should approach this topic. I mean, I remember when I was in law school, I was one of the very first graduating classes to graduate into a post-Glass-Steagall world. From a 50,000-foot level, I think people have a better understanding of what that means, in the sense, you know, you have all of a sudden the securities and the banking products can get together. But from a practical standpoint, from a ground-zero level, where I was at, that essentially meant two things. From a professional standpoint, we studied and were aware of the fact that there were a bunch of people on one side of the aisle, the investment products side–you know, the collateralized debt obligations that you mentioned. And then there were people who were on the banking side; we’re talking, you know, for purposes of argument, credit cards and debit cards. And that these people, they may have known about their products, but they were highly specialized; they only knew about the one or two things that they touched, and they certainly didn’t know about them and how they interacted together. And one of the things that I remember studying were not just the cases of whistleblowers, but also discussing amongst our classmates, you know, what the impact would be of all of a sudden having a class or a series of classes, graduating from law school, with people who are focusing on banking and compliance, like I was, and who are having to understand both of these products and sort of how they interact together. And what, sort of visualizing what our work life would be like, in terms of reporting to people that had an incomplete understanding of how the banking world worked. So, yes, I was definitely aware; I understood perfectly where she was coming from. And she was very much a cautionary tale for the rest of us who are lawyers. In terms of, if you find yourself in these difficult situations, you sort of game out what potentially can happen. And I certainly took it into consideration when I was gaming out whether or not to whistleblow.

RS: Well, before you get to the whistleblowing stage, I think you’re being too kind to what I personally think are people who should be considered as, or at least charged and examined often with what is criminal behavior. Because ignorance is really not a good defense; when they were called before congressional committees, these knowledgeable people admitted they really didn’t understand collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps. And for people who are not that familiar, you mentioned Glass-Steagall. And what Glass-Steagall was, was one of the, really maybe the most important response of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s democratic administration to the Great Depression. And how did this terrible depression happen, how were the banks so irresponsible. And they decided the key thing was to separate investment banks from commercial bank; investment banks could be high-rollers, private money, you know what you’re doing, you have knowledge; and commercial banks where you’re basically protecting the assets of ordinary people, they’re not knowledgeable, they’re trusting your expertise. And eliminating Glass-Steagall eliminated this wall between the two kinds of banking. And the company that you went to observe, Goldman Sachs, was an investment bank. And by the working of that law, they should have been allowed to go belly-up when it turned out they had a lot of these dubious credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations. To people who don’t know, a credit default swap was a phony insurance policy pretending to cover these things, but really there’s nothing backing it up. And somehow, in order to save them, they were allowed to announce they could do commercial banking. One could argue, in some ways, the barrier was lifted to help–Citigroup was of course the other one–Citibank. And these are two banks that the government stepped in to help and create this monster. Is it not the case?

CS: Yeah, that’s absolutely the case. But there’s a couple of things that we need to keep in mind. I mean, I think that we’re all sort of educated enough to know that, you know, where there’s a will, there’s a way. And so if a system can be corrupted, people that are allowed to grab hold of power will corrupt it–insofar and only for so long as we allow those people to have the ability and the power to corrupt it. So ultimately, talking about more or less rules, or different rules, is productive only to a point. Because ultimately what we’re talking about here is the haphazard, slap on the wrist, failure to truly enforce the rules and regulations equitably across the system. And that creates the imbalances that you see, for example, in Goldman Sachs, and that you see in the system in general. One of the things that happened as a result of Glass-Steagall coming down was that a lot of the investment bankers were allowed to take over the commercial banks. And those investment bankers knew nothing about banking, and Goldman is a great example of that. I mean, when I arrived three years in after the financial crisis, what was one of the things that was very shocking to me was going into meeting after meeting with Goldman senior management and hearing them lie, doublespeak, and most shockingly of all, insist that they didn’t have to comply with the law. And that is a problem. Because a bank that doesn’t believe, or management at a bank that doesn’t believe they have to comply with the law–you bet they are not supervising their employees correctly, and they’re not incentivizing employees correctly in terms of how to do their job. So their behavior is injecting enormous risk into the system.

RS: Why should they think they should comply with the law when they got the law written and they could get it rewritten? I mean, after all, the treasury secretary, who pushed in the Clinton administration, right, to get rid of this restraint of Glass-Steagall and allow companies like Goldman Sachs to cross that line, was Robert Rubin. And he had been a top executive at Goldman Sachs. In fact, people used to refer to it as Government Sachs, that they had people all over the government, and it was a revolving door. And I want to point out that what you did, which was really unique–you had the guts to record these conversations. When you finally got to have your say before Congress, you could be backed up because you had the record. And tell us about that record. The conversations you recorded are absolutely chilling in describing an atmosphere of cynicism; you know, corruption; contempt, actually, for the political process and for restraint and regulation.

CS: Yeah. And I would sort of add that part of what the book sort of points out is that I didn’t really get my say. I mean, Congress did hold a hearing, but they did not invite me to testify. They didn’t want to hear what I had to say. And so I think what we have in terms of this story is really not just a failure of the banks and the regulators, but also a failure of our prosecutors. I mean, a lot of the statutes that could be used–criminal statutes, even, that could be used to hold these executives accountable are not being used, and they have not expired; we could have prosecutors holding these people accountable. We could have trial lawyers filing cases and holding these people accountable. Yet we can’t count on them to do it; we can’t count on the judiciary to do anything about it. I mean, when you read about what happened in my case in the book, it’s tragic, you know? It’s unbelievable.

RS: Tell us about that. Because you had a judge who was actually deep into this system who threw your case out.

CS: The case was assigned to a judge who was friends with the attorney, I had worked with the attorney that represented the Fed. And then two days before dismissing the case, she revealed that she was married to someone who represented Goldman Sachs for a living. So, yeah, there you go. [Laughs] I mean, it’s almost impossible in terms of successfully blowing the whistle. But going back to your question with respect to the recordings and having a say, I think the question that we need to be asking ourselves is this: the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the Federal Reserve in general, is tasked with supervising the banks. They have recorders. They have the law on their side. New York is a one person consent state. Banks, private banks, habitually record everything that goes on inside the bank, and they do it for good reason. Because they do it to stop and prevent fraud, among employees and by anybody that walks in the door. Why is the Federal Reserve not recording these executives? Why are they not preserving evidence? I think that is the question that we need to be asking ourselves. You know, what I did was not special. What I did is what the Fed should have been doing.

RS: Well, it was special in that [Laughs]–come on! There have been a lot of witnesses to these crimes, really, and you’re the lone voice from within that system that dared to speak up. And as I said, had you not been able to document it with these tapes, you would have been just dismissed as some kind of kook. The book is called Noncompliant: A Lone Whistleblower Exposes the Giants of Wall Street. You know, what is so important is nuance and language and attitude. And the people on Wall Street can affect the protection of manners and complexity. I remember Lawrence Summers testifying in Congress on why you had to get rid of Glass-Steagall, and he said “this is very complicated.” And he said the same thing Alan Greenspan said: “These people know what they’re doing,” and so forth. It wasn’t complicated. If the Mafia did it, you’d see right through it in five minutes. Right? You were bundling a bunch of lousy deals together with some good deals, and you didn’t even know what was in there, and you sold them, and you got a phony insurance contract to back it up. And yet none of these people have been, gone to jail; very few, one or two have been prosecuted as kind of a scapegoat. But the book is a great story of an American heroine–but this is what everybody should do! [Laughs] I mean, the real issue about whistleblowers like yourself is why did it take you? Where were the other folks? How many people–yeah, go ahead.

CS: Yeah, agreed. I think that’s exactly right. You know, there’s a number of reasons why I wrote the book. First of all, because I think it’s an important contribution to the historical record. As to what is the systemic culture of corruption that exists in these regulatory agencies that are taking our taxpayer dollars and paying themselves handsome salaries to work against the American taxpayers. And then the second reason I wrote it is to incentivize people to come forward with their stories. I wasn’t the only person who wanted to blow the whistle in terms of what was going on there. My circumstances were unique, and I sort of go through it in the book, in the sense that I was very lucky, for example, that the Fed refused to even negotiate the mandated settlement that they were supposed to negotiate with me. But they refused, and that allowed me to sue. There’s a number of people who have gone through the process and have been silenced by, you know, getting a monetary offer and signing a settlement agreement. And we don’t hear about them because they are forced not to talk. What I sort of thought about was, you know, this is just a unique–you know, I didn’t ask to be in this situation, but I felt it was my civic duty. Because I do think that we need more people to really think about how in their daily lives, they can stop rewarding bad behavior. We live in a culture where we reward bad behavior, we worship bad behavior, and it’s something that needs to stop, you know. Changing the culture, the regulatory culture on the U.S. governmental level is something that’s going to take a decade, maybe two. And we need to start now, before things get worse. We are not in the best-off of situations as a country; you know, we have what seems like an economic boom, but it’s really just a debt-fueled economic boom that is going to be temporary. And it’s very tough to fix these types of cultural issues, system issues, when the hurricane of the next financial crisis hits. We need to fix it now, while we still have a semblance of peace, while we still have the sun shining. And we don’t know how much longer that’s going to be. I hope it’s long enough to fix it. I hope that people are inspired to come forward and to think about how to make a difference in their daily lives. You know, because we need to start thinking of raising children and raising adults that are incentivized in their daily lives to reward good behavior. I think that until we create a critical mass of Americans that in their daily lives refuse to reward bad behavior, we’re not going to see real systemic change.

RS: Well, we’ll see change. It might not be good change. I mean, you have Donald Trump–and I want to put some oomph behind this, that it’s bipartisan. Because one of the–you know, everybody, a lot of people I know are very upset about Donald Trump. He’s speaking to what Hillary Clinton calls the “deplorables”; but there’s a lot of people hurting out there. And if you read a study done by the Federal Reserve of St. Louis about the consequence of this economic meltdown that was engineered from places like Goldman Sachs, the human cost was incredible. I mean, people lost everything. They weren’t bailed out. There was no mortgage relief. They were not helped. The banks were bailed out. And yet no one has been held accountable, and the politicians, democrats and republicans, who supported it, have gotten off scot-free.

CS: Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. This is not a democratic problem, this is not a republican problem. This is an American problem with worldwide impact. The U.S. dollar is a reserve currency. The world depends in large part on the American banking system to work. And for it to work, there are these rules, and these rules are there to create trust in the system and to create smooth processes in the system, so that money can be moved and the economy can continue to grow. If the world can no longer trust the American banking system because Americans cannot be trusted to regulate it, they are going to move away from the American banking system. They are going to move away from the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency. And then we are going to find ourselves in the situation that a lot of countries that are not governed by reserve currencies find themselves occasionally, from time to time, whenever they have a crisis. You know, we’re talking about countries in Latin America; we’re talking about countries in Africa; we’re talking about countries in Asia. I hope the book will inspire people to really take a look around and realize, you know, the American consumer, the American worker, is incredibly powerful. You know, these banks cannot survive without our money. We don’t have to wait for the government to keep failing us; we don’t have to wait for the judiciary to keep failing us; we don’t have to wait for lawyers to keep failing us. We choose who we work for. We choose where we keep our money. We can choose to protest. We can choose to call our pension funds and tell them, I want you to stop doing business with Goldman Sachs. It’s what we do on a daily basis. When we stand up and we say, I am not going to be banking with these people–they will listen. It’s like, they control all of these other checks and balances that were put in place in terms of the government to stop them. So now it’s up to us as a people to actually do something about this.

RS: Let me take a break. And I’ve been talking to Carmen Segarra, who is actually the lone honest person from within the banking system that I know of who really took the story of what these people were doing, and swindling the American people, and fortunately documented it with tape recording–as they document everything; if you call the bank for information, “your conversation will be recorded to make it more efficient”–well, she turned the table on that, had the record. The book is called Noncompliant: A Lone Whistleblower Exposes the Giants of Wall Street. [omission for station break] I’m not going to be able, in the time that I have here, to do justice to this book, because the devil is in the details. I want to talk about some people who did speak up. I mentioned Brooksley Born, who was this brilliant member of the Clinton administration who got pushed out for speaking up. But when the pressure came down after the Great Recession, and the banks had to be questioned, they at Goldman Sachs turned to a Columbia University finance professor, David Beim. And he did a report. He had access to everything, he did this incredible report. We only know about it because it showed up in some footnote somewhere. And by the way, I haven’t given enough credit here to the people who have helped break this story. ProPublica, who did a really terrific job on it, and the NPR show This American Life, which really did a great job. So there has been really good reporting. As you pointed out, it was absolutely shameful that Congress did not really take testimony from you; you were there as an observer–I think in a red dress, to be noticed. [Laughs]

CS: Yes. Well, you know, red is the color of martyrs.

RS: And so I want to ask you about that. Before you even went there, this guy David Beim had done a study. And William Dudley, the president of the bank, didn’t even respond. He said thank you, they looked at the–and they never responded to the criticisms in that study, which were devastating. Of how the bank was operating.

CS: Yeah, but that’s how the Federal Reserve Bank of New York operates. And that’s, curiously enough, also how Goldman Sachs operates. They say one thing and do another. If you want to know what they’re doing, just flip it, right? I mean, if they’re asking for a report, that means that they plan to do nothing about it. And you know, the book sort of walks you through the story of how they played at this game of pretending to clean up the regulatory issues. I mean, the joke really was on us, the new regulators that were brought in from the industry to actually clean up the problems that were there. None of us are there at the Fed anymore. Every single one of those people that I talk about that validated my story, they’re gone. And they are gone under different circumstances, some in good standing, some in less good standing, but the point is they’re all gone. Because the purpose of bringing us in was not really to change things, it was to ensure that they had a smoke screen and a story to feed the press, that they would print, saying that they had indeed fixed this. And there was nothing else there to see.

RS: We’re going to run out of time here, but I want to nail down one–this chain of responsibility. And I had just mentioned New York Fed president William Dudley, who I believe ran into some difficulty; he had ownership in something that they were trading with. But leaving that aside, he replaced Timothy Geithner. And when Goldman Sachs, when this whole banking thing happened, there was no more important individual in this country, in a position to observe it, than Timothy Geithner. He had been in the Clinton administration; he had worked for Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers in the Clinton administration when they deregulated Wall Street. And he was rewarded for that deregulation, right, by being named to the most important regulatory position, to be head of the New York Fed. And Barack Obama in 2008, as the banking meltdown was happening, gave a speech at Cooper Union, April of 2008, blasting Wall Street. And then, when Hillary Clinton lost the primary, Barack Obama turned to Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, and these people for advice, and he named Timothy Geithner to be his treasury secretary. The guy who at the New York Fed, where you went there to work and to try to supervise Goldman Sachs–he knew everything about this, and told us nothing, and he was rewarded by being made treasury secretary.

CS: When I’m saying, you know, we have to stop rewarding bad behavior, that’s an example of what I’m talking about. It’s like, we have a culture where we reward people for their bad behavior. And in the Fed it is a systemic problem. And it is a problem that comes from the top down. And when I was at the Fed, Ben Bernanke was head of the Fed; Bill Dudley, as you pointed out, was the head of the New York Fed; and Sarah Dahlgren was his head of supervision. This is a very small world. We’re not talking about a lot of people; the culture is top-down, and everybody there just does what these people say, because if they don’t they’re afraid they’re going to lose their jobs. So from their perspective, they have nothing to lose, because they have a bunch of workers that are going to do as they say. And they will do what is in their best corporate interests. I mean, you have Bill Dudley, who was allowed to hold on to a lot of his investments that predated his arrival at the Fed and were held at Goldman Sachs. And you know, when you have somebody who’s not forced to really work for the government–as in divesting themselves of their own conflicts and truly taking taxpayer money and doing their job–then you can’t expect a good result to come from that. Again, we rewarded bad behavior. And that’s why I think, you know, the key here is really about taking a really good look at our daily lives and seeing, who are we rewarding on a regular basis? And we need to stop rewarding that bad behavior.

RS: But I want to challenge what I think is your optimism. And in fact, you are living proof that doing the right thing can be a career-ender. I haven’t asked you, I mean, I assume you still have a good career; you’re highly talented and competent, and you were, you know, extremely well educated. But you’re not being considered to be treasury secretary or something, right? The consequences for you were quite dire, weren’t they?

CS: They were. And you know, my career in banking is over on a permanent basis. But I think you sort of point out to, a little bit to my personality, and I hope it comes through in the book; I sort of talk about that fact that I’m just a very resilient person. And I just, I don’t like to let the bad guys win. I’d rather go down swinging. So for me, I saw it as an opportunity to do my civic duty and rebuild my life. You know, and I was very lucky to be blessed by so many people who I shared the story to, especially lawyers who were so concerned about what I was reporting, who thought that the Federal Reserve was above this, who thought that the government would not fail us after the financial crisis, and who were livid. And I’ve been blessed with their support through the process of whistleblowing, and I continue to be blessed by their support even after. I have a husband who was, you know, a real hero of the story in my book, and I have been able to remake my life as a lawyer in private practice. And my clients, you know, God bless them, they trust me to help them. And I wouldn’t change what I did for anything. Because I think for me–and I talk about it in the book–I think living a meaningful life is more important than making money. I think for me, making money is important insofar as it pays the bills. But once my bills are paid, it’s about having a meaningful life. And I just feel very, very lucky that I have had the life that I’ve had, that I got to go to a Catholic school that taught me the morals that I believe in. I think that I am who I am, and I think that I would be just as moral if I had grown up Jewish, or if I had grown up a Mormon, or if I had grown up a Protestant. So I feel very blessed that I was exposed to what good values and good behavior are. I decided since I was very little that that’s just the way I wanted to live my life, and that to live meaningfully was more important than anything else. And that has driven all of my decisions, and I found the experience to be rewarding. And when people talk to me about how bad things are and how things sort of look like they’re never going to turn around, I tell them, no. They will turn around. We just need to believe in ourselves and be our own saviors, and be our own heroes in our own daily lives.

RS: But let me, let me challenge that. And yes, you’re an exemplary person. No question. And people should read this book, Noncompliant: A Lone Whistleblower Exposes the Giants of Wall Street. But I want to focus on that word, “lone.” Lone whistleblower. These people had the same great education you had at the best schools, OK? They didn’t blow the whistle. No, they abetted the crime! They made it possible. They destroyed people like Brooksley Born, who dared challenge it. And the fact of the matter is, you can’t expect ordinary people–even myself. You know, I did graduate work in economics, I’m a professor, blah blah blah. But I can tell you, when I went into my bank loans, I didn’t know all the details and what they were talking about and everything. I counted on regulation, I counted on government, I counted on accountability, frankly, on the part of these institutions. So my view is, you can’t expect ordinary people–that’s why we had a distinction between investment banks and commercial banks. Commercial banks are supposed to deal with ordinary people, OK? They’re supposed to hold their money, give them a fair interest rate, make loans on their houses, and help them out. And they have to be regulated, because you know, the ordinary person can’t be an expert. The failure here is of the educated class. Of the superachievers. And you count on those people, yes, to do the right thing. But money talks. And the fact of the matter is, the people you went to school with, at the Ivy League schools, at the wherever–they sold us all out.

CS: I think you make a good point. But I also think that the problems are systemic and run deeper. I mean, I would point out, for example, just from a personal perspective, when I graduated both college and law school I happened to be one of those that graduated into a recession, twice. There weren’t too many jobs. I didn’t have too many options. I ended up working in where I ended up working because it was either that or not feed myself. And I think one of the problems that we have that is systemic is that we have allowed capitalism to create such huge imbalances in how we reward people for their daily work. So people are forced to do something that they may not even like, or may not even be good at, because they have no choice. It’s a shame, because we’re a big enough country, we have a lot of talent, there should be more invisible hand, central planning. This whole system where we are now turning our attention to creating computer programmers is more based on making sure that computer programming becomes a cheap, minimum-wage job where the owners of the computer companies like Apple don’t have to overpay like they are doing now for those workers. So I think that there are more systemic issues than we realize. And I agree with you, I think that, you know, we were sold out by the intellectual class. But we still need to figure out–and the intellectuals are the ones who are going to help us–we need to figure out how to fix the system on a larger scale if we are going to rebalance things. And I don’t have the monopoly on the answer, on all the answers, you know? I’m just a girl born in Indiana to two Puerto Rican parents, you know? [Laughs] It’s not like I have any terms, in any way access to the higher echelons and how that works. But I think that we really do need to think about, in our own ways and in our own lives, how we can sort of convince other people to make the right choices on a daily basis. Because I think that if everybody takes making the right choices seriously, and realizes that we’re all in the same boat–you know, we’re all Americans, this is going to impact us all–I think that we can, slowly but surely, right the boat and start heading in the right direction.

RS: People should read Noncompliant–it’s an important word; they weren’t compliant–A Lone Whistleblower Exposes the Giants of Wall Street. And recognize that the problem with modern governance is that the decisions are made by people who don’t have our common interest, who are bought off. That money talks. And one reason we have such despair now, and we go for demagogues, and we have such divisive, ugly language and ugly politics, is the so-called civilized, well-educated leaders of our country went for the money and betrayed ordinary people. I’ll let you take the last word, and then we’ll wrap it up.

CS: Ah, well, thank you. And again, you know, I know that you are sort of [Laughs] thinking about it from the perspective of a hopeless sort of case. But I do think that there is–and I hope people will look at it as the beginning of change. You know, yes, the book is a very sad story; the bad guys do win, for now. But just because they win the battle doesn’t mean they’re going to win the war. And I refuse to give up hope in the American people, and I refuse to give up hope in the American consumer. I think that we can make a difference if we try. Because I think that when we get the American people–no matter whether they’re democrats, republicans, independent–when we get them educated on the topic of finance, when we get them accessible stories, they will have their say. And they matter–we matter. And it’s important that they come to the table, otherwise this problem isn’t going to get solved.

RS: And if you’re someone who, or know someone who lost their home, or wondered what happened to the American dream, or where are the good jobs–you got to read Noncompliant: A Lone Whistleblower Exposes the Giants of Wall Street. My guest has been Carmen Segarra, who is a veteran of it, and understands it. That’s it for Scheer Intelligence. The producers for Scheer Intelligence are Joshua Scheer and Isabel Carreon. Our engineers at KCRW are Kat Yore and Mario Diaz. And at USC, at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, Victor Figueroa and Sebastian Grubaugh provided excellent assistance, as well as NPR in New York. I’m Robert Scheer. See you next week.

Wisconsin Republicans Continue the GOP’s Bid to Destroy Democracy

The Republican Party has once more demonstrated that it has no respect for democracy and is determined to hold on to power by any means necessary. GOP state lawmakers in Wisconsin this week engaged in a brazen power grab in the form of bills that were introduced, debated and voted on with breathtaking speed in order to cripple the decision-making powers of Gov.-elect Tony Evers and Attorney General-elect Josh Kaul. Legislators called a special session late last Friday, and then, as protesters marched and rallied outside the state Capitol building, the politicians debated in a closed-door session. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, before the sun rose, senators voted on and passed the bills and GOP members prevailed by a single-vote margin. A few hours later, their counterparts in the Wisconsin House did the same—by a larger margin.

According to The New York Times, the bills ensure that “[t]here would be a new limit on early voting, which tends to benefit Democratic candidates, after an election that saw record-breaking turnout.” Additionally, the Times reported, “[l]awmakers, not the governor, would control the majority of appointments on an economic development board.” The bills also curb the incoming governor’s ability to ban guns from the state Capitol and to protect the Affordable Care Act from legal challenges, among other things.

Wisconsin’s House speaker, Republican Robin Vos, disingenuously claimed on Twitter on Wednesday that “Democrats have been exaggerating and resorting to hyperbole throughout the debate.” He added sagely, “The vote is about ensuring equal branches of government exist in #Wisconsin especially during this time of divided government.” But a day earlier, Vos let slip his real agenda, saying, “We are going to have a very liberal governor who is going to enact policies that are in direct contrast to what many of us believe in.” It apparently has not occurred to Vos that voters, who live in a democracy, have elected the “very liberal” Evers over incumbent Scott Walker.

Wisconsin’s Senate majority leader, Scott Fitzgerald, also had a moment of honesty, saying Monday: “We trusted Scott Walker and the administration to be able to manage the back and forth with the Legislature. We don’t trust Tony Evers right now in a lot of these areas.” His statement is essentially a slap in the face to Wisconsin voters. He might as well have said, “We don’t trust voters.”

It was about seven years ago that Walker became a household name for fomenting a historic uprising in Wisconsin when he and his party launched an aggressive political attack against labor unions and workers’ rights. In retaliation, voters attempted to recall Walker, but the governor retained his position. Then, on Nov. 6 of this year, Walker failed to keep his seat after Democrats and grassroots progressive activists successfully generated a hefty voter turnout for Evers.

Mary Bottari, director of the Center for Media and Democracy’s Real Economy Project, lives in Wisconsin and has been participating in the protests this week. In an interview, she shared with me her shock at how brazenly and quickly the state’s Republicans moved to roll back gubernatorial power. “We’re still sorting through what the heck happened in the middle of the night,” she said. In addition to the bills, the GOP-dominated Legislature also rammed through a whopping 82 appointments by Walker of people to head various boards and agencies.

Right now Wisconsin’s political landscape looks extremely skewed. Bottari explained, “Democrats swept in this election,” winning the governorship, as well as the lieutenant governor, treasury secretary, secretary of state, and attorney general posts, and all the major positions that voters choose statewide. And yet in legislative races, the Democratic Party gained only one seat. According to Bottari, this is because “Our legislature is the most gerrymandered in the nation.” In fact, a case challenging Wisconsin’s redistricting process went to the Supreme Court earlier this year, but justices sent it back to the state, saying that plaintiffs needed greater standing to prove that they had been directly injured by the gerrymandered districts.

So the midterm elections took place with the skewed district maps in place—and the GOP clearly benefited. Republican state Assembly members won only about 46 percent of all votes on Nov. 6 but took 64 percent of all seats. What this means for the series of bills passed this week is that Republican lawmakers—the least democratically representative elected officials in the state—used their ill-gotten political power to disempower the most democratically representative politicians.

Seeing that high voter turnout helped their rival party win seats democratically, the GOP reduced the window for early voting as part of the package of bills it rushed through this week. Apparently, democracy does not benefit or suit the conservative party.

Wisconsin’s Republicans are so used to gaining political power through undemocratic means that that state’s U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan recently cast doubt on how California voters managed to vote out every congressional Republican representative who was running for re-election. Alex Padilla, California’s secretary of state, retorted, “Our elections in California are structured so that every eligible citizen can easily register, and every registered voter can easily cast their ballot,” a concept, he added, that might be “strange for Speaker Ryan, who comes from Wisconsin.”

The Republican Party has for years seen an opening at the state level to drive through its regressive agenda, pushing through model legislation across as many states as possible. Not only has the gerrymandering of districts happened at the state level, so have gun proliferation laws, anti-union “right to work” laws, “fetal personhood” laws and more. Now, Wisconsin Republicans are taking a page from their North Carolina counterparts who stymied an incoming Democratic governor two years ago in a similar manner, and Michigan’s Republicans are also resorting to the underhanded tactics in what seems to be the latest state-by-state GOP trend.

But it’s not so easy to impede democracy. Wisconsinites, spurred by nearly a decade of GOP assaults, aren’t rolling over and giving in. Bottari explained that the public pressure outside the state Capitol was essential to watering down some of the worst aspects of the bills that the party forced through this week. “Those 1,400 people who came to the capitol, who filled out slips and testified, and the thousands that were outside the capitol in the dark of night, in the freezing cold, really did their job,” she said. There are also likely to be lawsuits challenging the legality of some of the bills that passed. Evers also retains his veto power and has leverage over Republicans to negotiate a repeal of some of the damage they have done.

When voters are fully engaged in a healthy manner in their democracy, it should not surprise us that they may not choose Republicans—members of a party that has vociferously championed corporate personhood over ordinary people, the rights of fetuses over living babies and mothers, the profits of CEOs over workers and unions, the violence of guns over unarmed civilians and so on. What is happening in Wisconsin symbolizes the latest tactics of a party that has set itself up for minority rule at the expense of democracy.

The Progressive Case Against Beto O’Rourke for President

Anxious Democrats had barely recovered from their post-midterm election-night hangovers before pundits began breathlessly pontificating over the potential field of 2020 presidential candidates. Democrat Beto O’Rourke lost his Texas Senate race to Republican Ted Cruz, but that didn’t stop multiple outlets from pondering whether he could run. He enjoys a national profile, a positive message, even punk rock roots, and lost his race by a mere three points, but some progressives aren’t convinced he’s the one to beat Trump, should the president run in 2020.

Washington Post columnist Elizabeth Bruenig is one of them.

She writes on Thursday that despite her being from Texas, appreciating O’Rourke’s appeal and having “hoped as much as anyone for Cruz’s defeat,” America doesn’t need another Democrat in the Obama mold. Instead, she argues, “I think the times both call for and allow for a left-populist candidate with uncompromising progressive principles. I don’t see that in O’Rourke.”

Despite O’Rourke’s hiring a team of former Bernie Sanders organizers that helped him build “a grassroots army” of field operators, Bruenig finds his voting record and campaign priorities to be out of step with a leftist base eager for “Medicare for all” tuition free-college, stronger limits on corporate power, and other policies to level the economic playing field for Americans of all backgrounds. She notes that he never joined the Congressional Progressive Caucus, instead opting for the New Democratic Coalition, which she calls “a centrist caucus with Clintonian views on health care, education and trade.”

She further writes that O’Rourke has waffled on Medicare for all, and is not impressed at how, as a July Politico article pointed out, he avoids using the terms “single payer” and “Medicare for all,” opting instead for the more amorphous, “universal, guaranteed, high-quality health care for all.” Even his campaign website was vague, stating, as Bruenig says, “that he aims for achieving universal health-care coverage ‘whether it be through a single payer system, a dual system, or otherwise.’ ”

Bruenig calls O’Rourke’s statements on energy “surprisingly thin.” While newly elected representatives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are gaining both media attention and political traction for a strong stance on higher taxes on oil and gas companies, reducing carbon emissions and creating a new jobs plan centered on green infrastructure, Bruenig points out that O’Rourke “has called the decision between oil and gas and renewable energy sources “a false choice,” and proposes on his campaign website “mainly to rejoin the Paris Climate Accords, empower the Environmental Protection Agency and enact energy reform.”

It’s not that Bruenig thinks O’Rourke is actively harmful, only that “There’s no need to begin resigning ourselves to policies that are merely better than Republican alternatives.”

On the campaign trail for the Senate, O’Rourke brushed off questions about whether he would run for president. The Post previously reported that O’Rourke is rethinking this decision, having met with President Obama on Nov. 16. In addition, according to CNBC, he has been speaking with experts who could help him manage a primary campaign in key states, “fielding calls from senior operatives who worked on President Barack Obama’s campaign in the pivotal states of Iowa and New Hampshire as the Texas congressman considers running for president in 2020.”

Bruenig however, would prefer that the political class stop looking toward a centrist Obama past, and toward a progressive future, ending her column by saying:

I wish the Democrats would run a left-populist with sincere, well-attested antipathy toward Wall Street, oil and gas, welfare reform and war, who is willing to fight hard to win Medicare-for-all and drastically reverse our current course on climate change. I would love it if they came from Texas, but I would take one from anywhere.

Read the full column here.

Dick Cheney Biopic ‘Vice’ Tops Golden Globe Nominations

NEW YORK — Adam McKay’s Dick Cheney biopic “Vice” staged an awards-season coup Thursday, landing a leading six nominations from the 76th annual Golden Globe Awards to narrowly edge more expected favorites like Bradley Cooper’s tear-jerking revival “A Star Is Born,” the interracial road-trip drama “Green Book” and the period romp “The Favourite.”

“Vice” topped all contenders in the nominations that were announced at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, including best picture, comedy and best actor nominations for Christian Bale’s nearly unrecognizable performance as the former vice president. It also earned nominations for Amy Adams’ Lynne Cheney, Sam Rockwell’s George W. Bush and for the screenplay and direction by McKay, the veteran comedy filmmaker who once skewered politicians as a “Saturday Night Live” writer.

For even the often-quirky selections of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a collection of 88 mostly lesser-known freelance film journalists, the strong support for “Vice” (which arrives in theaters on Dec. 25) was a surprise. Even its categorization of the film — a highly critical portrait of Cheney as a power-hungry, behind-the-scenes tyrant — as a comedy raised some eyebrows, as did Globes recent comedy selections “Get Out” and “The Martian.”

Adam McKay’s Dick Cheney biopic “Vice” leads the nominations for the Golden Globe Awards, narrowly edging Bradley Cooper’s tear-jerking revival “A Star Is Born,” interracial road-trip drama “Green Book” and period romp “The Favourite.” (Dec. 6)

“It’s a movie that’s a lot like the times we live in. There’s part of it that’s absurdist and comedic and then there’s another part of it that’s darkly tragic and dramatic,” McKay said Thursday by phone from London. “But I do know I’m glad we’re in that category because we will take ‘Mary Poppins’ out. I’m not competitive with the other movies but I am competitive with ‘Mary Poppins.’ Dick Cheney is going for her.”

But it was far from a runaway win for “Vice” since the press association typically spreads its awards around. Oscar front-runners “A Star Is Born,” ″Green Book” and “The Favourite” trailed close behind with five nominations each.

On the television side, awards were even more widely dispersed among the likes of the spy thriller “The Americans,” Bill Hader’s hit-man comedy “Barry,” the Julia Roberts-led conspiracy thriller “Homecoming,” Chuck Lorre’s acting coach series “The Kominsky Method” and last year’s champ, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” Leading all small-screen nominees with four nods was “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” the FX anthology series about the Italian fashion designer’s murder.

For the first time, FX bested heavyweights like HBO, Netflix and Amazon with a network-best 10 nods, even though the exalted second season of its “Atlanta” received only a single nod for Donald Glover’s acting.

Curiously, the Hollywood Foreign Press doesn’t consider foreign-language films for best film, so Alfonso Cuaron’s acclaimed family drama “Roma” was left out of the Globes’ top category. “Roma,” which is expected to earn Netflix its first best picture nomination at the Oscars, was still nominated for best screenplay, best director and best foreign language film.

For the first time, the Globes nominated three films directed by African-American filmmakers for best picture, drama: Ryan Coogler’s superhero sensation “Black Panther,” Spike Lee’s urgent white nationalist drama “BlacKkKlansman” and Barry Jenkins’ lyrical James Baldwin adaption “If Beale Street Could Talk.” The other nominees are “A Star Is Born” and “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the Freddie Mercury biopic.

All earned nods in other categories, too, including Rami Malek’s prosthetic tooth-aided performance as Mercury and the leading turn by John David Washington in “BlacKkKlansman,” who said his father, Denzel, woke him up for the nominations announcement.

“I had flashbacks when I was watching the (NFL) draft when they never called my name,” said Washington, a former football player. “When I heard them say my name, it happened in slow motion.”

While Sam Elliott’s supporting performance in “A Star Is Born” was unexpectedly overlooked, the Warner Bros. hit (which elected to compete on the more hefty drama side of the Globes despite its many songs) earned the expected nods for Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper (as both actor and director) and the song “Shallow.”

Up for best picture comedy alongside “Vice” are Yorgos Lanthimos’ wild palace power struggle “The Favourite,” Peter Farrelly’s divisive crowd-pleaser “Green Book,” the upcoming Disney sequel “Mary Poppins Returns” and the rom-com hit “Crazy Rich Asians.”

The Oscar path for both “Green Book” and “The Favourite” appeared to be solidified, with nods for all of their leads, some of whom are running in supporting categories: Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali for “Green Book” and Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone for “The Favourite.”

While some critics have taken issue with “Green Book” for relying on outdated racial tropes, the uplifting drama’s once flagging Oscar campaign has lately received a boost with both better ticket sales and accruing awards-season accolades. Farrelly, best known for broader comedies with his brother, Bobby, like “Dumb and Dumber,” also received a best-director nod for his first dramatic film, edging out filmmakers like Lanthimos and Jenkins.

Nominees such as Constance Wu (“Crazy Rich Asians”), Regina King (“Beale Street”), Lin-Manuel Miranda (“Mary Poppins Returns”), Ali and Washington insured a diverse field of nominees. Three decades after last being included in the category for “Do the Right Thing,” Spike Lee was nominated for directing “BlacKkKlansman.” ″The first word that came to mind was ‘BOOM SHAKALAKA,’” Lee said in a statement.

But the Globes also failed to nominate any of the year’s acclaimed female filmmakers (among them Chloe Zhao, Tamara Jenkins, Marielle Heller) for best director, and none of the 10 best-picture nominees were helmed by a woman. At the previous Globes, presenter Natalie Portman pointedly introduced the “all-male” directing nominees.

Damien Chazelle’s Neil Armstrong biopic “First Man,” which has seen its awards hopes wane in recent weeks, failed to lift off, scoring neither a best-film nod, nor one for Ryan Gosling’s leading performance. (It did land nominations for Claire Foy and its score.) The morning was worse for Steve McQueen’s heist thriller “Widows,” which was shut out entirely.

Also left out was Ethan Hawke’s performance as an anguished pastor in “First Reformed” and Pawel Pawlikowski’s Polish stunner “Cold War,” his follow-up to the Oscar-winning “Ida.” (The nominees for best foreign language film alongside “Roma” were “Capernaum,” ″Girl,” ″Never Look Away” and “Shoplifters.”) Some of the TV snubs — “Atlanta,” ″This Is Us,” ″Better Call Saul” — were even more surprising.

But the Globes also handed out nominations to some up-and-comers, including Lucas Hedges (“Boy Erased”), Timothee Chalamet (“Beautiful Boy”) and Elsie Fisher, the 15-year-old star of the coming-of-age tale “Eighth Grade.” ″WHAT,” said Fisher on Twitter. When reached by phone Thursday morning and told she was trending, Fisher — whose character is a little-liked YouTuber — replied “Hell yeah!”

The press association honored one old favorite: Robert Redford, who received his 10th Globe nomination for what he has said may (or may not) be his final acting performance in “The Old Man & the Gun.” Redford was given the group’s Cecil B. DeMille achievement award in 1994.

Glenn Close likewise notched her 14th Globe nomination for her leading performance as a celebrated author in “The Wife.” Reached Thursday morning, Close said her voice was “gone” after two performances of the off-Broadway play “Mother of the Maid” the day before. But she hoped to celebrate.

“Maybe today it’ll be tequila,” said Close before thinking better of it. “I have a show tonight. And I’ll probably have to go back to sleep at some point today.”

In film and television, the nominations guaranteed the Globes will boast what it most craves for its famously frothy broadcast: stars. Among them: Julia Roberts (“Homecoming”), Amy Adams (“Sharp Objects”), Nicole Kidman (“Destroyer”), Hugh Grant (“A Very English Scandal”), Melissa McCarthy (“Can You Ever Forgive Me?”), Benedict Cumberbatch (“Patrick Melrose”), Emily Blunt (“Mary Poppins Returns”), Jim Carrey (“Kidding”) and Charlize Theron (“Tully”).

Though the major studios like Disney (“Black Panther,” ″Mary Poppins Returns,” ″Incredibles 2″), Warner Bros. (“A Star Is Born”) and Universal (“Green Book,” ″First Man”) are more in the thick of this year’s awards season than usual, indie outfits carried the day. Annapurna Pictures (“Vice,” ″Beale Street”) and Fox Searchlight (“The Favourite,” ″Can You Ever Forgive Me?) led with 10 nods apiece — especially welcome news for billionaire heiress Megan Ellison’s Annapurna, which struggled through upheaval and reported financial woes this fall.

Still, Disney could claim a kind of supremacy. Its soon-to-be-finalized acquisition of Fox would make its movie nominations tally 21 — a number that climbs higher still when you throw in Fox’s FX. The nod for its “Black Panther” also marked Marvel Studios’ first best-picture nomination at the Globes, a feat it’s hoping to repeat at the Academy Awards.

The ratings for last January’s broadcast, hosted by Seth Meyers and graced with an impassioned speech by Oprah Winfrey, dipped 5 percent with approximately 19 million viewers. As the first major awards show following the Harvey Weinstein revelations, the usually more frivolous ceremony had an atypical edge of seriousness. In a demonstration organized by the then-just-founded Time’s Up, women wore black on the red carpet.

Whether this year will return the Globes to their more lighthearted celebrations will rest partly with its unexpected pairing of Andy Samberg and “Killing Eve” star Sandra Oh, who’s also a nominee for best actress in a TV series drama. They were announced Wednesday as hosts of the Jan. 6 ceremony, to be broadcast live on NBC.

VA ‘Shadow Rulers’ Had More Influence Than Previously Thought

Newly released emails about the three Trump associates who secretly steered the Department of Veterans Affairs show how deeply the trio was involved in some of the agency’s most consequential matters, most notably a multibillion-dollar effort to overhaul electronic health records for millions of veterans.

Marvel Entertainment chairman Ike Perlmutter, West Palm Beach physician Bruce Moskowitz and lawyer Marc Sherman — part of the president’s circle at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida — reviewed a confidential draft of a $10 billion government contract for the electronic-records project, even though they lack any relevant expertise.

In preparing the contract, the agency consulted more than 40 outside experts, such as hospital executives, according to the records, which were released under the Freedom of Information Act. The Mar-a-Lago trio were listed among those experts. Perlmutter, a comic book tycoon, appears on the list between representatives from the University of Washington Medical Center, Intermountain Healthcare and Johns Hopkins University.

But none of the three men has served in the U.S. military or elsewhere in government, and none of them has expertise in health information technology or federal contracting.

The list is one of hundreds of newly released documents about the so-called Mar-a-Lago Crowd’s sway over VA policy and personnel decisions. The records show them editing the budget for a government program, weighing in on job candidates and being treated as having decision-making authority on policy initiatives.

In a June 2017 email, a VA official identified Perlmutter alongside then-VA Secretary David Shulkin as “top principles [sic].” In another message, Moskowitz named himself, Perlmutter and Sherman to an “executive committee.”

Since the role of the troika was exposed by ProPublica in August, lawmakers have called their influence “wildly inappropriate” and “textbook corruption and cronyism.” A liberal veterans group sued to block them under a Watergate-era sunshine law on advisory committees. House Democrats and the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office said they would investigate.

VA Secretary Robert Wilkie has repeatedly distanced himself from the trio. His spokesman, Curt Cashour, blamed previous leaders. “Although his predecessors may have done things differently, Sec. Wilkie has been clear about how he does business,” Cashour said in a statement. “No one from outside the administration dictates VA policies or decisions — that’s up to Sec. Wilkie and President Trump. Period.”

But that posture carries risk for Wilkie; his predecessor was fired after losing favor with the Mar-a-Lago Crowd.

A representative of Perlmutter, Moskowitz and Sherman declined to comment, as did Shulkin and the White House.

Before they could review the government contract in March 2018, Perlmutter, Sherman and Moskowitz had to sign non-disclosure agreements, according to the newly released records. Sherman edited the agreement to allow him, Perlmutter and Moskowitz to discuss the details with one another and with the president or other administration officials, according to the emails.

The newly released emails also detail Moskowitz’s effort to get the VA and Apple to adapt his app. As a VA IT official described it in a May 2017 email, “We are utilizing the native iOS mobile app, Emergency Medical Center Tracker, that Dr. Moskowitz developed.”

VA health officials offered their own ideas for how a collaboration with Apple could benefit veterans, such as working on credentialing, data exchange and analytics, and suicide prevention research. But Moskowitz rejected the VA doctors’ ideas in favor of his own. “These are good areas but not the emergency ones which my group of experts have identified,” he said in a May 2017 email. “I sent an email to outline the recommendations.”

Darin Selnick, a VA official who previously signed onto a 2016 proposal to dismantle the agency’s government-run health service, agreed with Moskowitz’s low estimation of the VA doctors’ input. “The VA staff has limited knowledge and experience, which is why you and the” academic medical centers “are so important to help the VA move forward,” Selnick wrote.

Selnick, who is now a special adviser to Wilkie, was the point person working with Moskowitz on the app, the emails show. “I like you are the implementer for VA,” he told Moskowitz in March 2017.

When Selnick said the VA’s information technology division could start working on the app, Moskowitz replied, “We need our specialist.” He then connected Selnick with his son Aaron, and Selnick introduced Aaron Moskowitz to Apple. (Aaron Moskowitz’s name is redacted from the emails, but his involvement was confirmed by four people familiar with the matter. He didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

VA officials identified major problems with the app’s usability and functionality. “Some of the code needs to be refactored and even rebuilt,” the IT official said in the May email.

Nevertheless, Moskowitz’s son Aaron joined a June 2017 conference callwith executives from top medical systems and from Apple, including CEO Tim Cook. Moskowitz wanted the app discussed for five to seven minutes, according to the emails. After the call, Moskowitz named his son as one of the project’s “mid-level project managers.”

In preparation for the conference call, Apple employees and medical experts circulated a memo that assessed Moskowitz’s proposals, which were identified as coming from “the VA and the White House.” In the memo, Apple’s experts pushed back on Moskowitz’s app, saying that the VA’s website already offered a similar tool and that the national databases needed to make the app accurate didn’t exist. Instead, the memo encouraged pursuing a different idea (giving veterans a way to store their health data on their cellphones), which it said would “achieve the greatest benefit for our veterans in the shortest amount of time.”

Apple spokesman Josh Rosenstock didn’t answer requests for comment.

Months later, Moskowitz fumed that the Apple partnership didn’t go his way. “We had an excellent group assembled on the call with Tim Cook,” he said in a March 2018 email. “The VA dropped all contact and proceeded on its own. So now we have a product of limited value.”

Moskowitz also used his influence at the VA to get the agency to convene a meeting on registries for medical devices. Moskowitz started a foundation (whose board included Perlmutter’s wife) that lobbied medical institutions to start such registries so patients could be notified of recalls. Aaron Moskowitz drew a $60,000 salary as the foundation’s director, according to tax filings.

The VA already had a system to notify patients within 10 days of a recall, with a 99 percent success rate, according to internal emails. And the Food and Drug Administration already has a nationwide program to track medical devices. Nevertheless, Moskowitz spurred the VA to organize a conference on the subject, with extensive input from him and his son, according to notes from weekly 7:30 a.m. planning calls. Planning documents named Moskowitz’s foundation as a “participating partner” and a “private interest.”

Moskowitz even had say over the conference’s budget: In an April 2018 email, the VA official running the effort said, “I owe Dr. Moskowitz a budget — Bruce and I are editing it.” Cashour, the VA spokesman, declined to say how much the program cost.

The Mar-a-Lago Crowd’s interventions sometimes bumped into each other. Once, in May 2017, when Selnick tried to schedule a call about the Apple partnership, Moskowitz replied that the time conflicted with another call he had with the acting head of the VA’s health division.

When Wilkie first met the Mar-a-Lago Crowd, they seemed to get along.

“For the first time in 1½ years we feel everyone is on the same page,” Perlmutter said in an email after the meeting at Mar-a-Lago in April. “Everybody ‘gets it.’”

Wilkie returned the enthusiasm, thanking the men for providing a foundation to build on.

“I was honored to visit with you,” Wilkie, who at the time was the acting secretary, wrote. “No matter how long I am here, there is a template in place based on your efforts to move this institution out of the Industrial Age.”

(That last sentence was redacted when the VA originally disclosed the email to ProPublica under the Freedom of Information Act; the agency cited an exemption for internal deliberations. After ProPublica challenged that redaction, the VA released the full message.)

But since that initial meeting in April, Wilkie’s relationship with the Mar-a-Lago Crowd has frayed. Under pressure from lawmakers after ProPublica’s investigation, Wilkie said in September that his team cut off contact with the trio.

The loss of access has stung Perlmutter, according to a person close to the administration. But Perlmutter remains close to Trump: he spent election night with him and saw him over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend at Mar-a-Lago.

The person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe confidential discussions, said Perlmutter has begun criticizing Wilkie — as he had Wilkie’s predecessor, Shulkin, before the president fired him.

Perlmutter faults Wilkie, the person said, for snubbing Perlmutter’s calls and for sidelining one of his top allies, former acting secretary Peter O’Rourke. Additionally, the person said, Perlmutter is displeased with the agency’s releasing emails about him and with the course of its electronic health records overhaul.

“It’s very clear that Ike is going to war against Wilkie in a similar way to the way he did against Shulkin,” the person familiar with the matter said. “It’s gotten that bad.”

China Demands Canada Release Executive of Tech Giant

BEIJING — China on Thursday demanded that Canada release an executive of Chinese tech giant Huawei who was arrested in a case that compounds tensions with the U.S. and threatens to complicate trade talks.

Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Ltd., faces possible extradition to the United States, according to Canadian authorities. The Globe and Mail newspaper, citing law enforcement sources, said she is suspected of trying to evade U.S. trade curbs on Iran.

Huawei, the biggest global supplier of network gear used by phone and internet companies, has been the target of deepening U.S. security concerns. Under Trump and his predecessor, Barack Obama, Washington has pressured European countries and other allies to limit use of its technology.

The U.S. sees Huawei and smaller Chinese tech suppliers as possible fronts for spying and as commercial competitors. The Trump administration says they benefit from improper subsidies and market barriers.

The timing of the arrest is awkward following the announcement of a U.S.-Chinese cease-fire in a trade war that has its roots in Beijing’s technology policy. Meng was detained in Vancouver on Saturday, the day Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met in Argentina and announced their deal.

Stock markets tumbled on the news, fearing renewed U.S.-Chinese tensions that threaten global economic growth. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 2.5 percent and the DAX in Germany sank 1.8 percent.

A Chinese government statement said Meng broke no U.S. or Canadian laws and demanded Canada “immediately correct the mistake” and release her.

Beijing asked Washington and Ottawa to explain the reason for Meng’s arrest, said a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang. He said arresting her without that violated her human rights.

But the Ministry of Commerce signaled that Beijing wants to avoid disrupting progress toward settling a dispute with Washington over technology policy that has led them to raise tariffs on billions of dollars of each other’s goods.

China is confident they can reach a trade deal during the 90 days that Trump agreed to suspend U.S. tariff hikes, said a ministry spokesman, Gao Feng.

Trump’s tariff hikes on Chinese imports stemmed from complaints Beijing steals or pressures foreign companies to hand over technology. But U.S. officials also worry more broadly that Chinese plans for state-led creation of Chinese champions in robotics, artificial intelligence and other fields might erode U.S. industrial leadership.

“The United States is stepping up containment of China in all respects,” said Zhu Feng, an international relations expert at Nanjing University. He said targeting Huawei, one of its most successful companies, “will trigger anti-U.S. sentiment.”

“The incident could turn out to be a breaking point,” Zhu said.

Last month, New Zealand blocked a mobile phone company from using Huawei equipment, saying it posed a “significant network security risk.” The company was banned in August from working on Australia’s fifth-generation network.

On Wednesday, British phone carrier BT said it was removing Huawei equipment from the core of its mobile phone networks. It said Huawei still is a supplier of other equipment and a “valued innovation partner.”

The Wall Street Journal reported this year U.S. authorities are investigating whether Huawei violated sanctions on Iran. The Chinese government appealed to Washington to avoid any steps that might damage business confidence.

Huawei’s biggest Chinese rival, ZTE Corp., was nearly driven out of business this year when Washington barred it from buying U.S. technology over exports to North Korea and Iran. Trump restored access after ZTE agreed to pay a $1 billion fine, replace its executive team and embed a U.S.-chosen compliance team in the company.

Huawei is regarded as far stronger commercially than ZTE. Based in Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, Huawei has the biggest research and development budget of any Chinese company and a vast portfolio of patents, making it less dependent on American suppliers.

Its growing smartphone brand is among the top three global suppliers behind Samsung Electronics and Apple Inc. by number of handsets sold.

Meng was changing flights in Canada when she was detained “on behalf of the United States of America” to face unspecified charges in New York, according to a Huawei statement.

“The company has been provided very little information regarding the charges and is not aware of any wrongdoing by Ms. Meng,” the statement said.

A U.S. Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

Huawei said it complies with all laws and rules where it operates, including export controls and sanctions of the U.N., the U.S. and European Union.

Meng’s arrest also threatened to inflame disagreements over Iran and Trump’s decision to break with other governments and re-impose sanctions over the country’s nuclear development.

Geng, the foreign ministry spokesman, said China objects to unilateral sanctions outside the United Nations. China has said it will continue to do business with Iran despite the possible threat of U.S. penalties.

Meng is a prominent member of China’s business world as deputy chairman of Huawei’s board and the daughter of its founder Ren Zhengfei, a former Chinese military engineer.

Despite that, her arrest is unlikely to derail trade talks, said Willy Lam, a politics specialist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

“I think too much is at stake for Xi Jinping. He desperately wants a settlement,” said Lam.

Longer term, however, the case will reinforce official Chinese urgency about developing domestic technology suppliers to reduce reliance on the United States, said Lam.

Trump has “pulled out all the stops” to hamper Chinese ambitions to challenge the U.S. as a technology leader, Lam said. That includes imposing limits on visas for Chinese students to study science and technology.

“If the Chinese need further convincing, this case would show them beyond doubt Trump’s commitment,” said Lam.

David Mulroney, a former Canadian ambassador to China, said U.S. and Canadian business executives could face reprisals in China.

“That’s something we should be watching out for. It’s a possibility. China plays rough,” Mulroney said. “It’s a prominent member of their society and it’s a company that really embodies China’s quest for global recognition as a technology power.”