Heather Cox Richardson's Blog, page 130
November 19, 2023
November 19, 2023
For three hot days, from July 1 to July 3, 1863, more than 150,000 soldiers from the armies of the United States of America and the Confederate States of America slashed at each other in the hills and through the fields around Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
When the battered armies limped out of town after the brutal battle, they left scattered behind them more than seven thousand corpses in a town with fewer than 2,500 inhabitants. With the heat of a summer sun beating down, the townspeople had to get the dead soldiers into the ground as quickly as they possibly could, marking the hasty graves with nothing more than pencil on wooden boards.
A local lawyer, David Wills, who had huddled in his cellar with his family and their neighbors during the battle, called for the creation of a national cemetery in the town, where the bodies of the United States soldiers who had died in the battle could be interred with dignity. Officials agreed, and Wills and an organizing committee planned an elaborate dedication ceremony to be held a few weeks after workers began moving remains into the new national cemetery.
They invited state governors, members of Congress, and cabinet members to attend. To deliver the keynote address, they asked prominent orator Edward Everett, who wanted to do such extensive research into the battle that they had to move the ceremony to November 19, a later date than they had first contemplated.
And, almost as an afterthought, they asked President Lincoln to make a few appropriate remarks. While they probably thought he would not attend, or that if he came he would simply mouth a few platitudes and sit down, President Lincoln had something different in mind.
On November 19, 1863, about fifteen thousand people gathered in Gettysburg for the dedication ceremony. A program of music and prayers preceded Everett’s two-hour oration. Then, after another hymn, Lincoln stood up to speak. Packed in the midst of a sea of frock coats, he began. In his high-pitched voice, speaking slowly, he delivered a two-minute speech that redefined the nation.
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” Lincoln began. While the southern enslavers who were making war on the United States had stood firm on the Constitution’s protection of property—including their enslaved Black neighbors—Lincoln dated the nation from the Declaration of Independence.
The men who wrote the Declaration considered the “truths” they listed “self-evident”: “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” But Lincoln had no such confidence. By his time, the idea that all men were created equal was a “proposition,” and Americans of his day were “engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”
Standing near where so many men had died four months before, Lincoln honored “those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.”
He noted that those “brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated” the ground “far above our poor power to add or detract.”
“It is for us the living,” Lincoln said, “to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.” He urged the men and women in the audience to “take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion” and to vow that “these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
[Image of President Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, center-left, with his head tilted downward. Work is in the U.S. public domain, obtained here from Wikimedia Commons.]
November 18, 2023
November 18, 2023
I didn’t see much of the Fall in Maine this year because I’ve been seeing so much else of the country, but my friend Peter sent this image of last month's Hunter Moon to bring me a little bit of home.
Headed that direction myself in the morning.
Going to take the night off and rest up. I’ll see you tomorrow.
[Image “Hunter Moon” by Peter Ralston.]
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You can find Peter and his wife Terri at the gallery in Rockport, Maine, or here: https://www.ralstongallery.com/
November 17, 2023
In an NPR piece yesterday, Bill Chappell noted that “the war between Israel and Hamas is being fought, in part, through disinformation and competing claims.”
Khalil al-Hayya, a member of Hamas’s leadership team currently in Qatar, told Ben Hubbard and Maria Abi-Habib of the New York Times that Hamas’s goal in their attack of October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists crossed from Gaza into Israel and tortured and killed about 1,200 people, taking another 240 hostage, was to make sure the region did not settle into a status quo that excluded the Palestinians.
In 2020 the Palestinians were excluded from discussions about the Abraham Accords negotiated by then-president Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner that normalized relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain (and later Morocco). More recently, Saudi Arabia and Israel were in talks with the United States about normalizing relations.
Al-Hayya told the reporters that in order to “change the entire equation and not just have a clash,” Hamas leaders intended to commit “a great act” that Israel would respond to with fury. “[W]ithout a doubt, it was known that the reaction to this great act would be big,” al-Hayya said, but “[w]e had to tell people that the Palestinian cause would not die.”
“Hamas’s goal is not to run Gaza and to bring it water and electricity and such,” al-Hayya said. “This battle was not because we wanted fuel or laborers,” he added. “It did not seek to improve the situation in Gaza. This battle is to completely overthrow the situation.”
Hamas media adviser Taher El-Nounou told the reporters: “I hope that the state of war with Israel will become permanent on all the borders, and that the Arab world will stand with us.”
Hamas could be pretty certain that Israel would retaliate with a heavy hand. The governing coalition that took power at the end of 2022 is a far-right coalition, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs to hold that coalition together to stay in power, not least because he faces charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust.
Once it took power, Netanyahu’s government announced that expanding Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank was a priority, vowing to annex the occupied territory. It also endorsed discrimination against LGBTQ people and called for generous payments to ultra-Orthodox men so they could engage in religious study rather than work. It also tried to push through changes to the judicial system to give far more power to the government.
From January 7 until October 7, 2023, protesters turned out in the streets in huge numbers. With the attack, Israelis have come together until the crisis is resolved.
Netanyahu’s ability to stay in power depended in large part on his promises that he would keep Israelis safe. The events of October 7 on his watch—the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust—shattered that guarantee. Polls show that Israelis blame his government, and three quarters of them think he should resign. Sixty-four percent think the country should hold an election immediately after the war.
Immediately after the attack, on October 7, Netanyahu vowed “mighty vengeance” against Hamas, and Israeli airstrikes began to pound Gaza. On October 8, Israel formally declared war. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the country’s retaliation would “change the reality on the ground in Gaza for the next 50 years,” and on October 9 he announced “a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed…. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
Israel and the U.S. have strong historic and economic ties: as Nicole Narea points out in Vox in a review of their history together, the U.S. has also traditionally seen Israel as an important strategic ally as it stabilizes the Middle East, helping to maintain the supply of Middle Eastern oil that the global economy needs. That strategic importance has only grown as the U.S. seeks to normalize ties around the region to form a united front against Iran.
For Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and other envoys, then, it appeared the first priority after the October 7 attack was to keep the conflict from spreading. Biden made it very clear that the U.S. would stand behind Israel should Iran, which backs Hamas, be considering moving in. He warned: “[T]o any country, any organization, anyone thinking of taking advantage of this situation, I have one word: Don’t.”
The movement of two U.S. carrier groups to the region appears so far to be helping to achieve that goal. While Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon and Yemen’s Houthis have fired missiles and drones at Israel since October 7, Iran’s leaders have said they will not join Hamas’s fight and are hoping only to use the conflict as leverage against the U.S.
Militias have fired at least 55 rocket and drone strikes at U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria since October 7 without killing any U.S. soldiers. In retaliation, the U.S. has launched three airstrikes against militia installations in Syria, killing up to seven men (the military assesses there were not women or children in the vicinity) in the third strike on Sunday. The U.S. keeps roughly 900 troops in Syria and 2,500 troops in Iraq to work with local forces to prevent the resurgence of the Islamic State.
At the same time that Biden emphasized Israel’s right to respond to Hamas’s attack and demanded the return of the hostages, he also called for humanitarian aid to Gaza through Egypt and warned Netanyahu to stay within the laws of war.
Rounds of diplomacy by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who flew to Israel and Jordan initially on October 11 and has gone back repeatedly, as well as by Biden, who has both visited the region—his second trip to a war zone—and constantly worked the phones, and other envoys, started humanitarian convoys moving into Gaza with a single 20-truck convoy on October 21. By early November, over 100 trucks a day were entering Gaza, the number the United Nations says is the minimum needed. Yesterday the Israeli war cabinet agreed to allow two tankers of fuel a day into Gaza after the U.N. said it couldn’t deliver aid because it had run out of fuel.
The U.S. has insisted from the start that Israel’s military decisions must not go beyond the laws of war. Israeli officials say they are staying within the law, yet an estimated 11,000 civilians and Hamas fighters (the numbers are not separated out) have died. Gaza has been crushed into rubble by airstrikes, and more than a million people are homeless. That carnage has sparked protests around the world along with calls for a cease-fire, which Israel rejects.
It has also sparked extreme Islamophobia and antisemitism exacerbated by social media. In the immediate aftermath of October 7, Islamophobia inspired a Chicago man to stab a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy to death; more recently, antisemitism has jumped more than 900% on X (formerly Twitter). On Wednesday, Elon Musk agreed with a virulently antisemitic post on X. White House spokesperson Andrew Bates responded: “We condemn this abhorrent promotion of Antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans.” Advertisers, including IBM and Apple, announced they would no longer advertise on Musk’s platform.
While calling for humanitarian pauses in the fighting, the Biden administration has continued to focus on getting the hostages out and has rejected calls for a cease-fire, saying such a break would only allow Hamas to regroup. In The Atlantic on November 14, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who negotiated a 2012 cease-fire between Hamas and Israel only to see Hamas violate that agreement two years later, explained that cease-fires have only kicked the can down the road. “Israel’s policy since 2009 of containing rather than destroying Hamas has failed,” she said.
Clinton called for the destruction of Hamas on the one hand and “a new strategy and new leadership” for Israel on the other. “Instead of the current ultra-right-wing government, it will need a government of national unity that’s rooted in the center of Israeli politics and can make the hard choices ahead,” she wrote.
Central to those choices is the long-neglected two-state solution that would establish a Palestinian state. Biden and Blinken and a number of Arab governments have backed the idea, but to many observers it seems impossible to pull off. Still, at the same time Clinton’s article appeared, King Abdullah II of Jordan published his own op-ed in the Washington Post titled: “A two-state solution would be a victory for our common humanity.”
“[L]et’s start with some basic reality,” he wrote. “The fact is that the thousands of victims across Israel, Gaza and the West Bank have been overwhelmingly civilians…. Leaders everywhere have the responsibility to face the full reality of this crisis, as ugly as it is. Only by anchoring ourselves to the concrete facts that have brought us to this point will we be able to change the increasingly dangerous direction of our world….
“If the status quo continues, the days ahead will be driven by an ongoing war of narratives over who is entitled to hate more and kill more. Sinister political agendas and ideologies will attempt to exploit religion. Extremism, vengeance and persecution will deepen not only in the region but also around the world…. It is up to responsible leaders to deliver results, starting now.”
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Notes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/world/middleeast/hamas-israel-gaza-war.html
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/16/1212889717/satellite-images-us-israel-gaza
https://www.thedefensepost.com/2023/11/16/us-troops-iraq-syria-attacked/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/world/middleeast/netanyahu-corruption-charges-israel.html
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/history-its-importance-and-irrelevance-plus-some-books
https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/09/saudi-israel-normalization-agreement-horizon
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/who-takes-over-gaza
https://www.vox.com/world-politics/23916266/us-israel-support-ally-gaza-war-aid
https://il.usembassy.gov/secretary-blinkens-travel-to-israel-and-jordan/
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/17/politics/inside-joe-biden-israel-trip-planning/index.html
https://www.state.gov/humanitarian-assistance-for-gaza/
Diplomatic, by Laura RozenIsrael agrees to fuel for Gaza after US privately warned of humanitarian catastropheA day after the United Nations said it could no longer deliver aid in Gaza because it had run out of fuel and American officials warned Israeli counterparts…Read more16 hours ago · 7 likes · Laura Rozenhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2023/gaza-rising-death-toll-civilians/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/15/technology/hate-speech-israel-gaza-internet.html
https://www.axios.com/2023/11/17/apple-twitter-x-advertising-elon-musk-antisemitism-ads
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/14/king-abdullah-jordan-two-state-solution/
Twitter (X):
November 16, 2023
November 16, 2023
The summit of the leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies continued today in San Francisco, California.
Formed in 1989, APEC is made up of the economies of 21 nations around the Pacific Rim: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Chile, Peru, Russia, Vietnam, and the United States. Together, these economies make up about 62% of global gross domestic product and almost half of global trade.
David Sanger of the New York Times today noted an apparent shift in the power dynamic between President Joe Biden and Chinese president Xi Jinping, who met yesterday for a four-hour conversation. Earlier in his presidency, Xi was riding on a strong economy that overshadowed that of the U.S. and looked as if it would continue to do so. Then, Xi favored what was known as “wolf warrior” diplomacy: the aggressive defense of China’s national interests against what Chinese envoys portrayed as foreign hostility, especially that of the U.S.
Under that diplomatic regime, Xi emphasized that liberal democracy was too weak to face the twenty-first century. The speed and momentous questions of the new era called for strong leaders, he said. In early February 2022, Russia and China held a summit after which they pledged that the “[f]riendship between the two States has no limits.”
Things have changed.
The U.S. has emerged from the coronavirus pandemic with a historically strong economy, while China’s economy is reeling from a real estate bubble and deflation at the same time that government crackdowns have made foreign capital flee. This summer, Xi quietly sidelined Qin Gang, the foreign minister associated with wolf warrior diplomacy, and in October, he replaced Defense Minister General Li Shangfu, who is under U.S. sanctions for overseeing weapon purchases from Russia.
Indeed, China has also been quietly pushing back from its close embrace of Russia. Just weeks after their February 2022 declaration, Russia invaded Ukraine in an operation that Russian president Vladimir Putin almost certainly expected would be quick and successful, permitting Russia to seize key Ukrainian ports and land. Such a victory would have strengthened both Russia and China at the same time it weakened Europe, the United States, and their allies and partners.
Instead, Ukraine stood firm, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and allies and partners have stood behind the embattled country. As the war has stretched on, sanctions have cut into the Russian economy and Putin has had to cede power to Xi, accepting the Chinese yuan in exchange for Russian commodities, for example. This week, Alberto Nardelli of Bloomberg reported that the European Union is considering another round of sanctions, including a ban on the export of machine tools and machinery parts that enable Russia to make ammunition.
In a piece at the Center for European Policy Analysis today, Julia Davis, who monitors Russian media, noted that Russia lost an extraordinary 997,000 people between October 2020 and September 2021, even before the war began. Now it is so desperate to increase its population that its leadership claims to have stolen as many as 700,000 Ukrainian children and is urging women to have as many children as possible.
Holly Ellyatt of CNBC noted that to the degree they even mentioned it, Russian media sniped at the Biden-Xi summit, but it was hard to miss that although Russian president Putin was not welcome to attend, Xi came and engaged in several high-level meetings, assuring potential investors that China wants to be friends with the U.S. Also hard to miss was Xi’s pointed comment that the China-U.S. relationship “is the most important bilateral relationship in the world.”
Going into this summit, then, the U.S. had the leverage to get agreements from China to crack down on the precursor chemicals that Chinese producers have been shipping to Latin America to make illegal fentanyl, restore military communications between the two countries now that Li has been replaced, and make promises about addressing climate change. Other large issues of trade and the independence of Taiwan will not be resolved so easily.
Still, it was a high point for President Biden, whose economic policies and careful investment in diplomatic alliances have helped to shift the power dynamic between the U.S. and two countries that were key geopolitical rivals when he took office. Now, both the U.S. and China appear to be making an effort to move forward on better terms. Indeed, Chinese media has shifted its tone about the U.S. and the APEC summit so quickly readers have expressed surprise.
Today, Biden emphasized “the unlimited potential of our partnerships…to realize a future that will benefit people not only in the Asia-Pacific region but the whole world,… [a] future where our prosperity is shared and is inclusive, where workers are empowered and their rights are respected, where our economies are sustainable and resilient.”
Biden and administration officials noted that companies from across the Asia-Pacific world have invested nearly $200 billion in the U.S. since Biden took office, creating tens of thousands of good jobs, while the U.S. has elevated its engagement with the region, holding bilateral talks, creating new initiatives and deepening economic partnerships.
Today, Biden and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo announced that the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, an economic forum established last year as a nonbinding replacement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership former president Trump abruptly pulled out of, had agreed on terms to set up an early warning system for disruptions to supply chains, cooperation on clean energy, and fighting corruption and tax evasion.
In a very different event in San Francisco today, a federal jury convicted David DePape, 43, of attempted kidnapping and assault on account of a federal official’s performance of official duties for his attack on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul with a hammer on October 28 of last year, fracturing his skull.
DePape’s lawyers did not contest the extensive evidence against him but tried to convince the jury that DePape did not commit a federal crime because he did not attack Pelosi on account of Representative Pelosi’s official position. Instead, they said, DePape had embraced the language of right-wing lawmakers and pundits and believed in a conspiracy theory that pedophile elites had taken over the country and were spreading lies about former president Donald Trump.
DePape told jurors he had come to conspiracy theories through Gamergate, a 2014–2015 misogynistic online campaign of harassment against women in the video game industry, which turned into attacks on feminism, diversity, and progressive ideas. Trump ally Steve Bannon talked of pulling together the Gamergate participants behind Trump and his politics.
Also today, a subcommittee of the House Ethics Committee set up to investigate allegations against Representative George Santos (R-NY) issued its report. The Republican-dominated committee found that Santos had lied about his background during his campaign and, furthermore, that he appears to be a serial liar. Those lies also “include numerous misrepresentations to the government and the public about his and his campaign’s financial activities.”
That is, the committee found, Santos defrauded his campaign donors, falsified his financial records, and used campaign money on beauty products, rent, luxury items from Hermes and Ferragamo, and purchases at the website Only Fans. The subcommittee recommended the Ethics Committee refer Santos to the Department of Justice, and “publicly condemn Representative Santos, whose conduct [is] beneath the dignity of the office” and who has “brought severe discredit upon the House.”
Santos says he will not run for reelection.
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Notes:
https://www.reuters.com/world/what-is-apec-asia-pacific-leaders-head-san-francisco-2023-11-01/
http://en.kremlin.ru/supplement/5770
https://thediplomat.com/2023/09/the-rise-and-fall-of-chinas-wolf-warrior-diplomacy/
https://cepa.org/article/women-enter-the-putin-regimes-crosshairs/
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/08/15/chinese-diplomat-qin-gang-fall-00110333
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/16/us/politics/biden-xi-china-power-balance.html
https://apnews.com/article/china-defense-minister-us-taiwan-8bbb77e5e37e5427cb8cc79b6e8d2b22
https://abcnews.go.com/US/paul-pelosi-hammer-attack-federal-trial-verdict/story?id=104879502
https://ethics.house.gov/sites/ethics.house.gov/files/documents/ISC%20Report_0.pdf
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/16/us/david-depape-paul-pelosi-verdict.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/16/xi-biden-meeting-china-summit/
November 15, 2023
November 15, 2023
Extremist Republicans today shut down House business by refusing to pass a procedural vote to take up a spending bill, as they had threatened to do in retaliation for the passage yesterday of the continuing resolution to fund the government into the new year. This is the fourth time the extremists have defeated special rules in the House this year, and as deputy chief of staff for Representative Don Beyer (D-VA) Aaron Fritschner pointed out, their doing so is highly unusual. In the previous 20 years the House voted down no such measures at all.
Although they were in the middle of a 17-vote series, the Republicans then recessed the House until after Thanksgiving.
Members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus made it clear they are angry that their own demands are not being met. “We’re sending a shot across the bow,” caucus chair Scott Perry (R-PA) told reporters. “[W]e are done with the failure theater here.”
Representative Chip Roy (R-TX) angrily said to his colleagues: “One thing. I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing. One. That I can go campaign on and say we did. One! Anybody sitting in the complex, if you want to come down to the floor and come explain to me, one material, meaningful, significant thing the Republican majority has done besides, ‘Well, I guess it’s not as bad as the Democrats.’”
In contrast, the Democrats with the same slim majority in the last Congress passed a series of sweeping bills that are already changing the country. Today marks the second anniversary of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act that invested $1.2 trillion—$550 billion of it new spending—in roads, water systems, electrical grids, broadband, bridges, and so on.
So far, that act has seen the start of more than 37,000 projects across the country. Bridges, airports, and supply chain projects are underway, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs. The Democrats today emphasized that they are delivering on the things that make people’s lives easier, and the White House listed a number of Republicans who voted against the measure only to boast of the benefits of the infrastructure investments to their constituents.
“And,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a video in which he echoed the tagline of the administration: “the great news is, we’re just getting started.”
The investment in infrastructure is part of what has created a booming U.S. economy. Growth is far better in the U.S. than in Europe or China, where a property bubble and local government debts have led to deflation.
That economic strength is standing behind President Joe Biden in San Francisco, where he traveled yesterday for a summit of the 21 member economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum (APEC groups economies, not nations). APEC economies make up almost half of world trade and about 62% of global gross domestic product.
Today, Biden met with Chinese president Xi Jinping in a much anticipated second meeting since Biden took office. But even before today’s discussion, the two leaders announced a new climate agreement. The U.S. and China are the world’s two largest climate polluters, accounting for 38% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.
China did not agree to phase out coal, which is the dirtiest fossil fuel, but both countries agreed to ramp up renewable energy capacity around the world and to reduce emissions in their power sectors overall. This is the first time China has agreed to cut emissions. In two weeks the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference will take place in Dubai. Observers hope the willingness of China and the U.S. to make this announcement, even with its limitations, will jump-start negotiations there.
Remarks by Biden and Xi before their meeting were cordial but tense. Biden emphasized that their “meetings have always been candid, straightforward, and useful,” telling Xi: “I value our conversation because I think it’s paramount that you and I understand each other clearly, leader to leader, with no misconceptions or miscommunication. We have to ensure that competition does not veer into conflict. And we also have to manage it responsibly—that competition.”
Xi responded that the China-U.S. relationship “is the most important bilateral relationship in the world,” and while it “has never been smooth sailing over the past 50 years and more…, it has kept moving forward amid twists and turns. For two large countries like China and the United States, turning their back on each other is not an option. It is unrealistic for one side to remodel the other, and conflict and confrontation has unbearable consequences for both sides.”
In their four-hour meeting, the two leaders agreed to recommence military communications more than a year after China broke them off when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan. The two countries also agreed to strengthen cooperation on stopping the flow of what are known as precursor chemicals—the chemicals needed to make street fentanyl—which are produced in China and shipped to drug operations primarily in Latin America. The U.S. has cracked down hard on that trade; additional Chinese cooperation will be welcome.
They agreed to continue to work together to address climate change, as well as to address the risks of artificial intelligence.
On the rest of their discussions, concerning Taiwan, human rights, the Middle East, and Ukraine, the two leaders “exchanged views,” according to the White House readout. Later in the day, meeting with business leaders who have grown nervous about investing in China, Xi assured them that China wants to be friends with the U.S., and “does not seek spheres of influence, and will not fight a cold or hot war with any country.”
In his remarks welcoming APEC leaders this evening, in the city of the famous Golden Gate Bridge, Biden emphasized the power of building bridges to span space and time, the past and the future. He spoke of connecting diverse communities: “All across the traditions, cultures, and languages, we find the common dreams we share for ourselves and for our children.”
Biden urged his audience to “take full advantage of this summit to make new connections and spark new partnerships, because every step we take to deepen our cooperation, to launch a new venture, to tackle the challenges that impact on all of us is a step toward realization of the enormous potential of our Asian Pacific future…, a future where our economics are strong, vibrant, and sustainable because our workers are empowered and protected; women and girls are full and equal participants in every aspect of our society; young people…can envision for themselves the lives and hope for unlimited possibilities.”
The strongest tools we have to meet this era’s challenges, he said, are “connection, cooperation, collective action, and common purpose. That’s why we’re all here.”
Late tonight, by a vote of 87 to 11, the Senate passed the continuing resolution to fund the government into the new year. One Democrat and ten Republicans voted no.
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Notes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/15/biden-xi-meeting/
https://www.reuters.com/world/what-is-apec-asia-pacific-leaders-head-san-francisco-2023-11-01/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/14/climate/us-china-climate-agreement.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/11/15/senate-vote-avert-government-shutdown/
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November 14, 2023
November 14, 2023
This evening, by a vote of 336 to 95, the House of Representatives passed a bill to fund the government. Pushed by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), the measure funds the government at current spending levels. Funding for different parts of the government will run out on two separate dates: January 19 and February 2. The measure does not include any funding for military aid to Israel or Ukraine.
Democrats provided most of the votes for the measure, which passed under a special rule that required two thirds of the House to agree to it. The Democrats provided 209 yes votes; the Republicans, 127. Two Democrats and 93 Republicans opposed it.
The Democratic House leadership, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA), and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-CA) and Vice Chair Ted Lieu (D-CA), released a statement saying:
“From the very beginning of the Congress, House Democrats have made clear that we will always put people over politics and try to find common ground with our Republican colleagues wherever possible, while pushing back against Republican extremism whenever necessary.
“That is the framework through which we will evaluate all issues before us this Congress. We have consistently made clear that a government shutdown would hurt the economy, our national security and everyday Americans during a very fragile time and must be avoided. To that end, House Democrats have repeatedly articulated that any continuing resolution must be set at the fiscal year 2023 spending level, be devoid of harmful cuts and free of extreme right-wing policy riders. The continuing resolution before the House today meets [those] criteria and we will support it.”
Just two Democrats opposed the measure. Ninety-three Republicans did.
Passing a continuing resolution at the same spending levels as fiscal year 2023 with the help of Democrats while much of his own party opposes it puts Johnson in the exact same place Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was in when eight extremists voted to oust him from the speakership: relying on Democratic votes to fund the government.
Far-right extremists were angry at Johnson and took an official stand against it. Now they are talking about retaliating against the speaker by holding up any further legislation in procedural votes so it cannot move forward, grinding the House to another halt. Johnson might have been trying to address that anger when he today endorsed former president Donald Trump for president in 2024, a move his predecessor McCarthy refused to make.
But McCarthy supporters looked at Johnson getting a pass for the same deal that cost McCarthy his leadership and cried foul. Republican tempers ran hot on Capitol Hill today as Representative Tim Burchett (R-TN) accused former speaker McCarthy of elbowing him in the kidney as McCarthy passed him in the House basement while Burchett was talking to NPR reporter Claudia Grisales. Clearly taken aback, Grisales tweeted: “Have NEVER seen this on Capitol Hill: While talking to [Burchett] after the GOP conference meeting, former [Speaker McCarthy] walked by with his detail and McCarthy shoved Burchett. Burchett lunged towards me. I thought it was a joke, it was not. And a chase ensued….” Burchett was one of the eight Republican representatives who voted to oust McCarthy from the speakership.
In a House hearing of the Oversight Committee on the U.S. General Services Administration, chair James Comer (R-KY) angrily told Representative Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), who was wearing a blue suit, that he looked like a Smurf (a small, blue cartoon character). Comer angrily defended himself from Moskowitz’s observation that Comer had lent the same amount of money to his own brother that President Biden lent to his brother James.
Comer has insisted without any proof that Biden’s loan was illicit; Moskowitz has repeatedly asked Comer to testify about his own loan. "That is bullsh*t," Comer said of Moskowitz’s observation that the American people would like to know more about his own loan. Moskowitz answered: "Your word means nothing, Mr. Chairman.... I think the American people have lots of questions, Mr. Chairman, and perhaps you should sit maybe for a deposition."
That was House Republicans today.
In the Senate, at a hearing of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Republican Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma tried to start a physical fight with one of the witnesses, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union Sean O'Brien. O’Brien had criticized Mullin on Twitter, and Mullin wanted to fight it out. O’Brien indicated he was more than ready. Mullin got up from his chair as if to begin, when Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), chair of the committee, yelled at him to sit back down. “You are a United States senator!” he shouted.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration today celebrated the drop of the inflation rate to zero for the month of October, meaning that prices did not rise at all between September and October. That flat month means the yearly inflation rate dropped to 3.2% for the past year. Much of that lower inflation rate reflects lower gasoline prices, which dropped 5% in October.
Under the Democratic administration, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which oversees the maintenance of fair business practices, has been much more aggressive about policing misconduct, and today it announced it filed 784 enforcement actions and claimed $4.95 billion in penalties in the fiscal year that ended in September. This financial recovery was the second highest in the history of the SEC, second only to last year’s amount of $6.4 billion.
The White House yesterday announced a new initiative on women’s health research designed to combat the fact that women’s health has been ill studied, leaving half the nation’s people suffering from poorly understood debilitating conditions such as endometriosis and fibroids, as well as being diagnosed or treated incorrectly for disorders such as cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and autoimmune disorders.
Today the White House issued the fifth national climate assessment, which showed a decline in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions despite the growth of the population and of the economy. The White House statement attributes this decline to efforts to mitigate emissions and the increasingly available low-emissions options. In the last decade, it noted, wind energy costs dropped 70% and solar energy costs dropped 90%. In 2020, 80% of new energy generation capacity came from clean energy. Climate change and related extreme weather events are rapidly intensifying, the administration warned, and will cost the U.S. at least $150 billion a year.
Reflecting that fact, Biden today announced more than $6 billion in investments to strengthen the electric grid, reduce flooding, support conservation, and advance environmental justice, as underserved communities bear the brunt of weather events. The money is coming primarily from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the Inflation Reduction Act.
—
Notes:
https://apnews.com/article/mike-johnson-donald-trump-2024-c0d8304f44bd7158415ac80673eb8c7f
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/14/us/politics/government-shutdown-vote-mike-johnson.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/14/mike-johnson-speaker-shutdown-democrats-00127083
https://thehill.com/business is/4308537-october-2024-inflation-consumer-price-index/
https://www.barrons.com/articles/october-cpi-inflation-report-data-today-155d53f1
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/14/politics/burchett-mccarthy-elbowing-fight/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/14/politics/speaker-johnson-conservative-reaction/index.html
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November 13, 2023
November 13, 2023
In a speech Saturday in Claremont, New Hampshire, and then in his Veterans Day greeting yesterday on social media, former president Trump echoed German Nazis.
“In honor of our great Veterans on Veteran’s Day [sic] we pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Racists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American Dream…. Despite the hatred and anger of the Radical Left Lunatics who want to destroy our country, we will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”
The use of language referring to enemies as bugs or rodents has a long history in genocide because it dehumanizes opponents, making it easier to kill them. In the U.S. this concept is most commonly associated with Hitler and the Nazis, who often spoke of Jews as “vermin” and vowed to exterminate them.
The parallel between MAGA Republicans’ plans and the Nazis had other echoes this weekend, as Trump’s speech came the same day that Charlie Savage, Maggie Haberman, and Jonathan Swan of the New York Times reported that Trump and his people are planning to revive his travel ban, more popularly known as the “Muslim ban,” which refused entry to the U.S. by people from some majority-Muslim nations, and to reimpose the pandemic-era restrictions he used during the coronavirus pandemic to refuse asylum claims—it is not only legal to apply for asylum in the United States, but it is a guaranteed right under the Refugee Act of 1980—by claiming that immigrants bring infectious diseases like tuberculosis.
They plan mass deportations of unauthorized people in the U.S., rounding them up with specially deputized law enforcement officers and National Guard soldiers contributed by Republican-dominated states. Because U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) doesn’t have the space for such numbers of people, Trump’s people plan to put them in “sprawling camps” while they wait to be expelled. Trump refers to this as “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”
Trump’s people would screen visa applicants to eliminate those with ideas they consider undesirable, and would kick out those here temporarily for humanitarian reasons, including Afghans who came here after the 2021 Taliban takeover. Trump ally Steve Bannon and his likely attorney general, Mike Davis, expect to deport 10 million people.
Trump’s advisors also intend to challenge birthright citizenship, the principle that anyone born in the U.S. is a citizen. This principle was established by the Fourteenth Amendment and acknowledged in the 1898 United States v. Wong Kim Ark Supreme Court decision during a period when native-born Americans were persecuting immigrants from Asia. That hatred resulted in Wong Kim Ark, an American-born child of Chinese immigrants, being denied reentry to the U.S. after a visit to China. Wong sued, arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment established birthright citizenship. The Supreme Court agreed. The children of immigrants to the U.S.—no matter how unpopular immigration was at the time—were U.S. citizens, entitled to all the rights and immunities of citizenship, and no act of Congress could overrule a constitutional amendment.
“Any activists who doubt President Trump’s resolve in the slightest are making a drastic error: Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown,” Trump immigration hardliner Stephen Miller told the New York Times reporters. “The immigration legal activists won’t know what’s happening.”
In addition to being illegal and unconstitutional, such plans to strip the nation of millions of workers would shatter the economy, sparking sky-high prices, especially of food.
For a long time, Trump’s increasingly fascist language hasn’t drawn much attention from the press, perhaps because the frequency of his outrageous statements has normalized them. When Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016 referred to many Trump supporters as “deplorables,” a New York Times headline read: “Hillary Clinton Calls Many Trump Backers ‘Deplorables,’ and G.O.P.* Pounces.” Yet Trump’s threat to root out “vermin” at first drew a New York Times headline saying, “Trump Takes Veterans Day Speech in a Very Different Direction.” (This prompted Mark Jacobs of Stop the Presses to write his own headlines about disasters, including my favorite: “John Wilkes Booth Takes Visit to the Theater in a Very Different Direction.”)
Finally, it seems, Trump’s explicit use of Nazi language, especially when coupled with his threats to establish camps, has woken up at least some headline writers. Forbes accurately headlined yesterday’s story: “Trump Compares Political Foes to ‘Vermin’ On Veterans Day—Echoing Nazi Propaganda.”
Republicans have refused to disavow Trump’s language. When Kristen Welker of Meet the Press asked Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel: “Are you comfortable with this language coming from the [Republican] frontrunner,” McDaniel answered: “I am not going to comment on candidates and their campaign messaging.” Others have remained silent.
Trump’s Veterans Day “vermin” statement set up his opponents as enemies of the country by blurring them together as “Communists, Marxists, Racists, and Radical Left Thugs.” Conflating liberals with the “Left” has been a common tactic in the U.S. right-wing movement since 1954, when L. Brent Bozell and William F. Buckley Jr. tried to demonize liberals—those Americans of all parties who wanted the government to regulate business, provide Social Security and basic welfare programs, fund roads and hospitals, and protect civil rights—as wannabe socialists.
In the United States there is a big difference between liberals and the political “Left.” Liberals believe in a society based in laws designed to protect the individual, arrived at by a government elected by the people. Political parties disagree about policy and work to change the laws, but they support the system itself. Most Americans, including Democrats and traditional Republicans, are liberals.
Both “the Left,” and the “Right” want to get rid of the system. Those on the Left believe that its creation was so warped either by wealth or by racism that it must be torn down and rebuilt. Those on the Right believe that most people don’t know what’s good for them, making democracy dangerous. They think the majority of people must be ruled by their betters, who will steer them toward productivity and religion. The political Left has never been powerful in the U.S.; the political Right has taken over the Republican Party.
The radical right pushes the idea that their opponents are “Radical Left Thugs” trying to tear down the system because they know liberal policies like Social Security, Medicare, environmental protection, reproductive rights, gun safety legislation, and so on, are actually quite popular. This weekend, for example, Trump once again took credit for signing into law the Veterans Choice health care act, which was actually sponsored by Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and signed by President Barack Obama in 2014.
The Right’s draconian immigration policies ignore the reality that presidents since Ronald Reagan have repeatedly asked Congress to rewrite the nation’s immigration laws, only to have Republicans tank such measures to keep the hot button issue alive, knowing it turns out their voters. Both President Joe Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have begged Congress to fund more immigration courts and border security and to provide a path to citizenship for those brought to the U.S. as children. They, along with Vice President Kamala Harris, have tried to slow the influx of undocumented migrants by working to stabilize the countries from which such migrants primarily come.
Such a plan does not reflect “hatred and anger of the Radical Left Lunatics who want to destroy our country.” It reflects support for a system in which Congress, not a dictator, writes the laws.
A video ABC News published tonight from Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis’s plea deal makes the distinction between liberal democracy and a far-right dictatorship clear. In it, Ellis told prosecutors that former White House deputy chief of staff and social media coordinator Dan Scavino told her in December 2020 that Trump was simply not going to leave the White House, despite losing the presidential election.
When Ellis lamented that their election challenges had lost, Scavino allegedly answered: “‘Well, we don’t care, and we’re not going to leave.” Ellis replied: “‘What do you mean?” Scavino answered: “The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power.” When Ellis responded “Well, it doesn’t quite work that way, you realize?” he allegedly answered: “We don’t care.”
*The GOP, or Grand Old Party, is an old nickname for the Republican Party.
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Notes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/11/us/politics/trump-2025-immigration-agenda.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/12/trump-rally-vermin-political-opponents/
https://veterans.house.gov/legislation/the-veterans-access-choice-and-accountability-act-of-2014.htm
https://abcnews.go.com/US/boss-leave-proffer-videos-show-trump-lawyers-telling/story
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/seeking-protection-how-us-asylum-process-works
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November 12, 2023
November 12, 2023
Some love from the other side of the country tonight: sunset from San Francisco.
The best part of this book tour has been meeting so many new friends and seeing so many old ones. That part is going to continue for months to come, but I’m not unhappy that tonight I’m winging my way home for a spell.
Late flight so taking tonight off. Will see you tomorrow.
November 11, 2023
In 1918, at the end of four years of World War I’s devastation, leaders negotiated for the guns in Europe to fall silent once and for all on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was not technically the end of the war, which came with the Treaty of Versailles. Leaders signed that treaty on June 28, 1919, five years to the day after the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand set off the conflict. But the armistice declared on November 11 held, and Armistice Day became popularly known as the day “The Great War,” which killed at least 40 million people, ended.
In November 1919, President Woodrow Wilson commemorated Armistice Day, saying that Americans would reflect on the anniversary of the armistice “with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…."
But Wilson was disappointed that the soldiers’ sacrifices had not changed the nation’s approach to international affairs. The Senate, under the leadership of Republican Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts—who had been determined to weaken Wilson as soon as the imperatives of the war had fallen away—refused to permit the United States to join the League of Nations, Wilson’s brainchild: a forum for countries to work out their differences with diplomacy, rather than resorting to bloodshed.
On November 10, 1923, just four years after he had established Armistice Day, former President Wilson spoke to the American people over the new medium of radio, giving the nation’s first live, nationwide broadcast.
“The anniversary of Armistice Day should stir us to a great exaltation of spirit,” he said, as Americans remembered that it was their example that had “by those early days of that never to be forgotten November, lifted the nations of the world to the lofty levels of vision and achievement upon which the great war for democracy and right was fought and won.”
But he lamented “the shameful fact that when victory was won,…chiefly by the indomitable spirit and ungrudging sacrifices of our own incomparable soldiers[,] we turned our backs upon our associates and refused to bear any responsible part in the administration of peace, or the firm and permanent establishment of the results of the war—won at so terrible a cost of life and treasure—and withdrew into a sullen and selfish isolation which is deeply ignoble because manifestly cowardly and dishonorable.”
Wilson said that a return to engagement with international affairs was “inevitable”; the U.S. eventually would have to take up its “true part in the affairs of the world.”
Congress didn’t want to hear it. In 1926 it passed a resolution noting that since November 11, 1918, “marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed,” the anniversary of that date “should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations.”
In 1938, Congress made November 11 a legal holiday to be dedicated to world peace.
But neither the “war to end all wars” nor the commemorations of it, ended war.
Just three years after Congress made Armistice Day a holiday for peace, American armed forces were fighting a second world war, even more devastating than the first. The carnage of World War II gave power to the idea of trying to stop wars by establishing a rules-based international order. Rather than trying to push their own boundaries and interests whenever they could gain advantage, countries agreed to abide by a series of rules that promoted peace, economic cooperation, and security.
The new international system provided forums for countries to discuss their differences—like the United Nations, founded in 1945—and mechanisms for them to protect each other, like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), established in 1949, which has a mutual defense pact that says any attack on a NATO country will be considered an attack on all of them.
In the years since, those agreements multiplied and were deepened and broadened to include more countries and more ties. While the U.S. and other countries sometimes fail to honor them, their central theory remains important: no country should be able to attack a neighbor, slaughter its people, and steal its lands at will. This concept preserved decades of relative peace compared to the horrors of the early twentieth century, but it is a concept that is currently under attack as autocrats increasingly reject the idea of a rules-based international order and claim the right to act however they wish.
In 1954, to honor the armed forces of wars after World War I, Congress amended the law creating Armistice Day by striking out the word “armistice” and putting “veterans” in its place. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, himself a veteran who had served as the supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and who had become a five-star general of the Army before his political career, later issued a proclamation asking Americans to observe Veterans Day:
“[L]et us solemnly remember the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly, on the seas, in the air, and on foreign shores, to preserve our heritage of freedom, and let us reconsecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain.”
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Notes:
https://www.va.gov/opa/vetsday/docs/proclamation_1954.pdf
https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/november-11/
https://www.va.gov/opa/vetsday/vetdayhistory.asp
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2015/10/politics/woodrow-wilson-house-history/
Wilson’s 1923 radio address on November 10, 1923, which has slightly different wording than his written notes, is available on YouTube (I’m worried that linking it here will get this letter caught in spam filters, so am not linking it).
https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss46029.mss46029-478_0018_1212/?sp=1164&st=image
November 11, 2023
November 10, 2023
For months now it has felt weirdly as if life in the United States of America is playing out on a split screen. That sense is very strong tonight.
On one side is a country that in the past three years has invested in its people more completely than in any era since the 1960s. The American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act jump-started the U.S. economy after the devastation of the coronavirus pandemic; are rebuilding our roads, bridges, harbors, and internet infrastructure; have attracted $200 billion in private investment for chip manufacturing; and have invested billions in addressing the effects of climate change.
All of these changes need workers, and the economy emerged from the coronavirus pandemic with extraordinary growth that reached 4.9% in the last quarter and has seen record employment and dramatic wage gains. Median household wealth has grown by 37% since the pandemic, with wages growing faster at the bottom of the economy than at the top.
Yesterday, President Biden, in a buoyant mood, reflected this America when he congratulated members of the United Auto Workers in Belvidere, Illinois, for the strong contracts that came from negotiations with the nation’s three top automakers—Ford, Stellantis, and General Motors—thanks to the UAW workers’ 46-day graduated strike. The union demanded the automakers make up the ground that workers had ceded years ago when the plants were suffering.
The final contracts that emerged from long negotiations gave workers wage gains of 30% over the next four and a half years, better retirement security, more paid leave, commitments that automakers would create more union jobs, union coverage for workers at electric vehicle battery plants—the lack of that protection had been a key reason autoworkers had been skittish about electric vehicles—and a commitment from Stellantis to reopen the Jeep Cherokee plant in Belvidere that had been shuttered in February.
The UAW’s success is already affecting other automakers. As workers at non-union plants begin to explore unionization, Honda and Toyota have already announced wage hikes to match those in the new UAW contracts, and Subaru is hinting it will do the same.
Biden had worked hard to get the Belvidere plant reopened, and he joined the UAW picket line—the first president to do such a thing. He told the autoworkers that he ran for the presidency “to…bring back good-paying jobs that you can raise a family on, whether or not you went to college, and give working families more breathing room. And the way to do that is to invest in ourselves again, invest in America, invest in American workers. And that’s exactly what we’ve done.”
In Belvidere, Biden and UAW president Shawn Fain cut a selfie video. In it, Biden says: “[Y]ou know, the middle class built this country, but unions built the middle class. And when unions do well, everybody does well. The economy does well.” Fain adds: “And this is what happens when working class people come together and stand together. Stand united. You know, one of the best things I’ve ever seen in my life was seeing a sitting U.S. president visit striking workers on the picket line. That goes a long way for showing where this president stands with working-class people.” Biden says: “Well, I want to tell you, from where I stood, you did a hell of a job, pal.” Fain answers: “Yep. Back at you.”
In contrast to this optimistic can-do vision that is making American lives better is the other side of the screen: that of former president Trump and the MAGA Republicans who have doubled down on supporting him.
In Ohio, after voters on Tuesday approved an amendment to the state constitution protecting abortion rights, Republicans are calling the amendment “ambiguous” and trying to remove it from the jurisdiction of the courts. They want to make the legislature—which they dominate thanks to gerrymandering—the only body that can decide what the measure means. They are openly trying to override the decision of the voters.
In Washington, Republicans have empowered Christian extremist Mike Johnson (R-LA) to lead the House of Representatives as speaker, and today we learned that outside his office he displays a flag associated with the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) network that wants to place the United States government under the control of right-wing Christians. On January 6, 2021, rioters took these flags with them into the U.S. Capitol.
Johnson is also associated with a right-wing movement to call a convention of states to rewrite the Constitution.
In The Bulwark on Wednesday, A. B. Stoddard noted that the Republican Party’s surrender to its MAGA wing is nearly complete. Today, Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who is the third most powerful Republican in the House, illustrated that capitulation when she filed a five-page letter to the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct. Stefanik’s letter drew on an article from the right-wing Breitbart media outlet to accuse Judge Arthur Engoron and his principal law clerk of being partisan operatives. Engoron is presiding over the New York fraud trial of former president Trump and the Trump Organization.
Legal analyst Lisa Rubin noted that Stefanik’s position as a member of Congress shields her from Freedom of Information Act requests, meaning that journalists will be unable to uncover whether members of Trump’s legal defense worked with her to produce the letter. And while the mistrial motion that observers like Rubin expected to see Trump defenders produce could be dismissed quickly by Engoron himself, a complaint to the state’s judicial conduct commission will hang out there until the commission meets again.
Undermining their opponents through accusations of impropriety has been a mainstay of the Republicans since the 1990s, and it is a tactic Trump likes to use. In this case, it illustrates that Stefanik, an official who swore to defend the Constitution, has abandoned the defense of our legal system and is instead embracing Trump’s efforts to tear it down.
Meanwhile, the inability of the Republicans to figure out a way to fund the government has led the credit-rating agency Moody’s to downgrade the outlook for the credit rating of the United States today from “stable” to “negative.” Moody’s expressed concern about the fight over the debt limit last spring, the removal of House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), and the rising threat of a government shutdown.
All of this plays into the hands of former president Donald Trump, who is eager to return to the White House. From there, he promises, he will take revenge on those he thinks have wronged him.
John Hendrickson of The Atlantic was at Trump’s political rally in Hialeah, Florida, on Wednesday, where the former president railed against those “coming into our country,” people he compared to “Hannibal Lecter,” a fictional serial killer who ate his victims. Trump said that under Biden, the U.S. has become “the dumping ground of the world,” and he attacked the “liars and leeches” who have been “sucking the life and blood” out of the country. He also attacked the “rotten, corrupt, and tyrannical establishment” of Washington, D.C.
Hendrickson called it a “dystopian, at times gothic speech [that] droned on for nearly 90 minutes.”
It was a sharp contrast to Biden’s speech in Belvidere.
“We have more to do, but we’re finally building an economy that works for the people—working people, the middle class—and, as a consequence, the entire country,” Biden said. “When I look out at all of you and the communities like Belvidere, I see real heroes of your story—you know, you and the American worker, you’re the American people.
“Because of you, I can honestly say—and I mean this from the bottom of my heart—I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s future than I am today…. Donald Trump often says…, ‘We are now a failing nation. We’re a nation in decline.’”
“But that’s not what I see,” Biden said. “I know this country. I know what we can do if folks are given half a chance. That’s why I’m so optimistic about our future. We just have to remember who we are. We are the United States of America. There is nothing beyond our capacity if we work together.”
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Notes:
https://www.rawstory.com/an-appeal-to-heaven-flag-2666227565/
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/11/10/mike-johnson-rewrite-constitution-00126157
https://fortune.com/2023/11/09/joe-biden-uaw-strike-visits-stellantis-auto-factory/
https://newrepublic.com/post/176861/mike-johnson-flying-christian-nationalist-flag-outside-office
The BulwarkIt’s Over Mitch, Go RogueTHERE ARE PROBABLY plenty of Derby days ahead back home for Sen. Mitch McConnell, but his time as the longest-running Senate party leader in history is coming …Read more3 days ago · 309 likes · A.B. Stoddardhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/11/10/moodys-credit-rating-deficit/
https://www.ft.com/content/7240265e-0157-428b-9c47-fb07c360dfc2
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/11/trump-rally-hialeah-florida/675948/
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