Heather Cox Richardson's Blog, page 141
August 1, 2023
August 1, 2023
Today a grand jury in Washington, D.C, indicted former president Donald J. Trump for conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding. The charges stemmed from Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. A grand jury is made up of 23 ordinary citizens who weigh evidence of criminal activity and produce an indictment if 12 or more of them vote in favor.
The grand jury indicted Trump for “conspiracy to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted and certified by the government; “conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified”; and “conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted.”
“Each of these conspiracies,” the indictment reads, “targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election.” “This federal government function…is foundational to the United States’ democratic process, and until 2021, had operated in a peaceful and orderly manner for more than 130 years.”
As Rachel Weiner pointed out in the Washington Post, “conspiracies don’t need to be successful to be criminal, and perpetrators can be held responsible if they join the conspiracy at any stage.”
The indictment referred to six co-conspirators without identifying them by name, but the details included about them suggest that Co-Conspirator 1 is Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani; Co-Conspirator 2 is lawyer John Eastman, who came up with the plan for then–vice president Mike Pence to use his ceremonial role of counting the electoral votes to throw the election to Trump; Co-Conspirator 3 is Trump lawyer Sidney Powell; Co-Conspirator 4 is Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department lawyer whom Trump tried to push into the role of attorney general so he could lie that there had been election fraud; Co-Conspirator 5 appears to be Kenneth Chesebro, a Trump attorney behind the idea of the false electors.
The identity of Co-Conspirator 6, a political consultant, is unclear.
On The Reid Out tonight, law professor Neal Katyal suggested that the six were not indicted because the Justice Department “doesn’t want the trial of the other six to be bundled up with this and slow this down.” Los Angeles Times senior legal affairs columnist Harry Litman concluded that the absence of Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, from the indictment indicates he’s cooperating with the Department of Justice. Meadows had a ringside seat to the last days of the Trump administration.
The indictment is what’s known as a “speaking indictment,” one that explains the alleged crimes to the public. It undercuts Trump loyalists’ insistence that the Department of Justice is trying to criminalize Trump’s free speech by laying out that Trump did indeed have a right to challenge the election—which he did, and lost. He also had a first-amendment right to lie about the election.
What he did not have was a right to use “unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.”
The indictment begins by settling out that Trump “lost the 2020 presidential election” but that “despite having lost, [Trump] was determined to remain in power.” So he lied that he had actually won. “These claims were false, and [Trump] knew they were false.” More than 15 pages of the 45-page indictment establish that Trump knew the allegations he was making about election fraud were lies.
In one memorable December exchange, a senior campaign advisor wrote in an email, “When our research and campaign legal team can’t back up any of the claims made by our Elite Strike Force Legal Team, you can see why we’re 0–32 on our cases. I’ll obviously hustle to help on all fronts, but it’s tough to own any of this when it’s all just conspiracy sh*t beamed down from the mothership.”
The Trump team used lies about the election to justify organizing fraudulent slates of electors in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Allegedly with the help of Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, they attempted to have the legitimate electors that accurately reflected the voters’ choice of Biden replaced with fraudulent ones that claimed Trump had won in their states, first by convincing state legislators they had the power to make the switch, and then by convincing Vice President Mike Pence he could choose the Trump electors.
When Pence would not fraudulently alter the election results, Trump whipped up the crowd he had gathered in Washington, D.C., against Pence and then, according to the indictment, “attempted to exploit the violence and chaos at the Capitol” to overturn the election results. “As violence ensued,” the indictment reads, Trump and his co-conspirators “explained the disruption by redoubling efforts to levy false claims of election fraud and convince Members of Congress to further delay the certification based on those claims.” On the evening of January 6, 2021, the indictment alleges, Trump and Co-Conspirator 1 called seven senators and one representative and asked them to delay the certification of Biden’s election.
While they were doing so, White House counsel Pat Cipollone called Trump “to ask him to withdraw any objections and allow the certification. The Defendant refused.” Just before midnight, Co-Conspirator 2 emailed Pence’s lawyer, once again begging the vice president to “violate the law and seek further delay of the certification.”
While Trump loyalists are trying to spin the indictment as the weaponization of the Department of Justice against Trump, legal analyst George Conway noted on CNN tonight: "All the evidence comes from Republicans. If you go through this indictment and you annotate the paragraphs to figure out who are the witnesses the [special counsel] would use to prove particular points, they're all Republicans. Those are the people who were having the discussions, telling [Trump], 'You lost.'”
Trump will be arraigned at 4:00 p.m. Eastern time on August 3. The case of the United States of America v. Donald J. Trump has been randomly assigned to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, appointed by President Obama in 2014 and confirmed 95–0 in the Senate. Chutkan has presided over dozens of cases concerning the defendants who participated in the events of January 6, 2021, and has been vocal during sentencing about the stakes of that event. In December 2021 she said: “It has to be made clear that trying to stop the peaceful transition of power, assaulting law enforcement, is going to be met with certain punishment.”
“The attack on our nation’s capital on January 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,” Special Counsel Jack Smith said in his statement about the indictment.
“The men and women of law enforcement who defended the U.S. Capitol on January 6 are heroes. They’re patriots, and they are the very best of us. They did not just defend a building or the people sheltering in it. They put their lives on the line to defend who we are as a country and as a people. They defended the very institutions and principles that define the United States.”
The prosecution of former president Trump for trying to destroy those institutions and principles, including our right to consent to the government under which we live—a right the Founders articulated in the Declaration of Independence—should deter others from trying to do the same. Moreover, it will defend the rights of the victims—those who gave their lives as well as all of us whose votes were attacked—by establishing the truth in place of lies. That realistic view should enable us to recommit to the principles on which we want our nation to rest.
Such a prosecution will reaffirm the institutions of democracy. Donald Trump tried to destroy “the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured…by the Constitution and laws of the United States—that is, the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.” Such an effort must be addressed, and doing it within the parameters of our legal system should reestablish the very institutions Trump loyalists are trying to undermine.
As former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said this evening: “Like every criminal defendant, the former President is innocent until proven guilty…. The charges…must play out through the legal process, peacefully and without any outside interference…. As this case proceeds through the courts, justice must be done according to the facts and the law.”
—
Notes:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149.1.0_1.pdf
https://www.congress.gov/nomination/113th-congress/1227
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/01/trump-indictment-jan-6-2020-election/
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/01/politics/co-conspirators-trump-indictment/index.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/08/01/trump-charges-2020-election-probe/
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/01/politics/judge-tanya-chutkan-trump-indictment/index.html
https://www.justice.gov/sco-smith/speech/special-counsel-jack-smith-delivers-statement-0
Twitter:
MSNBC/status/1686533580942401536
harrylitman/status/1686511437588443138
kyledcheney/status/1686569632923107328
Porter_Anderson/status/1686528681542287360
July 31, 2023
July 31, 2023
At Ukraine’s request, Saudi Arabia will host peace talks with up to 30 countries next month about negotiating an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The meetings will include the United Kingdom, Poland, and the European Union, as well as the United States. Brazil, India and South Africa—all three members of BRICS, the economic group made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—will attend, but Russia is not invited. Laurence Norman and Stephen Kalin of the Wall Street Journal report that diplomats picked Saudi Arabia to host the talks in hope of persuading China, which has close ties to Russia, to participate.
The basis for the talks will be Ukraine’s ten-point plan, which includes the removal of all Russian troops from Ukraine, but Norman and Kalin report that the plan will be adopted only if it is broadened into a widely shared set of principles that reinforce a rules-based international order. That ten-point plan calls for nuclear safety, food security, energy security, the release of all prisoners and deportees, territorial integrity, withdrawal of troops, justice, prevention of environmental damage, military security, and a firm end to the war.
While Ukrainians have the specific examples of the current war in mind—the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which is now occupied by Russia, for example, and Russia’s destruction of food supplies and energy infrastructure, as well as Russian kidnapping of children—these principles have universal appeal.
“The Ukrainian Peace Formula contains 10 fundamental points, the implementation of which will not only ensure peace for Ukraine, but also create mechanisms to counter future conflicts in the world,” the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, said in a statement. “We are deeply convinced that the Ukrainian peace plan should be taken as a basis, because the war is taking place on our land.”
At home, as David Smith noted today in The Guardian, quoting Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, Republican talking points against Biden and the Democrats “are having a really bad summer.” Republicans have centered their attacks on what they insist is a crisis at the southern border, crime in cities, and inflation. But in fact, as Smith points out, there is relative calm at the border (unlawful crossings dropped by more than 70% when Biden’s policies went into effect in early May) and violent crime has fallen (while Republicans are in the awkward position of explaining away Trump’s own apparent lawbreaking and threats of violence).
And inflation is down to 3%, lower than in any other major economy, while employment is at its strongest rate in half a century. On Friday, Yale School of Management professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian, a former quantitative investment analyst, wrote an article in Fortune titled: “Bidenomics’ Critics Are Being Proven Wrong. Happy Days Are Here Again.”
Sonnenfeld and Tian wrote that the economic theories of the past were proved wrong long ago and “[t]he U.S. economy is now pulling off what all these experts said was impossible: strong growth and record employment amidst plummeting inflation. And just as importantly, thanks to Bidenomics, the fruits of economic prosperity are inclusive and broad-based, amidst a renaissance in American manufacturing, investment, and productivity.” They conclude: “Bidenomics is proving to be the most impactful and transformative public investment program since FDR’s New Deal, with even Morgan Stanley acknowledging that economists broadly underestimated the positive effect of Bidenomics.”
As Smith wrote, the relative weakness of attacks on policy positions means that Republicans are pivoting to attacks on Biden’s character, not a bad move considering their own front runner appears to be weak on that front. Hence today’s House Committee on Oversight closed-door hearing with Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business partner.
Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) told reporters that the hearing reaffirmed their questions—perhaps because they didn’t like the answers—about Joe Biden’s knowledge of his son’s foreign business dealings. Representative Dan Goldman (D-NY), who said he was the only committee member who stayed for the whole testimony (suggesting that the Republicans weren’t really interested in it), said that “Archer testified that Joe Biden NEVER discussed any business with Hunter and his associates” and that “there was no bribe from Burisma to Joe or Hunter.”
Representative Andy Biggs (R-AZ) confirmed that Archer “didn’t know anything about” the supposed $5 million bribe to Biden that Republicans have made much of. Goldman concluded: “This investigation has uncovered ZERO evidence connected to President Biden.”
But there is another story that would have been a scandal in any other era, when we weren’t completely exhausted by scandals: the giant trucking company Yellow is on the verge of bankruptcy and is shutting down, throwing 30,000 people, including 22,000 Teamsters union members, out of work.
Just three years ago, the Trump administration overruled the Pentagon to certify that Yellow was critical to maintaining national security, qualifying it for a $700 million federal loan during the pandemic. Both White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin were personally involved in the deal, which Trump’s 2020 campaign used to suggest Trump was friendly to workers.
According to Yeganeh Torbati and Jeff Stein, who covered the story in April 2022 for the Washington Post, the $700 million loan “was by far the largest provided to any company through the program for businesses critical to national security.” Yellow has repaid $55 million in interest on the loan, but just $230 in principal. In May the company owed $729.2 million to the U.S. Treasury.
Still, the first New York Times/Sienna College poll of the 2024 campaign shows Trump winning 54% of the votes of likely Republican primary voters. The next closest challenger is Florida governor Ron DeSantis, at 17%. It appears Trump still has a lock on his base, and it is that base, the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent points out, that is demanding that House Republicans, led by House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) do more to protect Trump and bring down Democratic president Joe Biden.
For all that the base is in Trump’s camp, Peter Nicholas and Megan Lebowitz of NBC News note that of all the dozens of people who served in Trump’s cabinet, only four have said publicly they support his reelection and many are openly opposing him. Semafor’s Washington bureau chief Benji Sarlin noted that while “[e]veryone has thoroughly absorbed it already, it is 100% insane to have a president opposed by basically his whole cabinet—some of whom actively are or considered running against him themselves.”
Journalist Brian Beutler points out that Republican leaders could get together and fix their Trump problem by being honest with their voters about Trump’s behavior, “but refuse to.” Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne adds: “There is a vicious cycle here. Republican leaders who know how dangerous Trump is fear speaking up because Trump is strong with their electorate. They stay silent. Trump gets stronger. They become even more fearful. Rinse and repeat.”
Trump’s political action committee, which theoretically is supposed to give money to political allies, has spent $40 million on legal fees for the former president and his aides in the first half of 2023. His allies are creating a new legal defense fund to keep the money coming in as his legal troubles get worse. Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said: “In order to combat these heinous actions by Joe Biden’s cronies and to protect these innocent people from financial ruin and prevent their lives from being completely destroyed, a new legal defense fund will help pay for their legal fees.”
But there are signs that the era that celebrated strongmen is coming to an end as people recognize the danger of such centralization of power. A study by New York Times reporters on Friday noted that Elon Musk has steadily come to dominate satellite internet technology with the Starlink technology made by his SpaceX rocket company, and that he has used that dominance to restrict the activities of Ukraine’s military. Musk began to launch satellites into space in 2019, and currently has in position more than 4,500 of the 42,000 satellites he plans. He controls more than 50% of the globe’s working satellites.
The federal government contracts with SpaceX for its rockets and the technology that reaches into areas other companies don’t yet reach. Ukraine, for example, depends on the 42,000 Starlink terminals across the country. Late last year, Musk restricted the use of Starlink on the battlefields, leaving Ukrainian troops without the ability to communicate in a way that suggests he was conducting his own foreign and military policy that conflicted with that of the United States. But a number of countries worry that no one man should have such power, and U.S. officials noted his proposals for a peace plan that would have given Russia Ukrainian land.
—
Notes:
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-saudi-arabia-talks-ee8719ebcd6a0a541ce6a8670ae6bb09
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/what-is-zelenskiys-10-point-peace-plan-2022-12-28/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-cabinet-endorsements-rcna96648
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/31/fox-trump-indictment-poll-desantis/
https://fortune.com/2023/07/28/bidenomics-critics-ira-inflation-economy-politics-sonnenfeld-tian/
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/28/business/starlink.html
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/31/politics/devon-archer-house-testimony/index.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/04/27/trump-officials-loan-yellow-trucking/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/07/31/yellow-trucking-shutdown-bankruptcy/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/31/us/politics/2024-poll-nyt-siena-trump-republicans.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/07/29/trump-lawyers-pac-deoliveira-loyal/
Twitter:
BenjySarlin/status/1685638577298817024
RonFilipkowski/status/1686113452870213632
danielsgoldman/status/1686110334568787968
brianbeutler/status/1686125049852411904
EJDionne/status/1686131273452920833
July 30, 2023
July 30, 2023
This week we finished recording the audiobook for Democracy Awakening.
And so the entire process of writing a book, from getting the idea to reading the audiobook, is done, done, done, done, done.
It reads well, I think. In an odd way it is a deeply personal book: it’s basically my thoughts about the conversations we all have been having for the past four years about history, politics, democracy, and authoritarianism, based on my years of studying history and thinking about the human condition. We originally called the book “All I Know,” and that title would actually be pretty fair.
I’m superstitious about saying more now, but I’ll be speaking about the ideas in the book all over the country starting on the publication date—September 26—and will undoubtedly say then all the things I don’t dare venture now. (I’ll post a tour schedule somewhere obvious as soon as I get it.)
One thing new in this go-round is that the pandemic made it hard to get paper (manufacturers switched to cardboard packaging) and to print new runs (large printing facilities in the U.S. have closed as people turned to electronic formats), so if you think you’re going to want an actual book you might want to consider preordering one in the next week or so, from a local bookseller if you can. The publisher uses an algorithm based on preorders to determine the size of the first run, and while a second print run used to take about a week, now it can take as long as 8 weeks, so strong preorder numbers help to avoid running out of copies.
Considering how much the book feels like a community conversation, it seemed particularly appropriate that the audio recording was sort of old home week. My favorite sound guy, with whom I’ve worked for ages, was producing the recording. He was using a new studio, and it turned out I knew the studio’s owners; we had worked together about five years ago. I had never worked with the director before, but we figured out over the course of the week that we had a number of friends in common. And then, just as we were finishing the last chapter, my nephew, who’s a photographer, stopped by and started snapping pictures.
Here is an image of his I particularly like because it evokes all the hard work it takes to bring a project to life, and all the terrific people who make it happen. Sound producer Michael Moss is at the far right of the photo managing the recording, director Paul Ruben is on the computer screens (probably correcting me for the millionth time, poor man), and I’m on the left in the sound booth.
I’m going to take the night off, and will be back at it tomorrow. I’m guessing this week is going to be interesting.
[Image by Tyler Mitchell of Tyler Mitchell Creative.]
Moderate Republicans in 2023 and Moderate Democrats in 1854
On July 19, Lisa Kashinsky of Politico noted that New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu’s decision not to run for reelection in 2024 marks the end of the moderate Republican governor in Democratic-leaning states as Republican primary voters have increasingly fallen in behind former president Trump. Maryland’s Larry Hogan was term limited out last year; Ch…
July 29, 2023
July 29, 2023 (Saturday)
I had intended to write about Bacon’s Rebellion today, since on this date in 1676, Nathaniel Bacon published the Declaration of the People of Virginia, outlining the rebels’ demands —and, let’s be honest, also because I am giddy with relief at finishing the final stages of the new book and eager to be doing actual history again—but President Joe Biden gave a surprisingly interesting talk in Freeport, Maine, yesterday that hit my in-box today just as I was sitting down to write about Bacon. (I wasn’t at the event—I was in Boston recording the audiobook.)
When he first spoke at the State Department on February 4, 2021, Biden tied foreign policy and domestic policy together, saying: “There’s no longer a bright line between foreign and domestic policy. Every action we take in our conduct abroad, we must take with American working families in mind. Advancing a foreign policy for the middle class demands urgent focus on our domestic…economic renewal.”
“If we invest in ourselves and our people,” he said back in 2021, “if we fight to ensure that American businesses are positioned to compete and win on the global stage, if the rules of international trade aren’t stacked against us, if our workers and intellectual property are protected, then there’s no country on Earth…that can match us.
“Investing in our diplomacy isn’t something we do just because it’s the right thing to do for the world. We do it in order to live in peace, security, and prosperity. We do it because it’s in our own naked self-interest. When we strengthen our alliances, we amplify our power as well as our ability to disrupt threats before they can reach our shores.”
Yesterday, in a campaign reception at a private home in Freeport, he gave what amounted to a more personal version of that speech, updated after the events of his first two and a half years in office. As he spoke informally to a small audience, he seemed to hit what he sees as the major themes of his presidency so far. The talk included an interesting twist.
Biden talked again about the world being at an inflection point, defining it as an abrupt turn off an established path that means you can never get back on the original path again. The world is changing, he said, and not because of leaders, but because of fundamental changes like global warming and artificial intelligence. “We’re seeing changes… across the world in fundamental ways. And so, we better get going on what we’re going to do about it, both in foreign policy and domestic policy.”
“Name me a part of the world that you think is going to look like it did 10 years ago 10 years from now,” he said.
But Biden went on to make the case that such fundamental change “presents enormous opportunities.”
He began by outlining the economic successes of his administration: more than 13.2 million new jobs—including 810,000 jobs in manufacturing—inflation coming down, and so on. He attributed that success to his administration’s embrace of the country’s older vision of investing in workers and the middle class rather than concentrating wealth at the top of the economy in hopes that the wealthy would invest efficiently. The administration focused on infrastructure and manufacturing, using measures like the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act to jump-start private investment in new industries in the U.S.
Then he turned to foreign affairs. “Does anybody think that the post-war eras still exist, the rules of the road from the end of World War Two?” he asked. The Atlantic Charter of August 1941 that defined a post–World War II order based that world on territorial integrity, national self-determination, economic growth, and alliances to protect those values. It was the basis for most of the postwar international institutions that have protected a rules-based order ever since.
But the world has changed, Biden said. In recognition of the new era, in June 2021, Biden and then–U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson signed a “New Atlantic Charter” to update the original. The new charter renews the U.S. commitment to the old one, then resolves “to defend the principles, values, and institutions of democracy and open societies,” and to “strengthen the institutions, laws, and norms that sustain international co-operation to adapt them to meet the new challenges of the 21st century, and guard against those that would undermine them.”
Yesterday, Biden noted that his administration has shored up alliances around the world, just as he called for at the State Department back in February 2021 and in the New Atlantic Charter of June 2021. It helped to pull Europe together to support Ukraine against Russia’s 2022 invasion, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) “is stronger today than it’s ever been in its existence.”
The Indo-Pacific world is changing, with new alliances coming together to hold firm on the idea of a rules-based international order. Biden has supported “the Quad”—India, Japan, Australia, and the United States—to stop China from changing that order, and other countries are taking note, shifting toward support for that order themselves. Did “anybody ever think Japan would increase its military budget over its domestic budget and help a European war on the side of the West?” Biden asked. “That’s what it’s doing. It’s changing the dynamic significantly.”
“The world is changing in a big way,” Biden said. “And we want to promote democracies…. [T]here is so much going on that we can make the world…a lot safer and better and more secure.”
“So…if you think about what’s happening, there is a confluence, if we get this right, of both domestic economic policy and foreign policy. [It] can make [us] safer and more secure than we’ve been [for] a long, long time.”
For all that his talk was a heartfelt recap of his presidency, he emphasized that the key to those successes has been democratic institutions. Referring to President Bill Clinton’s secretary of state Madeleine Albright’s reference to the United States as “the essential nation,” he attributed the leadership of the United States in world affairs not to its military might or economic power, but rather to its ability to create and defend alliances and, crucially, institutions that aspire to a rules-based world that works for, rather than against, ordinary people.
“Who could possibly bring the world together?” Biden asked. “Not me. But the President of the United States of America. Who could do it unless the President of the United States does it? Who? What nation could do it?” His vision was not the triumphalism of recent presidents; it reached back to the 1940s, to the postwar institutions that helped to rebuild Europe and create lasting alliances, and expanded that vision for the twenty-first century.
He recognized that U.S. policies have caused damage in the past, and that the country must fix things it has broken. “We’re the ones who polluted the world,” he said, for example. “We made a lot of money,” and now the bill has come due.
And while the nation’s postwar vision was centered on majority-white countries, he emphasized that the modern world must include everyone. “[T]here’s a whole lot at stake, he said, “And I think we have an opportunity. And one of the ways we make life better for us is make life better for the rest of the world. That’s why I pushed so hard for the Build Back Better initiative to build the infrastructure in Africa…and in Latin America and South America.”
Biden noted that the strength of the U.S. is in its diversity. “I said when I got elected I was going to have an administration that looked like America.” He noted that there are a higher percentage of women in his Cabinet than ever before—more than the number of men—and that he had appointed more Black appellate court judges to the federal courts “than every other president in America combined.” He did this for a simple reason, he said: “Our strength is our diversity. It’s about time we begin to use it.”
“[T]he whole world is changing,” Biden said, “But if we grab hold,” he continued, “[t]here’s nothing beyond our capacity.”
If I were writing a history of the Biden administration 150 years from now, I would call out this informal talk as an articulation of a vision of American leadership, based not in economic expansion, military might, or personalities, or even in policies, but in the strength of the institutions of democracy, preserved through global alliances.
So I guess I got to write about history today, after all.
—
Notes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Charter#/media/File:Atlantic_Charter_(color).jpg
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/06/10/the-new-atlantic-charter/
July 28, 2023
July 28, 2023
On Wednesday, soldiers of the presidential guard overthrew Niger’s democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, and replaced him with a military general, Abdourahmane Tchiani. Niger gained independence from France in 1960, and after a series of upheavals, the country established its current democracy in 2011. Bazoum was the first elected leader since then to succeed another in a peaceful democratic transfer of power. Niger is a key player in the struggle to establish democracy in Africa, and Bazoum’s overthrow is part of that larger story.
Niger is a landlocked country about twice the size of Texas in the center of the Sahel region in Africa, a dry grassland region that crosses the continent from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. The Sahel sits below the Sahara and above the tropical Sudanian savanna. That region is being hit terribly hard by climate change, as temperatures are rising there faster than anywhere else in the world, making the desert push into the grasslands. The United Nations estimates Niger loses almost 250,000 acres of arable land each year.
That region has also been plagued by violent Islamic groups, and strongmen promising to restore order have launched successful coups in the countries of Mali and Burkina Faso, which are Niger’s neighbors. (When Vice President Kamala Harris went to Ghana in March, her visit was partly to shore up democracy in that country, which is on the edge of the Sahel region and under pressure from militants in Sahel countries.)
While Niger’s people are some of the poorest in the world, the country’s resources are immensely valuable. Niger has oil and, more strikingly, produces 7% of all the uranium in the world. It also has the fastest population growth in the world, with more than half the population under 15. Noting that young people are vulnerable to radicalization, the U.S. last year said that “helping Niger to become an increasingly capable partner against regional threats is a critical goal.”
Nigerien forces have worked alongside France and the U.S. to combat Islamic terrorism in the region, and both France and the U.S. have troops stationed in Niger: France has about 1,500, and the U.S. has about 1,100. In 2022 the U.S. State Department described Niger as “strategically important as a linchpin for stability in the Sahel as well as a reliable counterterrorism partner against ISIS,…Boko Haram,…[and] other regional violent extremist organizations.”
In March, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Niger, where he announced a $150 million humanitarian aid package to the Sahel region, bringing the year’s total aid from the U.S. to $233 million. "Niger is a young democracy in a challenging part of the world," Blinken told reporters. "But it remains true to the values we share. Niger has been quick to defend the democratic values under threat in neighboring countries."
During that visit, Niger's foreign minister said that Niger would uphold democratic values to combat extremists. "We need to show that democracy is the only way to defeat terrorism," he said.
Russia’s mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group troops have also been active in the region, working on the side of those overthrowing the governments in Mali and Burkina Faso by mercilessly crushing their opponents. In exchange, they extract highly valuable resources.
While it is not clear that the Wagner Group was involved in the government overthrow in Niger—the French newspaper Le Monde says there are no obvious signs of Russian involvement—some of the militants have been waving Russian flags, and Prigozhin yesterday took credit for the coup.
“This shows the effectiveness of Wagner,” Prigozhin said on social media. “A thousand Wagner fighters are able to restore order and destroy terrorists, preventing them from harming the civilian population of states.” This boast could well just be Prigozhin trying to rebuild his brand after his march on Moscow, but both Mali and Burkina Faso have turned toward Moscow after the coups there, and there is reason to think the same could happen in Niger.
Certainly, as their war in Ukraine goes poorly, it seems as if Russian leaders are throwing more of their weight into Africa. Putin has recently torn up the agreement that enabled Ukraine to export 35 million tons of grain in the past year, at least half of it to the developing world. He has added new mines to the Black Sea and has begun to bomb Ukraine’s grain-exporting ports, including the major port of Odesa, destroying 60,000 tons of grain stored there for export.
At a Russia-Africa summit held in St.Petersburg over the past two days between Russia and the leaders of 17 African countries, Russian president Vladimir Putin promised that Russia would export free grain to African countries to make up the difference. But Gyude Moore, senior policy fellow at the Centre for Global Development, told an Al Jazeera reporter that the amount he has offered is “too small in terms of the need.” It is also notable that African attendance at this summit is much smaller than at the first Russia-Africa summit in 2019, when 43 African leaders attended, suggesting that the continent as a whole is not tilting toward Russia.
In New Zealand yesterday, where he said the “door is open” for New Zealand and other nations to join AUKUS, the new security pact between the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, Blinken noted that Russia is responsible for cutting off food to Africa and pointed out that the U.S. donates about half of the budget of the World Food Program while Russia contributes about .02%.
“So that gives you some idea of who’s the solution and who’s the problem,” he said. He suggested that Russia’s attack on grain headed for Africa “sends a very clear message, and I think it’s a message that is falling on very, very critical and concerned ears in Africa and throughout the developing world. My expectation would be that Russia will hear this clearly from our African partners when they meet.” “[T]hey know exactly who’s to blame for this current situation.”
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres condemned “in the strongest terms” the attempt to seize power by force and called for those involved “to exercise restraint and to ensure the protection of constitutional order.” “We strongly condemn any effort to detain or subvert the functioning of Niger’s democratically elected government, led by President Bazoum,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said. A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council added: “An unconstitutional seizure of power puts at grave risk our continued security cooperation with the government of Niger.”
Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel program at Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation, told the Associated Press that the mutiny was a “nightmare scenario for Western powers who had betted on Bazoum and Niger as new security anchor for the Sahel.”
Still, Laessing added, “It remains to be seen whether this is the last word. Parts of the army are probably still loyal to Bazoum. They benefited much from equipment and training as part of foreign military assistance.” People in the streets protested the takeover, with one telling a reporter: “We are here to show the people that we are not happy about this movement going on, just to show these military people that they can’t just take the power like this…. We are a democratic country, we support democracy and we don’t need this kind of movement.”
—
Notes:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/mutinous-soldiers-claim-overthrown-nigers-president-rcna96574
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-66339528
https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/ICS_AF_Niger_Public.pdf
https://www.politico.eu/article/niger-coup-leave-france-us-exposed-west-africa/
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/whats-ahead-for-the-wagner-group-in-africa-and-the-middle-east/
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/27/blinken-new-zealand-aukus-00108455
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-africa-summit-vladimir-putin-ukraine-war-wagner-group/
https://apnews.com/article/niger-tensions-presidential-guard-96f8f63b838af5467d4c95ba7b998b32
July 27, 2023
July 27, 2023
More good news today for Bidenomics, as the gross domestic product report for the second quarter showed annualized growth of 2.4%, higher than projected, and inflation rose at a slower pace of 2.6%, down from last quarter and well below projections. Economic analyst Steven Rattner noted that as of the second quarter, “the US economy is over 6% larger than it was before COVID (after adjusting for inflation). At this point in the recovery from the Great Recession, 2011, the economy was just 0.7% larger than it had been in 2007.”
Both consumer spending and business investment, which is up 7.7% in real annualized terms, drove this growth. Business spending makes up a much smaller share of gross domestic product, but it drives future jobs and growth, and much of this growth is in manufacturing facilities. In keeping with that trend, the nation’s largest solar panel manufacturer, First Solar, announced today that it will build a fifth factory in the U.S. as alternative energy technology takes off. This commitment brings to more than $2.8 billion the amount First Solar has invested in the U.S. to ramp up production.
While so-called Bidenomics is designed to rebuild the middle class, the administration is also trying to reestablish fair ground rules for corporate behavior. Yesterday, the Departments of Justice, Commerce, and Treasury invited American businesses to come forward voluntarily if they think they might have violated U.S. sanctions, export controls, or other national security laws by sharing sensitive technology or helping sanctioned individuals launder money. Coming forward “can provide significant mitigation of civil or criminal liability,” the note says.
It highlighted the anti–money laundering and sanctions whistleblower program in the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN.
While many of us were watching the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., to see if an indictment was forthcoming against former president Trump for his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, a different set of charges appeared tonight. Special counsel Jack Smith brought additional charges against Trump in connection with his retention of classified documents.
The new indictment alleges that Trump plotted to delete video from security cameras near the storage room where he had stored boxes containing classified documents, and did so after the Department of Justice subpoenaed that footage. That effort to delete the video involved a third co-conspirator, Carlos De Oliveira, who has been added to the case.
De Oliveira is a former valet at the Trump Organization’s Mar-a-Lago property who became property manager there in January 2022. Allegedly, he told another Trump employee that “the boss” wanted the server deleted and that the conversation should stay between the two of them.
In the Washington Post, legal columnist Ruth Marcus wrote, “The alleged conduct—yes, even after all these years of watching Trump flagrantly flout norms—is nothing short of jaw-dropping: Trump allegedly conspired with others to destroy evidence.” If the allegations hold up, “the former president is a common criminal—and an uncommonly stupid one.”
This superseding indictment reiterates the material from the original indictment, and as I reread it, it still blows my mind that Trump allegedly compromised national security documents from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (surveillance imagery), the National Reconnaissance Office (surveillance and maps), the Department of Energy (nuclear weapons), and the Department of State and Bureau of Intelligence and Research (diplomatic intelligence).
It sounds like he was a one-man wrecking ball, aimed at our national security.
The Justice Department has asked again for a protective order to protect the classified information at the heart of this case. In their request, they explained that, among other things, Trump wanted to be able to discuss that classified information with his lawyers outside a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, a room protected against electronic surveillance and data leakage.
Former deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division Peter Strzok noted that there is “[n]o better demonstration of Trump’s abject lack of understanding of—and disregard for—classified info and national security. He is *asking the Court* to waive the requirements for classified info that EVERY OTHER SINGLE CLEARANCE HOLDER IN THE UNITED STATES must follow.”
The Senate today passed the $886 billion annual defense bill by a strong bipartisan margin of 86 to 11 after refusing to load it up with all the partisan measures Republican extremists added to the House bill. Now negotiators from the House and the Senate will try to hash out a compromise measure, but the bills are so far apart it is not clear they will be able to create a bipartisan compromise. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) has passed on a bipartisan basis for more than 60 years.
The extremists in the House Republican conference continue to revolt against House speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) deal with the administration to raise the debt ceiling. They insist the future cuts to which McCarthy agreed are not steep enough, and demand more. This has sparked fighting among House Republicans; Emine Yücel of Talking Points Memo suggests that McCarthy’s new willingness to consider impeaching President Biden might be an attempt to cut a deal with the extremists.
As the Senate is controlled by Democrats, the fight among the House Republicans threatens a much larger fight between the chambers because Democratic senators will not accept the demands of the extremist Republican representatives.
The House left for its August recess today without passing 11 of the 12 appropriations bills necessary to fund the government after September, setting up the conditions for a government shutdown this fall if they cannot pass the bills and negotiate with the Senate in the short time frame they’ve left. Far-right Republicans don’t much care, apparently. Representative Bob Good (R-VA) told reporters this week, “We should not fear a government shutdown… Most of what we do up here is bad anyway.”
Representative Katherine Clark (D-MA), the second ranking Democrat in the House, disagreed. “The Republican conference is saying they are sending us home for six weeks without funding the government? That we have one bill…out of 12 completed because extremists are holding your conference hostage, and that’s not the full story: the extremists are holding the American people hostage. We will have twelve days…when we return to fund the government, to live up to the job the American people sent us here to do. This is a reckless march to a MAGA shutdown, and for what? In pursuit of a national abortion ban? Is that what we are doing here?
“The American people see through this. They know who is fighting for them, fighting for solutions…. Your time is coming. The American people are watching. They are going to demand accountability. We should be staying here, completing these appropriations bills, stripping out the toxic, divisive, bigoted riders that have been put on these bills and get[ting] back to work for freedom and for our economy and the American family.”
—
Notes:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/27/gdp-q2-2023-.html
https://www.bea.gov/news/2023/gross-domestic-product-second-quarter-2023-advance-estimate
https://www.justice.gov/media/1307601/dl
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23888943-us-v-trump-nauta-de-oliveira-7272354
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-charged-special-counsel-jack-smith-rcna96742
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/27/trump-new-indictment-watergate/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/27/us/politics/senate-passes-bipartisan-defense-bill.html
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/27/politics/congress-funding-fight-august-recess/index.html
Twitter:
JoyceWhiteVance/status/1684690487964286976
petestrzok/status/1684695438497120256
SteveRattner/status/1684574253759496194
July 26, 2023
July 26, 2023
Yesterday a team of international researchers confirmed that human-caused climate change is driving the life-threatening heat waves in the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. has broken more than 2,000 high temperature records in the past month, and it looks like July will be the hottest month on Earth since scientists have kept records.
Another study published yesterday warns that the Atlantic currents that transport warm water from the tropics north are in danger of collapsing as early as 2025 and as late as 2095, with a central estimate of 2050. As Arctic ice melts, the cold water that sinks and pulls the current northward is warming, slowing the mechanism that moves the currents. The collapse of that system would disrupt rain patterns in India, South America, and West Africa, endangering the food supplies for billions of people. It would also raise sea levels on the North American east coast and create storms and colder temperatures in Europe.
On Sunday and Monday, the ocean water off the tip of Florida reached temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius), the same temperature as an average hot tub. According to the Coral Restoration Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Florida’s Key Largo that works to protect coral reefs, the hot water has created “a severe and urgent crisis,” with mortality up to 100%. The Mediterranean Sea also hit a record high this week, reaching 83.1 degrees Fahrenheit (28.4 Celsius).
An op-ed by David Wallace-Wells in the New York Times today noted that more land burned in Quebec in June than in the previous 20 years combined; across Canada, more than 25 million acres burned. And most of Canada’s fire season is still ahead.
Professor Ian Lowe of Australia’s Griffith University told The Guardian that he recalled reading the 1985 report that identified the link between greenhouse gasses and climate change, and worked to draw public attention to it. “Now all the projected changes are happening,” he said. “I reflect on how much needless environmental damage and human suffering will result from the work of those politicians, business leaders and public figures who have prevented concerted action. History will judge them very harshly.”
Former vice president Mike Pence, who is running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, today unveiled his economic proposal. It calls for eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency and the Biden administration’s incentives designed to address climate change.
In that, he is in line with Republican lawmakers. Earlier this month, Mike Magner in Roll Call noted that at least four of the bills released so far by the House Appropriations Committee for 2024 include cutting funding to address climate change that Congress appropriated in the Inflation Reduction Act. Project 2025, which has provided the blueprint for a Trump presidency, says “the Biden Administration’s climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding,” and calls for more use of fossil fuels.
A new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Columbia University says that court cases related to climate change have more than doubled in five years. Thirty-four of the 2,180 lawsuits have been brought forward on behalf of children, teens, and young adults.
And therein lies a huge problem for today’s Republican Party. A recent poll of young voters shows they care deeply about gun violence, economic inequality, LGBTQ+ rights, and climate change. All of those issues are only becoming more prominent.
And speaking of young people and the problems Republicans are having with that generation, I have only one other observation tonight, as I am spending this week reading the audiobook for the new book and am truly exhausted. It appears that the administration is pushing back on the attempts of states like Florida to whitewash our history by providing historical recaps in its press releases.
Today is the 75th anniversary of the desegregation of the armed forces by President Harry S. Truman in 1948, and the White House statement celebrating that anniversary did more than acknowledge it and praise today’s multicultural military. It recounted the history of Black service members from the American Revolution to the present.
It covered the Black regiments that fought in the Civil War to preserve the United States and defend their own freedom; the highly decorated Harlem Hellfighters of World War I who fought in France as part of the French army because American commanders would not have them alongside white units; the Tuskegee Airmen who flew 15,000 missions in World War II but returned home to discrimination and oppression.
It then went on to call out the women and men of color who have served in the U.S. military, including the Indigenous Code Talkers, who turned native languages into an unbroken code during World War II while their people were losing their lands; the famous 442nd Regimental Combat Team of Japanese Americans who fought in Europe even as their families were incarcerated in camps in the United States; the 65th Infantry Regiment of Puerto Rican soldiers in the Korean War, known as the Borinqueneers, who were court martialed as a group when their commander was replaced by a non-Hispanic officer.
Taken with yesterday’s quite comprehensive history of the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Black child Emmett Till, it seems as if the White House has found a simple way to push back on the whitewashed history taught in places like Florida: making the country’s real history easily available.
—
Notes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/26/opinion/climate-canada-wildfires-emissions.html
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/26/politics/pence-economic-proposal/index.html
https://rollcall.com/2023/07/11/republicans-take-aim-at-climate-funds-in-spending-bills/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/25/voters-progressive-trump-harvard-youth-poll-gop/
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/07/25/florida-record-warm-ocean-climate/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/25/voters-progressive-trump-harvard-youth-poll-gop/
Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Institute, 2023).
July 25, 2023
July 25, 2023
President Biden’s determination to “build the economy from the middle out and the bottom up,” appears to be paying off. Last Friday the global financial services company Morgan Stanley credited Biden’s policies with driving a boom in large-scale infrastructure and manufacturing, a boom large enough that Morgan Stanley revised its gross domestic product growth projections upward to 1.9%, a projection almost four times higher than its original projection.
Analysts doubled their projections for the fourth quarter, and raised forecasts for next year, as well. “The economy in the first half of the year is growing much stronger than we had anticipated,” Morgan Stanley’s chief U.S. economist Ellen Zentner wrote.
Part of their reasoning comes from a surge in manufacturing construction across the country thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which invests in roads, bridges, and other “hard” infrastructure projects; the Inflation Reduction Act, which invests in addressing climate change; and the CHIPS and Science Act, which invests in science and semiconductor chip manufacturing. During the 2010s, manufacturing construction generally held at about $50–80 billion a year. Now it is at $189 billion, with private investment following the government investment.
In half of the U.S. states, job creation is strong and unemployment is at or near 50-year lows, while lowering inflation rates has helped U.S. consumer confidence to rise to its highest level in two years (an important marker because consumer spending makes up about 70% of U.S. economic activity).
Today, the Teamsters union announced it has reached an agreement with United Parcel Service to avoid a major strike of as many as 340,000 workers. The tentative five-year agreement increases wages, including those for part-time employees, which was a sticking point in negotiations. Teamsters members still need to approve this deal, but Biden applauded the two sides for reaching an agreement by negotiating in good faith.
The agreement, Biden said, is “a testament to the power of employers and employees coming together to work out their differences at the bargaining table in a manner that helps businesses succeed while helping workers secure pay and benefits they can raise a family on and retire with dignity and respect.”
At the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan organization devoted to building a more dynamic U.S. economy, Daniel Newman reported yesterday that “[i]ndividuals filed nearly 2.7 million applications to start a business between January and June of this year, a 5 percent increase over 2022 and a staggering 52 percent increase over the same period in 2019.” He noted that “[t]he durability and growth of the startup surge is quite striking” and that nearly every major industry sector is participating in it.
Historically, Newman notes, “there is a tight correlation between the number of applications and true business formation.” “The sustained boost to entrepreneurship observed across much of the country since 2020 should produce a sense of optimism for a healthier, more dynamic economy in the coming years.”
Biden has always emphasized the importance of a healthy economy that gives workers breathing room and the ability to live with dignity.
But the administration’s reworking of the nation has not stopped there. Vice President Kamala Harris has stood firm on visibly honoring the nation’s commitment to equality before the law, and Biden has followed suit. Together, they have recalled the multicultural vision of the years from World War II to 1980, when the nation celebrated the power of its diversity.
On July 16, Harris spoke in Chicago at the retirement of the Reverend Jesse Jackson from the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, a civil rights organization he founded in 1971. Celebrating Jackson’s storied career, from his years as a protege of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., to creating Rainbow/PUSH, to running for president and critiquing the policies of the Republican Party, Harris noted that Jackson’s work rested on “the belief that the diversity of our nation is not a weakness or an afterthought, but instead, our greatest strength.”
“In his life’s work,” she said, Jackson “has reinforced that no matter who we are or where we come from, we have so much more in common than what separates us.” Jackson “has [brought] and continues to bring together people of all backgrounds: Black Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, farmers, LGBTQ+ Americans, Native Americans, women, labor union members, people with disabilities, our young leaders, and people around the world.”
He created “[a] coalition to push the values of democracy and liberty and equality and justice not from the top down, but from the bottom up and the outside in…. He has built coalitions that expanded who has a voice and a seat at the table. And in so doing, he has expanded our democracy—the democracy of our nation.”
But, Harris warned, extremists are threatening that expansion of democracy, seeking “to divide us as a nation,… to attack the importance of diversity and equity and inclusion.” “[I]n these dark moments,” she said, “history shines a light on our path.” “[O]ur ability to stand together is our strength. Our ability to unify as many peoples is our strength. And the heroes of this moment will be those who bring us together in coalition; those who know that one’s strength is not measured based on who you beat down, but who you lift up.”
Vice President Harris today opened an event to mark Biden’s designation of a national monument in honor of Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, in a searing reminder of what those determined to make the United States a country defined by white supremacy can do. “We gather to remember an act of astonishing violence and hate and to honor the courage of those who called upon…our nation to look with open eyes at that horror and to act,” Harris said.
In August 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, a Black boy from Chicago, was visiting relatives in a small Mississippi town. After the wife of a white man named Roy Bryant accused the boy of flirting with her, Bryant and his half-brother, J. W. Milam, kidnapped Till, brutally beat him, mutilated him, shot him in the back of the head, and dumped his body in the Tallahatchie River. The county sheriff directed that the body be buried quickly, but his mother insisted that her son’s body be returned to Chicago.
There, she insisted on an open-casket funeral. “Let the world see what I have seen,” she said.
Till’s murder became a symbol of what would happen if men were not called to account for their actions and a rallying cry to make sure such a society of white supremacists could not survive.
In March 2022, President Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, making lynching a federal hate crime. And he warned that “those who seek to ban books, bury history,” would not succeed. “[W]hile darkness and denialism can hide much,” he said, “they erase nothing.” And, he added, “only with truth comes healing, justice, repair, and another step forward toward forming a more perfect union.”
Today, on what would have been Emmett Till’s eighty-second birthday, Biden established the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument. It covers three historic sites in Mississippi and Chicago: the site in Graball Landing, Mississippi, where Till’s body is believed to have been pulled from the Tallahatchie River; the Chicago church where mourners held Till’s funeral; and the courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, where an all-white jury acquitted Bryant and Milam.
“We can’t just choose to learn what we want to know” about our history, Biden said. “We have to learn what we should know. We should know about our country. We should know everything: the good, the bad, the truth of who we are as a nation. That’s what great nations do, and we are a great nation.”
—
Notes:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/21/bidenomics-spurred-stronger-gdp-growth-morgan-stanley.html
https://twitter.com/SteveRattner/status/1683877423207657472
https://thehill.com/business/4045941-how-bidens-big-investments-spurred-a-factory-boom/
https://eig.org/2023-business-formation-midyear/
https://www.npr.org/2023/07/14/1187864773/jesse-jackson-rainbow-push-retiring
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/25/us/politics/emmett-till-national-monument-biden.html
https://www.npr.org/2023/07/23/1189664409/emmett-till-national-monuments-biden
July 24, 2023
July 24, 2023
Today, Israel’s parliament passed a law that increases the power of the country’s right wing, headed by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel does not have a written constitution, and the prime minister’s ruling coalition is in control of both the executive and the legislative branches of government. The only check on them was the courts, which could overturn extreme laws that did not pass a “reasonableness standard,” which means they were not made according to a basic standard of fair and just policymaking.
The new law aims to take away that judicial power, and it passed by a vote of 64–0 after opponents walked out in protest. Netanyahu’s coalition has indicated it intends to continue to weaken the institutions that can check it. “This is just the beginning,” said National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
For 13 of the last 14 years, Netanyahu, who is under indictment for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, has been Israel’s prime minister. Israeli democracy has weakened under him, in part because, as Zach Beauchamp of Vox explains, his support for Israeli settlement of the West Bank has fed an aggressive right-wing nationalist movement.
Netanyahu was turned out of the position briefly by a fragile coalition in 2021 but returned to power in December 2022 at the head of a coalition made up of ultranationalist and ultrareligious parties. That coalition commands just 64 out of 120 seats, a bare majority, in the Knesset, Israel’s unicameral legislature, which passes laws and runs the government.
As soon as the coalition formed, it announced its intention of reforming the judiciary to weaken it significantly. It also backed taking over the West Bank and limiting the rights of Palestinians, LGBTQ individuals, and secular Israelis. In early July the government launched a massive attack on the refugee camp in the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank that killed at least 8 Palestinians and wounded 50 others, saying the camp contained a militant command center.
Secular and center-left Jewish Israelis flooded the streets to protest as soon as the coalition announced its attack on the judiciary, and they have continued to protest for 29 weeks. Last Saturday, military leaders wrote to Netanyahu, blaming him personally for the damage done to the military and to Israel’s national security, and demanding that he stop. “We, veterans of Israel’s wars,… are raising a blaring red stop sign for you and your government.” Thousands of Israeli military reservists warned they would not report for duty if the judicial overhaul plan passed, dramatically weakening the country’s national security.
If the far-right coalition destroys the independence of the judiciary, it will have kneecapped the courts that could convict Netanyahu. It could also rig future elections by, for example, barring Arab parties from participating, thus cementing its hold on power.
The United States was the first nation to recognize Israel 75 years ago and has been a staunch supporter ever since, to the tune of nearly $4 billion a year. But the country’s rightward lurch is testing the strength of that bond.
Netanyahu has politicized the two countries’ bonds, openly siding with Trump and Trump Republicans, who continue to offer him their support. President Joe Biden has staunchly supported Israel for 50 years but recently has warned Netanyahu personally against pushing court reform, and last week he took the extraordinary step of inviting New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman to the Oval Office to make his message clear. Biden told Friedman that Israel’s lawmakers should not make fundamental changes to the country’s government without a popular consensus. The White House called today’s vote “unfortunate.”
Nonetheless, the administration has repeatedly emphasized that the U.S.-Israel relationship is “ironclad,” although White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated that “the core of that relationship is…on democratic values, the shared democratic values and interests.” In the Daily Beast today, David Rothkopf argued that Israel has abandoned those democratic values and thus has ended “America’s special relationship with Israel.” That damage “cannot be easily undone,” he writes. “A relationship built on shared values cannot be easily restored once it is clear those values are no longer shared.”
Two former U.S. ambassadors to Israel, Dan Kurtzer and Martin Indyk, have called for the U.S. to cut military aid to that country, saying it is time to develop a new approach to the relationship. At the New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristof points out that Israel is a wealthy country and that U.S. aid is essentially “a backdoor subsidy to American military contractors.”
In order to stay in power and avoid his legal trouble, Netanyahu must cater to his country’s hard right, no matter the cost to the nation. In the Washington Post today, columnist Max Boot noted that Netanyahu is undermining Israeli democracy, risking Israel’s relationship with the U.S., and threatening to spark a violent uprising among West Bank Palestinians.
In the U.S. today, after Texas governor Greg Abbott responded to the Justice Department’s letter warning him his buoys and razor wire in the Rio Grande were illegal by telling the government he would see it in court, the Department of Justice filed a civil complaint against the state of Texas on the same grounds it cited in the letter: the deployment of barriers breaks the Rivers and Harbors Act. It also threatens to damage U.S. foreign policy by breaking international treaties with Mexico, and foreign policy is exclusively the responsibility of the federal government.
Today the Department of Justice also agreed to permit U.S. attorney David Weiss to testify before the House Judiciary Committee…but with a twist. Weiss is the Trump-appointed official in charge of investigating President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden. In response to Weiss’s decision to charge Biden with two misdemeanor tax offenses and permit a pretrial diversion agreement with regard to a firearms charge, Trump Republicans have spread widely the accusations of two Internal Revenue Service investigators that Attorney General Merrick Garland tied Weiss’s hands. (As far as I can tell, these witnesses are not official whistleblowers, a designation that would mean the inspector general has agreed their accusations have merit.)
Weiss has publicly denied that accusation twice, but committee chair Jim Jordan (R-OH), Ways and Means Committee chair Jason Smith (R-MO), and Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) have demanded that Weiss, as well as more than a dozen other officials, testify before their committees.
But while the committee chairs have asked for closed-door testimony, the Justice Department today said it will make Weiss available for a public hearing, writing: “The Department believes it is strongly in the public interest for the American people and for Congress to hear directly from U.S. Attorney Weiss on these assertions and questions about his authority at a public hearing.” The Justice Department has proposed a number of dates for that hearing immediately after the House comes back from its August recess.
Russia continues to bomb the Ukrainian port city of Odesa, targeting agricultural infrastructure. Putin seems to have decided that if he can’t have Odesa, neither can anyone else. On Friday, Russia destroyed 100 tons of peas and 20 tons of barley in Odesa. Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian grain facilities just as the wheat harvest begins have spiked global grain prices and threatened food exports to Africa, which Russia has suggested it could take over itself. Russia’s attacks on Ukraine have badly damaged the country’s agricultural capacity, a blow to global food supplies. Today, Klaus Iohannis, the president of Romania, said he “strongly condemn[s]” Russian attacks on grain transit after Russians hit the port of Reni on the Romanian border.
Russia’s attacks on the city have also badly damaged famous cultural sites, earning condemnation in “the strongest terms” from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Such attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure and cultural treasures are another attempt to swing the war in Russia’s direction.
And on Friday, Russian officials announced they are raising the maximum age that men can be conscripted into military service from 27 to 30 years old.
—
Notes:
https://twitter.com/DanielSeidemann/status/1682749907499638784
https://www.politico.com/minutes/congress/07-24-2023/weiss-dates-from-doj/
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-21-2023
https://www.vox.com/2023/7/24/23805532/israel-judicial-overhaul-reasonableness
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/24/biden-israel-netanyahu-judicial-change/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/18/opinion/biden-netanyahu-supreme-court-protests.html
https://twitter.com/FarnoushAmiri/status/1683607913380675589
https://twitter.com/KlausIohannis/status/1683404882319998978
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/03/palestinians-killed-israeli-strike-west-bank-jenin
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/15/world/middleeast/israel-reservists-resignations-judiciary.htm
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/23/netanyahu-biden-israel-jenin-west-bank/
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/24/global-food-prices-inflation-ukraine-00107864
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/07/21/ukraine-grain-harvest-00107212
https://www.thedailybeast.com/this-is-the-end-of-the-us-israel-special-relationship
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/19/israel-republican-democrat-partisan-racist-state/
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/abbott-we-need-rio-grande-buoys-to-protect-from-invasion
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/22/opinion/israel-military-aid.html
Heather Cox Richardson's Blog
- Heather Cox Richardson's profile
- 1300 followers
.jpg){kind=link}