Heather Cox Richardson's Blog, page 155
May 23, 2023
May 22, 2023
The debt ceiling crisis has deflected attention from actual work of the federal government, which continues.
The meeting of the Group of Seven (G7) in Hiroshima, Japan, which began on May 19 and ended yesterday, emphasized the Biden administration’s focus on preventing the rise of dominant authoritarian powers by ruining Russia’s imperial ambitions and by creating regional partnerships to counter the rise of China. The G7 is a forum made up of democracies with advanced economies and includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The European Union is also a member.
The meeting demonstrated the strength of the G7’s support for Ukraine. The leaders agreed to increase financial and military support for the beleaguered country after Russia’s February 2022 invasion. G7 leaders also announced they would take new steps to isolate Russia economically from the rest of the world, thus weakening its ability to wage war. New sanctions on more than 70 companies and more than 300 individuals and entities around the globe are designed to close off the loopholes and workarounds that have enabled Russian president Vladimir Putin to continue to raise money. (Hence Russia’s retaliatory ban of those who have stood in Trump’s way as an open declaration of solidarity with Trump, who has threatened to cut support for Ukraine if he regains power.)
Gathered in the historic city of Hiroshima, where an American B-29 bomber dropped an atomic bomb on August 6, 1945, ultimately killing more than 140,000 people, members of the G7 condemned Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine and called for a return to nuclear disarmament. The G7 also said it would hold Russia financially accountable for the damage it has done to Ukraine.
Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky was a surprise visitor to the meeting, his presence a powerful illustration to Putin that the leaders of the G7 are firmly behind Ukraine’s cause. U.K. prime minister Rishi Sunak noted that the G7 was briefly the G8 when Russia was a member before being expelled in 2014 for its illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea. Zelensky’s presence, Sunak said, “demonstrates that brute force and oppression will not triumph over freedom and sovereignty.”
G7 leaders indicated they are united in the attempt to stand up to China. While they reiterated that their countries will continue to trade with China, they vowed to push to establish a level economic playing field between China and other countries, and to “foster resilience to economic coercion.” Just days after the Department of Justice charged a Chinese national—as well as two Russian people and a Greek man working for Russia—with stealing sensitive technologies, the G7 also vowed to protect technologies that could threaten our national security.
The leaders also expressed concerns about China’s record on human rights and “called on China not to conduct interference activities or undermine the integrity of our democratic institutions.”
The meeting also demonstrated support for regional partnerships in the Indo-Pacific and Africa that will counterbalance China. The leaders included in their deliberations guests from Australia, Brazil, and India. They also reached out to countries in Africa by including Comoros, an island nation off southeastern Africa, which is currently chairing the African Union. They included the Cook Islands, an island nation in the South Pacific that is currently chairing the Pacific Islands Forum, a group of 18 nations including Australia and New Zealand. And they included key G7 partners Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Republic of Korea.
The World Bank, an international financial institution with 189 member nations cooperating to make loans and grants to enable low- and middle-income countries to develop capital projects, was at the meeting. So were a number of leaders from private financial, communications, and IT infrastructure institutions, including Citi, Global Infrastructure Partners, Japan Foreign Trade Council, and Nokia. They discussed ways to unlock public and private capital to fund projects in the developing world as part of a way to relieve the mounting debt obligations of low- and middle-income countries, often a result of Chinese investment, and to counter Chinese investment in those regions.
Biden was supposed to go from Hiroshima to Australia for a meeting of leaders of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (known as the Quad), a strategic security group that includes Australia, India, Japan, and the U.S. He had to cancel because of the debt ceiling crisis, so the group met in Japan at the G7, where they issued a statement reaffirming “our steadfast commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific that is inclusive and resilient…. We believe all countries have a role in contributing to regional peace, stability, and prosperity, as well as upholding international law, including the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the rules-based international order. We seek a region where no country dominates and no country is dominated—one where all countries are free from coercion, and can exercise their agency to determine their futures.”
They said they see the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a political and economic group made up of 10 member states, as the central leader of the effort to create a strong Indo-Pacific regional partnership, and they reiterated their support for Pacific island nations, especially those in the Pacific Islands Forum.
Biden was also supposed to go to Papua New Guinea after the G7 for a meeting with the leaders of the Pacific Islands Forum but had to cancel the trip to come home and deal with the debt ceiling crisis. Secretary of State Antony Blinken went instead and today signed a security agreement with the strategically located nation, as well as confirming that the administration is seeking $7.1 billion for 20 years of investments in the region through diplomatic and cultural ties, including new embassies; infrastructure projects; and addressing climate change.
The Pacific Islands Forum responded by reaffirming “our shared vision for a resilient Pacific region of peace, harmony, security, social inclusion, and prosperity. We are committed to bolstering Pacific regionalism,” it said, “with a strong and united Pacific Islands Forum at its center.”
A domestic emphasis on regional cooperation appears to have paid off today, at least temporarily as, working with the Department of the Interior, the governors of Arizona, California, and Nevada have agreed on a plan to conserve water in the Colorado River system over the next three years in an effort to rebuild the depleted reservoirs on which 40 million people depend. All seven of the states in the Colorado River Lower Basin have agreed in principle to the plan, which will require the three states to cut about 13% of their water usage in exchange for about $1.2 billion in federal grant money funded by the Inflation Reduction Act. Had the states not come up with their own plan, the administration threatened bigger, unilateral cuts in water usage.
In a statement, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said: “Today’s announcement is a testament to the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to working with states, tribes and communities throughout the west to find consensus solutions in the face of climate change and sustained drought.”
Also today, Vice President Kamala Harris was in Sunnyvale, California, on a visit to Applied Materials, which has just announced it will invest up to $4 billion in a new research and development facility for designing semiconductor-manufacturing tools in collaboration with the chipmakers who will use the tools in their factories. Since the CHIPS and Science Act became law last August, the White House noted, “private companies have announced nearly $140 billion in investments in semiconductor production, supply chains, and R&D to be made over the next decade.”
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Notes:
https://www.axios.com/2023/05/16/justice-department-criminal-cases-tech-theft-russia-china-iran
https://www.state.gov/u-s-pacific-islands-forum-leaders-dialogue-in-papua-new-guinea/
https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Lower-Basin-Governors-Letter.pdf
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/22/colorado-river-states-california-arizona-nevada
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/us-sign-new-security-pact-papua-new-guinea-99496252
May 21, 2023
May 21, 2023
The list of 500 banned Americans that Russian president Vladimir Putin released on Friday makes it clear that Putin is openly aligning himself with Trump and today’s MAGA Republicans. The people on the list are not necessarily involved with U.S. policy toward Russia; they are Americans who are standing in the way of the Trump movement’s takeover of our country.
Notably, one of the names on the list is Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, who refused to “find” the 11,780 votes Trump needed to win Georgia in 2020 and thus take the state’s electoral votes from Democratic winner Joe Biden. Also on the list was Michael Byrd, the Capitol Police officer who killed Ashli Babbitt as she attempted to break into the chamber of the House of Representatives, where more than 60 representatives and staffers were holed up, on January 6, 2021. Others made the “500 list,” according to the statement, for being part of “power or law-enforcement structures directly involved in the persecution of dissidents in the wake of the so-called ‘storm of the Capitol.’”
Since Trump’s attempt to overthrow the will of the voters on January 6, 2021, his supporters have imitated the language and the laws that enabled Putin to destroy representative democracy in Russia and Viktor Orbán to undermine liberal democracy in Hungary.
Attempting to set a new kind of imperial Russia up as a challenger to the liberal democracies that have held the majority of global power since World War II, Putin in 2019 declared liberal democracy “obsolete.” At a time when his own economic and social troubles at home threatened his continuing hold on power, he lashed out at democracy’s emphasis on equality before the law, saying that immigrant rights, gay rights, and women’s rights undermine “the culture, traditions and traditional family values of millions of people making up the core population.”
Like Putin, Orbán cemented power with attacks on immigrants, LGBTQ people, and abortion rights while claiming to be shoring up traditional religion. Not surprisingly, both Putin and Orbán have praised Trump, with the overlap between the former U.S. president and the autocratic leaders becoming more pronounced as Trump’s followers work to undermine U.S. support for Ukraine in its fight to push back Russia’s invasion and in the Conservative Political Action Conference’s decision to hold a second meeting in Budapest, Hungary, this month.
That overlap is also visible in the anti-immigrant, anti-LBGTQ, and antiabortion legislation spreading through U.S. states dominated by Trump loyalists.
When Trump was in the White House, his team worked hard to put loyal supporters into power in state Republican parties before the 2020 election, possibly aware that he was likely to lose the vote and would have to turn to loyalists to steal it for him. (Recall that on October 31, 2020, Trump ally Stephen Bannon told an audience that the plan was simply to say he had won, and now, in a lawsuit filed last week against Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Noelle Dunphy alleges Giuliani told her of the scheme on February 7, 2019.) Packing the state parties with loyalists did indeed pay off: according to a study by Nick Corasaniti, Karen Yourish, and Keith Collins of the New York Times, at least 357 sitting Republican legislators in battleground states used their official positions either to discredit or to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Radicalizing the state parties has continued since Trump left office, strengthening his base in state legislatures. Those legislators are now advancing the illiberal Christian democracy embraced by Putin and Orbán, using the same language and politics of fear to pass laws that explicitly reject the principle of a nation based in the idea that is central to democracy: that everyone is equal before the law.
The attempt to demonize immigrants has been central to the Trump base since he announced his presidential campaign with the statement that “the U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems” and went on to say that Mexican immigrants are “bringing drugs…bringing crime. They’re rapists.” (In fact, undocumented immigrants are less than half as likely as native-born Americans to be arrested for violent crimes or drug offenses.)
Republicans have refused to consider bipartisan legislation that would fund immigration courts and border security, and instead have hammered on the idea that immigrants are “flooding” our borders. They fought to keep the pandemic-related Title 42 in place, insisting that its end would create, as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) put it, an “Imminent Invasion.” When, in fact, the end of Title 42 led to a 60% decrease in unauthorized crossings, Greene still pushed forward, calling for Biden’s impeachment for his handling of immigration issues.
This same antidemocratic extremism explains the anti-trans, anti-drag, and anti-LGBTQ legislation, all of which are an attack on equality before the law. A March 8 article in Mother Jones by Madison Pauly exposed how the wave of anti-trans legislation passing through Republican-dominated state legislatures is written and pushed by well-funded Christian activists and organizations who argue, like Orbán, that they are protecting children (although 86% of trans or nonbinary young people have reported the attacks on them are affecting their mental health, and nearly half have seriously considered suicide).
Advocates for those laws inaccurately claim that they are protecting children from genital mutilation, but as Nancy Goldstein of the Texas Observer pointed out, the American Academy of Pediatrics stands behind gender-affirming care. Dr. Joshua Safer, the executive director of the Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery in New York City, explains: No other countries “are reconsidering the use of hormones and surgeries as first-line treatment for transgender children because hormones and surgeries are not first-line treatment for transgender children…. First-line interventions include mental health intakes and social adjustments…. Puberty blockers sometimes follow.” Those treatments are reversible if a patient changes their mind.
Nonetheless, the rhetoric of demonization is working: Brian Tyler Cohen reports (with video) that “Christian” pastor Jason Graber recently called for the execution of all LGBTQ people as well as the parents of transgender people: “They just need to be shot in the back of the head and then we can string them up above a bridge.”
Goldstein points out that the language of demonization Republicans are using mimics that of the “southern strategy,” by which Republican leaders from President Richard Nixon onward solidified their base by creating the idea that Black Americans threatened the well-being of white people. That strategy, too, is ongoing in the Republican Party. On Monday, May 15, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill that defunds any state college or university with a diversity, equity, and inclusion program and that bans courses that “distort significant historical events or include a curriculum that teaches identity politics,” a reference to courses that acknowledge racism or sexism. Texas, Tennessee, North Dakota, Iowa, and Ohio are considering similar legislation.
The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a Latino civil rights organization; Equality Florida, a gay rights advocacy group; and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) have all issued advisories warning against travel to Florida. “Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals,” the NAACP said. “Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color.”
With its antiabortion legislation, the MAGA movement is also signaling its abandonment of the idea that everyone should be equal before the law. Since the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision last June, fifteen states have banned or severely restricted abortion rights. On Tuesday a supermajority of the North Carolina legislature, established when Tricia Cotham, a Democrat who ran on abortion rights, switched parties, overrode the veto of the Democratic governor Roy Cooper to ban virtually all abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy.
In Sumner County, Tennessee, these antidemocratic Republicans have taken over the county government and, as Christina A. Cassidy wrote today in the Associated Press, promptly changed the county’s official documents to say that operations would be “most importantly reflective of the Judeo-Christian values inherent in the nation’s founding.” They are trying to shape the county, including election rules, according to their ideology.
It is these same MAGA Republicans who are threatening to force the United States to default on its debt for the first time in our history, with catastrophic consequences, unless the Democrats agree to protect all tax cuts and slash the domestic spending that protects ordinary Americans. It’s important to remember that the global autocratic movement is not solely about creating a traditional religious society; it is about destroying democracy to concentrate wealth and power in a small group of men, usually white men, who will dominate the rest of us.
For all the talk of House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) negotiating over a budget that Republicans will then approve before they are willing to raise the debt ceiling, he has never had the votes of the extremists that he needs to make that happen. They are demanding that the Democrats dismantle the government programs that protect ordinary Americans in exchange for agreeing not to blow up the world economy.
And so, the battle over democracy has come down to the debt ceiling.
Today, Biden told reporters that he would not agree to the extremists’ demands. “We put forward a proposal that cuts spending by more than a trillion dollars, and on top of the nearly $3 trillion in deficit reduction that I previously proposed through the combination of spending cuts and new revenues,” he said.
“Let me be clear,” he said. “I’m not going to agree to a deal that protects, for example, a $30 billion tax break for the oil industry, which made $200 billion last year—they don’t need an incentive of another $30 billion—while putting healthcare of 21 million Americans at risk by going after Medicaid.
“I’m not going to agree to a deal that protects $200 billion in excess payments for pharmaceutical industries and refusing to count that while cutting over 100,000 schoolteachers and…assistants’ jobs, 30,000 law enforcement officers’ jobs cut across…the entire United States of America.
“And I’m not going to agree to a deal that protects wealthy tax cheats and crypto traders while putting food assistance at risk for nearly… 1 million Americans.
“And it’s time for Republicans to accept that there is no bipartisan deal to be made solely—solely—on their partisan terms. They have to move as well.
“All four congressional leaders agree with me that…default is not—let me say it again—default is not an option. And I expect each of…these leaders…to live up to that commitment.
“America has never defaulted—never defaulted on our debt, and it never will.”
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Notes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/03/us/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-georgia.html
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/05/22/us/politics/state-legislators-election-denial.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48795764
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62892596
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-plan-reduce-abortions/31473124.html
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/for-2020-2003/html?lang=en
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-title-42-border-crossings-drop-migrants/
https://greene.house.gov/uploadedfiles/joe-biden-articles-of-impeachment-may23.pdf
https://www.vox.com/politics/23631262/trans-bills-republican-state-legislatures
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/features/100352
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/17/diversity-initiatives-states-are-next-00097268
https://twitter.com/NoLieWithBTC/status/1659985894349078528
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/15/politics/abortion-north-carolina-what-matters/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/us/abortion-laws-roe-v-wade.html
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/15/1176210007/florida-ron-desantis-dei-ban-diversity
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/naacp-warns-people-color-traveling-florida-rcna85478
https://www.texasobserver.org/fast-furious-xi-texas-transgender-youth/
May 20, 2023
May 20, 2023
Grades are in and summer is on the way. I cannot wait.
Taking the night off. Will be back at it tomorrow.
[Photo by Buddy Poland.]
May 19, 2023
May 19, 2023
Yesterday the far-right House Freedom Caucus called for an end to any discussions of raising the debt ceiling until the Senate passes its bill calling for extreme budget cuts. Today, former president Trump announced on his social media channel that “REPUBLICANS SHOULD NOT MAKE A DEAL ON THE DEBT CEILING UNLESS THEY GET EVERYTHING THEY WANT (Including the ‘kitchen sink’).” THAT’S THE WAY THE DEMOCRATS HAVE ALWAYS DEALT WITH US. DO NOT FOLD!!!”
(In reality, Congress raised the debt ceiling without conditions three times when Trump was president as Trump added an astonishing almost $7.8 trillion to the national debt, much of it thanks to his tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations before the coronavirus pandemic hit.)
Immediately after Trump’s demand, the Republicans walked away from negotiations over the budget that they are demanding before they will vote to raise the debt ceiling.
Then, hours later, they came back to the table.
Meanwhile, the headline in the Washington Post read: “World watches in disbelief and horror as U.S. nears possible default.” The story by Rachel Siegel and Jeff Stein revealed that at the meeting of the G7 leaders in Hiroshima, Japan, this week, the finance ministers for the G7—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the European Union—have been pulling U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen aside to ask her what is going to happen.
“Around the world,” Siegel and Stein write, “experts have been watching in disbelief as the U.S. flirts with its first default, fearful of the potential international economic ramifications—and astonished by the global superpower’s brush with self-sabotage.”
“[T]he debate over the debt ceiling is unnerving,” Michal Baranowski, managing director of the German Marshall Fund of the U.S. told Siegel and Stein. “We really need the U.S. as a strong leader in world affairs during this time of deep global instability. I worry that the debt ceiling debate burns up valuable political oxygen that I would rather the U.S. spend for leadership abroad. It makes the U.S. look inward-looking, at best.”
Time is running out for Congress to pass a measure that will raise the debt ceiling.
Meanwhile, today at the G7 meeting—which Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky will attend—leaders announced a new slate of sanctions on more than 300 targets designed to block workarounds that have permitted Russia to continue its war against Ukraine. “Today’s actions will further tighten the vise on [Russian president Vladimir] Putin’s ability to wage his barbaric invasion and will advance our global efforts to cut off Russian attempts to evade sanctions,” Treasury Secretary Yellen said in a statement.
In retaliation, Russia announced that it would not allow consular access to Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested in March on false charges of espionage. It also banned a somewhat random list of 500 Americans from entering Russia, including former president Barack Obama, comedian Stephen Colbert, 45 members of the House of Representatives, former ambassadors to Russia, various journalists, and me (!), accusing us of being hostile to Russia.
The statement also aligned Putin with far-right Republicans who back Trump, blaming those on the list for being “directly involved in the persecution of dissidents in the wake of the so-called ‘storm of the Capitol.’” One of those banned was Michael Byrd, the Capitol Police officer who killed Ashley Babbitt as she attempted to break into the chamber of the House of Representatives, where more than 60 representatives and staffers were holed up, on January 6, 2021.
Also today, Washington, D.C., police lieutenant Shane Lamond was arrested on charges that he warned Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, that he was about to be arrested just before January 6, 2021, and then lied about it to investigators. As head of the department’s intelligence unit, Lamond monitored extremist groups but appeared to support the Proud Boys. “Of course I can’t say it officially,” Lamond told Tarrio in a message on January 8, “but personally I support you all and don’t want to see your group’s name or reputation dragged through the mud.”
The Republicans’ threat to blow up the U.S. economy—and, with it, the global economy—comes at a time when the economy is, in fact, quite strong and President Biden’s measures have significantly reduced the deficit after Republican tax cuts exploded it. Destroying the economy on Biden’s watch would undoubtedly help to hamstring his reelection campaign. It would also kill popular support for his return to a government that supports ordinary Americans rather than concentrating wealth at the top of the economy, as Republicans insist—contrary to economic studies—will expand the economy and benefit everyone.
Their attack on the economy is more than that, though: it is an attack on the nation’s global standing. Yesterday, Christopher Chivvis, the director of the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment, wrote that the debt ceiling crisis brings into question “how serious Washington is about leading the world…. In an era of global strategic competition, the United States will be entering the ring with one hand tied behind its back if its leaders can’t make progress on their domestic disagreements and moderate vicious political polarization.”
“Foreign leaders will doubt American reliability more and more, hurting Washington’s relationships with the very countries whose loyalty it’s competing for with Beijing,” he wrote, as other countries doubt that the U.S. can commit to a program for longer than a single administration. Moreover, the crisis will hurt the power of the dollar, whose domination of the international monetary system has brought the U.S. extraordinary advantages.
“Washington’s dysfunction also helps its autocratic adversaries in the global contest over ideology,” Chivvis notes.
Indeed.
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Notes:
https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1659318949492711425
https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1659662099771957248
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/19/us/politics/debt-limit-gop-biden.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/05/19/world-watches-us-debt-ceiling-worries-default/
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-imposes-sanctions-hundreds-targets-fresh-russia-action-2023-05-19/
https://www.state.gov/united-states-imposes-additional-sanctions-and-export-controls-on-russia/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/19/obama-banned-russia-us-sanctions-ukraine
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/obama-colbert-500-americans-banned-russia-99463444
https://www.mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/1871495/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/05/19/dc-police-officer-arrested-obstruction-jan6/
https://www.propublica.org/article/national-debt-trump
https://twitter.com/SimonWDC/status/1659533079638167552
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/05/18/zelensky-g7-summit-hiroshima-japan-ukraine/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tax-cuts-rich-50-years-no-trickle-down/
May 18, 2023
May 18, 2023
Citing “changing business conditions,” Disney leadership today canceled plans to build an office complex near Orlando, Florida. The construction was estimated to cost about $1 billion, and the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity projected it would bring to Florida more than 2,000 jobs with an average salary of $120,000. In his email to employees, Disney’s theme park and consumer products chair Josh D’Amaro made it clear that even more was on the line. He noted that Disney has planned more than $17 billion of construction in Florida, bringing about 13,000 jobs, over the next ten years but suggested that, too, was being reexamined. “I hope we’re able to,” he said.
Disney is locked in a battle with Florida governor Ron DeSantis that began when, under pressure from employees, then–Disney chief executive officer Bob Chapek spoke out against Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act. This law, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law because its vague language prohibiting instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation seems designed to silence any acknowledgement of LGBTQ Americans in grades K–3, was DeSantis’s pet project.
In retaliation, DeSantis led Florida Republicans to strip Disney of its ability to govern itself as if it were a county—as it has done since its inception in 1967—putting the board that controlled Disney under the control of a team hand-picked by DeSantis. But before the new board took over, the old board quietly and legally handed control of the parks over to Disney.
Apparently furious, DeSantis suggested he would build a competing state park or a prison next to Disney’s Florida theme park. In April, the new board set out to claw power from Disney, while the company announced it will hold its first gay-themed pride event in California and that it will build an affordable housing development in its Florida district, a move that Floridians will like. Meanwhile, with DeSantis’s blessing, the Florida state board of education approved expanding the ban on classroom mention of LGBTQ people to include grades 4–12.
On April 26, Disney sued the governor and those of his top advisors behind the attacks on Disney. The lawsuit noted that for more than 50 years, Disney “has made an immeasurable impact on Florida and its economy, establishing Central Florida as a top global tourist destination and attracting tens of millions of visitors to the State each year.” But, it said, “[a] targeted campaign of government retaliation—orchestrated at every step by Governor DeSantis as punishment for Disney’s protected speech— now threatens Disney’s business operations, jeopardizes its economic future in the region, and violates its constitutional rights.”
The lawsuit called out DeSantis’s actions as “patently retaliatory, patently anti-business, and patently unconstitutional. But,” it said, “the Governor and his allies have made it clear they do not care and will not stop.” The company said it felt forced to sue for protection “from a relentless campaign to weaponize government power against Disney in retaliation for expressing a political viewpoint unpopular with certain State officials.”
The fight between DeSantis and Disney illustrates the dramatic ideological change in the Republican Party in the last two years. No longer committed to keeping the government weak to stay out of the way of business development, the party is now committed to creating a strong government that enforces Christian nationalism.
This is a major and crucially important political shift.
From the earliest days of the Reagan Revolution, those leaders who wanted to slash the federal government to end business regulation and cut the social safety net recognized that they did not have the votes to put their program in place. To find those votes, they courted racists and traditionalists who hated the federal government’s protection of civil rights. Over time, that base became more and more powerful until Trump openly embraced it in August 2017, when he said there were “very fine people on both sides.”
As he moved toward the techniques of authoritarians, his followers began to champion the system that Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán called “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy” in his own country. Orbán argued that the principle of equality in liberal democracy undermines countries by attacking the national culture. Instead, he called for an end to multiculturalism—including immigration—and any lifestyle that is not based on the “Christian family model.” He seized control of universities to make them preach his values.
Today’s Republican leaders openly admire Orbán and appear to see themselves as the vanguard of a “post-liberal order.” They believe that the central tenets of democracy—free speech, religious liberty, academic freedom, equality before the law, and the ability of corporations to make decisions based on markets rather than religious values—have destroyed national virtue. Such a loss must be combated by a strong government that enforces religious values.
Right-wing thinkers have observed with approval that DeSantis’s Florida is “our American Hungary.” Indeed, DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” law appears to have been modeled on Orbán’s attacks on LGBTQ rights, which he has called a danger to “Western civilization.” DeSantis’s attack on the New College of Florida, turning a bastion of liberal thought into a right-wing beachhead, imitated Orbán’s attack on Hungary’s universities; on Monday, DeSantis signed three more bills that undermine the academic freedom of all the state universities in Florida by restricting what subjects can be taught and by weakening faculty rights.
DeSantis’s attack on Disney is yet another attack on the tenets of liberal democracy. He is challenging the idea that Disney leaders can base business decisions on markets rather than religion and exercise free speech.
There is another aspect of the Republicans’ turn against democracy in the news today. If democracy is a threat to their version of the nation, it follows that any institution that supports democracy should be destroyed. Today, the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, led by Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), continued its attack on the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Ranking member Representative Stacey Plaskett (D-VI) pointed out that Jordan was violating committee rules by refusing to let Democrats on the committee see the transcripts he claims to have from a whistleblower. Other committee members noted that two of the witnesses have been paid by Trump loyalist Kash Patel.
Plaskett warned: “The rules don’t apply when it comes to the Republicans.... It’s all part and parcel of the Republicans’ attempt to make Americans distrust our rule of law so that when 2024 comes around and should their candidate not win, more and more people will not believe the truth. The truth matters.”
And so does power. Although House Republicans are trying to protect Representative George Santos (R-NY), who was just indicted on 13 counts, by sending his case to the Republican-dominated Ethics Committee rather than allowing a vote on whether to expel him, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) introduced articles of impeachment against President Biden.
Also today, the far-right House Freedom Caucus has called for an end to any discussions of raising the debt ceiling until the Senate passes its bill calling for extreme budget cuts. Forcing the nation into default will cause a global economic panic and, asked if they should compromise with the White House, Representative Bob Good (R-VA) said: “Why would we? We have a winning hand.”
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Notes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/18/business/disney-ron-desantis-florida.html
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/disney-cancels-planned-florida-campus-lake-nona/story
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23789634-disney-v-desantis
https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/apr/26/context-trumps-very-fine-people-both-sides-remarks/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/06/15/hungary-gay-transgender-law/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/18/cpac-hungary-lgbtq-orban-florida-desantis/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/24/trump-states-2024-election/
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/05/01/viktor-orban-seizes-control-of-hungarys-universities
https://twitter.com/Victorshi2020/status/1659203233171263489
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/9/13/17823488/hungary-democracy-authoritarianism-trump
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1659197137320820747
https://www.axios.com/2023/05/17/house-vote-expel-george-santos
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/18/desantis-authoritarian-ignorant/
https://twitter.com/emilybrooksnews/status/1659263639524712452
May 17, 2023
May 17, 2023
The debt ceiling crisis is already affecting our national security. Because President Biden has pulled out of his trip to Australia so he can come home to address the crisis, a planned meeting of the Quad will not go forward. The Quad, whose official name is the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, is a security group consisting of Australia, India, Japan and the United States that organized in 2007 as a response to China’s rising power.
Biden’s visit to Australia and to Papua New Guinea was designed to cement the interest of the U.S. in the Indo-Pacific region. Daniel Hurst of The Guardian was quite clear what it meant to have Biden forced to cancel because of the Republicans’ debt ceiling demands. His article on the issue was titled: “The cancelled Quad summit is a win for China and a self-inflicted blow to the US’s Pacific standing.” “Chinese state media outlets won’t need to muster much creative energy to weave together some of Beijing’s preferred narratives,” Hurst wrote, “that the US is racked by increasingly severe domestic upheaval and is an unreliable partner, quick to leave allies high and dry.”
In the Sydney Morning Herald, Matthew Knott called Biden’s forced withdrawal “a disappointment, a mess and a gift to Beijing.” “The US wants to remain the leader of the free world but domestic divisions mean it now regularly struggles to keep its government from shutting down and defaulting on its debts,” he wrote. “The Quad summit in Sydney should have provided a powerful symbol of four proud democracies working together to get things done. Instead, it will serve to highlight the systemic problems plaguing the world’s longest-standing democracy and its aspirations for ongoing global leadership.”
And, astonishingly, stepping on this global rake is an unforced error. The debt ceiling is not about future spending, it is about paying bills Congress has already incurred. If it comes to that, failing to raise the debt ceiling—the amount of money the Treasury can borrow to meet its obligations—so that Republicans, led by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), can get concessions they cannot win through normal legislative procedures, will be an unforced error of truly epic proportions, a larger version of undercutting years of work building U.S. standing in the Indo-Pacific region.
Senate Democrats have begun to push for honoring the nation’s debts without trying to bring Republicans along. They are circulating a letter urging President Biden to invoke the fourth section of the Fourteenth Amendment to override the debt ceiling. That section reads: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”
Republican congressmen wrote that section to prevent Democratic opponents, who hated the newly powerful government that had won the Civil War, from changing the terms of repayment of the debt. Democrats called for turning gold interest payments into payments in paper money. That change would have significantly degraded the value of the debt. It would also have destroyed confidence in the government, a result those who had just lost the Civil War quite liked.
Congress intended the Fourteenth Amendment to assert the power of the federal government over the states once and for all, making sure that no one could discriminate against individuals within the states or make war on the United States from within. It was an attempt to make it impossible for those trying to destroy the nation to carry out their plans.
Senator Peter Welch (D-VT) told Burgess Everett and Sarah Ferris of Politico, “It’s not about being comfortable with Biden or anyone else. It’s about the House. Kevin’s in shackles. He’s in leg, arms and hand cuffs. And frankly I don’t think he’s got much capacity to negotiate. And very little capacity to advance a deal.” Welch, who served eight terms in the House before moving to the Senate in 2023, added, “I’m quite pessimistic about McCarthy. He’s very constrained…. I think we’re heading toward a decision on the 14th Amendment.”
Interestingly, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) has indicated he’s on board with the idea of Biden invoking the Fourteenth Amendment. “I think if I were president, I would be tempted” to use the Fourteenth Amendment, Hawley said. “Because I would just be like, ‘Listen, I’m not gonna let us default. So end of story. Y’all will do whatever you want to do.’ But I’m not necessarily giving him that advice. It’s against my interest.” Hawley’s defense of the idea suggests that Republicans are eager to find a solution to the crisis that does not involve them, so that they can then condemn the Democrats for whatever they do.
—
Notes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/05/17/debt-ceiling-democrats-discharge-petition/
https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article275275056.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/16/senators-after-biden-mccarthy-debt-sitdown-00097289
May 16, 2023
Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky has been on a tour of visits with European leaders. On May 13 he met with Pope Francis, who offered help finding the Ukrainian children kidnapped by the Russians and returning them to Ukraine, and with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. The next day he met with German chancellor Olaf Scholz before flying to France to meet with President Emmanuel Macron. On Monday, Zelensky made a surprise visit to the United Kingdom, where he met with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
The European Parliament and the Foundation of the International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen awarded the Ukrainian people and Zelensky the Charlemagne Prize “for their fight for freedom and democracy against the unjustified Russian war of aggression. This award underscores the fact that Ukraine is part of Europe and that its people and its government—headed by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy—support and defend European values, and therefore deserve encouragement to enter swiftly into accession negotiations with the European Union.”
Leaks linked to Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira have revealed a dynamic landscape. On the basis of those leaks, on May 13 the Washington Post reported that Zelensky’s calm public demeanor is different from his private positions, which have called for a much more aggressive stance toward Russia. On May 14 the Washington Post reported on a leaked document revealing that Yevgeniy Prigozhin had offered in January to tell Ukraine where Russian forces were positioned if it would pull back from the front in Bakhmut, where Prigozhin’s Wagner Group mercenaries were getting pounded.
On Sunday, as Zelensky was receiving promises of more European support, Ukraine said it had captured more than ten key Russian positions near Bakhmut. Last week, Germany announced its largest aid package to Ukraine since the war began—a package of nearly $3 billion—and U.S. Abrams tanks arrived in Germany ahead of schedule for training Ukrainian troops. Rumors are swirling about the health of Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko, one of Putin’s key allies, who has not been seen recently and has skipped important public events.
In July, leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will gather in Vilnius, Lithuania, to discuss strengthening the organization’s defenses against Russia, and the relationship of NATO to Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and the European Council have been hosting peace talks between Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of Armenia and President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan after Russian peacekeepers have become ineffective. And U.S. Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources Richard Verma is currently on a trip to Poland, Moldova, and Romania to “emphasize the United States’ commitment to our European Allies and partners, Transatlantic security, and our shared democratic values” even as Russia seeks to destabilize Moldova.
Elections in Turkey have produced a runoff between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his main challenger, Kemal Kilicdaroglu. Kilicdaroglu has promised to move Turkey closer to Europe than would Erdogan, who has swung toward Russia and authoritarianism. Turkey is a member of NATO, and Erodgan has ruled it for two decades, eroding its democracy. Opponents of Erdogan have coalesced behind Kilicdaroglu, who is popular enough that he managed to get within striking distance of Erdogan despite the leader’s attempt to rig the vote.
Expert on Turkish foreign policy and fellow at the Brookings Institution Asli Aydintasbas told Jared Malsin and Elvan Kivilcim of the Wall Street Journal: “A Turkey that tilts a little more toward Europe or NATO, even if it’s not a full pivot, that would be a huge change for the global balance of power, particularly with Russia’s war on Ukraine.”
U.S. senior officials are in Detroit this week for one of a series of meetings of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, a group of 21 countries with nearly 40 percent of the global population— almost 3 billion people— and nearly 50 percent of global trade. APEC members account for more than 60 percent of U.S. goods exports and seven of our top ten overall trading partners.
Hosting APEC this year was supposed to show “U.S. economic leadership and multilateralism in the Indo-Pacific and highlight the direct impact of international economic engagement on prosperity here in the United States,” an illustration of the Biden administration’s outreach in the Indo-Pacific.
But just as Biden’s attempts to counter Russia and China and shore up democracy globally are bearing fruit, he has to cut short his visit to Australia and Papua New Guinea, where he was scheduled to travel after this weekend’s meeting of the Group of Seven (G7) in Hiroshima, Japan. The G7 is a forum of the leaders of France, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Italy, and Canada, along with the European Union, to discuss economic and governmental policies. The debt ceiling crisis is forcing Biden to come home early rather than continue to strengthen ties in the region.
Today, more than 140 leaders of the biggest U.S. companies published an open letter to the president and congressional leaders “to emphasize the potentially disastrous consequences of a failure by the federal government to meet its obligations.” They noted that when the government approached a default in 2011 under similar circumstances, the U.S. lost its AAA bond rating (which it has never regained), the stock market lost 17% of its value for more than a year, and “Moody’s reported that the heightened uncertainty from this crisis resulted in 1.2 million fewer jobs, a 0.7 percentage point higher unemployment rate, and a $180 billion smaller economy than it otherwise would have—dire impacts that occurred without an actual default.”
House Republicans, led by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), are refusing to raise the debt ceiling, which is a limit to how much money the Treasury can raise to pay existing obligations, in order to extract budget cuts they cannot get through the normal process of legislation. While Republicans claim to be concerned about spending, it is notable that they have flat-out refused to help reduce the deficit by closing tax loopholes that would raise $40 billion. They also refuse to consider any measure that would raise taxes, focusing solely on spending cuts.
Meanwhile, Americans for Prosperity, a group funded by billionaire Charles Koch, has rolled out an ad campaign putting pressure on Biden and Democratic senators in the battleground states of Arizona, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Wisconsin to give in to Republican demands rather than insist on the same clean debt ceiling Congress passed three times under Trump.
—
Notes:
https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1657260004070633473
https://www.newsweek.com/rumors-swirl-about-putin-ally-lukashenkos-health-after-moscow-trip-1800132
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/05/13/zelensky-ukraine-war-leaked-documents/
https://www.voanews.com/a/zelenskyy-makes-surprise-visit-to-paris-for-talks-with-macron/7092547.html
https://www.eib.org/en/events/2023-international-charlemagne-prize-of-aachen
https://twitter.com/BBCWorld/status/1657779433875415041
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-hosts-peace-talks-with-armenia-azerbaijan-/7073539.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/05/14/ukraine-nato-membership-vilnius-summit/
https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1657896948421074952
https://apnews.com/article/abrams-tanks-ukraine-war-training-russia-62a21f24f4769044b3fcade518e5b44e
https://www.state.gov/usapec2023/
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-65594540
https://twitter.com/crgentle/status/1658586601893801986
https://www.ft.com/content/979df6c0-f91f-4bff-b106-f049ab8ffdc7
https://twitter.com/timurkuran/status/1658544680785567774
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/05/15/debt-ceiling-negotiations-deadline-default/
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/koch-group-biden-senate-democrats-debt-ceiling
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/13/world/europe/zelensky-pope-francis-ukraine-war.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/13/world/europe/ukraine-germany-zelensky-weapons.html
May 15, 2023
May 15, 2023
On Saturday, May 13th, President Joe Biden spoke to the graduating class at Howard University, a historically Black university in Washington, D.C. In his speech about “excellence, leadership, and truth and service,” Biden singled out white supremacy “as the most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland.”
Biden called for Americans to reject political extremism and violence, and to protect fundamental rights and freedoms for women to choose and for transgender children to be free. He called for affordable healthcare and housing and the right to raise your family and retire with dignity. He urged the graduates to “stand with leaders of your generation who give voice to the people, demanding action on gun violence,” and to stand “against books being banned and Black history being erased…. To stand up for the best in us.”
While Biden based his remarks on former president Trump’s declaration after the August 2017 Unite the Right Rally that “there are very fine people on both sides,” there were plenty of examples from just this week that he could have used.
Last night, Hunter Walker of Talking Points Memo broke the story that the digital director for right-wing representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ) appears to be Wade Searle, a devoted follower of white supremacist leader Nick Fuentes. Fuentes has openly embraced Nazism and Russian president Vladimir Putin’s authoritarianism, and he is one of those to whom the alt-right Groypers look up.
Although Fuentes calls the Groypers “Christian conservatives,” historian of the far right in the U.S. Nicole Hemmer told Walker: “The Groypers are essentially the equivalent of neo-Nazis…. They are attached to violent events like Jan. 6. Nick Fuentes, as sort of the organizer of the Groypers, expresses Holocaust denialism, white supremacy, white nationalism, pretty strong anti-women bigotry, he calls for a kind of return to Twelfth Century Catholicism. They’re an extremist group that is OK with violence.”
Walker has also identified an intern in Gosar’s office as another Fuentes follower.
A February study by the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that conducts independent research on religion, culture, and public policy, found that the so-called Christian nationalism at the heart of those like Fuentes is closely linked with a willingness to commit violence to make the U.S. a white Christian nation. The PRRI poll showed that nearly 20% of those who sympathize with Christian nationalism agreed they were “willing to fight” to take the nation back to what they incorrectly believe it always was.
Maria Cramer of the New York Times noted yesterday that while no one actually knows much about Daniel Penny, a white man who was recently charged with choking Jordan Neely, a homeless Black man, to death on a subway in New York, right-wing politicians and supporters have rallied around Penny. They seem to see him as a symbol of a powerful man who took matters into his own hands to restore order—although the events that led to the choking are still unclear—much as they lionized Kyle Rittenhouse after he killed two people and wounded another at a Black Lives Matter rally in 2020. Florida governor Ron DeSantis tweeted: “We must defeat the Soros-Funded DAs, stop the Left’s pro-criminal agenda, and take back the streets for law abiding citizens.”
Historian Thomas Zimmer explained the danger: “All strands of the Right—leading Republicans, the media machine, the reactionary intellectual sphere, the conservative base, the donor class—are openly and aggressively embracing rightwing vigilante violence,” he wrote. “This sends a clear message: It encourages white militants to use whatever force they please to “fight back” against anything and anyone associated with ‘the Left’ by protecting and glorifying those who have engaged in vigilante violence—call it the Kyle Rittenhouse dogma.”
In Washington this weekend, about 150 masked members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front marched toward the U.S. Capitol, chanting, “life, liberty, victory.”
Professor of journalism at New York University Jay Rosen noted on MSNBC on May 11, the day after CNN gave Trump the space to hold what amounted to a political rally, that journalists could better cover this moment in our history by focusing not on the horse race strategy, but on the consequences for the country if Trump wins again. How will American life change? Who will benefit? Who will suffer? He says the question should be “not the odds, but the stakes” as a principle for better campaign coverage.
A lawsuit filed today in New York by Noelle Dunphy, a woman who says Trump ally Rudy Giuliani hired her in January 2019 to manage his media presence, documents the sordid world she observed in her two years working for Giuliani. He promised her a salary of $1 million a year but said he couldn’t pay her until his divorce was final and, ultimately, paid her only small amounts of cash. In her account, he seemed to become obsessed with her, forcing her into sex and trying to dominate her. She is suing Giuliani, his companies, and 10 unidentified individuals over “unlawful abuses of power, wide-ranging sexual assault and harassment, wage theft, and other misconduct” and is asking for $10 million in compensation and damages.
The story of her time with Giuliani, whom she describes as a chronically alcoholic sexual abuser prone to racist and sexist outbursts, is bad enough—and she claims to have recordings—but her other allegations are politically incendiary. She claims to have heard Giuliani say that he was selling presidential pardons for $2 million a pop, splitting the proceeds with Trump, and that Giuliani told her on February 7, 2019, “about a plan that had been prepared for if Trump lost the 2020 election.” Specifically, Giuliani told Ms. Dunphy that Trump’s team would claim that there was ‘voter fraud’ and that Trump had actually won the election…. That same day, Giuliani had Ms. Dunphy sit in on a speakerphone conversation about a potential business opportunity involving a $72 billion dollar gas deal in China.”
Also of note is her claim that, since part of her job was managing emails, Giuliani gave her access to his email account. The system stored at least 23,000 emails on her own personal computer, including “privileged, confidential, and highly sensitive” emails from, to, or concerning Trump, his children Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump; Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner; Trump’s lawyers and advisors; media figures including Rupert Murdoch, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson; and so on.
There are a number of stories in the news today that wrap up long-standing issues. John Durham, the special counsel picked by Trump loyalist attorney general William Barr to undermine the FBI investigation into whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election, released a report today finding fault with the categorization of the FBI’s initial investigation into the Russia attempt to swing the 2016 election to Trump.
Representative George Santos (R-NY) has pleaded guilty to charges of theft in Brazil, but insists he is not guilty of the federal charges against him for financial crimes. He says he will not resign from Congress.
As predicted by everyone who correctly attributed the high cost of eggs late last year to the deadly avian flu and price gouging, there are now so many eggs on the market that the wholesale price is $0.94 a dozen, down from $5.46 a dozen six months ago.
The number of migrants at the southern border has dropped 50% since the end of the pandemic restriction known as Title 42 on May 11.
And finally, Representative James Comer (R-KY), chair of the House Oversight Committee, yesterday told Fox News Channel personality Maria Bartiromo that the committee has lost track of a top witness to alleged wrongdoing by the Biden family. “Well, unfortunately, we can’t track down the informant,” Comer said. “We’re hopeful that the informant is still there. The whistleblower knows the informant. The whistleblower is very credible.”
—
Notes:
https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/groyper-army-and-america-first
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/paul-gosar-nick-fuentes-staffer-wade-searle
https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/1657402146063564800
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/14/nyregion/daniel-penny-jordan-neely-conservative.html
https://twitter.com/tzimmer_history/status/1657736461540552705
https://news.yahoo.com/chilling-footage-shows-white-supremacist-040050917.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/15/rudy-giuliani-sexual-assault-harassment-lawsuit-00097014
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/05/15/durham-special-counsel-trump-report/
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/12/1175720925/george-santos-confesses-brazil-stolen-checks
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/05/10/nyregion/george-santos-charges-news
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/15/business/egg-prices/index.html
https://www.thedailybeast.com/rep-james-comer-says-hes-lost-track-of-his-top-biden-informant
May 14, 2023
May 14, 2023
Lots going on today, but I have been on the road and my battery is down to a tiny sliver of red. Headed for bed to recharge and will be back at it with a will tomorrow.
The good news is that Buddy has far more time to play with his camera when I’m away. Here is his newest sunrise, taken sometime this week in the wee hours while I was typing in New York City. His office definitely beats mine.
I’ll see you tomorrow.
[Photo by Buddy Poland.]
May 13, 2023
May 13, 2023
On the day before Mother’s Day, I usually post about the origins of the holiday in the 1870s, when Boston reformer Julia Ward Howe decided she would create a “Mothers’ Day” to bring women together to end war. Tonight, though, I have just come from the wedding of our fabulous producer for the Now & Then podcast, where almost the whole team gathered to celebrate, and am thinking about family and how often it has nothing to do with blood and everything to do with chance and affinity.
And that made me reach back a bit farther this year, to a piece I wrote a few years ago about another kind of family….
* * * * * *
Those of us who are truly lucky have more than one mother. They are the cool aunts, the elderly ladies, the family friends, even the mentors who whip us into shape. By my count, I’ve had at least eight mothers. One of the most important was Sally Adams Bascom Augenstern.
Mrs. A., a widow who had played cutthroat bridge with my grandmother in the 1950s, lived near my family in Maine in the summer. I began vacuuming and weeding and painting for her when I was about 12, but it wasn’t long before my time at her house stopped being a job. She was bossy, demanding, sharp as a tack...and funny and thoughtful, and she remembered most of the century. She would sit in her rocking chair by the sunny window in the kitchen, shelling peas and telling me stories while I washed the floor with a hand sponge to spin out the time.
Sally (not Sarah) Bascom was born on December 25, 1903. (That made her almost a full year older than Millard Robinson, a local fisherman who seemed ancient; she loathed that age gap.) She was the oldest of six children and spent her youth taking care of the younger ones. When I once asked her what was the most important historical event in her lifetime, this woman who had lived through the Depression and both world wars answered without hesitation: “the washing machine.” It had freed her and her mother from constant laundry. She could finally have some leisure time, which she spent listening to the radio and driving in cars with boys. Because her mother always needed her at home, it was not she, but all her younger siblings, who went to college. By the time Mrs. A. was an adult, she was certain she wanted no part of motherhood.
Mrs. A. never forgave her sister for driving her Model T through a field. She saved aluminum foil not because of WWII, but because of WWI. She supported herself and refused to marry until she met an older man who offered to take her traveling; they had a quickie wedding and set off for Banff, where they looked at mountains and watched the bears pilfer trash.
She destroyed her knees playing tennis, so she would weed the garden by staggering to a lawn chair set up there. She loved snapdragons and nicotiana, veronica and irises and wild roses. After Mr. Augenstern died, she drove herself to and from Florida once a year in a giant old Cadillac with “Arrive Alive” on the license plate holder; she drove like a bat out of hell. She played bridge with terrifying intensity. And she always refused to be seen in public unless she was in a dress with her hair pinned up and her pearls on.
Mrs. A. laughed at me when I fell in love with history and tried to tell her that people changed the world because of their beliefs. “Follow the money, Heather,” said the woman whose income depended on her knowledge of the stock market. “Don’t pay attention to what they say; pay attention to who’s getting the money.” I listened. And then I learned as I watched her lose my grandmother’s generation and then work to make friends with my mother’s generation. And when they, too, died, she set out, in her eighties, to make friends with my generation. Every day was a new day.
Mrs. A. left me her linens, her gardening coat, and this photo of her and her siblings: Frances (who died young), Phyllis, Carlton, Guy, and Nathan. She also left me ideas about how to approach both history and life. I’ve never met a woman more determined never to be a mother, but I’m pretty sure that plan was one of the few things at which she failed.
Thinking of her, and all the wonderful women like her who mother with or without the title, on this Mother’s Day.
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