Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Toxic substances found in the glass and decoration of alcoholic beverage bottles

New research shows that bottles of beer, wine and spirits contain potentially harmful levels of toxic elements, such as lead and cadmium, in their enameled decorations.

Take two E. coli and call me in the morning

What if the bacteria in your daily probiotic were also able to detect diseases in the gut and indicate when something is awry? New research has created an effective, non-invasive way to quickly identify new bacterial biosensors that can recognize and report the presence of various disease triggers in the gut, helping set the stage for a new frontier of digestive health monitoring and treatment.

The Problem For Blue-Collar Workers Isn’t China, It’s Lousy Economic Recoveries

I think Brad DeLong makes a good point today. It’s true that we lost a lot of traditionally blue-collar-male jobs to China in the early aughts, but the trade deficits that crowded-out those jobs also had a mirror-image effect: Imports crowd-in traditionally-male blue-collar wholesale trade jobs, and finance traditionally-male blue-collar construction (and capital-goods manufacturing) jobs. […]

First Amendment Case Against Restrictive Copyright Law Can Proceed, Says Judge

A federal judge has ruled that litigation can go forward to determine whether Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act violates the First Amendment as applied. EFF brought this litigation on behalf of security researcher Matt Green, technologist bunnie Huang, and bunnie's company Alphamax, in order to vindicate the right to speak, learn, and innovate despite this overly-broad and harmful law.

Originally passed to combat infringement, the sweeping language of Section 1201 allowed courts to interpret its provisions to leave out critical speech protections such as the fair use doctrine. This has interfered with educational uses of copyrighted works, accessibility, security research, remix art, and even your ability to repair your own car or tractor.

The ruling is a mixed bag. While the "as-applied" First Amendment claims will go forward, the court did not agree that rulemaking by the Librarian of Congress is subject to judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act, even when the Librarian is performing an executive branch function rather than a congressional one. The court also did not agree that the Librarian's rulemaking is subject to the First Amendment scrutiny that applies when a government official is making determinations about what speech to permit. Finally, the court saw no need to adjudicate the claims that Section 1201 is overly broad, because it concluded that determining the constitutionality of the statute as applied to the plaintiffs will turn on the same issues as with other potential targets of the law.

The bottom line is that the case is going forward and we will continue the fight to help you understand and modify the devices in your life and remix the culture we all share.

Related Cases:  Green v. U.S. Department of Justice

Apple Goes All In on China

Farewell Mac Pro, we hardly knew ye: Apple Inc. is manufacturing its new Mac Pro computer in China, according to people familiar with its plans, shifting abroad production of what had been its only major device assembled in the U.S. as trade tensions escalate between the Trump administration and Beijing….With the previous Mac Pro model, […]

Biden and the Obama Admin Are Finally Getting the Reckoning They Deserve

Joe Biden could have sat this campaign out, retired, and been fondly remembered by the American public as Barack Obama's goofy yet loveable vice president. Instead, he chose to run for president one last time, and as a result guaranteed that he’ll be remembered for his actual record.

Thursday night was a rough one for Biden. It was always going to be, not just because the candidate—who has assiduously avoided unscripted media appearances since announcing his run—has a poor record of success as a campaigner. Biden’s deep-rooted role as a centrist “neoliberal” Democrat has saddled him with a long, checkered history for his opponents to pick apart.

And pick apart they did. Thursday's debate saw several of Biden's rivals assail him for a record that sits uneasily with the more progressive direction of today’s Democratic Party. And Biden—who entered the night as the clear frontrunner—didn’t do himself any favors by frequently stumbling over his words and even making nonsensical statements.

The first crack came on the subject of immigration. As Biden boasted of his immigration record (“We all talk about these things, I did it!”), moderator Jose Diaz-Balart reminded him that “the Obama-Biden administration deported more than three million Americans,” prompting a camera cut to a confused-looking Biden. This topic opened up space for Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) to criticize not just Biden but the legacy of the Obama administration, explaining that she had “disagreed with my president” on the issue of unjust deportations.

Biden's defense of his record on immigration was wholly unconvincing. Biden said he would “surge immediately billions of dollars worth of help” into Central America to tackle the root causes of people fleeing, before referencing a “bipartisan agreement” he had secured at the very end of Obama's second term. Biden was likely referring to a plan inserted into the administration's 2016 budget request that came to be known as “Biden's billion.”

The trouble is, by funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to abusive security forces in the region, and by setting aside funding for Central American governments to prevent migrants from reaching the U.S. border, Biden's bipartisan agreement both fueled the root causes driving people to flee and ramped up the cruelty they faced. This was not a first for Biden. He had, in his own words, been “one of the architects” of the Clinton-era Plan Colombia enacted in 2000, which combined increased militarization in Colombia with opening the country up to foreign investment. The plan resulted in not just heightened violence, but economic and environmental exploitation, further driving people out of the country, and was replicated in the Obama-era Alliance for Prosperity for Central America 15 years later, also spearheaded by Biden.

During his time as vice president, Biden didn’t engage in the kind of warm and fuzzy bromides about protecting immigrants that we heard Thursday night. As late as 2014, Biden bragged that the Obama-Biden administration was “enhancing the enforcement and removal proceedings” against migrants, and warned that anyone making the trip should “be aware of what awaits them” because it “will not be open arms.” Indeed, one need only read the stomach-churning details of an ACLU lawsuit over the treatment of migrant children from that year to understand that he was being serious. Biden paid lip service to “hav[ing] to deal with the root causes” then, too.

The next major hit Biden took was over his opposition to busing and defense of his friendly relationships with racists and segregationists. It was Harris, again, who took Biden to task over these positions, with Biden hitting back that he “did not praise racists, that is not true,” and that he “did not oppose busing in America.”

Neither of these statements is true. Biden's opposition to busing is, at this point, well-worn territory, but it's worth cycling through some of his statements on the matter: the claim that busing was “the atom bomb of anti-discrimination weapons”; “the single most devastating issue that could occur to Delaware”; that he'd made it “reasonable for longstanding liberals to begin to” oppose it as a policy; that it was a “liberal train wreck.”

That last claim came not in the 1970s but in his 2007 autobiography.

Biden's statement that he hasn't praised racists is clearly debunked by his recent defense of his positive relationship with dyed-in-the-wool segregationist Sens. James Eastland and Herman Talmadge. But that’s not all. In his 2003 eulogy for segregationist and notorious sexual predator Strom Thurmond, Biden called Thurmond “a brave man” who “truly wanted to help.”

Even centrist Michael Bennett got in on the action, rejecting Biden's prediction that Republicans will experience a sudden change of heart and wish to work with a Democratic president once Trump is out of office. Bennett also excoriated an Obama-era deal on taxes Biden boasted of making with Mitch McConnell as a “complete victory for the Tea Party.”

“It does sound as if you haven't seen what's been happening in the United States Senate over the last 12 years,” remarked moderator Chuck Todd.

But it was the second exchange with Harris on the issue of race that began a gradual unraveling for Biden throughout the night. Attempting to defend his record on civil rights, Biden rattled off a series of policies he'd been involved in before abruptly stopping of his own volition, saying, (perhaps allegorically), “My time's up, I'm sorry.”

Biden later appeared to defend the powerful and increasingly far-Right National Rifle Association (NRA), saying the “enemy is the gun manufacturers, not the NRA.” In response to a question about what single issue he would prioritize upon winning the presidency, he oddly answered, “make sure that we defeat Donald Trump.”

Of course, Biden wasn't the only candidate to misrepresent his record on stage. Harris claimed the mantle of police accountability by mentioning her support for police body cameras, which likely came as news to civil rights activists in her home state of California who criticized her in 2016 for opposing measures for greater police oversight. And Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) cast herself as a tough-on-Wall Street politician, despite her well-documented history as a loyal ally to banking interests.

But Biden's misrepresentations, and the criticism he faced for his political history, are particularly significant given his now two-month-long reign as the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. Biden's domination of the early polls has been cited by commentators ranging from Jonathan Chait to Michelle Goldberg as evidence that the desire for change and bold progressivism among voters has been overstated since 2016. The attacks Biden faced last night, and his impulse to put a progressive spin on some unsavory parts of his history, suggest such arguments have been far too hasty.

The 2020 Democratic primary campaign will be long, and one single debate isn't likely to upend the candidates' standing. But Thursday offered a preview of what may well be in store for Biden in the months ahead: the longer he stays in pole position, the more his record will be excavated and the more attacks he'll face from his rivals. 

But the debate also indicated that cracks are forming in the Obama-Biden administration's invulnerability to Democratic criticism. As long as Biden stays in the race, his opponents will have more space to point out its flaws without going after the beloved former president himself. This may prove the most lasting legacy of Biden's campaign.

Yes, the Top 20% Is a Problem Too

David Brooks begs Democrats not to go nuts this year: Democrats are trying to start a populist v. populist campaign against Trump, which is a fight they cannot win. Democratic populists talk as if the only elite in America is big business, big pharma — the top 1 percent. This allows them to sound populist […]

Felony Contempt of Business Model: Lexmark's Anti-Competitive Legacy

In 2002, Lexmark was one of the leading printer companies in the world. A division of IBM—the original tech giant—Lexmark was also a pioneer in the now-familiar practice of locking customers in to expensive "consumables," like the carbon powder that laser-printers fuse to paper to produce printouts.

Lexmark gave its customers the choice of paying extra for their cartridges (by buying refillable cartridges at a $50 premium), or paying extra for their toner (saving $50 on a cartridge whose "lock-out" chip prevented refilling, so that they would have to buy a whole cartridge when the non-refillable one ran dry). Customers, however, had a counteroffer for Lexmark: they wanted to save $50 on a "non-refillable" cartridge and then go ahead and refill it. After all, carbon is relatively abundant throughout the universe, and more locally, Earth has more carbon that it knows what to do with.

Various competitors of Lexmark stepped up to help its customers with their counteroffer. One such company was Static Control Components, which reverse-engineered Lexmark's lock-out chip and found that its 55-byte program performed a relatively straightforward function that would be easy to duplicate: when a cartridge was newly filled, this chip signaled to the printer that the cartridge had available toner. Once the cartridge ran out, the chip would tell the printer that it had an empty cartridge. Refilling the cartridge did no good because the chip would still tell the printer that there was no toner available.

After Static Control performed this bit of reverse engineering, it was able to manufacture its own chips, which it sold to remanufacturers, who would pour in fresh carbon, swap out the chip, and sell the cartridges. Lexmark had a strong objection to this. But like every business, Lexmark’s products should be subject to market pressures, including the possibility that customers will make uses (and re-uses) of your product that aren’t exactly what the manufacturer intended. Lexmark was in a position to create its own refilling business to compete with Static Control, of course. But it didn’t want to. Instead, it wanted to trap purchasers into the lucrative two-tier market it had dreamed up.

Under a reasonable open market, that would have been the end of it: Lexmark would have either sucked it up and taken the losses at the margins from Static Control, or it would have gone into the refilling business and tried to outcompete them. But in 2002, Lexmark thought it had a third option: to have the pathway that Static Control took to create aftermarket competition declared illegal.

In 1998, President Bill Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) into law. The DMCA was a comprehensive set of copyright changes occasioned by the advent of commercial Internet services. While the DMCA's significance has only grown over time, one part, Section 1201, has become central to the story of competition, information security, and self-determination in digital technology, reaching far beyond the traditional copyright industries. And this overflow really begins with the dispute between Lexmark and Static Control.

DMCA 1201—the "anti-circumvention" rule—imposes a blanket ban on disabling or bypassing "access controls" for copyrighted works. In plain language, that means that you can't override a manufacturer's software locks on copyrighted works. Notably, DMCA 1201 does not limit itself to banning circumvention where copyright infringement takes place: if you remove or bypass a copyright lock to do something that is perfectly legal, like fair use or reverse engineering, you're still in violation of DMCA 1201. What's more, providing people with a tool to bypass a DMCA 1201 lock can sometimes be a criminal violation, a felony punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine (for a first offense!).

Originally, DMCA 1201 was used by companies that made products like DVD players and game consoles. For example, DVD players rely on "region coding" to stop people from buying DVDs in one country and watching them in another country. This isn't a copyright violation (buying a licensed DVD and then watching it in your home is definitely not a copyright violation!), but it is a violation of the movie studios' business models, which maximize profits by controlling when movies are released in different "territories." Because bringing a DVD from one territory to another and watching it require that you somehow disable your DVD player's software lock, the movie studios have been able to create a new kind of violation: Felony Contempt of Business Model.

So long as DMCA 1201 was only applied to a few niche devices like DVD and game players used to control access and copying of commercial entertainment products, it was at least contained. Lexmark, however, was determined to expand DMCA 1201 and avail itself of the right to sue competitors for contempt of its own business models. Lexmark's lawsuit against Static Control made an unprecedented argument: that bypassing its lock-out chips was a violation of DMCA 1201.

At first, it's hard to understand how this could work. The lock-out chips on a toner cartridge control access to fine carbon powders -- not copyrighted works. How could a law that banned breaking copyright locks cover bypassing locks on carbon?

Lexmark had an answer: the copyrighted work in its toner cartridge was the 55-byte program in the lock-out chip, which also functioned as a password that enabled printing. Software is copyrightable, and so the copyrighted work that the lock was protecting was... part of the lock itself.

Happily, the court didn't buy it. While the judges in the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit acknowledged that software could be copyrighted, they found that a software program doesn’t trigger DMCA 1201 restrictions when it’s used as a password.

Time went by, and Lexmark fared just fine. Today, Lexmark is part of a conglomerate of companies that also includes Static Control, putting them both on the same side.

The underlying story of Static Control was once routine: once a company like Lexmark attained dominance, it would attract competitors who would find ways to erode that dominance by providing its customers with superior products at lower prices. The new entrants would rely on adversarial interoperability as their chief competitive weapon: that's when a company makes a new product that works with another company's existing products, against the established company's wishes.

Unfortunately, Lexmark (now combined with Static Control) didn’t give up after the court refused to allow it to use section 1201 to block competition. It shifted its focus to patent law and tried to fight off new competitors with that intellectual property claim, rather than by making better products at better prices. It’s such efforts that led EFF to launch its patent-busting project, to help clear a path for competition in digital tools that benefit users.

Today, Lexmark's legacy isn't an object lesson in the ways that adversarial interoperability can fuel competition, lowering prices and improving products. Rather, it's an early example of a ruthless campaign to dominate markets and see off competitors by invoking Felony Contempt of Business Model and various intellectual property regimes.

As the years have gone by, DMCA 1201 has only become more of a threat, despite the good legal precedent in Lexmark. That's because other federal appeals courts have rejected the Lexmark precedent, holding that DMCA 1201 liability can attach no matter why the downstream user bypassed an access control, unless one of the narrow, temporary exemptions apply.

The first printer ink wars were fought with superior products, but today's printer ink wars are being fought with dirtytricks and legalthreats.

More than 15 years ago, the case Lexmark showed us that forcing companies to compete on price and quality created a vibrant market where no one could dominate forever. Today, that promise has not been kept. Between patents, unfair terms of service and copyright overreach, the dominant players no longer need fear upstart competitors wielding adversarial interoperability: instead, using one of these underlying legal theories, the incumbents can simply bring (or threaten) suit for Felony Contempt of Business Model and sue or scare off nascent competitors before they can even get started.

Is it any wonder that investors now call any business dominated by a Big Tech giant the kill zone, rather than seeing it as an opportunity to seize a market from a bloated tyrant? It started with printers, but it definitely hasn’t ended there.

Related Cases:  Lexmark v. Static Control Case Archive

A Major Police Body Camera Maker Hits Pause on Face Surveillance

Communities and lawmakers across the country are waking up to the fact that using face recognition for government surveillance is a troubling trend, particularly when used with cameras that police officers wear. On Thursday, Axon—a major police body-worn camera maker—added its voice to calls to press the pause button on this type of face surveillance, saying it will no longer be “commercializing face matching products on our body cameras at this time.”

Axon’s decision follows strong opposition to government use of face surveillance. San Francisco in May banned city use of face surveillance. This month, Oakland, California and Somerville, Massachusetts have both taken crucial steps toward adopting similar bans, with both measures now headed for full city council votes. 

California Assemblymember Phil Ting has also introduced A.B. 1215, the Body Camera Accountability Act, which would prohibit the application of all biometric technology on cameras worn or carried by police officers.

TAKE ACTION

California: No Face Recognition on Body-Worn Cameras

Axon made its decision based on the recommendation of its independent ethics board. (EFF Tech Projects Director Jeremy Gillula sits on the Axon Ethics Board, in his personal capacity.)

As EFF and others have noted, the interaction between face surveillance and police cameras have grave implications for privacy, free speech, and racial justice.

In its own statement, Axon highlighted the need for lawmakers to think carefully about the issues raised by using face surveillance on police cameras. 

Technology is moving much faster than legislative bodies and courts can respond. Hence, we believe it is critical for technology leaders to work hard to understand the ethical, legal, and community implications for new technologies that are too new to be effectively covered by existing law.

The ethics board report, published by New York University’s Policing Project, has also recommended that jurisdictions should not adopt face recognition technology without “going through open, transparent, democratic processes” that allow for public analysis, input and objection. “Further, development of face recognition products should be premised on evidence-based benefits,” the report said.

This is exactly the sort of review and auditing process for surveillance technologies, known as CCOPS or SERO, that EFF and others have supported across the country.

It should be noted that Axon has left open the possibility that it may include face recognition in the future, which is why we need federal and state laws—such as A.B. 1215—that would ban the use of biometric technology on body cameras altogether.  As New York Timescolumnist Charlie Warzel wrote about Axon’s announcement, “true progress will have to come from regulation at the city, state or federal level.”

We agree. Californians, please urge your lawmakers to pass A.B. 1215. Communities across the country can urge their lawmakers to ensure that police body-worn cameras, intended to act as a tool to improve police accountability, do not morph into a mass biometric surveillance network.

Again!? The NSA’s Phone Records Program Still Can’t Stay Within the Law

Just as the Trump administration has signaled its interest in a permanent “clean” reauthorization  of the Patriot Act’s phone surveillance provision, the NSA proves once again that it is not to be trusted with these tools. New documents obtained by the ACLU and reported in the Wall Street Journal have revealed that last year the NSA once again collected phone records of Americans that it was not authorized to obtain.

The NSA collected Information, including who phone-users were calling and for how long, after a telecommunications firm began sending the information to the NSA—despite the fact that it had received no orders that would have authorized them to do so. Although the name of the company is redacted, for years it has been widely reported that large telecommunication firms like AT&T and Verizon have worked with the NSA as part of BLARNEY, an NSA project that leverages “commercial partnerships” in order to gather intelligence.

 This “anomalous” unauthorized collection of American’s private information comes only a few months after a separate incident in which “technical irregularities” resulted in the NSA getting access to many more records than it should have. In response, the NSA erased three years of all of its collected metadata, which amounted to records of hundreds of millions of phone calls. The documents released today include an assessment by the NSA that the overcollection had a “significant impact on civil liberties and privacy,” which is putting it mildly.

 The NSA’s telephone record program, conducted under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, allows it to collect metadata of phone calls, including phone numbers, time stamps, and other identifying information. While this information may seem benign, many organizations and outlets, including EFF, have demonstrated how things like time stamps, phone numbers, and the GPS coordinates of where calls were made can be stitched together to reveal potentially compromising information about a person. Metadata can, for instance, have dire consequences for vulnerable populations who fear retribution for political beliefs, or whose metadata could be used in immigration enforcement.

 With Section 215 up for re-authorization in December, these two instances prove that it’s time to let the NSA’s permission to sweep up phone records expire. If Section 215 is allowed to be reauthorized, accidents like this—in which an unthinkable amount of our personal data winds up in the hands of the government—will continue to happen.

Related Cases:  Jewel v. NSA

The Cost of Endless War

The “war on terror” has cost us twice what we’d need to pay for healthcare for every American.

All Publicity is Good Publicity

The camps at the border are getting some bad press. Time to call in the spin doctors.

Just Like the Real Thing

All the new amenities at your co-working space.

The Pioneering Surgeon Who Defied Victorian Gender Norms

Assigned female at birth, Dr. James Barry lived life as a man—and saved lives.

With Census Decision, Trump’s GOP Falters in March Toward White Minority Rule

The Supreme Court's failure to address the racist underpinnings of the census citizenship question — even while blocking it — is concerning.

The post With Census Decision, Trump’s GOP Falters in March Toward White Minority Rule appeared first on The Intercept.

Josh Gottheimer Warned Democratic Leaders He Had Votes to Block Bill Mandating Better Conditions for Children in Detention

The bill passed by Congress “does nothing to hold a rogue agency accountable for its cruelty,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal.

The post Josh Gottheimer Warned Democratic Leaders He Had Votes to Block Bill Mandating Better Conditions for Children in Detention appeared first on The Intercept.

NYPD Added Nearly 2,500 New People to Its Gang Database in the Last Year

The secret gang database maintained by New York police consists almost entirely of brown and black people.

The post NYPD Added Nearly 2,500 New People to Its Gang Database in the Last Year appeared first on The Intercept.

The Democratic Debates Showcased the Most Dangerous Form of Climate Denial

An ongoing forest fire has ravaged more than 42,000 acres of the Florida Everglades. Forest fires are a natural occurrence, but they are expected to get worse as climate change lengthens the fire season and reduces rainfall. About 40 miles south of the blaze is Miami, a coastal city of half a million resting on a foundation of porous limestone, which floods on sunny days and could be partly underwater by 2045.

The first Democratic Primary Debates of the 2020 election unfolded in Miami amid this climate chaos. Climate change will transform the future in unforeseeably ways. But this transformation is already happening all around us. The next decade is the time to embark on a just transition to climate safety: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report says that we need to cut global carbon emissions in half in this timeframe to have any hope of staving off a climate crisis that would existentially threaten human society. Alarmingly, most Democratic candidates have made it clear that they have little understanding of the magnitude of the threat and the response required to meet it. And moderators curated debates devoid of the urgency this moment demands.

On Wednesday, the first debate devoted a total of seven minutes to the existential threat of global warming. The moderators evidenced paltry knowled­ge of the subject: Chuck Todd confused the key terms “mitigation” (reducing emissions) and “adaptation” (increasing resiliency), and echoed right-wing talking points about the “cost” of addressing climate change. None of the 10 candidates mentioned the Green New Deal. On Thursday, it was eight minutes spent on climate, and three candidates referred briefly to the Green New Deal. One of them was John Hickenloper, who cited it as an example of why candidates shouldn’t identify as socialists.

Of course, it’s far more important to look at what candidates actually do beyond the debate spotlight. Jay Inslee stands out for convincingly campaigning on climate change as his number-one priority. His plans for sector-by-sector decarbonization and phasing out the fossil fuel industry are impressively detailed—and even suggest using state power to decommission oil, gas and coal assets.

Elizabeth Warren has multiple plans for that, and aspects of them, like the call for a concerted industrial policy and mass job creation, are good. But a worrying thread of “economic patriotism” unites those plans: She sees the global market for green technology as a way for the U.S. to reassert its manufacturing prowess, a quest for dominance that would undermine global cooperation.

At last night’s debate, Todd did a slightly better job presenting his climate question, framing climate change as a “major concern for voters” and asking for policy details. But candidates’ responses left much to be desired.

Kamala Harris referred to the “climate crisis” as an “existential threat” and voiced support for a Green New Deal, but quickly pivoted to other supposed threats—Trump, King Jong Un, and Putin—thus undercutting the punch of her initially bold statement.

Joe Biden waxed nostalgic about the Obama administration’s achievements, emphasized the need for electric-vehicle-recharging stations, and discussed jobs and the Paris Accord before pointing the finger at the “85 percent of the world makes up the rest” of carbon emissions.

Hickenloper, a man who once claimed he drank fracking fluid to prove it was harmless, said working with the oil and gas industry will help address climate change. But those industries are to blame both for climate change and for fostering the dangerous negligence of our political system; they must be dismantled and their executives prosecuted.

Pete Buttigieg called for “aggressive and ambitious measures.” His first example? A “carbon tax and dividend”—the posterchild for the gradual, technocratic, market-oriented proposals that have failed to gain political traction or avert climate chaos.

Of the 20, only Bernie Sanders seemed to grasp—and relish—the need to confront the fossil fuel industry, and to divert the “trillion and a half dollars” we spend “on weapons of destruction” to transform our energy systems. It’s less the dollar amount that sets him apart, and more the way he links international cooperation and U.S. demilitarization—and doesn’t shy away from naming climate change as our “common enemy.” Yet he didn’t mention the Green New Deal, even though it is an element of his campaign platform.

Weeks earlier, Tom Perez, chair of the Democratic National Committee, rejected calls for a debate centered on the climate emergency. His reasons, which framed the climate crisis as one narrow “issue” among many others and concern-trolled about breaking the previously-devised rules governing debate procedure, were cringeworthy. He also threatened any candidate who participates in a unsanctioned debate with exclusion from the official ones.

By doing so, he offered an on-the-nose illustration of how the political establishment is aiding and abetting the crimes of fossil capital. Perhaps Democratic Party elites believe that ignoring climate change is somehow necessary to winning over some slice of voters against Trump next November. But they're wrong on the politics: People know that action is necessary. According to recent polls commissioned by Data for Progress, 64% of registered Democratic voters want a climate debate and 71% support a Green New Deal.

On Tuesday, hundreds of Sunrise Movement activists descended the DNC headquarters, demanding a climate debate. As of Thursday, dozens remained, having camped out overnight. Their persistence matches the depth of the crisis. As Sunrise co-founder Varshini Prakash said in a statement released Tuesday, “Business as usual is a death sentence.”

The most dangerous form of climate denial is no longer Senator Jim Inhofe throwing a snowball on the Senate floor to prove that global warming isn’t real, or Trump calling climate change a Chinese hoax. It’s liberal and centrist politicians who should know better appealing to “bipartisan consensus,” immediately shifting the blame to other countries when the U.S. has among the highest per-capita emissions in the world, or asking, “How will we pay for it?”

Moderators shouldn't wait roughly an hour and 19 minutes, as they did at last night's debate, to ask the first question explicitly about climate change—and Democratic candidates shouldn't wait for them to do so either. Climate change shapes every other political question. It does not belong on a laundry list of topics, because we can’t build a better world without a livable planet.

California Set to Ban Hair Discrimination

This is the kind of thing that I suppose Fox News will mock someday, but it’s a good idea: The CROWN Act, which passed the state Senate in April, was approved by the state Assembly on Thursday. It would outlaw policies that punish black employees and students for their hairstyles. Supporters say the bill’s acronym […]

Bernie Sanders Said Medicare for All Would Protect Abortion. Here’s Why.

Last night, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was asked on the Democratic presidential debate stage how he would protect abortion rights in the face of unprecedented attacks on the procedure and the possibility that Roe v. Wade might be overturned. Sanders gave a surprising response: He’d fight back against restrictions on abortion with his signature legislation, Medicare […]