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What Fox News is doing to white people.

Connect the Dots

Who’s the inspiration behind all the recent white nationalist attacks? A whodunnit for the ages!

Starman

Sean Spicer heads to “Dancing With the Stars”

Ninth Circuit Goes a Step Further to Protect Privacy in Border Device Searches

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a new ruling in U.S. v. Cano [.pdf] that offers greater privacy protection for people crossing the border with their electronic devices, but it doesn’t go as far as we sought in our amicus brief.

Cano had attempted to cross the border near San Diego when cocaine was found in his car. He was arrested at the port of entry and border agents manually and forensically searched his cell phone. He was prosecuted for importing illegal drugs and moved to suppress the evidence found on his phone. The Ninth Circuit held that the searches of his cell phone violated the Fourth Amendment and vacated his conviction.

In U.S. v. Cotterman (2013), the Ninth Circuit had circumscribed the border search exception as it applies to electronic devices. The court held that the Fourth Amendment required border agents to have had reasonable suspicion—a standard between no suspicion and probable cause—before they conducted a forensic search, aided by sophisticated software, of the defendant’s laptop. Unfortunately, the Cotterman court also held that a manual search of a laptop is “routine” and so the border search exception applies: no warrant or any suspicion of wrongdoing is needed.

In Cano, it was disappointing though not surprising that the three-judge panel reaffirmed Cotterman’s en banc rule and held that a manual search of a cell phone requires no suspicion while a forensic search requires reasonable suspicion. We argued in our amicus brief that the Ninth Circuit should revisit this issue and require a probable cause warrant for all border device searches, in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Riley v. California (2014). In that watershed case, the Court acknowledged the extraordinary privacy interests people have in their cell phones, irrespective of how the devices are searched, and held that police must obtain a warrant to search the cell phone of an arrestee.

On the bright side, the Cano court further held that warrantless, suspicionless border device searches—both manual and forensic—are only permissible under the Fourth Amendment to determine whether the device contains digital contraband. The court agreed with the arguments we presented in our amicus brief that the border search exception is “narrow,” being justified by the purpose of interdicting contraband and not simply finding evidence of illegal activity. Additionally, the court held with respect to forensic searches, “We clarify Cotterman by holding that ‘reasonable suspicion’ in this context means that officials must reasonably suspect that the cell phone contains digital contraband.”

While we still believe that electronic devices should fall outside the border search exception and thus require a warrant for search, limiting the scope of all device searches under the border search exception to looking for digital contraband is a good pro-privacy rule.

The Cano court emphasized that border agents may not conduct warrantless, suspicionless border device searches “for evidence of past or future border-related crimes.” This is striking because we know from our civil case against the government, Alasaad v. Nielsen, that CBP and ICE agents do regularly conduct device searches (under the border search exception, they argue) to look for mere evidence of border-related crimes and in support of general law enforcement. The Cano rule means that border agents within the Ninth Circuit states can’t conduct broad-ranging fishing expeditions for digital data such as correspondence between the traveler and his associates, or metadata like location information. Such data might be evidence, but is not itself contraband.

It’s important to note, however, that emails and text messages are not totally off limits. The Cano court noted that child pornography may be sent via email or text message, and so border device searches for digital contraband within these kinds of cell phone data are reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.

As for Cano himself, the Ninth Circuit held that the recording of phone numbers and text messages during a manual search “had no connection whatsoever to digital contraband.” And while border agents “had reason to suspect that Cano’s cell phone would contain evidence leading to additional drugs,” the forensic search was unconstitutional because “the record does not give rise to any objectively reasonable suspicion that the digital data in the phone contained contraband.”

The Cano court also stated that “the detection-of-contraband justification” for warrantless, suspicionless border device searches “would rarely seem to apply to an electronic search of a cell phone outside the context of child pornography.” We will advocate for courts to narrowly define the “digital contraband” that, under Cano, is the outer limit of the scope of warrantless, suspicionless border device searches. We will also continue to advocate for a warrant requirement.

Bernie Sanders Calls To Seize the Means of Electricity Production

A year after a neglected Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) power line sparked a wildfire that tore through northern California, presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday visited Chico, Calif., where many who fled the fire made a new home. He held a town hall the same day he released a new climate plan, in which he declared that the days of investor-owned utilities—with their profit incentives to underinvest in the electric grid and double down on fossil fuels—have to end.

He’s right: It is time for a massive public takeover of the nation’s electric grid.

The for-profit companies that reign over our energy system now have shown no meaningful sign of being willing to transform our energy system; they are much more interested in shareholder gains and business as usual. Together, for-profit utilities and fossil fuel companies have created powerful political-economic machines across the country to solidify the status quo of extraction and extortion. In contrast, democratic public ownership of our energy system could prioritize community benefit over profit, paving the way for a just and equitable energy system.

“We will end greed in our energy system,” says Sanders’ climate plan. “The renewable energy generated by the Green New Deal will be publicly owned.”

His plan comes as public power ownership campaigns mobilize across the country. California’s movement took off after the state’s largest for-profit utility, PG&E, requested a bailout after the fire forced the utility to declare bankruptcy under the weight of liability claims. Communities across the state are now demanding public ownership, and the company’s hometown of San Francisco has begun looking into municipalization.

In New York, in the midst of a July heat wave, Con Edison sacrificed low-income communities of color in Brooklyn by cutting their power to avoid a larger blackout. Residents responded with outrage, and Mayor Bill de Blasio, another presidential contender, called for kicking out the utility in favor of public ownership.

The birthplace of the monopoly for-profit utility, Chicago, just introduced legislation to take over Commonwealth Edison after years of rate hikes and inaction on climate change. Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa said that "through municipalization, Chicago could accelerate decarbonization, and implement a progressive rate structure that ensures better rates for working-class Chicagoans.”

Over the past months, multiple Democratic presidential candidates have come out in favor of democratizing our energy system. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (who this week dropped out to run again for governor) centered much of his plan for a clean energy economy on community-owned and community-led renewables. And Julian Castro—the former mayor of San Antonio, where one of the more progressive public utilities is located—has voiced support for policies that empower the public to set up democratic utilities not only for electricity but also internet services and water.

But Sanders has voiced the most direct support for 100% public power, and this demand is fundamental to his climate plan. Unlike other proposals to date, Sanders’ plan explicitly commits to using public dollars for everything, refusing to leave the transition to corporate investors who so far have failed the public. By doing so, the Green New Deal proposal also ensures that the benefits of the plan don’t disappear into the pockets of billionaires like Elon Musk but are directed toward a more equitable society. Publicly funded projects, when structured so communities have a say in the types of projects and jobs they create, also have the potential to be more accountable, and can prioritize marginalized communities’ access to high-paying, unionized public jobs and respect the rights of the communities where this new infrastructure is built.

Sanders’ plan envisions harnessing and expanding the four already-operating federal Power Marketing Administrations (PMAs) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), as well as creating a fifth PMA, to build out renewable energy. It would inject $1.52 trillion into renewable energy expansion and $852 billion into energy storage, working particularly with publicly or cooperatively owned utilities. By 2035, this plan would essentially decommodify energy generation through the federal authorities. Unlike the TVA of the past, designed largely for the benefit of white men in search of work in the South, the entire plan is based on the Jemez Principles of environmental justice that focus on bottom-up organizing and including all people in decision-making.

At the municipal, district and state levels, Sanders explicitly commits to supporting the growth of public and co-op utilities. Already, public and cooperatively owned utilities serve 49 million people in the United States, at lower costs and with generally more reliable service. In fact, the entire state of Nebraska runs fully off of public power after the state expelled the for-profit utility in the 1940s because of its extortionist rates. Unlike their for-profit counterparts, these entities are ultimately beholden to the public and any profits are reinvested into the community’s schools, parks and public services. This plan would help this sector expand its reach and invest more in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and much more.

It also provides express assistance to states and municipalities so they could start their own democratically owned utilities—ones driven by the public interest and a climate-resilient future. This could be key for places like New York or Chicago that are starting the process of taking over their utility, seeking guidance and expertise throughout the process. By taking energy utilities into public ownership, we can catalyze renewable energy deployment at the same time we redistribute wealth and power.

Elements of Sanders’ proposal are similar to a proposal for a Community Ownership of Power Administration that was co-created by The Democracy Collaborative (where I work) and grassroots energy groups.

Sanders’ plans for public ownership don’t stop at electricity. He would also allocate funds to massively increase public broadband projects to give people access to a new and necessary public good: the internet. An estimated 19 million people, largely located in rural America, still do not have access to broadband. He offers a vision for integrated and effective local public transportation systems with high-speed rail connections. He stresses the importance of building high-quality, low-carbon-footprint public housing, as well as weatherizing already-standing homes to end energy poverty. The plan reinstates the federal Civilian Conservation Corps jobs program to restore our public lands. It invests dramatically more in public regional development agencies like the Appalachian Regional Commission. It even creates spaces for cooperatively owned grocery stores to facilitate local agriculture not held hostage by monopolies like Monsanto.

Sanders is not alone in his call for more public ownership. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has similarly audacious plans for services like broadband, and both Warren and Sen. Cory Booker have invoked the Civilian Conservation Corps as a model. However, Sanders’ Green New Deal proposal stands alone in its comprehensive commitment to public funding and programs.

The future is public. It is accountable to the principles of environmental justice. It is democratic. It is decommodified. Sanders’ plan is the latest to set the bar for a new economy shepherded in by the green energy transition. We learned long ago that private interests won’t solve for climate and justice at the same time—that change will have to come from united and empowered people. Now, this realization is firmly on the presidential political agenda. 

Democratic National Committee Rejects Call for Official Climate Debate

The Democratic National Committee on Thursday voted not to hold an official debate dedicated to discussing global warming, once again rejecting a longstanding demand from activists who argue that the climate crisis has gotten short shrift during the presidential primary campaign. But the DNC’s resolutions committee also voted to advance a measure that—if approved Saturday—would […]

Browsers Take a Stand Against Kazakhstan’s Invasive Internet Surveillance

Yesterday, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple’s Safari browsers started blocking a security certificate previously used by Kazakh ISPs to compromise their users’ security and perform dragnet surveillance. We encourage other browsers to take similar security measures. Since the fix has been implemented upstream in Chromium, it shouldn’t take long for other Chromium-based browsers, like Brave, Opera, and Microsoft’s Edge, to do the same.

What Happened, and Why Is It a Problem?

Back in July, Kazakhtelecom, Kazakhstan’s state telecommunications operator, began regularly intercepting encrypted web (HTTPS) connections. Usually, this kind of attack on encrypted HTTPS connections is detectable and leads to loud and visible browser warnings or other safeguards that prevent users from continuing. These security measures work because the certificate used is not trusted by user devices or browsers.

However, Kazakh ISPs also sent instructions telling users to compromise their own security by manually trusting the certificate on their devices and browsers, bypassing the security checks that are built into most devices.

The two-step of Kazakh ISPs deploying an untrusted certificate, and users manually trusting that certificate allows the ISPs to read and even alter the online communication of any of their users, including sensitive user data, messages, emails, and passwords sent over the web. Research and monitoring from Censored Planet found around 40 domains that were being regularly intercepted, including Google services, Facebook services, Twitter, and VK (a Russian social media site).

The government of Kazakhstan had expressed their intention to perform dragnet surveillance like this in the past, but, following widespread backlash, it failed to act on those statements. Now, it seems the Kazakh authorities were serious about undermining the privacy of their entire country's communications — even if it meant forcing individual Internet users to manually compromise their devices’ own built-in privacy protections.

What’s Next?

Earlier this month, Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee stated that Kazakhstan had halted the program. The announcement, along with a tweet from the president of Kazakhstan, called the program a successful pilot, claiming it was mounted to detect and counteract external security threats, even though the government’s actions primarily compromised the security of Kazakhstan’s own citizens. The announcement also stated that the program may be deployed again in the future. Censored Planet’s live monitoring indicate that the system was turned off after the first week of August.

This step by Google, Mozilla, and Apple to block the particular certificate that Kazakh ISPs used for traffic interception prevents the government of Kazakhstan from resuming this invasive program, as well as setting a precedent such that browsers may take similar actions against network attacks of this nature in the future. Without strong pushback, it’s likely that Kazakhstan, or other states, might try to repeat their “pilot,” so we also encourage browser vendors, device manufacturers, and operating systems to improve the warnings and tighten the flow around manually trusting new certificates.

Kazakhstan’s actions were a drastic response to the slowly improving security of end-user devices and end-to-end communication online, but they and other countries could take even more invasive steps. Faced with just a handful of secure browsers, the government could next push their citizens to use a browser that does not currently implement this safeguard. We encourage other browsers to take the same steps and stand in solidarity against the government of Kazakhstan’s decision to compromise the Internet security of their entire population. What’s more, designers of user software should anticipate such intrusive state action in future threat models.

Dietary zinc protects against Streptococcus pneumoniae infection, study finds

Researchers have uncovered a crucial link between dietary zinc intake and protection against Streptococcus pneumoniae, the primary bacterial cause of pneumonia.

Bernie Sanders’s Climate Plan Is More Radical Than His Opponents’ — And More Likely to Succeed

The $16.3 trillion plan would not only transition American society away from fossil fuels but renegotiate decades-old nostrums about the government’s role in the economy.

The post Bernie Sanders’s Climate Plan Is More Radical Than His Opponents’ — And More Likely to Succeed appeared first on The Intercept.

Joe Biden and the Perils of Bipartisanship

The Democratic presidential campaign playbook has, for decades, included grand promises to reach out to the GOP to solve the nation’s ills.

In 2020, some candidates are throwing that playbook out the window.

“If the Republicans are going to try to block us on key pieces that we’re trying to move forward, then you better believe we gotta keep all the options on the table,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said, referring to the possibility of eliminating the filibuster. In a speech to the 2019 California Democratic Convention, Sen. Bernie Sanders (IVt.) pledged “no middle ground” on issues dear to progressives. Even centrist Michael Bennet, at the June Democratic debate, acknowledged that working with Republicans would be impossible in 2021: “Gridlock will not magically disappear.”

Four progressive lawmakers elected in 2018— Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)—model what a rebellious Democratic approach can look like. The “squad,” as they’re known, has proposed far-reaching measures like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal while combating right-wing attacks and calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump. While mainstream Democrats still pledge to build bridges, this new generation is more likely to occupy them.

It’s a remarkable turnaround. If worship of the U.S. Constitution is an American civic religion, with the Founders as prophets and Capitol Hill as a place of worship, then bipartisanship has become its holy sacrament.

This uncompromising approach from young progressive legislators and presidential candidates like Warren and Sanders is also an implicit rebuke of former Vice President Joe Biden, who is campaigning on the promise of an outstretched, bipartisan hand.

For Biden and his generation of Democratic lawmakers, bipartisanship has long been hailed as a worthy end in its own right, no matter the result. He has pledged that a new day will dawn once Trump is removed from the White House. “This nation cannot function without generating consensus,” Biden said in May. “You will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends.”

But as moderator Chuck Todd told Biden at the first Democratic debate, “It does sound as if you haven’t seen what’s been happening in the United States Senate over the last 12 years.”

An increasingly far-right GOP has ruthlessly obstructed Democrats while dangling cooperation to lure them rightward. The outcome has been a disaster for progressives. The parties have cooperated to water down or kill left-leaning measures and advance a right-wing agenda, from shredding the New Deal to ramping up deportation, turning the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama into graveyards of progressive policies. Democrats increasingly understand that, if they want to generate consensus, they’ll have to do it some other way than meeting a right-moving GOP in the “middle.”

In the first round of the Democratic primary debates, Biden was the only candidate (besides little-known centrist John Delaney) to say “bipartisan.”

Biden, however, is not the only one clinging to faith in cross-party cooperation.

In April 2017, New York Times columnist David Brooks speculated that, assuming the departure of Trump in 2020, Congress would again enjoy a “world with the possibility of bipartisanship.” Politico Magazine’s Michael Grunwald explained that Biden’s “bipartisan friendships, Washington experience and genial Uncle Joe approach really can help produce results.”

Indeed, “discomfort with open division is part of the DNA of the nation,” says historian Rick Perlstein, author of The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan. “It’s all about repressing this original fissure: Slavery. The entire history, for the first half of the 19th century, is this all-consuming attempt to keep this genie in the bottle.”

To get slave-owners to at least pay lip service to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” the Founders compromised that three out of every five slaves would be counted in a state’s population when apportioning congressional seats. Slave states wielded this inflated electoral power to ensure slavery continued in the new republic, while the Compromise of 1850 facilitated slavery’s westward spread and made the federal government responsible for recovering “fugitive” slaves.

These compromises “came at a tremendous cost,” says historian Manisha Sinha, author of The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition. “If you think of slavery as a gross abuse of human rights, then compromise doesn’t sound so good.”

This compromising dynamic outlived slavery. The Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction, made room for Jim Crow and, by pulling federal troops out of the South, gave a green light to racist terrorists like the Ku Klux Klan.

Yet Biden and others who yearn for the “pragmatism” of days past aren’t inventing things. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first 100 days—so consequential they would turn that number into a measure of success for every president thereafter—likely would have failed had he not secured pivotal support from Republicans and even put several in his cabinet. Four-fifths of Republicans in Congress voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act signed by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson.

All of this was possible, says historian Thomas Frank, in part because “there was a time when the parties were not divided by ideology or by their place on the political spectrum. The parties were regional and ethnic.”

In the early 20th century, Republicans dominated politics as a party of the Northeast, white Protestants, business owners, African Americans and the middle class, while Democrats foundered as a largely agrarian party of the South and Great Plains. Things changed when Roosevelt cobbled together an ultimately unstable coalition of Southerners, Catholic immigrants in urban areas, blue-collar workers and, crucially, African Americans, who fled the GOP as they began economically benefiting from the New Deal. In practice, this meant progressive politicians from both parties could work together to get things passed.

So what happened? Commentators across the spectrum name one culprit: Partisanship.

“Too much estrangement on both sides,” groused Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) in 2018. A 2017 Atlantic Council report on U.S. political dysfunction blamed a “dangerously codependent” partisan divide birthed by gerrymandering that made officials accountable to partisan radicals. Bruce Wolpe, who worked on the Democratic staff in Congress during the first Obama administration, charged that Congress was beset by “hyperpartisanship” defined by “no compromise, no consensus” and “no working together in the national interest.”

In June, Biden echoed these sentiments, bemoaning the loss of “civility” that marked his salad days in Congress when he worked with segregationists despite disagreements.

“We got things done,” Biden said. “We got it finished.”

These analyses omit, however, the key agent of this growing political polarization: the GOP.

Soon after FDR took office in 1933, a coterie of conservative intellectuals, prominent political figures and wealthy businessmen (such as the Du Pont brothers) began organizing against what they saw as the “socialistic” overreach of the New Deal. With a messianic resolve and a seemingly bottomless pit of cash, they created think tanks, books, periodicals, colleges, television and radio programming and more. The result was an alternative intellectual landscape that demonized government and deified the free market.

Electoral politics followed. Frustrated with the “dimestore New Deal”-ism of the postwar GOP, what came to be called the “New Right” engineered a grassroots takeover of the Republican Party, resulting in the 1964 presidential nomination of hardline conservative Barry Goldwater. While Goldwater lost spectacularly, liberalism’s triumphs only fueled right-wing organizing. A well-cultivated conservative and evangelical backlash against the civil rights victories of the 1960s and the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision culminated in the 1980 victory of Ronald Reagan, previously viewed largely as an unelectable ideologue out of step with the times.

“The election of Ronald Reagan was a symbol of the eclipse of the Rockefeller Republicans by the Barry Goldwater wing, sending a signal to the party to get on board,” says Corey Robin, professor of political science at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York Graduate Center.

Reagan used his bully pulpit to popularize the idea of getting “the government off the backs of the people.”

“The conservative wing of the GOP established hegemony over not just the Republican Party, but the American political order,” says Robin.

Testimonies from the conservative Hoover Institution at the close of Reagan’s presidency attest to that fact. As historian Stephen Ambrose put it, while Reagan “failed to break the Democratic hold on Congress, he did force the Democratic Party to move to the right.” Historian Karl O’Lessker wrote that “Reaganomics may well have caused a fundamental shift in the political community’s approach to fiscal policy. … There has been little if any disposition among congressional Democrats to advocate, still less vote for, big new spending or taxation programs.” 

The GOP came to explicitly align itself with the agenda of super-rich, right-wing patrons like the Koch brothers, while the Democrats, shell-shocked from electoral defeats, began relying on big-dollar fundraisers that hastened a rightward turn.

“[Republican Party patrons have] turned the GOP into a kind of Leninist party of the Right, one in which no dissent is allowed after the course has been set,” says historian Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. “It wants to dramatically diminish the power of the federal government in order to remove the reins from capitalists.” And yet, she says, “We are still operating as a nation as if there is a Republican Party.”

The newer, more strident class of Republicans who entered Congress in 1979 “had not been exposed to the demoralizing impact of Watergate, the Agnew and Nixon resignations, the Ford defeat, and maneuvering in a Congress dominated by two-to-one Democrats,” read a 1979-1980 internal report commissioned by GOP congressional leadership. “Where older members saw persistence and shrewdness, the freshmen saw timidity and indecision.” Newt Gingrich was one of them. In the 1990s, he would continue the process that Reagan began by spearheading the tactic of obstructionism by the minority.

Gingrich fancied himself “the most serious, systematic revolutionary of modern times” and called for “large-scale, radical change.” Working to polarize debate between the parties, he pioneered the threat of a government shutdown as a political strategy. He calculated that obstructionism would nurture popular contempt toward the institution of Congress, which would serve the Right’s anti-government agenda.

Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who served as House Majority Whip when Gingrich was Speaker, later wrote about the GOP’s strategy under Clinton. Knowing that Clinton and the Senate would tack to the center, he explained, the GOP would “start every policy initiative from as far to the political right as we could” to move “the center farther to the right” and achieve a “much greater success rate than we had ever known.” DeLay boasted in his memoirs, “We moved the whole of American governance to the right.”

The old-guard Republicans joined in. Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole pioneered the filibuster-threat strategy now synonymous with Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), making 60 votes necessary for anything to get done, from healthcare reform to a stimulus package.

This rightward shift led scholars Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein—at the Brookings Institution and the conservative American Enterprise Institute, respectively— to declare in 2012 that the GOP had “become an insurgent outlier.” The party was “ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science.”

Joe Biden’s political career is an exemplar of the price the Democratic Party paid as the Right slid into the dark reaches of the political spectrum.

As overt racism faded in polite society after the 1960s, those committed to beating back the advance of civil rights found proxy issues to dog whistle a racist tune: crime, drugs, welfare and busing. They found a willing partner in a 30-year-old freshman senator: Biden.

Biden hailed from Delaware, whose culture and borders straddled the Mason-Dixon line and whose political and economic life was dominated for decades by the Du Pont family that had helped jumpstart the rebellion against the New Deal. (As Biden would later assure a Republican Rotary Club in South Carolina in advance of his 2008 presidential run, Delaware, a slave state, had only “fought beside the North. … because we couldn’t figure out how to get to the South.”)

As conflict over court-ordered busing roiled his home state, Biden led a crusade against the civil rights measure, later boasting that he made it politically acceptable for other liberals to oppose it. He built alliances with Republican racists like Sen. Jesse Helms (N.C.) and Sen. Strom Thurmond (S.C.), the record-holder for longest filibuster in history, a 24-hour attempt to stall the Civil Rights Act of 1957. During the Reagan administration, Biden, Helms and Thurmond would help usher in an era of mass incarceration, working together to establish racist crack cocaine sentencing guidelines and harsh mandatory minimum drug sentences.

Biden also led the way on budget-slashing: In 1984, with Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley (Iowa) and Nancy Kassebaum (Kan.), Biden put forward a budget “freeze” that cut deficits by $100 billion more than Reagan proposed and eliminated scheduled increases to Social Security and Medicare. Biden also ranked among the sizable number of Democrats who gave their stamp of approval to signature Reagan victories like increased military spending, privatization and lower taxes for the rich.

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton was cutting his teeth in this same punishing era. In 1980, Clinton lost his bid for reelection as governor of Arkansas after raising car license fees to fund highway repairs and trying to rein in the timber industry. The loss taught Clinton to eschew challenging corporate power and, instead, embrace what Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial page editor Paul Greenberg termed “the politics of ultraconsensus.”

While Clinton’s presidency is remembered as a time of partisan warfare, bipartisan consensus was a quiet fixture throughout. Clinton brought in his own personal Rasputin in the form of political operative Dick Morris, who laid his strategy out in a memo: “fast-forward the Gingrich agenda” to make “Republican issues less appealing” and take the wind out of their sails. Unbeknownst to Clinton, Morris also created a back channel to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), a former client, whom he giddily told: “We’ll pass everything.”

“Everything” meant measures like welfare reform, a balanced budget, cuts to Medicare and an immigration overhaul that helped create the deportation state currently operated by Trump.

Biden was an important player in these bipartisan deals. As Senate Judiciary Chair under Clinton, Biden led the passage of the infamous 1994 Crime Bill and worked to make sure Clinton would fulfill his promise to “end welfare as we know it.” With Republican Sen. Arlen Specter (Penn.), Biden lamented “the polarizing partisanship and presidential politics that have permeated the issue” and insisted that a “tough, bipartisan welfare reform bill is easily within reach.” In 1996, the Senate passed welfare reform (what Lott described as “the Holy Grail of [the GOP’s] legislative master plan”) thanks to the votes of 51 Republicans and 23 Democrats.

“These were great monuments to consensus in Washington,” says Thomas Frank, author of Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? “They were just downstream of racism.”

Bipartisanship reached its apogee after September 11, when Biden swiftly became one of the most prominent Democrats to hitch himself to President George W. Bush’s foreign policy. The terrorist attacks created a stunning uniformity of opinion, and Biden, up for reelection in 2002, would soon be heavily criticized in the Delaware press for a speech that appeared dovish. Biden told reporters they should count him “in the 90%” of voters who backed Bush. He stacked a hearing on Iraq with pro-war voices and made regular TV appearances parroting the administration’s talking points about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. And, like 28 other Democratic senators, Biden voted to authorize the war in Iraq.

In 2008, Vice President Biden found a home with “postpartisan” Obama, who, Perlstein says, “was wedded to the myths of consensus in a way that a lot of his supporters hadn’t realized at the time.”

Obama had risen to stardom with his 2004 convention speech denying the existence of a “red” and “blue” America, a feeling that suffused Democratic politics. Nary a 2008 primary debate went by without Sen. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.), for example, pledging something or other of a bipartisan nature: a “bipartisan process” to tackle Social Security, a “bipartisan way” on immigration reform, even “bipartisan diplomacy” headed by “bipartisan emissaries.”

But once president, “Republicans used Obama’s own longing for consensus and bipartisanship against him,” says Frank.

Obama ran aground upon a decidedly partisan opposition that took advantage of racist sentiments against him. He tried for months to secure minimal Republican buy-in on Obamacare so he could slap a “bipartisan” label on it, only for “moderate” Republicans like Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) to use it as leverage to endlessly delay and erode the bill. Obama ramped up deportations as a bipartisan gesture, and the GOP continued to obstruct immigration reform.

Nothing spoke more to Obama’s futile attempt to reach common ground with Republicans than his 2011 attempt at a “grand bargain” on cutting the deficit. Biden was dispatched to negotiate with a radically anti-tax, anti-government GOP. He capitulated to every Republican demand, including cuts to food stamps, Medicare and Social Security, while agreeing to rule out new taxes. Ironically, it was only thanks to the Tea Partiers’ obstinacy that the deal did not pass.

The public was not so lucky in 2010, when Biden made a deal with Sen. McConnell to extend unemployment insurance in exchange for extending the Bush tax cuts and cutting the estate tax. The deal was so lopsided that it outraged even conservative Democrats like Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) and prompted an eight-hour filibuster by Bernie Sanders. Two months later, in the midst of affectionately paying tribute to McConnell at the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center (named for the senator), Biden pointed to the deal as “the only truly bipartisan event that occurred in the first two years of our administration.”

“We both got beat up, but we knew we were doing the right thing,” Biden said. “The process worked.”

He explained to the audience that, whether they were liberals, conservatives, Tea Partiers or Blue Dogs, little actually divided members of Congress.

“We basically all agree on the nature of the problems we face,” Biden said, as McConnell, leading a historically radical campaign of obstructionism against the Obama administration, looked on.

A continuing faith in compromise may well be the last gasp of a dying era.

“A lot of the things that made bipartisanship sound attractive are now vestigial,” Perlstein says. “Like a lot of neuroses, it was a response that was useful for dealing with trauma that was present and important at the time, but has outlasted its usefulness.”

Or, as Robin says, bipartisanship is “a mourning for a neoliberal accord between Democratic and Republican party elites.”

Today’s Democrats increasingly recognize the folly of seeking progressive change by partnering with a GOP that’s fundamentally opposed to it. A new generation of Democratic lawmakers is taking a combative, unflinchingly progressive approach reminiscent of the 1979 class of freshmen GOP legislators that included Gingrich.

As Ocasio-Cortez told journalist Ryan Grim, “The older members really cling to the idea that things are going to go ‘back to normal’ [after Trump]. For us, it’s never been normal, and before that, the bipartisanship was shitty anyway and gave us the War on Drugs, [the Defense of Marriage Act] and stripping the leg[islative] branch of everything.”

These young progressives are backed by social movements whose adherents have no desire to cooperate with nativists and corporatists. Together, they are seeking to remake the existing governing consensus in their image, just as Reagan managed to do four decades prior. The irony is, they’d be following the Right’s own road to success.

“The rise of the Right is the closest thing we have to an example of a political success story in our time in America, and it was largely achieved by smashing consensus,” Frank says.

But MacLean warns it would be a mistake to believe that obstructionism alone is a path to victory. “The radical Right is winning now because its chief architects played a very sophisticated, well-funded, integrated long game and built a vast infrastructure that is well-aligned to achieve their agenda,” MacLean says.

For inspiration, today’s progressives might look back to the anti-slavery movement, which went from a relatively small band of uncompromising, “radical” activists to controlling the presidency and Congress. 

“Abolitionists were never anywhere near a majority in the North or anywhere else,” says Eric Foner, professor emeritus of history at Columbia University. “They were a vanguard.”

Abolitionists worked at both the grassroots and official levels to enact change, whether through legislation and court decisions or direct action and education. They made pioneering use of cutting-edge technology such as the printing press, the railroad and the telegram to spread their message. Their efforts helped lead Abraham Lincoln to drastically shift his thinking, jettisoning ideas like gradual emancipation and instead embracing black citizenship. 

“Abolitionists and radicals were able to shift the pendulum to the left, and were able to make moderates inhabit radical ground,” says Sinha. “In the end, it wasn’t the abolitionists who abolished slavery,” Foner says. “It was more moderate people like Abraham Lincoln. But without the abolitionists, there’s no Lincoln. There’s a symbiotic relationship.”

Political shifts require years of movement building, but change ultimately happens suddenly. Thirty years after the abolitionist movement took off, there were nearly 2 million more slaves in the United States. Three years later, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. 

“The abolitionist movement lasted for a long, long time, and for a long time failed abysmally,” Foner says. “Radicals have to not give up.”

The time is looking ripe for another hegemonic shift. The Trump administration has sparked a wave of political activism and organizing by Americans previously disengaged from politics. A bevy of socialist intellectual organs and figures have risen to newfound prominence, their arguments cited by mainstream news outlets and shared quickly and easily over the internet, much like the cheap, ephemeral books and magazines passed around by conservatives in the mid-20th Century. Workers are showing a renewed militancy, from the teachers who went on strike in red states across the country to the flight attendants who helped end the government shutdown in January.

Polls suggest the public has moved left, supporting everything from Medicare for All and the Green New Deal to a much higher minimum wage. Even as Trump stokes a racist anti-immigrant campaign, polling shows a public more pro-immigrant than ever.

Republicans will demonize these movements. The Democratic establishment will try to ignore them. But as the ranks of today’s radicals grow, and the more a concerted movement to remake the country expands, the harder it will be for even the most committed centrists to hew to their vision of consensus. As Biden told the audience at the McConnell Center eight years ago: “Reality has a way of intruding on one’s tightly held view.”

Los Angeles County Votes to Stop Construction of New Jail-Like Facility, Adding Momentum to National Abolition Movement

“A jail is a jail is a jail. It is not enough to change the name of the facility,” said LA Board of Supervisors member Heidi Solis.

The post Los Angeles County Votes to Stop Construction of New Jail-Like Facility, Adding Momentum to National Abolition Movement appeared first on The Intercept.

#UK should cut #vehicle use to hit #zero-carbon target, say MPs | #Environment | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/22/uk-must-reduce-personal-vehicle-ownership-meet-zero-carbon-target-mps-report

#GlobalWarming #ClimateChange #GreenhouseGases #FossilFuels #Health #Pollution

#Cuadrilla halts #fracking after biggest #tremor yet at #Lancashire site | #Environment | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/22/cuadrilla-halts-fracking-after-biggest-tremor-yet-at-lancashire-site-preston-new-road

#England #UK #FossiFuels

Kashmir is Cut Off

After decades of border disputes, Muslim-majority Kashmir is under a strict crackdown by India’s Hindu nationalist government.

Say A Little Prayer

At First-Ever Native American Presidential Forum, Candidates Answer to Centuries of Injustice

“‘We the people’ has never meant ‘all the people,’” said Independent presidential candidate Mark Charles of the Navajo Nation at the first-ever Native American presidential forum, held August 19 and 20 in Sioux City, Iowa. 

Charles was enthusiastically received as the only member of a tribe currently running for president, and his remarks echoed a theme of the night: the mistreatment and neglect of Native Americans by the federal government.

Named for the revered Winnebago activist Frank LaMere, who died in June, the event presented a series of serious, hour-long discussions with Charles and ten 2020 Democratic presidential candidates: Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D.–Mass.), Bernie Sanders (D.–Vt.), Amy Klobuchar (D.–Minn.), Kamala Harris (D.–Calif.), Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, former HUD Secretary Julian Castro, Marianne Williamson, former Rep. Joe Sestak, former Rep. John Delaney and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. 

“History-making” was how event organizer and Rosebud Sioux tribal member OJ Semans described the rare spotlight on Native issues during a presidential primary.

Semans, who runs the voting-rights group Four Directions with his wife, Barb, believes the candidates took part because they understand that Native Americans are an increasingly powerful voting bloc. Voter turnout is growing in Indian country, and “in an election that’s likely to be close, there are several states where Native American voters can provide a winning margin,” Semans says. He cites Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina and Arizona, which have substantial Native populations that Four Directions is seeking to register and get to the polls (as it did on North Dakota reservations in 2018 when the state imposed ID voting requirements that were particularly difficult for Native people to meet.)

Each candidate was individually questioned by some six to eight panelists. They sat on a stage lined with tribal and U.S. flags, before an auditorium filled with members of tribes from around the country. 

After panelists offered greetings in their traditional languages, they shifted to English to ask about topics of interest to Native people, many related to historic injustices: the struggle to renew traditional languages decimated by the boarding schools, protection of Native children’s right to stay in their families and communities, upholding voting rights, protecting sacred sites threatened with desecration, federal-tribal consultation and U.S. Census undercounts of Native people. Other high-priority topics were economic development, housing, education, healthcare and climate justice.

The new president must support tribal governments’ sovereignty, said De Blasio. As mayor of New York City, he well understood, he said, that “the governments that are closest to people serve them best.”

Marcella LeBeau, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and recipient of the French Legion of Honor and other awards for front-line service as an Army nurse during World War II, asked many if they supported the Remove the Stain Act. This proposed Congressional legislation would rescind medals given to soldiers for the Wounded Knee massacre. Each candidate wholeheartedly agreed.

Charles, for his part, highlighted how, despite the expansion of some rights—like suffrage for women, Native Americans and African Americans—prejudices that date back to the country’s founding remain woven into our political and legal system. He said that the next president must understand how U.S. law remains skewed by the U.S. Constitution’s protections of the rights of white, Christian, land-owning men. 

For example, the high rate of murder and other violence against Native women is compounded by the Supreme Court’s denial of Indian nations’ right to prosecute non-Indians for on-reservation crimes. Charles also noted the ongoing power in U.S. law of the Doctrine of Discovery, a centuries-old papal policy encouraging the subjugation and seizure of non-Christian lands and people. Many may be startled to learn that as recently as 2005, the Supreme Court cited this doctrine in deciding against a tribe in a lawsuit it heard.

Manny and Renee Iron Hawk, who attended the forum from the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, appreciated candidates’ thoughtful responses but wanted more detail in some areas. They wanted to know candidates’ specific plans for protecting water sources and for cleaning up already-contaminated tribal ones. “It’s great to talk about water rights,” Renee says. “But let’s hear something tangible.” 

She also wonders about candidates’ declarations that they would “honor the treaties.” It’s not a simple concept, in her analysis. Some treaties must be honored—full stop—and others may need reconsideration.

“Some treaties had purposely misconstrued and mistranslated provisions and were not upheld anyway,” Renee says. “We need a president who can lead a thorough re-think of the federal-tribal relationship, so we can become fully self-sustaining nations.” 

The New York Times and NPR led their pieces on the forum with Senator Warren’s apology for trying to prove Cherokee ancestry via a DNA test. Her mistaken assumption that test results might convey identity or even tribal affiliation—and end the current president’s Native-oriented slurs against her—became controversial in Indian country. 

But the panelists and attendees seemed not to focus on the misstep by Warren, who was greeted with a standing ovation. In introducing her, first-term U.S. Rep. Deb Haaland (D.–N.M.), from Laguna Pueblo and one of the first Native women elected to Congress, described her as a valued collaborator on numerous bills and initiatives, and “my sister in the struggle.” 

Haaland added that centuries of displacement mean many Natives spend generations finding their families and tribes. “What I’m saying is, she has found us,” said Haaland, who described media focus on the issue as supporting the current president’s racism. Other Natives present described Warren as consistently involved in Congressional Native matters and referred to her with traditional honorifics like “grandmother.”

Warren described a series of plans unveiled Friday—yes, she has plans—for solving the many systemic challenges in justice, economic development and other areas that continue to plague Indian country. “Big structural change, that’s what Congresswoman Haaland and I are fighting for,” she said, “so that everyone has a chance to build a strong future.” 

“We don’t need to hear about the DNA test; we need discussion of the Presidents’ slurs,” Renee said. “Are we invisible people? Our feelings matter. We are still here. In fact, we wouldn’t be if we weren’t such determined people. We will decide this election. Try telling us we can’t, and you’ll see, we will.”

As Native people both vote and, like Haaland, get elected to office themselves, “We are going from protest to power,” says Judith Le Blanc, director of the Native Organizers Alliance, a co-host of the forum.

Environmental Groups Just Sued the Trump Administration Over Its Endangered Species Act Rollback

Environmental and animal rights groups are taking the Trump administration to court over rules finalized last week by the departments of Commerce and Interior weakening the Endangered Species Act’s protections. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday by Earthjustice on behalf of seven groups including the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Defenders of Wildlife, alleges […]

Communities Across the Country Reject Automated License Plate Readers

Recent months have seen a wave of cities and counties around the country rejecting the use of automated license plate readers in their communities, citing privacy concerns posed by the technology. Added to recentlocal levelvictories barring the use of face recognition technologies, it is encouraging to see local governments across the nation lead the way in proactively stemming the tide of invasive surveillance technologies.

Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) are camera systems that scan vehicle license plates and build a searchable database of drivers’ historical travel patterns. ALPRs, often installed on patrol vehicles, streetlights, freeway overpasses and the like, indiscriminately scan every vehicle in a given area and collect data on all drivers regardless of whether their vehicle is under suspicion. Location-based information collected over time can reveal intimate details of a person’s life, such as where they work and live, where they pray, where they seek medical treatment, and who their friends or romantic partners are.

In June, the California State Auditor launched a probe into the use of ALPRs by local law enforcement agencies, which is a valuable step towards improved information about how government agencies are collecting, using, and storing ALPR data. Even better, there’s been a recent surge of cities and counties rejecting ALPRs. This shows the power that local governments and residents have when they speak up and voice concerns over threats to their privacy. That’s how a community can curb the spread of this dangerous technology.

Half Moon Bay, California

In July, the City of Half Moon Bay, California halted considerations regarding ALPRs until the state’s audit is complete. As reported by the Half Moon Bay Review, the City Council began considering the adoption of ALPRs in May. But as planning unfolded, and in light of the state’s audit announcement, many members of the public, as well as city officials, raised privacy concerns. Of particular concern to city councilmembers was the possibility of data collected by local ALPRs being accessed by federal immigration enforcement officials.

Delano, California

The City of Delano, California, recently determined it will no longer pursue using ALPRs, after a series of meetings between law enforcement officials and community members. Kern Sol News reports that for the past several months, the city’s police chief  had been considering ALPRs. The chief held a series of community meetings to discuss residents’ privacy concerns. Delano residents and privacy advocates, including the ACLU, voiced concerns about the data being accessed by ICE. They explained that primary ALPR vendor, Vigilant Solutions, has an active contract with ICE that enables the agency to access data collected by the systems. Community members objected that the technology would make the county’s undocumented immigrants vulnerable to deportation. At a city council meeting on July 1, the police chief announced the department would no longer seek ALPRs, because losing public trust outweighed any possible benefits the technology would offer. 

Michigan City, Indiana 

Also last month, Michigan City, Indiana, chose not to advance a local ordinance that would have allowed the city’s police department to purchase ALPR systems, due to opposition from city residents. 

According to the La Porte County Herald-Argus, the ordinance would have allowed the Michigan City Police Department to purchase ALPRs. When the ordinance was brought up for discussion at a city council meeting, nearly every speaker opposed ALPRS. Residents objected that the technology is invasive, and would be used to disproportionately profile and harass people of color. 

During these deliberations, members of the city council asked local law enforcement to identify the policies that would regulate the access, retention, and purging of the collected ALPR data. Their response? There weren’t any such controls. The city council voted unanimously to amend the proposed ordinance to cut ALPR authorization.

Suffolk County, New York 

In New York, Suffolk County postponed accepting a million-dollar state grant for the purchase of approximately 70 new ALPR cameras, after listening to concerns from local civil liberties groups and residents. Newsday reported that the ALPRs were to be installed in two communities that have seen high rates of gang violence in the past, though gang activity has decreased in these areas in recent years. Local civil liberties groups questioned how collecting and storing data on every car on the road would help combat gang violence. They also objected that it could be used as a dragnet to target low-income residents, people of color, and immigrants. In early July, county officials postponed accepting the grants, citing questions about how data would be stored and the adequacy of ALPRs in reducing crime.

Pima County, Arizona

In Arizona’s border region, the Pima County Board of Supervisors, responding to pressure from privacy advocates, recently rejected federal funds designated for ALPRs. A $1.8 million package of federal Operation Stonegarden grants for border enforcement included funds to purchase ALPRs, according to the Tucson Sentinel. The county already uses several ALPRs for their drug interdiction and auto-theft units, but the new federally-funded ALPRs were intended for indiscriminate collection of location data. Privacy advocates objected that increased use of these technologies could strengthen the ability of private companies, advertisers, debt collectors, and ICE to target vulnerable communities. While the supervisors approved the overall package, it excluded funding for plate readers.

These scenes from around the country demonstrate a growing public awareness of the threats to privacy and civil rights posed by tools of mass surveillance. The actions taken in these five forward-looking cities and counties also show the increasingly powerful role that concerned residents can play in thwarting the spread of invasive technologies in our communities. 

Related Cases:  Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR)