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Bill McKibben | Deb Haaland's Ability, Vision and Ancestry Would Make Her an Ideal Interior Secretary
Bill McKibben, Guardian UK
McKibben writes: "Occasionally presidents have a chance to make choices that change the way we view things - one of those opportunities comes in the next few days, when Joe Biden is expected to name the next secretary of the interior."
The Native American congresswoman from New Mexico has worked across the aisle and is backed by environmentalists
The interior department dates back to 1849 and President Zachary Taylor. Largely forgotten now (in part because he died after 16 months in office), Taylor had first come to prominence fighting in the Black Hawk war, which led to the policy of “removing” Native Americans to the far side of the Mississippi, and then as a general in the Second Seminole war, where he fought the Battle of Lake Okeechobee. Over the years its secretaries have ranged from the corrupt (Albert Fall, of Teapot Dome fame) to the remarkable (Stewart Udall, who in the 1960s became the most persuasive champion of conservation the government ever had) to the unpleasant (James Watt, Reagan’s choice, who lost his job when he explained to a Chamber of Commerce gathering that one of his agencies boasted “a black, two Jews, and a cripple”).
But there’s one kind of American who’s never run the department, and that’s a descendant of the people who, well, once owned the interior. That could change – the New Mexico congresswoman Deb Haaland, one of the first two Native American women ever elected to the House, is considered a frontrunner for the job.
From the beginning, one duty of the department has been to handle “Indian affairs”, which is to say they have administered what’s usually been a gruesome set of policies. Haaland’s grandmother was taken away to boarding school when she was eight, as part of the process to break the chain of cultural connection that stretched back into the very ancient history of the Laguna Pueblo. Haaland – both of whose parents served in the military – was a single mother on food stamps; nonetheless she managed to graduate from law school, and she was soon chairwoman of the tribe’s development corporation, successfully overseeing its casinos and other businesses. She ran the state’s Democratic party before her election to Congress, where she has managed to make friends across lines of party, region and ideology – the Alaska Republican Don Young, longest-serving member of the House, called her a “consensus builder”, and according to the journalist Julian Brave NoiseCat, her House legislation has attracted more companion bills in the Senate than any other representative. She’s already served as vice-chair of the House committee on natural resources and chair of the subcommittee on national parks, forests, and public lands – she knows precisely what she’s getting into.
But she’s also beloved of environmentalists – the Sunrise Movement has offered an unstinting endorsement, and she’s introduced the 30 by 30 Act, which “sets a national goal of conserving at least 30% of the land and 30% of the ocean within the United States by 2030”. (Full disclosure – I’ve spoken at fundraisers in both her congressional campaigns.) She’s argued persuasively that the best route out of the coronavirus recession is to move swiftly to build out clean energy. “We need to listen to our planet and act now. While we do that, our country can reap the economic benefits of new industries and address economic inequality.”
Much of the next interior secretary’s role will be simply to clean up the mess left by Trump: after Ryan Zinke was caught up in a corruption investigation, he was replaced by the oil lobbyist David Bernhardt, who has been remarkably successful in rolling back environmental regulations – at the moment, he’s doing his best to sell off oil leases in the country’s largest wildlife refuge before Biden can take office.
And no matter who’s secretary, they will face controversy: Biden has promised to end all new fossil fuel drilling and mining on public lands, most of which fall under interior’s domain. That will go down hard in parts of the west – but who better to tell the oil boys that they no longer have control of the land than someone who can say it once belonged to her and her people?
In truth, if her competence and vision are the best reasons for giving her the job, her background comes next on the list. It would be a remarkable plot twist in the American story for an Indigenous person to run interior – a gesture can’t repair much of the damage that’s been done, but it can serve as a constant reminder of the debt still to be repaid. There’s never been a Native American cabinet member. For most of our history, sadly, it would have been an outlandish idea; now it feels absolutely necessary.
The Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech has been recommended for an emergency use authorization by the FDA's vaccine advisors. (photo: Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images)
FDA Advisers Recommend the First Covid-19 Vaccine for Emergency Use in the US
Umair Irfan, Vox
Irfan writes: "The highly anticipated vote means health workers facing high exposure to the disease and residents of long-term care facilities could start receiving the first doses of the two-dose vaccine, developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, within days."
READ MORE
Mitch McConnell. (photo: CNN)
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Signals No GOP Support for Emerging COVID-19 Relief Deal
Andrew Taylor, Associated Press
Taylor writes: "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is hitting the brakes on emerging COVID-19 aid package from a bipartisan group of lawmakers, saying Republican senators won't support billion in state and local funds as part of a potential trade-off in the deal."
McConnell’s staff conveyed to top negotiators that the GOP leader sees no path to an agreement on a key aspect of the lawmakers’ existing proposal — a slimmed-down version of the liability shield for companies and organizations facing potential COVID-19 lawsuits — in exchange for $160 billion in state and local funds that Democrats want.
A senior Democrat confirmed that McConnell’s position was conveyed to negotiators and was granted anonymity to discuss the private talks. McConnell’s office did not immediately respond for a request for comment.
The hardened stance from McConnell, who does not appear to have the votes from Republicans for a far-reaching compromise, creates a new stalemate over the $900-billion-plus package, despite days of toiling by a bipartisan group of lawmakers toward a deal.
It comes as President Donald Trump’s top negotiator on COVID-19 financial aid took the opposite view. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin reported headway Thursday on the package from the bipartisan senators’ group.
“I think we’re making a lot of progress,” Mnuchin said.
Deadlines, real and perceived, haven’t been sufficient to drive Washington’s factions to an agreement, despite the U.S. breaking a record-high 3,000 daily COVID fatalities, and hospitals straining at capacity from soaring caseloads nationwide.
A one-week stop-gap measure to prevent a federal shutdown appears to have sapped some urgency from the talks. The short-term government-wide funding bill, approved by the House on Wednesday, needs to clear the Senate before Friday at midnight to avert a partial closure.
The next deadline would be Dec. 18, but both House and Senate leaders say they won’t adjourn without passing an aid measure.
But many Republicans have long viewed the state and local aid as a bailout they would have trouble supporting, despite the pleas for funds coming from governors and mayors nationwide.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who is sending lawmakers home while talks continue, said Congress would keep working up to or even after Christmas to get an agreement. The new Congress is being sworn in on Jan. 3.
“Now if we need more time then we take more time, but we have to have a bill and we cannot go home without it,” Pelosi said. She also gave an upbeat assessment on the talks.
McConnell has proposed a five-year liability shield from virus lawsuits, retroactive to December 2019, but the bipartisan group was eyeing a scaled-back shield of six months to a year. Labor and civil rights groups oppose any shield, which they say strips essential workers of potential legal recourse as they take risks during the pandemic.
Republicans say the right people to handle final negotiations are the four leaders of Congress and the Trump administration, with the focus on a proposal by McConnell, R-Ky., to eliminate a Democratic demand for $160 billion or so in assistance for state and local governments.
The Trump administration is back in the middle of the negotiations with a $916 billion plan. It would send a $600 direct payment to most Americans but eliminate a $300-per-week employment benefit favored by the bipartisan group of Senate negotiators.
The offer has the endorsement of the top House Republican and apparent backing from McConnell, who had previously favored a $519 billion GOP plan that has already failed twice. But Democrats immediately blasted the plan over the administration’s refusal to back the partial restoration, to $300 per week, of bonus pandemic jobless benefits that lapsed in August.
President-elect Joe Biden is pressing for as much pandemic relief as possible, though he’s not directly involved in the talks. McConnell, like Pelosi, says Congress will not adjourn without providing the long-overdue COVID-19 relief. The pressure to deliver is intense; all sides say failure isn’t an option.
The bipartisan negotiating group — led by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, among others — is seeking to rally lawmakers behind the $908 billion framework that includes the $300-per-week pandemic jobless benefit and $160 billion for states and local governments.
It also includes a four-month extension of jobless benefits set to expire at the end of the month, $300 billion for “paycheck protection” subsidies for struggling businesses, funding for vaccines and testing, and a host of smaller items such as aid to transit systems, the U.S. Postal Service and health care providers.
Trump supporters at a 'Stop the Steal' rally outside of the Georgia state capitol on 21 November. (photo: Nathan Posner/Rex/Shutterstock)
'It's Surreal': The US Officials Facing Violent Threats as Trump Claims Voter Fraud
Ed Pilkington and Sam Levine, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "Georgians from both parties describe violent and sexual threats to themselves and their families as militias make their presence known."
n 1 December Gabriel Sterling, a Republican election official in Georgia, stood on the steps of the state capitol in Atlanta and let rip on Donald Trump.
“Mr President, it looks like you likely lost the state of Georgia,” he said, contradicting Trump’s increasingly unhinged claim that he had won the presidential race against all evidence.
“Stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence,” Sterling went on, referring to a storm of death threats and intimidation that had been unleashed by Trump supporters against public officials in the state.
“Someone is going to get shot, someone is going to get killed. And it’s not right.”
Then Sterling uttered the phrase that instantly entered the annals of American political rhetoric: “It has to stop.”
It did not stop.
Two days after Sterling’s impassioned speech went viral, Elena Parent, a Democratic state senator in Georgia, turned up for a hearing organized by Republican leaders to try to cast doubt on the election result. Trump attorneys, led by Rudy Giuliani, presented the hearing with a raft of conspiracy theories and baseless claims that tens of thousands of dead people and other ineligible individuals had voted.
The Republicans hadn’t warned Parent that the event would be attended by Giuliani, Trump’s henchman in his mission to undermine American democracy until this week when the former New York mayor came down with Covid-19. So she had no idea that a big crowd of far-right fanatics and the media outlets that feed them lies and falsehoods would also be in the chamber.
If she had known, she would have been careful to protect her personal details online. And she might not have sent out an anodyne tweet decrying the event accurately as a “sad sham”.
The bombardment began immediately. “The attacks came from all corners and on all platforms,” Parent told the Guardian. “They were in chat-boards, by email, in comments on my Facebook and Instagram pages, on the phone. They ran the gamut from basic insults to ‘We are watching you, you have kids, we are coming to your house.’”
In eight years as an elected politician in Georgia, she had never experienced anything like it. “It was surreal. I’m not someone who will ever be bullied or intimidated into being silent, but never have I had an issue on this scale.”
The bile spread far and wide. An elected official in Missouri accused her on Facebook of an act of treason “punishable by death”.
The worst part wasn’t the threats of sexual violence against her, or even the death threats; it was that her home address was plastered all over the internet. As a result, state police have stepped up patrols outside her home.
Parent has no doubt about the source of the overwhelming assault she has endured. “We have a president who does not care about American institutions or democracy. He has created a cult-like following and is exposing people like me across the country to danger because of his unfounded rhetoric on the election.”
What she fears most is that “cult-like” quality of Trump supporters. “That makes the entire experience more disturbing because you know there is no logic or sense of reality that will dissuade or deter these folks.”
The election may be more than five weeks in the past, but in Georgia, the heat that Trump has generated around his unprecedented refusal to accept defeat shows no sign of cooling.
Parent suspects that for elected officials like her, as well as election workers, it will remain “very difficult” through the two US Senate runoff elections in Georgia on 5 January, which will be crucial in determining which party controls the Senate, and probably until Joe Biden’s inauguration on 20 January and beyond.
At the center of the maelstrom are the public servants in charge of Georgia’s election process. Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state who on Monday recertified the results after three separate counts all showed Biden the victor by about 12,000 votes, has faced caravans of armed “Stop the Steal” militants driving past his house.
In an interview with the Guardian, Raffensperger said that his wife was the first to start getting death threats. “Then I started getting them. Then she started getting sexualized texts. Threatening stuff.”
Both Raffensperger and Sterling now have police protection at their homes, and the FBI is investigating. But it’s not just prominent officials who are in danger.
Raffensperger told the Guardian that some election workers had been followed home. “One of them pulled into a police station and then the car [following them] disappeared.”
A 20-year-old contractor for a private company had a noose strung outside his door and was threatened with being hanged for treason on the back of a QAnon conspiracy theory enabled by Trump. Raffensperger said: “An election worker was just working his job, doing what he has to do to put food on the table. His family actually becomes part of this threat vector because they have the same last name.”
Cassie Miller, senior research analyst for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that the threatening behavior in Georgia and other states that Trump has put under a spotlight, such as Michigan, is part of a new and more dangerous formation on the far right.
“What’s happening with the ‘Stop the Steal’ rallies is that mobilization is gathering force in an effort to shift the Republican party to more extreme positions,” she said.
Part of what makes the movement so toxic, Miller said, was its anti-democratic thrust. “Their message is that Trump represents the true will of the people, that the democratic process failed to recognize that, so the democratic process should no longer be trusted. That opens up the train to a lot of other tactics.”
The attacks hurled by Trump and his supporters on members of his own party, including Georgia governor, Brian Kemp, Raffensperger and Sterling, are all part of coercion intended to bend the Republican party in a fundamentally authoritarian direction. To no small degree, it is working.
While some Republican figures like Sterling have memorably spoken out, most have kept their silence. As Parent put it: “My Republican colleagues in Georgia, and even in Congress, have not been profiles in courage.”
Raffensperger also expressed his disappointment over the lack of outrage coming from fellow elected officials. “It would be nice to see moral courage from political leaders on both sides to condemn violence and threats of violence.”
He said that it was “very disheartening when that’s not really condemned by everyone. When it is condemned, it seems like it’s a half-hearted condemnation. It should be full-throated: ‘We condemn this, it’s wrong.’”
The two Republican senators in Georgia contesting the runoff elections, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, have both resisted acknowledging Biden’s victory in public. Loeffler has gone further, embracing aspects of that other cult-like antisemitic conspiracy theory movement, QAnon.
In August, Loeffler appeared on a campaign stage alongside Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has since become the first open QAnon supporter to win a seat in the US House. A less noticed but equally disturbing feature of Loeffler’s controversial alliance with Greene was that members of the far-right militia group Georgia III% Martyrs were among the security detail for the event.
A separate splinter group, Georgia Security Force 3%, has made its presence felt at several of the most intimidatory “Stop the Steal” actions since the election. Its leader, Chris Hill, has posted videos on YouTube showing him participating in caravans of agitated Trump supporters driving past Raffensperger’s house and the governor’s mansion.
In one video, Hill calls Raffensperger “Mr Ratsperger” and says: “We are going to go over there and let him know he can hear us. There’s going to be hell to pay. There’s a lot of patriots out here feeling revolutionary, and I’m one of them. Guns up!”
Hampton Stall, founder of the Atlanta-based research body Militia Watch, said that it was not always easy to distinguish genuine danger from macho grandstanding. “There’s a lot of bluster – a lot of the threats made by militia groups are idle threats.”
But at the “Stop the Steal” rally that was held over five days at the capitol building in Atlanta last month, Stall was struck by the unprecedented amount of intermingling that was going on among far-right groups. Chris Hill and his militia were there, Alex Jones of InfoWars was there, as were Nick Fuentes and his Groyper army and the Proud Boys.
“There was an incredible amount of crossover of far-right militias,” Stall said. “Seeing Chris Hill speak from a bullhorn followed by Nick Fuentes making jokes about the Holocaust was troubling – it points to the coalitions that could be built in the future.”
Trump’s willful validation of such activity has left elected officials on both sides of the aisle deeply rattled. They question the health of the nation.
“It demonstrates the utmost importance of having a thread of moral character in the White House,” said Parent. “I’m grateful Donald Trump will be exiting – morality is absent in this president, and it is very dangerous.”
Raffensperger set his personal anxiety against the long arc of US history. “Is this something George Washington would have done?” he asked. “Is that the kind of behavior that the founding fathers of this great republic would have done?”
Zhang Zhan, a 37-year-old former lawyer, has been held in detention since she was arrested in May. (photo: YouTube)
Wuhan Citizen Journalist Detained for Covid Reporting Has 'Feeding Tube Forcibly Inserted and Arms Restrained'
The Telegraph
Excerpt: "A former lawyer detained for more than six months due to reporting on the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan has been fitted with a tube so she can be force-fed after she went on hunger strike, her lawyer said."
Zhang Zhan, 37, was apparently unable to pull the tube out as her arms were restrained. She was arrested in May and accused of “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” a charge often used against government critics and activists in China.
Zhang attempted to report the virus outbreak on social media and streaming account, and is now being held at a detention centre near Shanghai.
She was formally charged with spreading false information in November. Her lawyer, Zhang Keke detailed her deteriorating condition in a blog post after visiting her.
“She was wearing thick pyjamas with a girdle around the waist, her left hand pinned in front and right hand pinned behind,” he wrote. “She said she had a stomach tube inserted recently and because she wanted to pull it out, she was restrained.”
“In addition to headache, dizziness and stomach pain, there was also pain in her mouth and throat. She said this may be inflammation due to the insertion of a gastric tube.”
He added that she said she had expected to go to court in December, but that the appearance had been cancelled and she didn't know how she was going to survive.
Zhang refused to stop the hunger strike even after her lawyer told her that her family and loved ones urged her to put an end to it.
It’s not the first time that Zhang has been arrested on such charges. She was detained once in 2018 by Chinese authorities and again in 2019 for voicing support for Hong Kong activists.
Zhang has denied the allegation of falsifying information, and told her lawyer that she gathered the information on the ground through interviews with Wuhan residents.
Several Chinese citizen journalists were arrested and silenced after travelling to Wuhan to report on the virus outbreak and response. Chen Qiushui was among the first to be detained in January and disappeared after he broadcasted live on social media showing scenes of crowded hospitals. Li Zehua, who travelled to Wuhan, went missing in early February and was released in April.
Zhang posted videos on Youtube - which is banned in China - consistently from February until her arrest in May.
In one video posted in February, she explained her experience of visiting hospitals in Wuhan, and said that the number of infected patients was higher than the government figures. She also questioned the effectiveness of containing the virus at the hospitals.
In another video posted in May, she recorded herself outside a major train station in Wuhan where she tried to interview travellers but hardly found any. She said the city of Wuhan was ruled by fear.
Ethiopia. (photo: Reuters)
UN Signals Concern About Human Rights Situation in Ethiopia's Tigray Region
Reuters
Excerpt: "The situation in Ethiopia is 'worrying and volatile' as fighting in the Tigray region continues amid reports of ethnic profiling of Tigrayans including in Addis Ababa, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said on Wednesday."
“We have reports that particularly areas surrounding towns like Mekelle, Sherero, Axum, Abiy Addi, and the borders between the Amhara and Tigray regions, fighting continues between federal forces and the TPLF (Tigray People’s Liberation Front), and affiliated militias on both sides,” Bachelet told a news conference in Geneva.
“There is an urgent need for independent monitoring of the human rights situation in the Tigray region, all necessary measures to protect civilians, and accountability for violations.”
Reuters has been unable to verify claims by either side in the conflict since phone and internet connections to the Tigray region are down and access to the area is strictly controlled.
Nathaniel Smith. (photo: Dan Reynolds Photography/Getty Images)
He's Helping Georgia Move Away From Its Polluting Past
Adrienne Day, Grist
Day writes: "Nathaniel Smith is passionate about many issues: racial equality; crafting equitable, people-centered policy; and not least of all, the American South."
His work engaging and empowering communities, namely as founder and chief equity officer at the Partnership for Southern Equity (PSE), allows him a unique opportunity to pursue all of these things.
Smith, a 2018 Fixer, is known for big, bold visions, a trait he’ll surely bring to his new role as co-chair of the leadership council of Drawdown Georgia. The organization, which launched in October, will work with others statewide to cut Georgia’s carbon impact by at least one-third by 2030. While the plan is to support the development of 20 solutions — as chosen by academic partners Georgia Tech, Emory University, and the University of Georgia — what makes the initiative unique is its effort to “crowdsolve” their scaling via Groopit. Smith’s work with Drawdown Georgia will allow him to do what he does best: Collaborate with leaders from municipal government, businesses, and NGOs to cultivate support for these projects.
The South may loom large in the collective imagination as a conservative stronghold unwilling to change with the times — even if Georgia did go blue in the presidential election — but Smith sees it as “a place of resilience, of courage, of regeneration, and of change.” The region, he says, is at the center of a new civil rights movement that recognizes climate and equity are inextricably linked.
Fix sat down with Smith to talk about his long history of activism, what he’ll do at Drawdown Georgia, and why building real relationships with people is key to the process of empowering them. His comments have been edited for length and clarity.
On becoming an activist
I didn’t really have a choice! I’m third-generation Atlantan, and my parents were involved in the civil rights movement. They had the honor of working under Martin Luther King Jr. and at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I’m also a graduate of Morehouse College, which is Dr. King’s alma mater. Joseph Lowery, C.T. Vivian, and John Lewis, three icons of the civil rights movement that we lost this past summer, played a major role in my development and in the shaping of my worldview and my deep belief in the power of policy and people. I really do consider my work a calling.
On centering racial equality and justice
I’ve always been committed to racial justice and to what Dr. King called the “Beloved Community”: a community where all people are valued and positioned to reach their full potential, and a place where we understand that we all are connected and have a shared destiny. These things have shaped my life. I founded the Partnership for Southern Equity to advance work in a number of areas like health equity and economic inclusion, but it’s really about advancing racial justice. You can’t get to climate remediation without understanding the role that justice must play in getting us there. In order for us to be in a position to lower our carbon emissions, we have to understand the equity implications of what needs to occur in Georgia.
On collaborating with Drawdown Georgia
Because of PSE’s work advancing a climate-justice movement in the South, Drawdown Georgia thought it would be great for me to co-chair its leadership council. Drawdown Georgia just had its formal kickoff around a month ago, so we haven’t gotten to a point where we’re developing a strategy, per se. What we’re doing is trying to get the facts as strong and tight as possible, then we’ll begin the process of bringing together leaders and people who represent all aspects of the state and developing an engagement approach.
The facts don’t necessarily dictate whether we’ll win the climate-change battle. We need to engage the community and make it plain why the Drawdown Georgia effort is important. Our perspective around crowdsolving is about working to ensure that the wisdom of all people is at the table when these solutions are being developed.
It all boils down to putting people at the center of the work and having racial equity at the center of the conversation. This can be realized in a number of ways. One example is the work that PSE is doing with Atlanta’s Department of Watershed Management, where we’re working on a green-infrastructure bond that will require local hiring for low-wealth communities and communities of color. We are also developing a resilience hub in the Atlanta University Center Consortium that will hopefully provide electricity to low-wealth, low-income residents and solar energy from microgrid technology, along with workforce-development opportunities. We’ve also organized the Just Energy Circle, a coalition of more than 22 organizations from around the state, to advance climate justice centered in racial equity.
On changing the system from within
In order to make institutional change, you must reach people who work within institutions. For us, it’s about connecting with people who are committed to living their values. Along the way, we’ve met many people who have worked inside of these institutions who are committed to equity, but they haven’t necessarily had the language or connections to get things done. And so it’s kind of moving beyond the issues and working to develop real relationships with people and inspire them to take a chance on a new way forward. And we’ve been really successful in doing it.
