'It's gonna kill us': Lobstermen concerned about proposed regulations to protect whales
Anastasia Lennon, Standard Times
Published Dec 17, 2020
The Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries is proposing multiple amendments to current rules regulating fixed gear fisheries in an effort to protect an endangered species, the North Atlantic right whale. Two local lobstermen say the proposed regulations threaten their livelihoods.
"It's gonna take roughly 30% of my income away from me," said Dave Magee, a lobsterman from Mattapoisett who fishes out of Fairhaven.
One of the key amendments would expand the existing large whale seasonal trap gear closure, which runs from Feb. 1 to April 30, to all waters under the jurisdiction of the commonwealth, highlighted with dark red in the map below. The division would also have the authority to extend trap gear closures if right whales remain present after April 30.
Magee, 57, sets traps in the proposed closure area during the winter. He said he operates in other areas at other times of the year, but that fishing in the proposed closure area over the winter yields lobsters that sell for higher prices.
Magee also said the no-fishing period would last longer than three months as he would have to start moving his 800 traps at least a month in advance due to the amount of gear and in anticipation of adverse weather.
During a December hearing, when asked if the division had studied the economic impact of these regulations on lobstermen, Division of Marine Fisheries Director Daniel McKiernan said there is a "burden attributable" to removing gear and bringing it back when the area reopens, but that the division did not have any estimates.
McKiernan said the proposed regulation changes are in response to two challenges: the long-term decline of right whales and recent litigation.
The North Atlantic right whale population has dropped from about 481 individuals in 2011 to 366 in 2019, according to the Associated Press and the Division of Marine Fisheries.
A citizens suit was filed against the state in January 2020 arguing the division licenses and regulates vertical buoy lines that violate the Endangered Species Act as the ropes may cause right whale entanglements, which can prove fatal or life-threatening.
Right whales, which can be found along the East Coast from Florida to Canada, have been listed as endangered since 1970. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, entanglement in fishing gear is a primary cause of serious injury and death for many whale species, including the North Atlantic right whale.
"Entanglement and vessel strikes continue to be a significant source of serious injury and mortality," McKiernan said during the hearing. "Where whales are being entangled always generates much debate and controversy because it's unusual to retrieve the entangling gear off the whale to successfully identify the gear back to the region, the fishery or the person."
Magee said he's never seen a right whale in the proposed closure area during the winter.
"I've been fishing 40 years, I have never ever seen a right whale in Massachusetts state waters in Area 2," Magee said. Area 2, formally called Lobster Management Area 2, extends from the waters south of Rhode Island to the Cape. "They’re just doing this to appease the whale people and environmental people and what it's doing, it’s gonna basically put me out of business."
However, Erin Burke, a protected species specialist for the Division of Marine Fisheries, said sightings in Massachusetts waters south of the Cape, while not "extremely common," are also not unheard of.
Burke cited and shared screenshots of maps that show sightings from January through December, which goes beyond the closure period. According to the NOAA Fisheries sighting system, right whales have been sighted in the proposed closure area during the closure period.
Other proposed regulation changes include lowering commercial lobstermen's maximum buoy line diameter to three-eighths of an inch, and requiring all gear to be rigged with buoy lines that break when exposed to 1,700 pounds of tension. The agency cited research that concludes this breakaway strength could reduce the number of life-threatening entanglements for large whales by at least 72%.
Part of their rationale, McKiernan said, is also to absolve Massachusetts lobstermen as the sources of future entanglements. He said the new rule can "effectively rule out" Massachusetts permit holders whenever rope is seen on right whales with diameters larger than what is allowed by the state.
Magee said he can get on board with the gear change.
"That's all something we can live with," he said. "It's going to cost us a little money to change that stuff, but I still can make a living with those kinds of changes."
Tom Tomkiewicz, a Fairhaven lobsterman, was not sold on the regulation, saying it would cost more money and that the ropes, being thinner, would likely need to be replaced more frequently.
During the hearing, the Division of Marine Fisheries discussed grants with NOAA Fisheries and possible state funding to distribute some new gear to the state's lobstermen.
Tomkiewicz, 45, said he fishes in the same management area as Magee over the winter and estimates the regulations could cut 30% of his catch and up to 50% of his income, depending on the selling price.
"As far as the fishermen go, this is gonna kill us, it really is," he said. "All the bait guys, the marine supply guys, the shipyards, down to the restaurants we go to once or twice a week. We’re not going to be able to go because we won’t have the money. It's going to affect a lot of people not even involved."
Magee said he planned on having his 15-year-old son take over his business after he graduates high school. Now, he said it's not looking like that will be a viable option.
"I put a lot of money into this business the last few years," Magee said. "If I knew all of this [regulation] was coming down, I wouldn’t have had all this stuff done."
The deadline to submit public comment to the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries is Friday, Dec. 18, at 5 p.m. Written comments should be addressed to Director Daniel McKiernan and submitted by email to marine.fish@mass.gov, or by post to 251 Causeway Street, Suite 400, Boston, MA 02114.
When the public comment period closes Friday, the division will communicate its final recommendation to the Marine Fisheries Advisory Commission on Jan. 7. After that, the division will submit regulations for final review with the intention of putting into effect the new regulations as early as February 2021.
A North Atlantic right whale mother and calf were seen off Hilton Head, South Carolina last weekend, according to the New England Aquarium. This marks the third calf of the right whale calving season, with a mother and calf seen off Cumberland Island, Georgia on Dec. 4 and a third off Vilano Beach, Florida on Dec. 7.
The right whale is the most endangered great whale in the world. Its population estimate dropped below 400 to 355 following a disastrous string of deaths in recent years. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported only 22 calves born from 2017 to Nov. 2020, with 31 mortalities over that same period.
Being hit by ships was once the leading cause of death but that has changed, with entanglements causing 85% of mortalities between 2010 and 2015.
Whale researchers are concerned about the reproductive capability of the relatively small number of females — fewer than 100 — left to save the species. They took the birth of three calves as a positive trend in an otherwise alarming year of bad news.
I just read that Wall Street executives are planning to spend a whopping $80 million in Georgia to elect Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue and keep Mitch McConnell in power.1
According to new campaign finance documents, Steven Schwarzman, a Wall Street CEO and close Trump confidant, just forked over $15 million to McConnell's Super PAC, and billionaire hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin also wired $10 million to McConnell—all to be spent in Georgia.2
Let's be clear about why Wall Street titans are dumping so much money into the Georgia races: It's because they're terrified. They know that, just one month ago, we flipped Georgia blue and that we're on the brink of doing so again—and they know that this time, we'll also rip the Senate gavel away from their favorite lapdog: Mitch McConnell.
The races are down to the wire. For Democrats to win, grassroots groups on the ground as well as national powerhouses like MoveOn are doing everything they can to energize the Democratic base and win over independent voters. Right now, MoveOn is
flooding Georgia's airwaves with television and radio ads to drum up support and enthusiasm for Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff,
blanketing Atlanta with billboards that get the truth out to voters about Loeffler and Perdue's corrupt records and ties to shady Wall Street deals, and
engaging 55,000 MoveOn members in an ambitious and innovative get-out-the-vote campaign.
As the runoff elections in Georgia show, Wall Street and other Big Money interests continue to corrupt American politics—creating a vicious cycle that funnels more wealth and power to those at the top and erodes our democracy.
Here's how that vicious cycle works: Republicans cut taxes and slash regulations for their wealthy campaign donors. Megadonors and corporations funnel some of that money back into our political system to keep their lackeys in power. Those Republican politicians then propose another round of tax cuts, subsidies, or bailouts to secure even more donations.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
We must put an end to this corruption, and that starts by winning in Georgia. While Kelly Loeffler—herself a former Wall Street CEO—and David Perdue—a shady corporate executive—are bankrolled by Big Money, Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff have pledged to reject every cent of corporate PAC money. Which means that it's going to be up to grassroots activists like you to propel Warnock and Ossoff to victory.
I just checked the polls, and both runoff races are neck and neck.3 In races this close, every ad, every billboard, and every dollar could make all the difference and open the door to the passage of real reform in a Democratically controlled Senate. So I'm coming to you with a personal request.
FOCUS: Jonathan Chait | Trump Floats Coup Plan That's So Wild Even Rudy Giuliani Is Terrified Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine Chait writes: "At the White House on Friday, President Trump held what may have been his most deranged meeting yet. In it, the president raged at his loyalists for betraying him, and discussed taking extralegal measures to overturn the election."
The meeting, first reported by the New York Times, included lawyer and conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell, convicted felon Michael Flynn, and Rudy Giuliani. One plan floated at the meeting was for Trump to appoint Powell as a “special counsel” overseeing allegations of voter fraud. Powell’s voter fraud claims are so fantastical she has been mocked even by other far-right legal conspiracy theorists. Andrew McCarthy, a former birther and author of one book titled How Obama Embraces Islam’s Sharia Agenda and another calling for his impeachment on multiple counts, has described Powell’s vote-fraud claims as “loopy.”
Trump also reportedly brought up Flynn’s proposal, which he has expounded on cable news, to impose martial law and direct the military to hold a new election. “At one point in the meeting on Friday, Mr. Trump asked about that idea,” reports the Times.
Political scientists have debated whether it is accurate to describe Trump’s efforts to overturn the election as a “coup,” an “autogolpe,” or neither. Trump’s interest in deploying the military to cancel an election he clearly lost certainly seems to resolve that debate, at least in terms of his intent.
There is no reason to believe Trump commands the power to actually implement any of these wild ideas. Trump’s best chance to steal the election was to have the decisive voting margin in the Electoral College determined by the counting of mail-in ballots that were mailed before, but arrived after Election Day. This would have let him either persuade the Republican-controlled Supreme Court to invalidate those decisive ballots, or Republican-controlled state legislators to disregard their state’s voting results and appoint pro-Trump electors to represent their state.
But the election was not close enough for him to pursue either strategy, whatever chance he had for some kind of Bush v. Gore replay has passed. The measures he is now contemplating lie outside the normal framework for resolving election disputes, and would require, at minimum, almost uniform levels of GOP support.
Trump does not have that. Indeed the striking thing is that he is veering to positions so extreme and self-defeating that even his loyalists have blanched. Perhaps the most alarming fact about the Friday meeting is that Giuliani, who has spent months spreading fantastical claims of imagined voter fraud, became a quasi-voice of reason. Giuliani has proposed using the Department of Homeland Security to seize and examine voting machines — a move the Department has resisted — but even Giuliani opposes appointing a nutter like Powell.
One theme running through Trump World reporting in recent weeks is that the president has increasingly tuned out any advisers or friends who try to reason him toward accepting defeat. Friday’s meeting devolved into a loyalty contest, with “yelling and screaming,” and competing lawyers “often accusing each other of failing to sufficiently support the president’s efforts,” reports Politico.
Reporters are emphasizing that it isn’t just the usual Republicans who have always privately worried about Trump who express concern. Advisers fret that Trump “is spending too much time with people they consider crackpots or conspiracy theorists,” reports Jonathan Swan. The “too much time” line captures the extremely relative nature of the schism. It’s apparently well and good for Trump to spend some time with crackpots and conspiracy theorists — just not too much time. Even Trump’s hardened loyalists sound genuinely worried:
In all likelihood, their concern is not some scenario where tanks roll down the streets or Trump blockades himself in the Oval Office on January 20 like Al Pacino in the last scene of Scarface. It’s that Trump will spin so completely out of control that he discredits them, or puts the Georgia special election at risk. The crazies are turning on the crazier.
29 military bases across Africa. 1 dead CIA contractor. 1000s of drone strikes. Administration after administration. We've got to seize a critical opportunity to finally end endless war — and we will, with your help.
Last month, an ex-special forces member working as a contractor for the CIA died following a terrorist attack in Mogadishu. What were they doing in Somalia? Classified.
Right now there are close to 30 U.S. military bases operating across Africa. One of them: a sprawling $110 million U.S. drone base in Agadez, Niger. The missions? Classified.
There are dozens and dozens of secret U.S. wars around the world, and administration after administration has continued the path of disastrous overseas adventurism — and I’m sorry to say we’re likely to see the same under a Biden administration.
Congress is how we stop this. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution makes it crystal clear that Congress has the SOLE authority to declare war — but for decades Congress has acquiesced to the Presidency.
2021 could change everything. There’s a critical mass of bipartisan support for the first time to stop this disastrous cycle, and we are making seismic changes to grow our team, expand our reach, and deepen our relationships on the Hill to seize this once-in-a-generation opportunity — and that has financial consequences.
Activists like you fuel our work, but fewer than 2% of people reading this will give. If everyone gave just $7 we could fund our entire End Endless War campaign from just this email.
When Biden takes office he’ll inherit Operation Freedom’s Sentinel in Afghanistan and Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq and Syria, and thousands of U.S. troops patrolling Africa -- including in Chad, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, and South Sudan. And we mustn't forget the dozens of U.S. planes and drones filling countless classified skies that have already been documented killing thousands in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.
It’s a war-footing in almost every continent, but already President-elect Biden has suggested that he wanted to replace — not revoke — one of the key congressional authorizations for the wars being conducted all over the world: the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force.
What Biden’s saying is he wants renewed, albeit more limited, congressional authority to conduct drone operations and special forces raids, and to rely on foreign ‘partner’ forces to fight these wars.
That’s not ending endless war; that’s a recipe for PERPETUAL global war — but it’s not up to him.
It is up to Congress, and Congress alone, to decide. And the good news is, the Win Without War team has never seen so much bipartisan momentum on the Hill to rein in rubberstamp authorizations for endless war. So we’re gearing up for the campaign of a generation — and we need your support:
Activists like you fuel our work, but fewer than 2% of people reading this will give. If everyone gave just $7 we could fund our entire End Endless War campaign from just this email. Can you donate $7 to make 2021 the year we End Endless War?
Six years ago, we named our goal to build a progressive foreign policy focused on justice, safety, equity, and peace in a visionary campaign: END ENDLESS WAR. The debate about our nation’s post-9/11 wars has never been the same, and now we are SO close to achieving this incredible milestone — if we make 2021 our biggest year yet.
Thank you for working for peace,
Stephen, Shayna, Amisha, and the Win Without War team
This is the worst December, year-end fundraiser we have ever seen. At this point in December of last year we had double the number of donations we have now. This amounts to a huge slashing of RSN’s budget.
Joan Baez to Nancy Pelosi Joan Baez, Joan Baez's Facebook Page Baez writes: "Thank you, Speaker Pelosi, for not mincing words about the 126 Republicans who joined the lawsuit filed by the Texas Attorney General."
As you said: "Instead of upholding their oath to support and defend the Constitution, they chose to subvert the Constitution and undermine public trust in our sacred democratic institutions."
But in these virulent times are words enough?
Direct action is what John Lewis called “making good trouble.” Good trouble calls for a determined and unflinching willingness to stand up for the truth, no matter the consequences or inconvenience.
As Speaker of the House, you might be the only official in a position to do something, subtle or rash, to lift us above the moral morass in which we find ourselves.
Part of making good trouble is finding imaginative ways to confront one’s adversary.
How difficult would it be to establish something like a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where these Representatives, in order to be seated, would have to testify publicly to what they were doing and why, while being questioned by a Democratic or independent panel?
The point would not be retribution or punishment, but re-establishing, through public exposure, some extent of moral equilibrium and public trust that has been lost. Perhaps the most essential by-product would be re-establishing and demonstrating the authority and power of the Democratic Party by putting it on offense rather than defense.
Another interesting approach would be to not allow these Representatives to be seated until they attend a class on Constitutional Law (yes, like driving school), taught by an independent and respected professor who would explain to them the meaning of what they did in detail, and make sure they were able to retake their oath of office with full understanding.
Exceptional times need to be dealt with by exceptional measures, or else the most brazen authoritarian forces will continue to feel free to push ahead unchecked, as they have been doing.
My nonviolent community of troublemakers and I are here as a resource for you. Call any time.
Senators Resolve Fed Standoff, Clearing Way for Stimulus Deal Mike DeBonis, Jeff Stein and Rachel Siegel, The Washington Post Excerpt: "Senior lawmakers resolved a major standoff late Saturday night clearing the way for Congress to pass a nearly $1 trillion economic relief package, after Democratic leaders and Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) struck a compromise over his proposal to rein in the lending powers of the Federal Reserve."
Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) had proposed curbing the central bank’s ability to offer emergency loans. With the issue now resolved, a deal on the nearly $1 trillion legislation could be near.
Toomey had created a major impasse last week by demanding new limits on the central bank’s emergency lending authority. His proposal, supported by Republican leadership, threatened the delicate negotiations over the relief package. But after hours of frenzied negotiations and meetings in the Capitol, a compromise between Toomey and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) was brokered around 9:30 p.m., aides in both parties said.
The revised language bars the Federal Reserve from creating precise copies of the lending programs created through the $2 trillion Cares Act passed by Congress. It affirmatively shuts down as of Jan. 1 those programs, which were seeded with a $500 billion appropriation by Congress in March. As congressional negotiators have discussed for weeks, the $429 billion in unspent funds will be redirected to other programs in the new $900 billion bill.
Toomey made his original proposal to make sure that the emergency Federal Reserve facilities created by Congress would shut down at the end of the year. Democrats worried that Toomey’s initial proposal went too far in restricting the central bank’s ability to use its long-standing emergency lending authority to respond to future economic calamities.
Republicans believe the new language will still prevent the Fed from pursuing vast new lending programs on its own without permission — and new appropriations — from Congress. At the same time, it gives the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden the clear authority to pursue new tools in conjunction with the central bank to confront threats to the economic recovery from the pandemic.
The compromise language was described by three congressional aides familiar with its drafting who were not authorized to comment publicly.
Leaving his office just before midnight Saturday, Senate Minority Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) declared a deal “very close” and predicted a resolution on Sunday.
“If things continue on this path and nothing gets in the way, we’ll be able to vote tomorrow,” he said.
However, at 12:18 a.m. on Sunday, President Trump tweeted that Congress needs to give “more money in direct payments.” The Washington Post reported last week that White House aides talked Trump out of issuing a public statement demanding stimulus checks as big as $2,000, telling the president such a move could derail negotiations on the broader relief package. His tweet early Sunday signals that the president may not have given up on his demand.
The breakthrough with Toomey came after two days of scrambling that sent tremors across Capitol Hill, as lawmakers realized that a deal badly desired by both sides could fall through at the last minute.
The intensifying dispute had threatened to stymie talks over the relief package that would provide hundreds of billions in emergency aid to the unemployed and small businesses; funding for vaccine distribution and health-care facilities; and another round of stimulus checks to millions of Americans.
The need for such a package has only grown as the virus rampages across the nation and several emergency programs protecting tens of millions of Americans are set to expire in days.
The holidays, looming Senate runoff elections in Georgia and the prospect of a partial government shutdown on Monday are adding to the pressure for negotiators to finalize a deal this weekend.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) earlier on Saturday called the dispute over Toomey’s proposal “the big thing” holding up an agreement.
Congressional leaders had given themselves until midnight Sunday to close out talks. Trump on Friday night signed a two-day spending bill to keep the government open until midnight Sunday. If no deal is reach on the stimulus package, lawmakers would have to pass another temporary measure before Monday. Otherwise, parts of the federal government would shut down.
The compromise between Toomey and Democratic leaders came together over the course of six frantic hours Saturday afternoon. As senators headed to the floor for a nomination vote shortly before 3 p.m., the dispute was threatening to turn into a partisan inferno.
Toomey had been arguing that the Fed’s programs, initially funded with a $500 billion congressional appropriation under the March relief bill, were of marginal utility earlier in the pandemic and no longer necessary.
Democrats had countered that the Toomey proposal represented an unusual political intervention into the independence of the Fed, limiting emergency lending powers it has possessed since 1932.
“It’s no surprise that Republicans are drawing a line in the sand over their ability to sabotage the economy, and tie the Biden administration’s hands,” Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the finance committee, said in a statement.
As debate intensified on Capitol HIll, former Federal Reserve Chair Ben S. Bernanke weighed in on the dispute in an unusual public statement on Saturday, saying that the central bank’s emergency lending authorities should be at minimum as robust as they were before passage of the Cares Act in March. Bernanke said it was “vital” that the central bank’s ability to “respond promptly to damaging disruptions in credit markets not be circumscribed.” The Fed did not release a public statement Saturday on the matter.
In the late afternoon on the Senate floor, lawmakers met to directly work out the dispute after days of sputtering staff-level talks. Toomey and Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) — both senior members of the Senate Banking Committee — sat facing each other, flanked by nearly a dozen other senators. After about 10 minutes of sometimes animated discussion, Toomey and several other senators retreated to Schumer’s office.
After a half-hour meeting, Toomey emerged cautiously predicting a deal was possible. After a second meeting with Schumer later in the evening, the two senators traded draft legislation and finally agreed shortly before 9:30 pm, tentatively ending the standoff.
Earlier in the evening Schumer had indicated in a call with Democratic senators that Toomey said he was willing to modify his proposal to reach a compromise and that talks would continue into the night, according to two people on the call spoke on the condition of anonymity. While Schumer said the Senate could vote as soon as Sunday on a final deal, others were cautious that the bill could be written and passed by Congress that quickly.
Lawmakers still have to resolve other issues. Those include eligibility for small-business relief; how to structure unemployment aid; and the criteria for sending out a $600-per-person stimulus check. Pelosi told House Democrats during a call on Saturday that lawmakers remained divided over the amount of money necessary for food assistance, according to a person who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share the speaker’s private remarks.
Many aides close to talks had expressed optimism that these issues could be addressed fairly quickly with the dispute over the Fed resolved. Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 ranking Republican, said earlier Saturday that the “probably more likely scenario” is that negotiations continue into Monday.
“But I think we’re in the homestretch; we’re on the glide path,” Thune said. “I think we’re going to get this done and help out the American people.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said lawmakers will not leave Washington for the holidays until a deal is done.
After the compromise was reached between Toomey and Schumer, McConnell’s office released a statement.
“Now that Democrats have agreed to a version of Sen. Toomey’s important language, we can begin closing out the rest of the package to deliver much-needed relief to families, workers, and businesses,” said Doug Andres, spokesman for McConnell.
Likely to run many hundreds of pages, the package is not only expected to carry a nearly $1 trillion virus relief deal but also $1.4 trillion in year-long appropriations for federal agencies; the extension of tens of billions of dollars in expiring tax breaks; a bipartisan energy bill; a long-delayed bipartisan solution to surprise medical billing; and dozens of other potential add-ons that lobbyists and congressional aides are hoping to include in this last legislative vehicle of the year.
Lawmakers will almost certainly be asked to vote on a broad piece of legislation with only hours to review it.
The Trump Administration Has Planted a Land Mine in Federal Agencies Matthew Cunningham-Cook, The Intercept Cunningham-Cook writes: "A race is on between those Trump die-hards and the incoming administration, as the Trump team looks to execute on powers they've aggregated before the Biden administration can act to stop them."
A long-running corporate and GOP goal was accomplished in the last few weeks of the Trump administration.
he outgoing administration has set a ticking time bomb for the incoming one, and planted it into every federal agency the president-elect is about to take over. Through executive action, President Donald Trump has gutted civil service protections, a four-year process that was undertaken to allow him to sweep out federal workers in his second term. Now that such a term isn’t in the cards for Trump, his lieutenants are busy making big changes in federal agencies, potentially upending the work lives of hundreds of thousands of federal employees and sowing chaos in Joe Biden’s first 100 days.
Beginning in 2017, the Trump administration began to discuss creating a new federal worker classification, called Schedule F. It was finally implemented by executive order on October 21. The new classification would allow Trump’s deputies to effectively hire and fire at will. At the end of every administration, some appointees attempt to “burrow in”: government-speak for converting their appointed roles into a career category, allowing them to stay despite the new regime. The changes under Schedule F could make that process much easier by removing requirements for individuals applying for federal government jobs. And once those officials have successfully burrowed in, they’d have new powers at their disposal. The changes that the Trump administration has already sought under Schedule F would, for instance, remove protections for 88 percent of the employees in the critical Office of Management and Budget, and potentially many more agencies. The OMB, which crafts policy and budgeting across the federal government, is critical to Biden being able to implement much of his executive agenda.
The question, then, is how much damage the Trump appointees can do quickly — and how much of that can be undone. If Biden doesn’t make reversing the order an immediate priority, it’s easy to envision it getting lost amid the chaotic first few months and then forgotten, as Trump’s burrowed employees slash through the ranks of federal employees, replacing them with cronies.
The order was crafted by James Sherk, a longtime former employee at the Heritage Foundation who currently works for Trump’s Domestic Policy Council. It’s being implemented by Michael Rigas, a top official at the Office of Management and Budget and another Heritage alumni. An Intercept review of news stories shows that Heritage is one of the only organizations going on the record supporting Schedule F.
The Trump administration has partnered closely with the conservative think tank in the moves, which could benefit government contractors associated with Heritage.
Per Trump’s order, Schedule F is a new schedule in the civil service that does not have protection from civil service rules that mandate cause in terminations and ensure due process for federal employees. The executive order authorizing Schedule F underscores the role that think tanks, with their contributor lists shielded from the public, play in crafting policy in Washington; a single think tank with expertise in a particular area can dominate an administration’s approach to the issue, even if it cuts against 130-year-old laws guaranteeing a civil service independent of graft, bribery, patronage, or corporate influence.
The Heritage Foundation, founded in 1973 with funds from the Coors family, has long been an integral part of the right in Washington, distinguishing it from the rival American Enterprise Institute by closely adhering to the GOP line on social issues. Civil service rules are a domain of expertise for Heritage Foundation President Kay Cole James, who led George W. Bush’s Office of Personnel Management, which oversees the administration of the civil service, from 2001 to 2004. James helped lead the Trump transition for both the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management, agencies that are now implementing Schedule F. Heritage has published reports going back 20 years urging dramatic reforms to the civil service, effectively making federal employees at-will at the discretion of the president.
In their public statements, Heritage officials have stated that they do not believe that the civil service should be a bulwark against executive overreach. “Imagine if you have a CEO of a company and they’re told, look you cannot do anything to discipline or dismiss managers who refuse to carry out your directives, or who actively try to thwart your initiatives,” Rachel Greszler, a research fellow at Heritage, told Federal News Network in October. “And that’s often the case right now within the federal government.”
The change in administrations is unlikely to change the influence think tanks have, with former Center for American Progress head Neera Tanden set to lead the Office of Management and Budget. (Although, in contrast to Heritage, CAP does release the identities of some of its donors.) The Obama administration oversaw an unprecedented weakening of civil service rules at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The executive order could be a beachhead for a longer-term undermining of the civil service, whereby presidents will be able to exert much more authority over the 2.8-million-strong federal workforce, effectively reviving the patronage system banned by the Pendleton Act in 1883. For most of the first century of American government, federal jobs were considered spoils to dole out to the powerful backers of the victorious administration.
Schedule F is a “huge, broad new exception,” said John Hatton, the legislative director of the National Association of Active and Retired Federal Employees, a professional organization that has over 300,000 members. “It creates a whole new class of employees. The language of it is such that it could be interpreted very broadly, possibly as many as hundreds of thousands of federal employees. It goes against the idea of federal civil service, which is a career workforce with merit-based hiring and some due process.”
The impetus for the executive order came from a 19-page memo authored by Sherk in 2017, soon after he had joined the Trump administration from Heritage as a “labor policy adviser.” The memo urged wide restrictions on the rights of unions, both within the federal government and without.
“His memorandum was a blueprint for an absolute destruction of any kinds of protections any American workers could have from their union or from the government. It was extremely insidious,” said Jacqueline Simon, the public policy director at the American Federation of Government Employees, a labor union with 300,000 members.
Of particular concern to some experts is the way that the proposed executive order could lead to the politicization of the government contracting process, by making it easier both to hire underqualified employees and remove government employees charged with procuring government services or in crafting procurement policy. Nearly all government contracting must be done by career civil servants, and some of the contracting requires significant subjective determination by those civil servants. “If you’re hired and have to prove your loyalty, then you don’t have fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers you’re sworn only to adhere or show loyalty to whoever hired you,” said Simon.
Without civil service protections, a company that was looking for federal money could exert its influence to fire an employee who was unwilling to give the firm the contract, and replace them with a crony eager to let out the business. Civil service protections are designed to block that sort of arrangement.
Those types of companies are precisely the kind who fund the Heritage Foundation. Nick Schwellenbach, a senior investigator at the Project on Government Oversight, connected Heritage’s work on Schedule F to its relationship with defense contractors. In 2015, The Intercept reported on emails that showed Heritage officials working closely with Lockheed Martin executives to save a weapons program facing cuts, and the think tank has frequently advocated not only for higher spending at the Pentagon, but specifically higher spending on individual weapons programs, including on Lockheed’s F-35 jet program, which has seen its projected costs balloon from $200 billion in 2001 to $1.5 trillion in 2017. (By contrast, the annual cost of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families welfare program is $17 billion annually.)
“We wrote a report a decade ago called ‘Bad Business’ and we found that when we fully loaded out the cost of contracting out positions they often far exceeded the cost of a government employee. James Sherk specifically attacked our report and defended outsourcing,” said Schwellenbach. “When contracting officers raise questions, asking, ‘Should we even outsource this function, are we getting value for this contract?’ they could really piss off their superiors. Civil service protections are there to protect those employees.”
While the Trump administration has not moved, as of now, to reclassify any Department of Defense employees under Schedule F, the Sherk memo urged exempting the entire Department of Defense from collective bargaining. But the OMB, which includes the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, sets rules for the federal government’s purchasing operation.
James, Heritage Foundation’s president, has experience with the contracting process as well; she briefly worked for defense contractor Mitchell Wade in 2005, who was later convicted and sent to prison for bribing then-Rep. Duke Cunningham, R-Calif., for his help acquiring federal contracts.
“Lockheed Martin would prefer it if the procurement officers it dealt with were chastened and felt fear of asking the hard questions,” said Schwellenbach.
Gutierrez, 36, a stay-at-home mother in Phoenix. (photo: Thomas Hawthorne/Arizona Republic)
As COVID-19 Vaccine Rolls Out, Undocumented Immigrants Fear Retribution for Seeking Dose Marco della Cava, Daniel Gonzalez, Rebecca Plevin, USA TODAY Excerpt: "As the COVID-19 vaccine makes its way throughout the United States, immigration activists and lawmakers are rallying to ensure that the 11 million undocumented immigrants at the heart of the nation's food production and service industry sectors are not left out."
Supporters of former president Evo Morales block a road to a Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos oil refinery as part of a protest against Jeanine Áñez on November 17, 2019 in El Alto, La Paz, Bolivia. (photo: Gaston Brito Miserocchi/Getty Images)
Bolivia's Indigenous Masses Have Changed the Course of History Cindy Forster, Jacobin Forster writes: "Fifteen years after Evo Morales was first elected president of Bolivia, his socialist party has returned to power. The far right hasn't given up - but the indigenous masses that reversed the right-wing coup and forced elections have proven themselves a formidable force for justice and democracy."
wo realities collide today in Bolivia. One is the power of a murderous, kleptocratic elite that overthrew an elected government last November, employing violence to impose its will and reprivatize the economy. The other is the people who just voted massively for the return of Movement toward Socialism (MAS), the electoral arm of a socialist movement rooted in indigenous politics that long predates the party itself.
Common sense would indicate that a right-wing coup government never voluntarily cedes authority to a government striving toward socialism. Indigenous peoples, working-class, and even middle-class Bolivians saw no reason to accept that notion.
And on November 16, Evo Morales Ayma — the historic indigenous leader of MAS, who served as president for almost fourteen years — insisted publicly that the coup regime is not ready to retire. The oligarchy appears to have accepted the MAS victory, he said in an interview, but they do not intend to hand power over to the people.
The plans of the Right are therefore far from clear, even two months after MAS’s crushing electoral victory. Earlier this month, police warned the new government not to put them on trial for committing massacres under the orders of the coup authorities. Last week, President Luis Arce told the army generals that rumors of a coup are unacceptable. And international experts who represent the Inter-American Court system arrived recently in Bolivia to investigate responsibility for the massacres of the Áñez regime.
It is clear that the Bolivian masses are ready to mobilize if necessary. Their actions earlier this year — particularly from July 28 to August 15, in the lead-up to October elections — have already changed the tides of history.
“Like Ants That Appear Alone by Day and Come Together at Night”
Ordinary Bolivians in the Andes are often said to be frugal with their words, yet they never stopped blasting the coup government through eleven months of repression. “Evo did not resign, he was forced out,” a young woman said matter-of-factly in March. Elderly women in the marketplaces unleashed streams of invective at police who tried to make them go home at curfew, which fell at high noon. Older men who retained some semblance of reserve all last year expressed their fury after the elections: “Evo Morales ended racism, but the government of that señora brought it back with a vengeance. The coup regime singled out polleras” — indigenous women — “for humiliation.” They were talking about their mothers, sisters, and wives.
Within days of taking power in November 2019, coup president Jeanine Áñez ordered the killing and jailing of protesters. When the pandemic hit, she reduced to misery the majority of the population by imposing a draconian quarantine — permitting only six hours each week outside one’s home, for months, in a country where some three-quarters survive on their earnings day-to-day.
“This is so important” — the gentleman, dignified, struggles for the right words in Spanish, since his world is Aymara — “they never respected us before MAS.” He is a master technician who had told me about the workings of mines and electrical systems to while away the hours of the quarantine; that day, he was giving me directions to the MAS victory celebration.
Through the long night of the coup regime, indigenous people organized “like ants that appear alone by day and come together at night,” in the words of one campesino, “or like the bird that dives and attacks in the piedmont where coca grows. Like a mass of fleas.”
An indigenous community leader told us as the polls were opening, “We are thankful to you for being here. Before this last year, we experienced fourteen years in which we were governed by a state that was very stable.” MAS was putting in place universal health care when it was overthrown. “Now, we have no access to doctors.”
Bolivia suffers one of the highest mortality rates from COVID-19 in Latin America, 6.2 percent as of November 12, and the third-highest rate on Earth. Despite imposing severe restrictions, the government provided virtually no testing during quarantine; logically, many COVID deaths went uncounted. Quarantine was continually extended from March through July and policed by arrogant, officious security forces who practiced no social distancing themselves, often on motorcycles with long firearms, descending on stores like an occupying army at noon or racing uphill in serpentine chains to shut people down. The lockdown was more a state of siege than a sanitary measure.
A woman gestures and shouts during the funeral of people killed during clashes between police and supporters of Evo Morales in the entrance of a major fuel plant, at San Antonio de Asis Church on November 20, 2019 in El Alto, outskirts of La Paz, Bolivia. Gaston Brito Miserocchi / Getty Images
The coup government drove out seven hundred Cuban medical providers in one of its first acts. (Cuba has the lowest COVID-19 contagion and death rates in the hemisphere.) Corpses of the poor overwhelmed the capacity of the cemeteries and ambulances; many were abandoned in the streets.
For months before the 2020 elections, La Razón, the country’s newspaper of record and hardly a radical rag, accused the Right of lying and blocking elections to support an openly authoritarian government. The coup government’s election authority was so divorced from the Bolivian majorities that it prepared a public service announcement encouraging people to vote where it described indigenous protesters as “violent mobs.” In the image, a woman in a pollera was seen waving the sacred symbol of the Wiphala — the multicolored banner of indigenous unity — that was trampled by the right wing as they consecrated their coup with violence.
Said a protester in August, “With COVID-19, we are learning how to live with it, but with this de facto government, we are destined to die.”
The 2020 Elections, According to the Poor
On October 18, MAS’s Luis Arce won by a landslide: 55 percent. The other candidates were varying shades of right-wing. The US embassy’s choice, Carlos Mesa, garnered 29 percent, while the far-right loose cannon Luis Camacho won 14 percent and still refuses to concede. Immediately, Camacho partisans set up road blockades and camped out in front of military bases, demanding that the army and police “carry out another coup.” Mesa and his followers joined them whenever the pendulum of fake news provided an opportunity. When Donald Trump charged fraud, they took heart and echoed Trump, jubilant.
On the morning of the vote, a working-class neighborhood leader told two of us who had arrived as official electoral observers, “Certain sectors took power by committing massacres and now they are leaving office, thanks to today’s election.” He was sure of it. The anger of working-class people was palpable but contained. They were finally voting after four postponements: a deadline of three months was announced by the “interim” government when it came to power, which it then pushed back to May 3, August 2, and finally, September 6. The rural and urban masses lost much, if not most, of their daily income under a government that refused to leave office.
The same community leader said, too modestly, “What we are doing today is a very difficult task.” Hundreds of community leaders had been forced into exile or underground, and the government had done its best to liquidate MAS. Left and grassroots media outlets had been violently shuttered. Over one thousand protesters and MAS leaders filled the prisons. (A handful of high-ranking officials found refuge in the Mexican embassy.) In actions reminiscent of Bolivia’s twentieth-century dictatorships, political prisoners were subjected to torture, including electrical shock; others were denied medical treatment for serious injuries or danger of miscarriage in late-term pregnancy; many were raped by the people guarding them; and some were put in close quarters for prolonged periods with fellow prisoners suffering from COVID.
Yet MAS persistently polled the highest in surveys; even elite pollsters predicted a first-round victory for the socialists. Despite suffering the bruising blows of the Áñez government, the indigenous masses compelled the coup government to finally hold elections.
Highland indigenous likened themselves to paja brava, the indestructible wild grasses of the high Andes. A political prisoner recounted the authorities’ failed attempt to infect her with COVID, and hearing this, a comrade commented that it failed “because we are strong.”
Forged Through Struggle
The unity of the Bolivian poor was forged in the epic years of the 1980s and 1990s, when hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers went on strike in an attempt to save their jobs; when the original peoples of the Amazon and Chaco walked across their vast country to demand territorial sovereignty and a new constitution written by the people (the one at the time was written by the US embassy); and when the indigenous Quechua and Aymara of the high Andes began the organizing that ultimately prevented Bolivia’s water and natural gas from being sold off to foreign interests.
Among these poor people were the small coca farmers who met the worst repression. Hundreds were killed, victims of a war waged by US elite troops that had set up a permanent military presence in the Chapare coca-growing regions. Working with Bolivian forces, US Drug Enforcement Agency soldiers burned homes, raped women, and sprayed lethal chemicals over the countryside.
MAS grew out of these diverse movements: intensely anti-imperialist, fundamentally indigenous, and often taking direction from the wisdom of organized peasant women. They devised a political path and won congressional seats. Before MAS secured the presidency, Washington had advertised Bolivia as a perfect model of neoliberalism.
Congressman Evo Morales Ayma, an indigenous coca farmer who his enemies called the Andean Osama bin Laden, was elected in a landslide in late 2005. He governed over a new page in Bolivian history, preferring decision-making via assemblies and the democratic practices of the peasant union that created him (the Six Federations of the Trópico, to which he has now returned). When Morales favored middle-class experts over the counsel of the social movements, his popularity dropped. (Both he and the recently elected MAS president, Luis Arce Catacora, have said that the decision for Evo to run for a fourth term was a mistake. According to the bases of MAS, they made that decision in an assembly.)
During the MAS years, class tensions were never far from the surface. The breaking point for the right wing was the Constitution that emerged from grassroots assemblies in 2009, which consecrated the reversal of privatizations of the preceding era. Bolivia possesses natural resources that are among the world’s richest, and MAS had moved to reclaim mining, natural gas, and telecommunications, distributing the resulting profits to the most impoverished.
Outraged, the old elites threw themselves into a secession struggle with direction from US ambassador Philip Goldberg (who is now serving in Colombia, launching attacks on Venezuela’s government). National MAS leaders — including the president himself — were prevented from entering half the country, under threats of death from the right-wing elite in the lowlands. When the secession strategy failed, elites turned to the task of winning over the middle sectors, with the goal of overturning the 2009 constitution and ousting MAS.
And they had an ace up their sleeve: five hundred years of virulent racism.
The Middle Classes
I had spent about three months in Bolivia in 2019, watching tensions mount. By October, the street violence unleashed by the right wing was terrifying. Paramilitary actions were ubiquitous, even as the mass media in Bolivia and abroad labeled them peaceful demonstrations. Years of preparation had generated a conservative backlash against MAS, based on media half-truths and lies.
The majority of urban dwellers were convinced that fraud was in the making. Middle-class ladies with their grandchildren would march during the daytime, followed by angry university students in the hundreds, who would then give way to the trained paramilitaries. The attacks were directed by the same well-heeled politicians that had gutted organized labor and privatized the economy during the 1980s and 1990s — Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, Carlos Mesa, Samuel Doria Medina, Óscar Ortiz Antelo.
On the tenth of November 2019, the executive branch was overthrown. An unknown senator was imposed as president unconstitutionally, and the world was told, falsely, that she stood in the line of succession. Carlos Mesa and Luis Camacho were joined by a host of elite actors who have long been neoliberal warriors. Other politicians had already changed colors: from their version of populism within MAS to alliances with conservatives. Among them were the mayors Luis Revilla of La Paz and Soledad Chapetón of El Alto, two neighboring cities that are centers, respectively, of national governance, and of resistance to neoliberalism.
Right-wing social media and outlets spun incredible lies, claiming the massacres of indigenous people in the days after the coup were the work of “savages” killing each other. It was left to a handful of leftist journalists and a few intrepid international reporters to depict the bravery of the poor, defying the coup regime’s threats to jail them. One journalist was killed. The task of challenging the mainstream media was also taken up by Evo Morales and his closest advisers, who had left the country rather than enter a civil war.
Those who still claim that MAS imposed its victory through fraud in 2019 include individuals in the highest reaches of the twentieth-century narco-economy and disgruntled magnates whose mining or gas emporia MAS had whittled down. Alongside them are the US embassy, their allies in the Bolivian armed forces and police, and the Organization of American States.
The startling crimes of the Áñez government, however, have diminished the fervor of the middle classes. Carlos Mesa lost to MAS by a much greater margin than in 2019: an additional 8 percent of the electorate gave their vote to the Left. Political analysts in Bolivia suggest these are the same people who were raised out of poverty into middle-class status by “the economic miracle” engineered by MAS, which created the healthiest growth rates in South America.
Mesa still prevailed in the largest cities with the exception of two. The first was the indigenous city of El Alto — situated above La Paz — which voted for MAS. The second was the lowland metropolis of Santa Cruz, the fulcrum of the agro-export oligarchy and home to a wrathful middle class whose rage against “savage Indian hordes” has been molded by Latin America’s ultra-right opinion shapers.
But even in the most right-wing department of Santa Cruz (which goes by the same name as the city), working-class and peasant supporters of MAS won 36.19 percent, coming in second place.
The Right Plays Foul
Among urban voters, the fears of a stolen election had been carefully stoked by the Organization of American States (OAS) and plotted by the US Embassy, with the aim of ensuring violence. Paramilitaries were trained and acted according to a meticulous military strategy. But they were outmaneuvered by the sheer organization of the poor.
Carlos Mesa tucked his tail between his legs and congratulated the new president, as did Jeanine Áñez. She had warned voters of the dangers of MAS up to the very last moment — in defiance of the legal prohibition against such speech — but was unable to prevent MAS from sweeping the polls.
The far right is an abiding threat. Creemos won 45.04 percent of the total votes in Santa Cruz. A very wealthy businessman, Camacho sends his profits offshore and holds political meetings that are effectively sobbing prayer sessions at the foot of a huge statue of Christ the Redeemer. He has spent the last two decades at the forefront of the Civic Committee of the city of Santa Cruz, which makes no secret of its racism and its fascination with fascism.
According to his own account, Camacho said his father persuaded the army’s high command to join the coup last year. The Santa Cruz paramilitary wing entered La Paz in 2019, moving in waves of “shock” attacks and beating indigenous women and anyone who lingered. On November 12, riding the wave of terror he had created, Luis Camacho escorted Jeanine Áñez into the presidential palace. In the days after the October 2020 election, the youth wing of Camacho’s Santa Cruz Civic Committee planted itself in front of army bases and police stations in Santa Cruz, demanding that the soldiers stage “another coup to save the country from MAS” — even though they had spent the last year denying they’d carried out a coup.
The right-wing youth of Santa Cruz were joined by their cohorts in the city of Cochabamba, going by the name Cochala Youth Resistance. Cochabamba’s political thugs are infamous for their pre-2019 election beating and six-kilometer forced march of Patricia Arce, a small-town MAS mayor (who had just been elected to the Senate), and their attack on a demonstration of peasant women and children. They followed with a year of motorcycle attacks on the poor who dared critique Áñez and, post-election, have refused to concede.
In the deluge of reports since MAS returned to power on Sunday, November 8, Morales asserted that the coup government and its international allies had attempted a second coup just days earlier. Among the generals charged with carrying out the coup, one of them stepped forward and refused to obey because he “belonged to MAS.” He was followed by others who said the same. The plans of the oligarchy fell like a house of cards — in a gathering of generals — eleven months of organizing by the people both within MAS and more broadly.
Neoliberal elites are unlikely to give up on coup-plotting or disband their paramilitary apparatus anytime soon, and the United States government continues to believe it possesses the right to control Bolivia’s natural resources. The movement behind MAS is under no illusion that the Right and its allies have had a change of heart.
During weeks of protest at the start of August, indigenous campesinos and the urban poor put into practice the strategies they had forged since the early twenty-first century, when social movements shut down Bolivia and opened the path to a more democratic country. Constantly across the last year, they told people not to worry, utterly confident that the presence of “the people” inside the military and police would prevail over the paid collaborators of the oligarchy. Those strategies have grown more complex through the first two decades of this century — and they are likely to be put to the test again.
Joan Baez and Pete Seeger preform, Where Have All The Flowers Gone at the Pete 1994 Kennedy Center Honors
Where Have All the Flowers Gone Lyrics, Pete Seeger
Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing Where have all the flowers gone? Long time ago Where have all the flowers gone? Young girls have picked them every one Oh, when will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?
Where have all the young girls gone? Long time passing Where have all the young girls gone? Long time ago Where have all the young girls gone? Gone for husbands every one Oh, when will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?
Where have all the husbands gone? Long time passing Where have all the husbands gone? Long time ago Where have all the husbands gone? Gone for soldiers every one Oh, when will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?
Where have all the soldiers gone? Long time passing Where have all the soldiers gone? Long time ago Where have all the soldiers gone? Gone to graveyards every one Oh, when will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?
Where have all the graveyards gone? Long time passing Where have all the graveyards gone? Long time ago Where have all the graveyards gone? Gone to flowers every one Oh, when will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?
Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing Where have all the flowers gone? Long time ago Where have all the flowers gone? Young girls have picked them every one Oh, when will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?
The Oak Flat area of the Tonto National Forest, east of Phoenix. Under a Forest Service plan to create a copper mine, much of Oak Flat would be destroyed. (photo: Adriana Zehbrauskas/NYT)
In Last Rush, Trump Grants Mining and Energy Firms Access to Public Lands Eric Lipton, The New York Times Lipton writes: "The Trump administration is rushing to approve a final wave of large-scale mining and energy projects on federal lands, encouraged by investors who want to try to ensure the projects move ahead even after President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. takes office."
The outgoing administration is pushing through approval of corporate projects over the opposition of environmental groups and tribal communities.
In Arizona, the Forest Service is preparing to sign off on the transfer of federal forest land — considered sacred by a neighboring Native American tribe — to allow construction of one of the nation’s largest copper mines.
In Utah, the Interior Department may grant final approval as soon as next week to a team of energy speculators targeting a remote spot inside an iconic national wilderness area — where new energy leasing is currently banned — so they can start drilling into what they believe is a huge underground supply of helium.
he outgoing administration has set a ticking time bomb for the incoming one, and planted it into every federal agency the president-elect is about to take over. Through executive action, President Donald Trump has gutted civil service protections, a four-year process that was undertaken to allow him to sweep out federal workers in his second term. Now that such a term isn’t in the cards for Trump, his lieutenants are busy making big changes in federal agencies, potentially upending the work lives of hundreds of thousands of federal employees and sowing chaos in Joe Biden’s first 100 days.
