It's Live on the HomePage Now: FOCUS: Jesse Jackson | Biden's Inauguration Gives Us New Hope and New Energy
Kennedy, inaugurated after eight years of Republican Dwight Eisenhower, brought new energy to Washington. Kennedy favored action on civil rights but was terribly worried that trying to move a civil rights bill would get in the way of the rest of his legislative agenda. During his campaign, his call to Coretta Scott King when Dr. King was jailed, helped him capture immense Black support in a razor-thin election. Yet, he was wary of King, unhappy that King and the movement kept demonstrating and forcing change. King appreciated Kennedy but understood the conflicting pressures he faced. The movement continued independently. The Freedom Riders in Montgomery, the dogs and water cannons in Birmingham, the sit-in in Jackson forced Kennedy to act. Even then the legislation — and much of Kennedy’s agenda — was stuck in the legislature. Kennedy’s assassination brought Lyndon Johnson, the master of the Senate, to the presidency. Johnson decided to push civil rights legislation and put his enormous skills behind passing it. King conferred with Johnson and helped put pressure on legislators who were reluctant. King wasn’t simply interested in protest; he wanted a change in policy and was prepared to work with LBJ to get it. Johnson, like Kennedy, was wary of King. He often besmirched him in private, angry that King would not stop the demonstrations. Again, the movement — this time the dramatic scenes at Selma — forced action, and Johnson rose to the moment, leading to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. The collaboration of Johnson and King, however, soon ended. The Watts Riot angered Johnson who thought blacks should be grateful for what he had done. When Dr. King went public with his opposition to the Vietnam War, the relationship was severed. The FBI under J. Edgar Hoover continued its efforts to discredit and intimidate King. Today the situation is different. Black voters were critical to Biden’s election victory. He chose Kamala Harris as his vice president. He has reaffirmed his commitment to criminal justice reform, to addressing the continued disparities in education, housing, health care and opportunity. What African Americans still seek is an even playing field. On economic justice issues, our agenda speaks to all: the right to a job, the right to health care, the right to a high-quality education, retirement security. To drive reform, the lessons of the 1960s still apply. The movement for justice must continue to organize nonviolent protest, challenging the entrenched systemic racism that still pervades our institutions. It must continue to build, as Dr. King did, a poor people’s campaign across lines of race and region. The movement can’t follow Biden’s timetable; it must continue to build on its own agenda. There should be no reluctance to work with Biden to help pass critical reforms, but at the same time, the pressure for outside must continue to build for there to be any hope of change. The 1960s offer another caution: the war on poverty, the progress on civil rights, was lost in the jungles of Vietnam, as that war consumed resources and attention as well as lives. While Biden’s domestic pledges offer hope, he inherits a country mired in endless wars and gearing up for a new cold war with both Russia and China. Once more, follies abroad may sap the energy needed to rebuild at home. Once more, the movement for justice must not be silent about the administration’s priorities. Biden’s inauguration offers new hope and new energy. He inherits severe crises — the pandemic, mass unemployment, extreme inequality, the climate crisis, racial upheaval. He’ll need all the help he can get. And the best way the movement can help is to keep on keeping on. |
n Monday, we celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King’s 91st birthday; on Wednesday, Joe Biden will be inaugurated as president, promising change after a dark period of division. Dr. King’s relationship with John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson offers instructive lessons for today’s movement for justice.
It's Live on the HomePage Now: Rep. Rashida Tlaib: I Fear Trump Will Lead More Violent Attacks; He Must Be Held to Account
Biden has already outlined a day-one agenda of executive actions to address the raging coronavirus pandemic and roll back key parts of Trump’s agenda. On Wednesday, he says, he’ll repeal Trump’s travel ban for citizens of majority-Muslim countries, move to rejoin the Paris climate accord, and issue a mask mandate on federal property. Biden also plans to unveil a sweeping immigration bill to offer an eight-year path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. without legal status. Meanwhile, Trump plans to leave Washington, D.C., Wednesday morning and continues to make false claims of election fraud after Congress impeached him last week for a second time after the failed insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th. Among those with an agenda for incoming President Biden are members of the Squad, and in a minute we’ll be joined by Congressmember Rashida Talib of Michigan. This is Congressmember Tlaib speaking during the House impeachment proceedings last Wednesday.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Wednesday. On Monday, Congressmember Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, tweeted, “The Senate reconvenes tomorrow. They should immediately convict Donald Trump and hold him fully accountable for inciting a deadly attack on our country.” Well, for more, we’re joined by Congressmember Rashida Tlaib. It’s great to have you back on Democracy Now! If you can start off by talking about what is about to happen tomorrow? It’s not only the inauguration. And we’d like you to talk about this unprecedented crackdown in your adopted city right now, the capital of the United States, but also this slew of first day executive orders. It looks like the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, the largest caucus in Congress, has certainly held sway on a number of these issues. REP. RASHIDA TLAIB: Yeah, I think many of us are obviously concerned, but it’s just a continuation of this administration. I mean, the Trump administration hasn’t fully been transparent, nor have they had moral values — I don’t care if it’s around pardons, death penalty. There’s just been a wave of increased, I think, hate in this violent agenda by this current administration. So I’m not surprised, as all of us who were celebrating the legacy of Dr. King, that he was yet still signing a number of executive orders, and then also continuing with appointments and other kinds of measures that are pretty unprecedented. So, I think it’s really important, Amy, to understand just how dangerous this man is, even after he leaves office. He has spewed out this agenda, that I don’t think is going to go anywhere. I think he’s going to continue to lead this type of — what are people calling — insurrection; I call it violent attacks on our country. And so, I think it’s really important that we, as a country, realize accountability is extremely important here, from those in Congress that enabled him, from those that continue to support him, that they all need to be held equally accountable, as well as Donald Trump. I hope — I hope that there’s an awakening in the Senate, but I’ve been waiting for that awakening to happen for quite a while, for Leader McConnell and many others to finally say, “Enough is enough,” and impeach and convict the forever-impeached, twice, President Donald Trump. What he did was pretty unprecedented. And, Amy, I have to be honest: If it was somebody that looked like me, if it was President Barack Obama, there would be no question that he would be held accountable. He would be convicted. He would be removed from office. He would never, ever be able to run again. He wouldn’t ever be able to get public benefits. He has truly sent us on a dangerous path that I don’t thing is going to go away very easily even after he leaves office. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Congressmember, could you talk a little bit about your own experience during that insurrection? According to the staff in Representative Ayanna Pressley’s office, panic buttons had been ripped out. What have you heard about that? And tell us what you, yourself, experienced that day. REP. RASHIDA TLAIB: Yeah, that day, I was not on campus, even though I was scheduled to speak on the floor because Michigan was one of the states that was going to be objected by the Republicans, the Electoral College, so I was planning on speaking for over, like, close to five minutes on the House floor. But, fortunately, by fate, I was not on campus, nor was I near the attacks. I started beginning to hear about them, checking in with many of my Michigan delegation members who were on the floor. I didn’t experience similar trauma; I think many of my colleagues did. But it sure angered me to see the place that I work, that I fight for my district every single day, under attack, and so easily done. I kept seeing videos after videos of these folks carrying Confederate flags, chanting “Nancy! Nancy!” trying to find her, to kidnap members of the United States Congress, calling us the traitors when they’re the ones attacking our democracy. And so, it definitely, I think, for my team and I, who this past week did a session around just self-care in trauma and understanding that, you know, the place that we work and that we go and advocate and fight for our people was literally surrounded by gun-carrying, violent folks who had every intention of hurting members of Congress or anyone that wanted to hold Trump accountable. I think it’s important for listeners to please take a moment, and know it’s hard, but I did — I listened to the speech that this forever-impeached, lawless, corrupted president gave to the crowd before they headed towards the Capitol. It was very clear what his orders were. And they followed them very clearly. And yet again, many of my colleagues continue to enable him and continue to support what happened. “I’m against violence,” they say, and then they continue to say that’s not what they were here to support, when it is very clear, from intelligence, they had every intention of kidnapping. They left human feces all throughout the hallway, carried Confederate flags, chanted and looked for Speaker Pelosi, while one of my colleagues live-tweeted the whereabouts of the speaker. This was — well, could have been so much worse than what we saw. I mean, just the image of the noose erected outside of the Capitol, in hopes that were going to be able to lynch the vice president of the United States for following our democracy, following what the will of the people were, which was to make sure that Joe Biden was the next president of the United States. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Congressmember, I wanted to ask you about some of — REP. RASHIDA TLAIB: But this is so deep and so painful to have— JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you about some of the initiatives of President-elect Biden, both the — some of the executive orders, a reversal of the ban on travel from Muslim-majority countries, and also the XL pipeline, and also the indication that he’s apparently going to try to move quickly on immigration reform, something that has stymied Congress now for more than 16 — I mean, what’s it? Fourteen, 15 years. Since 2006, there have been attempts to try to get immigration reform through Congress. Did you get a sense that this will change in this session of the new Congress? REP. RASHIDA TLAIB: I mean, I think, you know, for myself and many of my sisters in service and others, we are asking for a sense of urgency and moving forward in trying to address these broken systems that have left so many of our families in a lot of pain, many of which are oppressive policies, hate and discriminative policies that have torn our families apart, left them, in some ways — you know, their children and others — again, with trauma that’s going to — who knows how long it’s going to take to even address that? It’s going to be generations of our families that have been impacted by this hate agenda that continues to spew in these broken systems, that, honestly, should have been addressed years ago. So, yes, from my immigrant neighbors in the 13th Congressional District, what I hear from them is this is great. They want the details, and they want to make sure that someone like them, who have been here for years, have been part of our community for decades, raising their children here with mine, that they are going to have a pathway to citizenship, that’s not going to take another decade or take these kinds of leaps of bureaucracy that really will delay, again, for them to be able to move on with their life and not live in fear. AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you, Congressmember Rashida Tlaib, about the experience of your colleagues who were there. Is it right, you were vaccinated right around that time? REP. RASHIDA TLAIB: I had the second vaccination — and I never get sick — and I got all the side effects, literally woke up with a fever, thought it was COVID, got the test done. In all of this, me trying to make sure that I was going to be able to get to the floor to speak on behalf of my state, but that’s when the lockdown happened, and I kept hearing reports and checking in again with colleagues. AMY GOODMAN: So, you had Ayanna Pressley, the first African American congresswoman elected from Massachusetts, her staff realizing, when they were locked in the office, that somehow the panic buttons — is this true — that you all have in your offices, were ripped out, something they had never seen before? You had Pramila Jayapal and Congressmember Coleman from New Jersey both testing positive for COVID, as they were forced to be in a secure location very closely with Republican colleagues who refused to wear masks. Now both of their husbands also have tested positive for COVID-19. REP. RASHIDA TLAIB: Yeah, so, you know, I think Representative Pressley’s staff folks did make public that the panic button wasn’t there. It did make many of us, including myself and others, to make sure ours was intact. Mine was. And again, I don’t know how much we can share of the whereabouts of these buttons, but I know it’s part of — I think, before we even got there, part of a process or a protocol for members of the United States Congress. I think, for many of my colleagues, including Representative Pressley and Pramila Jayapal, Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman, many of my colleagues that were in that room, undisclosed room, we all, I think, watched as some of the newer members, ones that continue to enable this president in the violence on our democracy and on our people, they mocked one of my colleagues, who gently and very gracefully asked for them to wear masks, just, you know, on top of, again, this attack, many of which heard the shooting outside of the House chambers. Some of my colleagues were telling me the next day — one of them, who’s been there longer than I have, said he’s experiencing post-traumatic stress the next day, just realizing his whole body was kind of in shock. And again, a continuation of hearing stories from many of my colleagues about just how unprepared and just the kind of shock that they all went through in experiencing that and hearing not only the shooting, but also the chants and just kind of the loud crowd screaming outside of the House chambers. AMY GOODMAN: And your colleague Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saying she feared Republican lawmakers would lead rioters to her if she joined them in a secure room. She said, “I thought I was going to die.” Which leads us to, one, the demand for an investigation, people like Mikie Sherrill, the congresswoman from New Jersey, saying she saw these tours the day before, of what turned out to be the rioters, the domestic terrorists, the next day — could only be invited in by congressmembers or their staff — and what the impeachment trial would look like, why there’s a demand to do it while McConnell is still in charge, when the Democrats are going to be taking over in just a matter of days — is that right? — the Senate. REP. RASHIDA TLAIB: Yeah, I think — you know, I think it’s really important to understand that there is a tremendous breakdown of trust among many of us with some of our colleagues, again, some of which were live-tweeting, continued to even tweet and speak on the floor during the impeachment, the second impeachment. They’re kind of almost enabling speeches about what happened and how this — you know, spewing into the conspiracy theories that this was a stolen election. A continuation of them pushing back against this rhetoric, that is real, coming from this white-supremacist-in-chief, President Trump, and it was just — you can see that, as we sat there in shock after everything we’ve all gone through together, including themselves, I watched, again, one by one, continue to support what happened. They claim they’re not against violence, but they’re supporting a violent president. They’re supporting someone that just gave that speech to the crowd that really gave them the green light of going ahead and, again, doing what they did on January 6. I think, with impeachment, people want to move quickly. This is — you know, I think we wanted eight days ago for the Senate to convene and to stop, because what you see now, not only with executive orders — who knows what he’s going to do with pardons? He’s appointing people. Understand, this is a very dangerous president. This is a person that is a threat to our country and our nation. And we want, again, a sense of urgency, and have those that enabled him, including Mitch McConnell, to finally wake up and hold him accountable. It is important, again, for the future of our nation, but also to send a strong message that it’s over, enough, enough with the conspiracy theories that have led to, you know, this kind of hate agenda, but also underlining racism, when they target communities like Detroit and communities that I represent. And so, I think it’s important to understand, for all of us, we wanted them to move quickly, because we’re seeing what we’re seeing in the last few days. Who knows what he’s going to be able to do? Again, he is the most not powerful person only in the country, but the world. And I think, again, he’s a very imminent danger to our world, to our country. |
MY GOODMAN: On Donald Trump’s final full day as president, the Senate is holding confirmation hearings for five of President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet nominees as Biden prepares for his inauguration Wednesday along with Kamala Harris.
President Biden's inauguration. (photo: J.Scott Applewhite/AP)
Joe Biden Plans to Swiftly Reverse Trump's 'Most Egregious Moves' on First Day in White House
Joey Garrison and Courtney Subramanian, USA Today
Excerpt: "Throughout the presidential campaign, Joe Biden vowed to use executive authority to immediately undo President Donald Trump's policies on the environment, immigration and other areas that dismayed Democrats and international allies."
That rollback begins Wednesday after Biden is sworn in as the 46th president. In a flurry of orders billed as "historic action on Day One," Biden plans to sign 15 executive orders and other directives in the evening, followed by several more over the next 10 days.
Biden will end construction of Trump's signature wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the president-elect's transition team, by proclaiming the "immediate termination" of the national emergency declaration Trump used to fund it. He will also take action to end Trump's withdrawal from the World Health Organization, which Trump abandoned in July.
Biden also on Wednesday will rejoin the Paris Agreement on climate change, a treaty the U.S. formally exited in November after Trump withdrew in 2017, and take executive action to reverse Trump's ban on travel from predominantly Muslim countries.
The swiftness is meant to demonstrate urgency to turn the page on a divisive four years under the Trump administration, experts said. Most of the actions hit what the Biden team calls "four overlapping and compounding crises" – the COVID-19 pandemic, the resulting economic damage, climate change and lagging racial equity
"He's trying to show the American people, and the world more generally, that America is back to where it was before the Trump administration," said Todd Belt, professor and political management program director at George Washington University. By signing so many orders so soon, Biden will deliver a "repudiation of Trump's approach to governance," Belt said.
Keystone pipeline, racial equity, 1776 Commission, immigration and more
Also on his first day in office, Biden will cancel the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline to move oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, according to White House national climate adviser Gina McCarthy, rescinding Trump's approval of a project long criticized by environmentalists.
He will issue a mask mandate on federal property as part of his efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, and extend the pause on student loan payments and nationwide restrictions on evictions and disclosures.
The president is also expected to sign an order launching a government-wide initiative directing every federal agency to review its state of racial equity and deliver an action plan within 200 days to address any disparities in policies and programs, according to Susan Rice, Biden’s domestic policy chief.
The Biden administration will create a new equitable data working group to make sure federal data reflects the country’s diverse make-up and direct the Office of Management and Budget to allocate more federal resources to underserved communities.
“Delivering on racial justice will require that the administration takes a comprehensive approach to embed equity in every aspect of our policymaking and decision-making,” Rice said.
Other Day One executive orders include:
- Rescinding Trump's 1776 Commission, a panel Trump established as a response to the New York Times' 1619 Project, a Pulitzer Prize-winning collection that focused on America's history with slavery.
- Revoking Trump's plan to exclude non-citizens from the census.
- Prohibiting workplace discrimination in the federal government based on sexual orientation and gender identity and directing federal agencies to ensure protections for LGBTQ people are included in anti-discrimination statutes.
- Creating a COVID-19 response coordinator who will report directly to the president
- Revoking Trump's 2017 Interior Enforcement Executive Order, which broadened the categories of undocumented immigrants subject for removal, restarted the Secure Communities program and supported the federal 287(g) deportation program.
More action planned over next 10 days
Kate Bedingfield, Biden's incoming White House communication director, called the executive orders "decisive steps to roll back some of the most egregious moves of the Trump administration" in an interview Sunday on ABC's "This Week. "And he's going to take steps to move us forward," she added.
More orders will come Thursday, Biden's first full day in office, when he signs several executive actions related to the COVID-19 crisis and reopening schools and businesses, Biden's Chief of Staff Klain said in a memo outlining the first 10 days of the administration. That includes expanded testing, protections for workers and establishing public health standards.
Friday, Biden will direct his incoming Cabinet to "take immediate action to deliver economic relief" to working families struggling financially as a result of the pandemic, the memo said.
Other future orders confirmed by Biden's team include revoking the ban on military service by transgender Americans and reversing the "Mexico City policy," which blocks federal funding for non-governmental organizations that provide abortion services abroad.
Next week, Biden will sign orders to carry out his "Buy American" pledge, "advance equity and support communities of color and other underserved communities" and implement criminal justice changes.
He will sign additional executive actions related to climate change, expanding access to health care – particularly for low-income women and women of color – and on immigration and border policies, including the process of reuniting families separated at the U.S.-Mexican border, according to Klain.
"Of course, these actions are just the start of our work," Klain said. "But by Feb. 1st, America will be moving in the right direction on all four of these challenges – and more – thanks to President-elect Joe Biden’s leadership."
Just one piece of the Biden agenda
The Biden team acknowledged that congressional action will be required to achieve much of Biden's early agenda. Topping that list is passage of a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package, dubbed the American Rescue Plan, that Biden introduced last week.
Biden promised to introduce an immigration bill "immediately" upon taking office. It will include an eight-year pathway to citizenship for immigrants living in the U.S. without legal status, an expansion of refugee admissions and the use of new technology to patrol the border.
"Over the first week and a half, he's going to do everything he can, within his power, to move us forward," Bedingfield said. "But that's only one piece of the agenda. The second piece of the agenda will be working with Congress."
Biden begins his presidency seeking to unify a deeply divided nation, yet taking unilateral action. Executive orders became more common under the Obama and Trump presidencies, Belt said, as their administrations recognized it's easier to govern through executive power than legislation that needs congressional approval.
Trump issued eight executive orders by Feb. 3, 2017, and 210 over his four-year term. Obama had nine during the same time frame after inauguration and 276 over eight years. But the last four presidents only took two day-one executive actions combined, according to the Biden team.
Other environmental orders in addition to Paris Agreement
Perhaps no other early action will deliver a bigger statement symbolically than rejoining the Paris Agreement, which will show the world the United States is ready to work multilaterally again, a departure from the isolationist tendencies of Trump, experts said.
The historic deal signed by Obama in 2015 includes almost 200 nations in agreement to combat climate change. Although mostly nonbinding, the Paris Agreement requires countries to set voluntary targets for reducing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. Nations have to accurately report on their efforts. Rejoining would mean the United States would again provide funding to developing countries for its climate change efforts.
"It's a very strong signal to the world that President Biden is sharply reversing the Trump policies and rejoining the national effort to fight climate change," said Michael Gerrard, director of Columbia University's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. "It will be warmly received by the rest of the world and put the U.S. back in a position of leadership."
Biden’s climate crusade: How his plan to cut carbon emissions, create jobs could impact US
The president also plans to sign a broad executive order to reverse more than 100 Trump administration environmental policies and direct all agencies to review federal regulations and executive actions from the last four years to determine whether they were harmful to public health, damaging to the environment or unsupported by science, McCarthy said.
Within that order, Biden will direct the Department of Interior to restore protections for national monuments including Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears, which Trump sought to open to companies for mining and energy drilling, as well as place a temporary moratorium on all oil and natural gas leasing activities in the Arctic National Wildlife.
The order also re-establishes the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases to examine whether greenhouse gas emissions and climate risks in governmental activities are fully accounted for.
More:The US is out of the Paris climate change agreement; if Biden wins, that could change
"The Paris climate agreement itself is not particularly binding. It's more what it symbolizes. But Biden is going to obviously be taking lot of other measures to carry out the promises of Paris," Gerrard said.
Travel ban a 'stain on nation,' Biden team says
Trump's travel ban, ordered during his first week in office but reworked after legal challenges, was struck down multiple times in lower courts for being unconstitutional but was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018. Trump campaigned in 2016 on banning Muslims from entering the USA.
Trump's travel ban suspended the issuance of immigrant and nonimmigrant visas to applicants from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela. Last year, the Trump administration added six countries by suspending overseas visas for nationals of Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar and Nigeria and adding restrictions on Sudanese and Tanzanian nationals.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan called the Muslim ban “nothing less than a stain on our nation.”
“It was rooted in xenophobia and religious animus and President-elect Biden has been clear that we will not turn our back on our values with discriminatory bans on entry to the United States,” he said.
Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, called it "very welcome news" to see Biden rescind "what was a totally, we believe, totally unconstitutional, un-American policy barring people based on their faith."
He said CAIR hopes Biden will soon repeal other Trump policies on immigration and refugees. That includes prohibiting the separation of parents from children at the southern border and removing caps on refugees and asylum seekers.
"The actions taken on Day One are an indication of how they're viewed as being important – issues that need to be introduced immediately," Hooper said. "It's good the Muslim ban is one of those issues."
Vice President Kamala Harris is sworn-in. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty)
Kamala Harris Sworn Into History
Chelsea Janes and Cleve R. Wootson Jr., The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Kamala D. Harris was sworn in as vice president of the United States on Wednesday, stepping into history as the highest-ranking female politician in American history."
As the world watched and worried and hoped, Harris raised her right hand, face steeled as it was through so many hearings and debates that it became her signature stare.
Then, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor read “so help me God,” the stoicism broke.
“So help me God,” Harris repeated, overcome with a smile as her sister, Maya, broke into tears behind her. She hugged her husband. She found Joe Biden waiting, shaking his fists in triumph. Then she walked back to her seat and into history.
The moment reflected a historic rise at a time of historic crises. Harris, the 56-year-old daughter of a Jamaican father and Indian mother, became the first Black person and the first person of South Asian descent to hold an office that has been previously occupied solely by White men. She was sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina to serve on the nation’s highest court, a calculated choice from a former senator from California who has highlighted women of color during her career.
The weight of the history Harris made — and what it took for her to make it — were ever-present Wednesday.
From the moment Harris stepped out of her motorcade, she and her husband, Doug Emhoff, were escorted by Eugene Goodman, the Black Capitol police officer who held off a mostly White mob of rioters during the attempted siege of that complex last week. Goodman also escorted her to the balcony where she took the oath.
She stepped out to a gathered crowd that included allies such as Hillary Clinton, who nearly broke the glass ceiling for women in the nation’s highest offices four years sooner, and recent adversaries, including Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, the subject of one of her most-talked-about interrogations on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
As she walked into the ceremony, she stooped to kiss her niece. She bumped fists with Barack Obama, the first Black man to serve as president. She shared a few words with Mike Pence, her predecessor, who called Harris to congratulate her earlier this week, even as President Donald Trump refused to do so.
She passed women wearing pearls like her, including Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who wore pearls that used to belong to late congresswoman Shirley Chisholm — a nod to the first Black woman to run for president. When Harris ran for president last year, she chose her logo and colors based on the ones Chisholm used a half-century ago.
Harris, clad in an outfit of purple by Black designer Christopher John Rogers, took the oath of office with her hand on two Bibles. One belonged to civil rights icon Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court justice and a fellow Howard University graduate whom Harris, a former prosecutor, saw as a hero. The second belonged to Regina Shelton, a neighbor who was a second mother to Harris and her younger sister, Maya. Harris took her Senate oath on Shelton’s Bible in January 2017. Joe Biden administered that oath.
Earlier in the day, Harris and Emhoff joined the Bidens, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and others at St. Matthew of the Apostle church for a prayer service. They joined the Bidens in a motorcade to the Capitol, where Harris was sworn in shortly before the new president.
Harris’s term was historic from the moment she finished the oath, but she has the potential to be one of the most consequential vice presidents in American history. Democrats and Republicans each hold 50 seats in the U.S. Senate and, as the president of the Senate, Harris holds the tie-breaking vote. The Democratic lean means the Biden-Harris administration has a clearer path to enacting legislative priorities, including an expansion of federal health-care subsidies, a comprehensive immigration overhaul and a tax increase on the wealthy.
One of Harris’s first official acts will be to swear in three new Democratic senators: Alex Padilla, her replacement as senator from California and the first Latino to hold the position; and new Georgia Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, whose victories in a pair of runoffs knotted the chamber. At 33, Ossoff will be the youngest senator sworn in since Biden, who was 30 when he first took office in 1973.
Harris was one of more than two dozen Democrats who had vied to unseat President Donald Trump. She began the Democratic primary as an on-paper favorite, drawing one of its biggest crowds — more than 20,000 people — to her campaign launch in front of City Hall in Oakland, Calif.
But her campaign foundered, largely because of her inability to dislodge Biden’s base of support. By December 2019, she was out of money and exited the race before a single ballot was cast.
Harris, who was selected to the Senate the same day Trump became president, did not have the progressive track record to pry away loyalists to Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and she did not inspire the newcomer zing of Pete Buttigieg, then-mayor of South Bend., Ind..
Instead, from the most diverse slate of candidates in history, Democrats searching for practicality and normalcy selected Biden — believing he had the best chance of defeating Trump in the general election.
At 78, Biden is the oldest president in the nation’s history, which thrusts additional importance on the person who would serve in his stead. Biden has said he considers himself a “transition candidate,” a label he cemented when he vowed to pick a woman as his running mate and interviewed more than a dozen.
But as the nation simmered with racial strife following the death of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police, liberal activists and congressional leaders pressured Biden to select a Black woman.
Harris has known Biden for years, and was close with his late son Beau, who was the attorney general for the state of Delaware when Harris held the same post in California.
Despite the connection, Harris launched an attack on Biden at the first Democratic debate over his nostalgic talk about working with two segregationists senators.
“It was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country,” Harris said during the debate. She also took Biden to task for his opposition to mandatory busing.
Biden’s wife, Jill, described that moment as being “like a punch to the gut,” and it added drama to Biden’s months-long search for a running mate.
But Biden and Harris publicly made up, and aides to both say they have worked in tandem throughout the transition. Both say she will be a key partner in his administration, much as Biden was to President Barack Obama. She often spoke alongside Biden at transition events, a constant presence by design in a way past vice presidents have not been.
Tuesday night, it was Harris who offered remarks to the nation as part of a brief memorial service for those lost to covid-19. Her family — some White, some Black, stepchildren and beloved grandnieces — gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial ahead of time, snapping selfies that embodied the kind of modern American experience Harris has come to represent.
As Harris stood in St. Matthew of the Apostle on Wednesday morning, surrounded by high-profile politicians drenched in Washington tradition, her hometown basketball team — the Golden State Warriors — released a video of a young Black girl skipping through the streets of Oakland in Converses, the shoes Harris wore regularly on the campaign trail. That girl wore a Warriors jersey with No. 49, a symbol of the possibilities children see in Harris that they never saw before. Harris, the 49th vice president, will display a No. 49 Warriors jersey in her office. The back reads Madam Vice President — “MVP.”
The schedule for her first day as vice president is a busy one, and includes a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, the swearing in of three new senators, and remarks at a televised inauguration celebration later in the day — the first time Americans will hear a woman address them as vice president.
A Border Patrol officer sits in his car as he guards the U.S.-Mexico border fence in Nogales, Ariz., on Feb. 9, 2019. (photo: Ariana Drehsler/Getty)
ALSO SEE: Trump Revokes Lobbying Ban After
Promising to 'Drain the Swamp'
Trump Administration Trying to Sabotage Biden Immigration Plans With Last-Minute Deals, Say Officials
Jacob Soboroff and Julia Ainsley, NBC News
Excerpt: "Current and former Trump administration officials say the Department of Homeland Security has made a last-minute effort to 'sabotage' the incoming administration's efforts to unroll its tough immigration policies by signing legal agreements in recent weeks with state and local authorities that are intended to delay any such changes for 180 days."
"The whole point is 110 percent to screw the incoming administration from doing anything for six months," said an official, who doubts the deals are legal.
Homeland Security has entered into agreements that would require the agency, even under the leadership of the Biden administration, to consult with certain state and local jurisdictions "before taking any action or making any decision that could reduce immigration enforcement, increase the number of illegal aliens in the United States, or increase immigration benefits or eligibility for benefits" for undocumented immigrants.
The states and localities would then have 180 days to provide comment — and the Biden officials would have to consider their input and provide a "detailed written explanation" if they rejected it.
Four such agreements, signed by the attorneys general of Indiana, Louisiana and Arizona and the sheriff of Rockingham County, North Carolina, were first reported by BuzzFeed News. Legal experts have questioned whether they can be enforced.
NBC News has reviewed the four agreements, which were signed from Dec. 15 to Dec. 29 by the localities and on Jan. 8 by Ken Cuccinelli, the senior Trump official performing the duties of deputy secretary of homeland security. Two current Trump administration officials said more such agreements have been signed by other states and municipalities.
One of the current officials said the documents were written with the sole purpose of delaying Biden's immigration agenda by six months.
"The whole point is 110 percent to screw the incoming administration from doing anything for six months," one of the officials said, adding that the broad language could keep the agreements from standing up in court.
"It's written so broadly I can't think of anything DHS would do that wouldn't fall under that. But at the same time, that makes it potentially unenforceable," the official added.
Rick Su, a professor of immigration law at the University of North Carolina, said: "They are trying to hamper the power of a subsequent administration. The federal government cannot relinquish or delegate its sovereign power in this manner."
A former Trump administration official called the legal agreements "an attempt at undemocratic sabotage." Another current official said the agreements would ensure that the states and local jurisdictions that sign them continue to give information to Homeland Security that would help immigration agents detain and deport potentially dangerous immigrants.
The Biden administration has said, among other immigration policy changes, that it would like to end Trump's "Remain in Mexico" policy, which keeps immigrants waiting in Mexico until their asylum cases are adjudicated, undo other policies that have made it harder for immigrants to qualify for asylum, and give participants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as Dreamers, permanent status to stay in the U.S. by enacting new laws. Biden has also said he will set up a task force to reunite migrant families separated by the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy.
Under the agreements, all of those policies could be stalled if states argue that they were not consulted. The agreements stipulate that Homeland Security, even under new leadership, must provide the local agencies "with 180 days' written notice ... of the proposed action and an opportunity to consult and comment on the proposed action."
Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page said his office signed the agreement only because it wants to be notified before the Biden administration changes immigration policies.
"I realize that any incoming administration is likely to make changes in policy. Policy changes at the federal level affect us on the local level. ... We are simply asking for notice of these changes," Page said.
Cory Dennis, press secretary for Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, said Landry's office plans to be a "watchdog."
"We signed this memorandum of understanding with the Department of Homeland Security because we want to continue to support efforts to stem the tide of illegal immigration," Dennis said, adding, "Our office will continue to be a watchdog for any changes to immigration policies that may be detrimental to the people of Louisiana."
A spokeswoman for Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said she could not comment because the agreement was signed by the state's former attorney general, Curtis Hill. Rokita took office Jan. 11.
Spokespeople for Homeland Security, the attorney general of Arizona and the Biden administration did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Regardless of whether the agreements can be enforced in court, Su said, they open a window into how Republicans may try to fight the Biden administration on immigration policy. "Republicans are going to retreat to the states to challenge through sensational lawsuits," he said.
Members of the North Carolina Minuteman Coalition train in Lawndale, N.C., on Jan. 16, 2021. (photo: Mike Giglio/The Intercept)
What's Next for the Militias?
Mike Giglio, The Intercept
Excerpt: "The Capitol riot has forced a reckoning inside America's militant groups."
met Gordon Baird at a militia training this fall. We spoke briefly about a charity cookout he said his group had held and his suspicion that Joe Biden is a pedophile. His zip ties, though, were what stuck out. Baird was kitted out with his tactical gear and rifle, but he also had half a dozen sets of plastic cuffs strapped to his body armor.
I thought about the zip ties during the Capitol riot, when I saw a photo of a man carrying some through the Senate chamber while decked in his own battle-rattle. It made me wonder: How far was he really willing to go? It’s the same question most of the country is asking about militant groups this week, with government buildings on lockdown and the FBI issuing arrest warrants for those who allegedly entered the Capitol. So I reconnected with people like Baird, to see if they knew the answer.
Baird, 30, heads a group called the North Carolina Minuteman Coalition. He was in Washington, D.C., on January 6 but insisted he didn’t go into the Capitol. “I went,” he said, “to hear my commander in chief.” He told me this on Saturday, when he and his 10-year-old son, dressed in matching fatigues, met me at the training site he built on his 6-acre property in Lawndale, North Carolina. A handful of men were walking through lightly organized drills as Baird explained that local police had visited once or twice to make sure everyone was shooting safely. He said the cops sometimes give a whoop of the siren when they pass, “just to say hey.” The pride with which he recounted these details speaks to the dilemma many militant groups are now facing: They might be pro-Trump. But most are also pro-cop and want to be seen as community protection forces, a sort of law enforcement auxiliary. Storming government buildings and trying to overturn an election flies in the face of that. At the end of the day, it’s also illegal. It’s the same contradiction conveyed by the plastic cuffs: Taking the law into your own hands also means breaking it.
These militant groups have arrived at a moment of truth. In meetings and conversations over the last week, I found members struggling with it. Behind all the rhetoric and threats and Trumpian claims about the election is a choice about what side of law and order they really want to be on. Where they land will say a lot about whether the political violence we saw on January 6 remains relatively isolated or metastasizes into a wider uprising.
Some may have already made their choice, like the three veterans with alleged ties to militant groups whom the FBI has charged with conspiracy, saying that they planned and executed an incursion into the Capitol amid talk of making a “citizen’s arrest” of lawmakers for “acts of treason” and “election fraud.” And then there are people like Baird. He was still trying to make up his mind about the riot. He said it was wrong and anyone who entered the Capitol made a “fatal mistake,” while also echoing the talking point that the assault might have been a leftist ploy. It had exposed protesters to the same accusations of insurrection and domestic terrorism that many of them had spent the summer lobbing at Black Lives Matter and antifa. “I can tell you right now: I’m not a terrorist. I’m a patriot,” he said.
He stressed several times that he still believes in working through the system and within the rule of law. Yet he was gratified by the message the riot had delivered to politicians in the Capitol: “At the end of the day, it put the fear of God back in them, and I think that might be just what they needed.”
His group is small — about 20 active members, he said, and less than half that number were on hand for the relaxed weekly training I attended. Everyone seemed to agree that further violence would be a mistake. They were against the idea of storming state Capitols or other government buildings.
Later, Baird told me word had been spreading among militia groups that the FBI was on the hunt: “Everybody keeps saying the FBI is out there coming to see you. I’m expecting the FBI to come see me. I’ve got nothing to hide. I welcome them.”
He wouldn’t have a problem with people getting arrested if they’d been part of the riot, he added. “If someone stormed the Capitol and was actually inside the Capitol, then by all means,” he said. “If you’ve got proof that you can show me that they were in the Capitol, then I wash my hands of it.”
When I asked what he’d do if he caught word of militant groups planning violence, he replied, “I carry flexi-cuffs in my truck for a reason.”
He added: “When you take it to the extreme, when you’re trying to kick off a civil war — at that point, you become part of the problem.”
So that’s one possibility: Militant groups cool down and even do some self-policing. There are others, though. Some group somewhere could start something with real momentum that more groups decide to get behind. Or Trump could spotlight calls for a specific push or protest and incite people, as he did on January 6. (Baird and others noted that part of the reason they were standing down was because Trump had said to.) Then there’s the chance that the government response to the riot will inflame people.
Many militant groups have been relatively open about their membership, with formal chapters and people affiliating on social media. There are myriad outfits with thousands of members who are sometimes involved only casually. The authorities have mostly tolerated them — I can’t say if Baird’s account of his interactions with police is accurate, for example, but a big wooden sign for his group and training center marks his roadside property. Police are sometimes sympathetic to militant groups and even involved in them, and it may be only now that they’re considering the extent to which those groups can be threatening. Overnight, federal authorities have begun scrambling to monitor them, social media bans have jumped, and politicians have embraced terms like “insurrectionists” and “domestic terrorists.” Meanwhile, these are often people who spent years immersed in conspiratorial fears about a coming tyranny, only to have Trump and many Republicans tell them it’s finally about to happen.
I asked Baird what he’d do if it started to seem that groups like his were being targeted.
“At that point, that’s when we would start scurrying and getting ready.”
It helps to come back to people over time if you’re trying to keep track of a national breakdown. I first met Joe Klemm at a militia muster in Virginia in July. He stepped onto a flatbed truck and addressed the hundred or so people there with a speech so aggressive in its call to uprising that it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
From there I watched him get pulled ever deeper into the conspiracy world Trump had created around the election. I was with him at a training before the election, the same one where I met Baird, as Klemm echoed Trump’s claims that there’d be massive voter fraud. And again on November 3, as he and his men drove around to polling stations in southwestern Virginia, patrolling. Klemm is convinced that the election was stolen and considered coming down to the Capitol in that short window when it seemed possible the people inside could hold their ground. So I wondered if I’d find him itching for action when I met him at his home last week. Instead, he seemed content to sit back and wait.
“It’s business as usual,” he told me. “We’re just following the orders of the president to stay away from any protests or uprisings that are at the capitals.”
We drank whiskey at his kitchen table, discussing Q theories. Klemm, who’s 29, was with a friend named Andrew, a sweet-mannered ICU nurse who had nothing to do with militias but told me Klemm made him feel safe. (He asked me to use only his first name because he feared being harassed online for his views.) Maybe Trump would find a way to stay in power, and the senators and members of Congress who’d voted to accept the Electoral College results would be tried for treason. Maybe Trump would only appear to step down before being inaugurated on March 4, the day presidents were sworn in until 1933. Maybe Michael Flynn would step in to lead the militias before that. “If he were to put the call out for the militias to assemble for whatever reason — it’s been discussed before — we would get behind Flynn and support his orders,” Klemm said.
“I mean, word on the street is he’s going to be vice president,” Andrew added.
“Mhmm,” Klemm agreed.
“I mean, these are crazy times,” Andrew told me. “I don’t fully believe it, but I just know that anything is possible. Would anything shock you at this point?”
People can stay lost in their theories, or the theories can start to crash against reality. Long before QAnon, many Americans had convinced themselves that socialism and tyranny were coming and centered those fears on the specter of agents from a budding globalist-Marxist regime showing up at their homes. Now federal agents may indeed find themselves door-knocking as they search for people who took part in the riot. That simple act could also bring the national conflict home for militia members who have so far mainly viewed their involvement as local. On Friday night, I joined an Iraq War veteran named Will as he had dinner at a restaurant in a shopping center in rural Virginia. He’d helped to organize the summer muster where I first encountered Klemm; the idea was to raise a self-styled militia for his county. Will told me he hadn’t been in D.C. and that the violence had been an unequivocal mistake, but he thought the national response had “turned into a witch hunt for patriots. It’s like we’re the bad guys.”
He turned his hands into two scales and weighed them as if an outcome were hanging in the balance: civil war or not civil war. “I know I’m going to be in Virginia watching,” he said. “I’m a moderate motherfucker. We’re more the ‘We just want to be left alone’ types.”
“This place,” he said, knocking on the table, “is not important. It’s not D.C. It’s not Richmond. The main thing protecting us right now is our complete and total lack of importance.”
I asked what he’d think if militant groups pushed for more violence or tried to storm more government buildings in D.C. or elsewhere. “What is there to gain by that?” he asked. “Either it gets us nothing or it might be the spark that ends it all, and you’ll have kids and old people dying for no reason. It’s fucking pointless.”
I believed that people wanted to stay away from violence when they said so but also knew that they, like everyone involved in this, were trying to make sense of things as they went. Nobody really speaks frankly if they think they’re in a war anyway. When I pressed one person about what might happen next, he reminded me that the FBI had been calling around and said he’d only speak in generalities. Even those who’ve been involved with militant groups for a long time are wondering what to make of the new reality. I spoke to a man who’s among the cooler heads I know in the movement, someone who has never bought into the conspiracies and who I can’t name because he’s a U.S. military reservist. He worried that some of the people furthest down the rabbit hole of the conspiratorial mindset might turn their fears into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The people he knows are dropping off social media, closing Facebook and Twitter accounts, and going dark, he said. “There are people who are genuinely scared.”
Most likely, he said, people are simply worried about being targeted for their affiliations or losing access to their accounts. But what if the feds come knocking on a door and “someone fights back and a cop gets killed, heavens forbid, or [the shooter] gets killed,” he said. “It’s going to entrench the mindset that now they’re sending out the death squads. They’re going to literally make their own worst dreams come true.”
He said people might not realize how much the strains of the last year are clouding their thinking. “It doesn’t help that you have all the stuff from Covid coming on,” he said. “We’re one year into this. That year has put a lot of stress on people, the businesses going under, being forced to wear masks and being forced to stay home, and then you add the elections on top of that. It’s just stacking and stacking and stacking. They don’t have the mental resiliency.”
When the training at Baird’s was over and most people had gone home, a member who’d been outside the Capitol recounted how the moment the crowd broke through felt like the climax of something. The man, who asked to be called Anthony because he feared repercussions for his involvement, was near the steps when word came down that the building had been breached and said he didn’t push inside only because the sea of people was so thick. “We were so fucking live and emotional in that moment, man,” he said. When he heard that requests to call in the National Guard had been delayed, it seemed like fate: “It was like they were giving us an opportunity to give the people in the Capitol one good lick.”
He said they had sent lawmakers a message: “You’re not fucking immortal.”
He cried as he recounted how things had seemed to keep stacking against him until that point, as he lost his job to coronavirus pandemic conditions and tried to support his family on an unemployment check of less than $150 a week. Then Baird had raised money from his social media followers to pay for the gas to drive down to the protest, and Anthony had joined him. “That was one of the most powerful things that I was ever a part of and will ever be a part of,” he said. “We only live once. We’re going to tell our grandkids about this one day.”
It was all over quickly, and for Anthony, it was enough. He and Baird were out of D.C. by nightfall. On the way back, he said, he got messages from militiamen back home who were vowing to follow them back into the Capitol with weapons. He brushed it off, telling them it was a ludicrous idea. He doesn’t think they’d have come anyway. He sensed the momentum sapping from the militia crowd and predicted a period of indecision and infighting. That was the mood, at least, on the eve of Biden’s inauguration.
Anchan Preelert arrives at the court before being sentenced to 43 years in jail, in Bangkok, Thailand on January 19, 2021. (photo: Patipat Janthong/Reuters)
Record 43-Year Sentence for Insulting Thai Monarchy Sends a Chilling Message to Activists
Helen Regan and Kocha Olarn, CNN
Excerpt: "A 43-year prison sentence given to a woman by a Thai court for insulting the monarchy could be seen as a 'warning shot' to protesters demanding reform in the kingdom, according to analysts."
The sentence passed Tuesday is believed to be the toughest ever imposed under the country's lese majeste laws and comes after months of youth-led protests last year openly calling for reform of Thailand's powerful monarchy and greater democratic freedoms. The verdict is likely to send a chill through the movement, which has seen dozens of its protest leaders and activists charged with the same crime.
Thailand has some of the world's strictest laws against defaming or criticizing the king, queen, heir-apparent or regent. The laws, which are known as lese majeste, can result in a 15-year prison sentence for each violation.
Anchan Preelert, 65, pleaded guilty to sharing audio clips on YouTube and Facebook between 2014 and 2015 that were deemed critical of the kingdom's royal family, according to the Thai Lawyers for Human Rights. She was convicted of 29 counts, with three years for each.
The criminal court in Bangkok handed an initial sentence of 87 years but halved it because of Anchan's guilty plea.
"The sentence is the highest ever handed down by Thai court from violating Section 112," said her lawyer Pawinee Chumsri, referring to the lese majeste law.
Pawinee said they would appeal the verdict and were working to secure bail from the Court of Appeal. "There are two more courts we can try on her legal case," she said.
Revival of lese majeste
Since late last year, authorities have brought lese majeste cases against dozens of protesters after more than two years of the law not being used. Thailand's Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said last June that the law was no longer being applied because of a request from King Maha Vajiralongkorn.
But that was before the democracy movement grew to become the biggest challenge to the establishment the country has seen in the modern era. For more than five months, protesters held regular demonstrations demanding the resignation of Prayut -- who seized power in a military coup in 2014 -- as well as the dissolution of Parliament and changes to the constitution that they say entrenches the military's power.
Many protesters felt emboldened to openly call for reform of the monarchy.
Those calls hit a nerve and brought thousands of people out onto the streets, in sometimes violent confrontations with police and pro-monarchy groups. The idea of a sacrosanct monarchy and a King shielded from public scrutiny was torn apart by the younger generation. Their demands included the King be held to account under the constitution, a curb on his powers, and transparency over his finances.
From November 24 to December 31, 2020, at least 38 people were charged under lese majeste, including a minor and several university students, according to the Thai Lawyers for Human Rights.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak, political scientist and director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University, said Anchan's sentence "means the lese majeste law is back in full force."
"Because it dates from the last reign and the coup in 2014, this record-setting sentence after a hiatus is seen as a warning shot to the ongoing youth-led protest movement against the new monarch," he said. "It suggests that Thailand's established centers of power are hunkering down for the long haul."
Six-year case
Anchan's case is not directly linked to the recent charges against pro-democracy protesters. But with the almost three-year hiatus of lese majeste cases over, analysts say the sentence suggests old cases will now be activated.
Anchan, a former civil servant who worked for the Revenue Department, was arrested in January 2015, not long after the military overthrew Thailand's civilian government in a coup.
After seizing power, Prayut imposed martial law and hundreds of activists were arrested and charged under draconian laws such as sedition and lese majeste in a crackdown aimed to silence any dissent, rights groups said.
Anchan's case was initially brought before a military court and she was detained for almost four years while awaiting trial, her lawyers said. In 2018, she was released on bail and her case was transferred to a civilian criminal court.
Her crime was to share audio clips on social media from an underground radio show that allegedly criticized the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej. The creator of the clips -- a man who went by the name "Banpodj" -- was convicted on lese majeste and has already served his sentence.
"This shocking case is yet another serious assault on Thailand's vanishing space for freedom of expression," Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific regional director Yamini Mishra said. "The manner of her sentencing is also chilling. The way authorities have evidently sought to maximize the punishments by multiplying criminal charges sends a clear message of deterrence to Thailand's 50 million internet users."
Just 60 feet beneath the surface off the coast of Alabama lies an 'underwater forest.' (photo: Pxhere)
'One of a Kind': Calls to Protect Alabama's 60,000-Year-Old Underwater Forest
Paola Rosa-Aquino, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "Efforts are under way to designate site of submerged forest off the Alabama coast a marine sanctuary."
When divers jump into a particular stretch of water off the coast of Alabama, they travel back to a time before humans arrived in the new world.
Submerged below the waters are the remains of a cypress tree forest that grew 60,000 years ago, but was inundated by the Gulf of Mexico and preserved from decomposition beneath sediment. Nothing like Alabama’s underwater forest, in terms of age or scale, has ever been found.
Now efforts are under way to protect the expanse of tree stumps from exploitation by designating the site a marine sanctuary – some firms have sought to salvage the wood for commercial use – and to see if the underwater forest harbors new compounds for medicine.
It took giant waves driven by Hurricane Ivan in 2004 to exhume the forest from its seafloor grave. In 2012, environmental journalist Ben Raines went in search of the arboreal seascape after he was tipped off by a savvy source in the local diving community.
One of Raines’s articles about “swimming with dinosaurs” caught the attention of Kristine DeLong, a paleoclimatologist at Louisiana State University (and an avid scuba diver herself). She immediately called asking if she could carbon date some samples from the site.
After sending samples out to a colleague for dating, she received an email saying the trees were – to her surprise – ‘radiocarbon dead’. “Essentially, that means they’re older than 50,000 years,” DeLong said. “We did it three times to make sure.” She then turned to a team of geologists who collected core samples from the seafloor and confirmed the results.
With that, Raines and DeLong formed a partnership to extract as much knowledge from the site as possible while also preserving it. “From a scientific perspective, it’s a goldmine of information that we just don’t have access to anywhere else,” Delong says. She has worked with a cadre of scientists – from dendrochronologists to geologists and marine biologists – using only non-invasive instruments to collect rare information on Ice Age-era climate, rainfall, insects and plants.
The forest’s bald cypress trunks are teeming with life, including shipworms – types of clams that like munching on wood so much they’re known as the “termite of the sea”. Researchers are collecting these and other marine creatures from the depths to study their chemical potential to produce life-saving medicines on the surface.
But the site is at risk from salvage companies seeking to dig up the ancient logs and sell them. According to DeLong, the army corps of engineers had received a permit request in 2020 from a furniture company seeking to salvage wood from the site.
With a wealth of potential information and research, it’s no wonder scientists have worked for years to stop the valuable 50,000-year-old wood from becoming high-end coffee tables. In October, a Republican representative from Alabama, Bradley Byrne, proposed the creation of a national marine sanctuary encompassing the ancient underwater forest.
“The underwater forest is another unique Alabama gem with global importance. As the only known site where a coastal ice age forest this old has been preserved in place, we must take action now to protect it,” Byrne said in a statement when he introduced the bill.
“This is a one of a kind natural wonder, like Yellowstone national park, or the Grand Canyon,” Raines told AL.com in October. “ It should be protected from exploitation and saved for the American public, just like those amazing sites on land.”
Under this designation, the sunken forest would stay open to tourists, fishermen and research groups, but it would be protected rom logging, peat harvesting and other disruptive activities. Though Congress didn’t pass the underwater forest bill before Byrne left office earlier this month, he told NBC he’s very hopeful the next Congress will.
With President-elect Joe Biden’s prioritization of environmental issues, and his nomination of public lands advocate Deb Haaland to lead the interior department, experts are hopeful about the forest’s prospects.
DeLong added that the forest hints at how the contours of our world are delicate and impermanent, giving us a glimpse into ancient climate change during a period in which they suspect sea levels may have been rising as quickly as eight feet every 100 years.
“As the climate continues to change, what’s today land could very well be ocean,” said DeLong. “I think it’s a really powerful message.”
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