04 May 21
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Biden Calls Bernie Privately to Check In on the Left Wing
Julian Kaplan, Business Insider
Kaplan writes:
resident Joe Biden makes private phone calls to Sen. Bernie Sanders to hear from the left of his party, according to a New York Times report.
It's an unlikely turn of events for two fierce rivals from last fall's primary campaign from opposite wings of the Democratic Party, but another piece of evidence that Biden's bold economic agenda is dissolving the boundaries between those factions — and that Sanders is playing a pivotal role in it.
Politico reported in early March that Biden and Sanders had a very high level of contact with each other. Weeks later, after Biden's historic $1.9 trillion stimulus package passed almost entirely intact — with the significant exception of Sanders' beloved $15 minimum-wage increase — the Los Angeles Times reported that Sanders had become "the consummate insider in the Senate," hitting the phones to keep progressives in line as the minimum-wage was struck from the bill.
Sanders subsequently praised Biden for the size and scope of the stimulus, which included several policies Sanders has long championed. He also later told the New York Times that he thinks Biden has the "courage" to act boldly — and hopes that continues.
"As Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, I am proud that we passed the American Rescue Plan, which, in my view, is the most significant piece of legislation to benefit working families in the modern history of this country," Sanders tweeted after the passage of the first stimulus package.
Biden reportedly also makes private calls to moderate Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin, who wields considerable power in the Democrats' razor-thin majority, to check in with the broader Democratic caucus. He also calls Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to urge bipartisanship, which has so far not manifested.
Both Sanders and Manchin represent major factions that will likely come into play during months of infrastructure negotiations ahead. The more moderate Manchin was one of the Democrats who vocally opposed the inclusion of a $15 minimum wage in reconciliation, and ultimately voted against the wage hike.
He's also already reportedly shaped at least one of the proposed tax hikes in Biden's infrastructure package; Manchin signaled that he'd prefer the corporate tax rate increase to 25% from 21%, instead of Biden's proposed 28%. He's been reportedly joined by other Senate Democrats, and that's the rate that's likely to get passed, according to a Morgan Stanley note.
In April, when Insider's Nicole Gaudiano and Warren Rojas spoke to prominent progressives about Biden's progress so far, they said Biden is largely impressing his left wing, but also cited disappointments such as the $15 minimum wage and what they perceive as a subpar handling of the climate crisis.
"I think he is showing the kind of leadership and providing the kind of agenda that working families in this country want and need," Sanders previously told Insider.
Former president Jimmy Carter. (photo: Paul Hennessey/Getty Images)
'Decades Ahead of His Time': History Catches Up With Visionary Jimmy Carter
Megan Mayhew Bergman, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "A new film rejects the popular narrative and recasts the former president, 96, as hugely prescient thinker, particularly on climate change."
hen I reach Jimmy Carter’s grandson by Zoom, he answers wearing a Raphael Warnock campaign T-shirt. Jason Carter is a lawyer and politician himself, mid-40s, animated and well-read, with blue eyes reminiscent of his grandfather’s. He’s just got off the phone with his 93-year-old grandmother, Rosalynn. It’s a special day; Joe Biden is on his way to the Carter house in Plains, Georgia.
“My grandfather has met nearly everyone in the world he might want to,” Jason Carter says. “Right now, he’s meeting with the president of the United States. But the person he’d say he learned the most from was Rachel Clark, an illiterate sharecropper who lived on his family’s farm.
“He didn’t pity her,” Carter says. “He saw her power. My grandfather believes in the power of a single human and a small community. Protect people’s freedoms, he says, and they can do great things. It all comes back to an enormous respect for human beings.”
Carter is openly moved speaking about his grandfather, though it’s also clear he does so often. A spate of recent biographies and documentaries shows not just a renewed interest in the former president, but a willingness to update the public narrative surrounding his time in office. Recent biographer Jonathan Alter calls Carter “perhaps the most misunderstood president in American history”.
Carter, who lost his bid for re-election in a so-called landslide to Reagan in 1980, is often painted as a “failed president” – a hapless peanut farmer who did not understand how to get things done in Washington, and whose administration was marked by inflation, an energy crisis and the Iran hostage disaster.
Subsequent presidents, especially fellow southern Democrat Bill Clinton, kept a distance – assumably not wanting to be seen as part of a political narrative that emphasized piety over getting things done. Even Obama was apparently wary of being associated with the sort of soft-hearted ineffectuality ascribed to Carter.
But was Carter actually so ineffectual?
In his 2020 biography of Carter, Alter speaks to a more nuanced interpretation of Carter, calling him “a surprisingly consequential president – a political and stylistic failure, but a substantive and far-sighted success”. It is, perhaps, the far-sighted nature of Carter’s ambitions, particularly around energy, that allows us to appreciate him more four decades after his term concluded.
Born in 1924, Carter is now 96. Americans must process his mortality and the onset of climate change, which Carter explicitly warned the nation about 40 years ago.
Carterland, a just released documentary, offers a particularly sharp focus on Carter’s extensive work on conservation, climate and justice.
“Here’s what people get wrong about Carter,” Will Pattiz, one of the film’s directors tells me. “He was not in over his head or ineffective, weak or indecisive – he was a visionary leader, decades ahead of his time trying to pull the country toward renewable energy, climate solutions, social justice for women and minorities, equitable treatment for all nations of the world. He faced nearly impossible economic problems – and at the end of the day came so very close to changing the trajectory of this nation.”
Will’s brother, Jim, agrees. “A question folks should be asking themselves is: what catastrophes would have befallen this country had anyone other than Jimmy Carter been at the helm during that critical time in the late 1970s?”
Those late 1970s were defined by inflation, the cold war, long lines at gas pumps, and a shift in cultural mores. Carter himself showed a willingness to grow. Although Carter served in the navy himself, he pardoned Vietnam draft-dodgers. Though from a segregated and racist background in Georgia, Carter pushed for affirmative action and prioritized diversity among judicial nominees, including the appointment of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Amalya Lyle Kearse. He employed Mary Prince, a Black woman wrongly accused of murder, as his daughter Amy’s nanny, a move criticized by some contemporary thinkers as perpetuating domestic servitude.
What was radical in the 1970s can appear backwards decades later; the public narrative works in both directions. Carter is, in some respects, difficult to narrativize because he could be both startlingly conservative – financially, or in his appeal to the deep south’s evangelicals – and progressive, particularly on human rights and climate. He seemed to act from his personal compass, rather than a political one.
He startled the globe by personally brokering the critical Middle East peace treaty between Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin at Camp David. He ceded access to the Panama canal, angering conservatives who thought he was giving away an American asset. Through the Alaska Natural Interests Lands Conservation Act, he doubled the national park system and conserved over 100m acres of land – the most sweeping expansion of conserved land in American history.
He was not afraid to make unpopular moves, or ask for personal sacrifice. He was old-fashioned and a futurist, and nowhere did his futurism matter more, or seem more prescient, than on climate and conservation. He risked speaking directly to the American public, and asking them to do a difficult thing – focus on renewable energy and reduce reliance on oil.
He paid the price for this frank ask, and so did we.
In advance of his trip to Plains, Georgia, Biden participated in a video tribute to Carter, joining an all-star cast of Georgia politicians, the familiar faces of Senator Jon Ossoff, Senator Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams serving as an affirming nod to Georgia’s return to political importance.
The messages address the substance of the film, but also serve as a heartfelt thank you to a former president who has only recently begun to look prescient on climate, and singular in his moral bearing.
“He has always lived his values,” Abrams says in the video.
“Our world cries out for moral and ethical leadership,” Warnock offers. “Few have embodied it as clearly and consistently as Carter.”
“He showed us what it means to be a public servant, with an emphasis on servant,” Biden says.
Many Americans can’t help but spot a link between Carter and Biden – who became the first elected official outside of Georgia to support Carter’s bid for the presidency in 1976. Biden’s colleagues decried him as an “exuberant” idealist at the time.
There’s also an increasingly stark comparison between the Carter and the Trump administration.
James Gustave Speth served as the chairman of Carter’s Council on Environmental Quality. As Carter’s chief adviser on environmental matters, Speth helped brief Carter on climate change and direct policy. He finds the contrast between Carter and Trump “striking”.
“People see now that Carter was at a pole,” Speth tells me. “Carter was the opposite of Trump – and everything that people despised about him. Carter had integrity, honesty, candor and a commitment to the public good of all else. Carter was a different man, totally.”
Carter’s vice-president, Walter Mondale, died a month ago at 93, perhaps putting an exclamation mark on the need to expedite overdue praise and understanding. Speth agrees that it would be best to speed up our recognition of Carter. “So many fine things are said over the bodies of the dead,” Speth said. “I’d love to have the recognition occur now.”
Speth is also working on his own book on the Carter administration, that covers the Carter and subsequent administrations on climate and energy and highlights the failure to build on the foundation that Carter laid. His project, soon to be published with MIT, carries a damning title: They Knew.
One of the most profound– even painful – parts of watching documentaries like Carterland is bearing witness to the fact that Carter was right on asking us to drive less, to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, to focus on conservation and renewable energy. Not only was Carter’s vision a path not taken, it was a path mocked. Reagan removed the solar panels from the White House, politicized the environmental movement and painted it as a fringe endeavor.
“Carter was our only president who had a visceral environmental and ecological attachment. That was part of his being,” Speth says. “We had an opportunity in 1980 – but we’ve lost 40 years in the pursuit of a climate-safe path. We can no longer avoid serious and destructive changes, period. That didn’t have to happen.”
I ask Speth why getting Carter’s legacy right matters. First, Speth says, it’s important to recognize the example Carter set for looking ahead, in a culture that prizes soundbites and short-term gains. “Carter was a trained engineer who believed in science,” Speth points out. “He understood things on a global scale, and believed in forecasting. Preparing for the long run is rare in politics.”
Carter’s biographer Alter agrees. “If there is a gene for duty, responsibility and the will to tackle messy problems with little or no potential for political gain,” he writes, “Jimmy Carter was born with it.”
While none of these recent documentaries or biographies seeks to portray Carter as a saint or even politically savvy, they do insist that his presidency was more successful than history has acknowledged, particularly on the energy, conservation and human rights fronts. Still, there are aspects of his single term that will probably remain embedded in his narrative, such as his tenuous relationship with Congress, early catering to segregationists to win votes, and Iran’s hostage crisis.
What can we learn from the shifting narrative around Carter’s presidency?
“You can talk about how Carter was an underrated president,” film-maker Jim Pattiz says. “But can you ask yourself: what qualities do you actually want in a leader? Do you want someone who will challenge you to be better, or speak in catchphrases and not ask much of you?
“This film is a cautionary tale,” Pattiz says. “We can elect another Carter. Let’s reward leaders willing to do the right thing.”
Jason Carter has lived with the nuances and inconsistencies in the narrative surrounding his grandfather’s presidency his entire life. “Stories are always summaries,” he says. “They leave out so much so that we can understand them in simple terms. Public narrative, these days, is so often about politics. It should really be about the great, public problems we’re solving. There’s a difference.
“I don’t want history to be kind to my grandfather,” Jason Carter tells me. “I just want history to be honest.”
Proud Boys and other protesters in Washington, D.C. (photo: Getty Images)
Senate Pushes FBI on Intelligence "Fail" on the Proud Boys
Aram Roston, Reuters
Roston writes: "The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee chair is pressing the Federal Bureau of Investigation to explain how it failed to anticipate the violence of Jan. 6, despite having contact with several members of the far right Proud Boys in the months before the insurrection."
On Monday, the committee chair, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, wrote to FBI director Christopher Wray asking whether the agency had adequately pushed its sources in the extremist group to understand their plans before the Capitol attack that sought to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election as president.
Durbin’s letter came after Reuters reported last week that the FBI had received information from at least four sources in the Proud Boys over the years since 2019. The Judiciary Committee has oversight of the FBI.
“Given the FBI’s apparent relationship with Proud Boys sources,” the Illinois senator asked Wray, “why did the FBI fail to detect the threat that the Proud Boys and other similar militia violent extremists posed to the Capitol on January 6?”
The FBI did not immediately respond Monday to questions about the letter.
In court filings, prosecutors have described the Proud Boys as among the instigators of the fatal riot on Jan. 6, in which extremists sought to keep Donald Trump in office despite his electoral defeat. At least 18 Proud Boys have been arrested on charges ranging from conspiracy to assaulting police officers. At least six others associated with or accompanying the group have been charged.
As Reuters reported last week, Proud Boys leader Joseph Biggs declined to discuss his plans for Jan. 6 when the news agency interviewed him two days before the Capitol riot. But he said he would have told an FBI agent he knew, if he’d been asked.
Citing that report, Durbin asked Wray: “Did the FBI ask its Proud Boys sources for their plans for January 6? If not, why not?”
Biggs has said in court filings that he frequently reported information to the FBI about “Antifa,” a left-wing movement criticized by Trump and his followers. Biggs is now charged with conspiracy in the riot. He is appealing a judge’s ruling that he be detained until trial.
Proud Boys leaders maintain they never spoke with the FBI about the group itself. Instead, they say, they often shared information about Antifa members or, in other cases, told the federal agency about routes for planned marches.
Even before Jan. 6, the Proud Boys had become a well-known right-wing group that calls itself “Western chauvinist” and often engages in street fighting and violence.
A rally for LGBT rights. (photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)
Biden White House Is Preparing to Confront States on Anti-Trans Bills
Tim Teeman, The Daily Beast
Teeman writes: "The White House's move and DOJ declaration follow President Biden's address to the joint session of Congress last week, in which he said that he hoped 'Congress can get to my desk the Equality Act to protect LGBTQ Americans.'"
The Human Rights Campaign says the White House is preparing to directly confront the flood of anti-trans and LGBTQ legislation. The Department of Justice may also join the fight.
he Biden administration is preparing to directly confront the rash of anti-LGBT, and specifically anti-trans bills proliferating in state legislatures, according to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the country’s leading LGBTQ advocacy organization.
Separately, the Department of Justice has told The Daily Beast it will “fully enforce our civil rights statutes to protect transgender individuals,” giving hope to campaigners that the DOJ is preparing to challenge in the courts the legality of bills that have been introduced—and some passed—in a number of states, outlawing transgender youth’s access to health care and sports.
The White House’s move and DOJ declaration follow President Biden’s address to the joint session of Congress last week, in which he said that he hoped “Congress can get to my desk the Equality Act to protect LGBTQ Americans. To all transgender Americans watching at home, especially young people who are so brave, I want you to know your President has your back.”
Biden’s words were warmly welcomed by campaigners as a stirring statement of support, although they also attracted criticism for not mentioning the multiple legislative attacks on trans youth, and what having their “back” meant in practical terms at such a critical moment.
As Kai Shappley, a Texas trans fourth-grader, who eloquently testified in the state Senate, put it in a tweet: “I’m very thankful for this. But, what does having my back mean? Like, if the bills pass in Texas will you keep them from putting my mom in jail?” (Shappley was referring to SB 1646, one of many anti-trans bills being considered in Texas.) Chase Strangio, deputy director for transgender justice at the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBT & HIV Project, said in another tweet: “I guess I appreciate the platitudes. But we need action. Things are desperate.”
Nearly 120 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in the current legislative session. Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, West Virginia, and South Dakota have introduced bans on trans girls playing school sports. Arkansas has enshrined a ban on gender-affirming health care. Many other bills are on governors’ desks awaiting signatures, or being debated in state legislatures. According to a recent GLAAD survey focused on the first 100 days of Biden’s presidency, 77 per cent of LGBTQ Americans feel these bills “make them feel unsafe in their own community.”
HRC President Alphonso David told The Daily Beast: “We are having conversations with the Biden administration about additional actions that they should be taking as it relates to anti-LGBTQ bills that we’re seeing in these states. But we want to make sure we don’t lose sight of how important those words are, and how important his early actions have been to support and protect LGBTQ people throughout the country.”
This reporter asked David if HRC would like Biden and his administration to directly, and publicly, challenge the anti-LGBTQ and anti-trans laws being debated and passed.
“The short answer is ‘Yes,’ and based on my conversations with the administration I believe they will be doing that,” David told The Daily Beast.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has previously emphasized that Biden “believes trans rights are human rights and that no one should be discriminated on the basis of sex... Not only is this the law of the land, it’s his own deeply held belief.” The number and pace of the anti-trans bills has led many to call for the administration to make its support more pro-active.
“At a time when anti-trans legislation aimed at harming trans youth is moving through statehouses at an alarming rate, President Biden’s words are welcomed, but don’t go far enough,” Kris Hayashi, Executive Director of Transgender Law Center, told The Daily Beast. “To truly have our backs, the administration must take action against states enacting these laws, immediately end the detention of trans people, and address the police killings of Black people and the crisis of violence Black trans women face in this nation.”
Alphonso David would not reveal the detail of the conversations HRC was having with the Biden administration, “except to say we are exploring variety of ways where the administration could be even more active. Federal agencies interpret federal law. And I believe in many cases, the bills being passed in many states across the country violate federal law, including the constitution.
“So, there are options and actions that have yet to be taken that we are engaging with the Biden administration on as they explore different ways where they can be even more impactful. We can anticipate more actions from the Biden administration as related to these bills. I think more needs to be done, and we are engaging with them to do more. I believe that the administration is going be taking additional steps and additional actions that will further clarify their position as it relates to the anti-LGBTQ bills that we’re seeing in the states. I can’t tell you what form that will take.”
Biden had hoped to pass the Equality Act within the first 100 days of his presidency. It needs 60 votes to pass in the Senate, and Republican senators have thus far not shown much sign of supporting it. (Democrat Senator Joe Manchin’s support isn’t assured either.)
Equality campaigners have welcomed Biden’s many pro-equality actions since winning the presidency, as detailed by American Progress. For example, there have been executive orders to lift the Trump-era trans military ban, and another directing federal agencies to fully implement the “Bostock” ruling at the Supreme Court last year which ensured sexual orientation and gender identity were included under the umbrella of sex discrimination as laid out in the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The Department of Justice has also clarified that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation in federally-funded education institutions. The Department of Justice recently cited the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution in the case of an incarcerated trans woman, writing that it “requires prison officials to conduct individualized assessments that lead to reasonably safe conditions of confinement and adequate medical care for all prisoners.”
Alongside these actions, there has been a relentless legislative assault on the rights of trans youth, with Republican politicians at a local and national level using issues such as trans rights as part of what of a broader culture war, which they see as galvanizing their voter base in the 2022 midterm elections.
However, a recent PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll found that 66 per cent of Americans—including 70 per cent of Republicans—opposed legislation that prohibited gender transition-related medical care for minors. Last night in Kansas, Republicans failed to overturn Democratic governor Laura Kelly’s veto of that state’s ban on trans girls playing school sports. Trans youth in Arkansas and North Carolina recently spoke powerfully and movingly to The Daily Beast about living in those states at this time.
Alphonso David said that where the Trump administration had “broken every rule, regulation, and constitutional principle known to man, we have to make sure as we are confronting anti-equality extremists we don’t violate our own principles. We have to adhere to the rule of law and constitution, but at the same time make sure the states are not violating those principles. I think that is what the Biden administration is evaluating as they go through the next phase of the determining actions they take.”
Despite detailed questions sent by The Daily Beast, the White House would not comment on what it specifically planned to do or say around the anti-LGBTQ/trans bills, and the vexed progress of the Equality Act—and whether the president planned to speak to state governors and Republican senators direct.
Instead, in a statement, Reggie Greer, director of priority placement and senior adviser on LGBTQ+ engagement, told The Daily Beast: “Protecting LGBTQ+ Americans, especially transgender and non-binary people, from discrimination remains a key priority for President Biden. From day one, the President has built a whole-of-government approach to advancing LGBTQ+ rights, which has led to a number of executive actions that restore or strengthen protections for LGBTQ+ people. Policies that discriminate against LGBTQ+ people are inconsistent with the values of this administration, which is why the President continues to urge the Senate to pass the Equality Act.”
The Equality Act would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. If passed, it would set into a specific law around sexual orientation and gender identity the principle of the ruling in the landmark Bostock case at the Supreme Court last year, in which the definition of sex discrimination was extended to include discrimination suffered by LGBTQ Americans.
The protections in the act apply to employment, housing, credit, education, public spaces and services, federally funded programs, and jury service. The act would prohibit discrimination in public spaces and services and federally funded programs on the basis of sex. The act would also, according to the Human Rights Campaign, “update the public spaces and services covered in current law to include retail stores, services such as banks and legal services, and transportation services.”
The GLAAD survey found that 78 per cent of LGBTQ Americans are concerned that Republicans can use the filibuster to block Democrats from passing progressive policies, like the Equality Act.
Campaigners hope the Department of Justice will follow the example of then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch who in 2016 announced the DOJ was suing North Carolina over its infamous “bathroom bill,” HB2, which stipulated that people working for state-run organizations used bathrooms corresponding to the gender listed on their birth certificate. Lynch called it “state-sanctioned discrimination.” In 2016, Vanita Gupta—then deputy assistant attorney general, and now the newly appointed associate attorney general—said, “Calling HB2 a bathroom bill trivializes what this is really about. HB2 translates into discrimination in the real world.”
Carl Charles, a staff attorney with advocacy group Lambda Legal based in their southern regional office in Atlanta, told The Daily Beast that Biden’s words “were not nothing, they were clearly historic and meaningful and no one is disputing that.” However, it reminded Charles of Lynch speaking in 2016, announcing the legal challenge to HB2.
Charles has framed her words from that day, “because it’s so meaningful to me as a trans attorney and also a trans person. She said, ‘Let me also speak directly to the transgender community itself. Some of you have lived freely for decades, and others of you are wondering how you can possibly lead the lives you were born to lead. But no matter how isolated, no matter how afraid, and no matter how alone you might feel today know this—that the Department of Justice and indeed the entire Obama administration wants you to know, we see you, we stand with you, and we will do everything we can to protect you going forward and please know that history is on your side.’
“Now, ‘We have your back’ is a far cry from the passage I have just read to you,” said Charles. “Notably, we would really like to see a lot of follow-up from President Biden. And for those of us who have been spending basically countless sleepless nights since the start of the state legislative sessions it was a little underwhelming compared to this Department of Justice response from five years ago.”
Charles would like the DOJ to soon signal it is getting involved in these cases, gathering statements of interest, and launching affirmative lawsuits. “That’s the power of the federal government—to intervene when states do things that harm an already vulnerable and relatively politically powerless group of people. Without actions it’s just words. However meaningful they might be, you can’t change someone’s material reality just based on words. There have to be actions that follow.”
What particularly disappointed Charles was for Biden to “not really acknowledge what is happening. ‘We have your back’—about what? What prompted Biden to say that? If we are not naming the harm in the context of saying ‘We support you,’ I don’t think words do the service that maybe the president and the Biden-Harris administration hoped.”
Charles said the DOJ has the ability to file affirmative lawsuits “when states engage in unconstitutional behavior, and what we are seeing is a true onslaught of attacks against transgender youth in particular. We haven’t seen such a lawsuit yet. I understand people are still getting settled into their jobs, and (attorney general) Merrick Garland has a full plate, but we really have not heard a ton from them. Lynch acknowledged what people were feeling and what is happening right now.”
GLAAD would also “encourage” the DOJ to pursue legal actions against the states passing anti-LGBTQ bills, Zeke Stokes, a former chief programs officer and now adviser to the advocacy group, said. “And we are confident that is going to happen.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Justice would not be drawn on what specific actions the DoJ will take around the anti-LGBTQ legislation in state legislatures, but told The Daily Beast in a statement: “The Department of Justice intends to fully enforce our civil rights statutes to protect transgender individuals.”
“I’m hopeful, but it feels like lip service at this point. Come on, it’s now or never!”
“Any good advocate says, ‘Thank you. And?’ That’s my response to those words,” Sam Brinton, vice president of advocacy and government affairs at LGBTQ youth advocacy group Trevor Project, told The Daily Beast. “It is powerful as a life-saving opportunity to use the pulpit of the presidency to tell trans youth you have their backs. We know trans youth want to see themselves represented and see themselves supported, so there’s that very important aspect. And then there’s, ‘What are we doing to make sure those words are enacted?’”
Amber Briggle, the mother of a trans son in Texas who has written in The Daily Beast about facing bigoted lawmakers and those who wish her family harm, feels the Biden administration is falling flat.
“I know he’s an ally, and I am expecting more kindness, compassion, and action out of the Biden administration than I ever did out of the Trump administration,” Briggle told The Daily Beast. “I know there are a lot of things to fix in this country, and at the same time we are seeing all these bills against trans children. This is happening now to these kids. Kids are feeling suicidal because they’re scared.
“So, I’m hopeful, but it feels like lip service at this point. Come on, it’s now or never! I want to see the Equality Act passed, and the DOJ sue states like Texas and Tennessee. In a nutshell, I’d say, ‘Thank you Mr. President, but this doesn’t go far enough.’ Instead of having our backs, I want him to get out front and turn this around. Trans children are actively hurting, not just with the passing of bills, but even with the rhetoric around them. They’re feeling really defeated and scared.”
In one sense, this is a familiar political debate around when fine rhetoric meets the need for action. It is also a test for an administration dedicated to fighting for LGBTQ equality, yet aware of right-wing conservatives eager to scream “culture war.”
“In the context of history the speech was incredibly important,” Zeke Stokes told The Daily Beast. “It was the first time the word ‘transgender’ had been used by any president to a joint session of Congress. But when you compare it to the last president, who put targets on trans people’s backs, it’s even more important. To hear a president stand up say those words makes a huge difference. It can be a lifesaving affirmation for a kid. I wouldn’t minimize it at all. Our expectation is that he will follow through with it with action.”
“As we look at this and other issues, we have to appreciate that words and actions matter,” said Alphonso David. “We went through the past four years of the Trump administration advancing dangerous rhetoric which perpetuated stigma against transgender people. Those words mattered and they had an impact, influencing public discourse and affecting how LGBTQ people are treated in this country. Having said that I also think I also think actions are important, and President Biden has already taken significant steps to ensure transgender people are protected under federal law.”
“It is not just the bills,” said Carl Charles. “It is the heinous and unscientific opinions masquerading as reasoned thought. It is the atmosphere that has now percolated into the general public, meaning it is acceptable to debate the existence of trans youth, and to ponder and opine, as a lay person, about what medical care is appropriate for someone other than say their doctor or the informed consent of parents. This is just absurd.”
While there had been a huge and game-changing corporate pushback to the passage of North Carolina’s “bathroom ban” in 2016/17, Stokes said, this time around while businesses have spoken out against the anti-trans and LGBTQ bills, “we have not seen them spell out to the states what the practical consequences from a business perspective of their actions might be.”
There does not seem to the groundswell of vigorous corporate support for trans people as there was over the bathroom bills of yore.
Alphonso David puts some of that down to the pressures of the pandemic, but also a level of ignorance about what the bills entail. A recent ad HRC placed in the New York Times brought more corporate support their way, “but we need to amplify that these bills mean trans people not being able to access the medical care they need. They may mean families having to leave their homes or jobs to protect their families. They may result in an increase in depression, anxiety, and suicide ideation among trans and non-binary people. We need to make people understand when one population is oppressed it affects all of us.”
Companies may be saying the right things about inclusion, but they are not presently promising punitive action against states over anti-trans discrimination. Despite lobbying by the HRC, the NCAA will not commit to withdrawing tournaments from states where discriminatory legislation is being considered. Right wing media’s penchant for whipping up culture war controversies may mean corporate leaders have become nervous about weighing in on social justice issues, but “that fear is misguided,” said David. “You can’t decide to articulate a series of values in your corporate manual or website and not live up to those values. You have to live up to your values, otherwise it’s meaningless. You as a corporate leader have a responsibility to weigh in on some of those issues.”
Carl Charles points to the flurry, then evaporation of the “bathroom bills” of a few years ago (even though such bills have staged a return in the tranche of anti-LGBTQ bill-making of now). The whipping up of prejudice was, Charles thinks, curtailed by the federal government’s firm response back then to HB2, the pro-equality response of big business, “and people in those states saying ‘This is not we want.’”
“Stop these bills. Leave trans youth alone.”
Charles paid emotional tribute to the trans youth, their families, allies, and advocacy groups fighting the present deluge of bills on the ground. “Those people have showed up to change hearts and minds, and persuade legislators.”
He pointed to the example of Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, who while passing anti-trans legislation, tried to veto one of the bills—only to have that veto overridden. “Listening to him talk made me realize he had sat down with young trans people and their families, and listened to them about the harm this would do to them. He would never have come to those conclusions were it not for everyday folks. Trans folks living in these communities little are making their voices heard. They spoke up. The work we do at Lambda Legal and other organizations is not in a vacuum. It is made possible by people trying to lead their lives, take care of their families, and carve out a little bit of happiness. They are fighting so hard every day.”
The GLAAD survey found that 38 per cent of LGBTQ respondents would not spend tourist dollars in the states where anti-trans legislation is passed; the same percentage would do what they could to ensure the defeat of anti-equality politicians. Twenty-eight per cent would not buy products from companies headquartered in those states. (It is not known if the remaining percentages believe the opposite or differently.)
GLAAD adviser Stokes thinks the LGBTQ community is divided on the wisdom of state boycotts. “There is a sense that state legislatures will introduce these laws, the courts will undo them, and the Biden administration is standing in the doorway to some extent and will save the day. But that is not realistic. Biden has no control over what state legislatures do, and when you punish states for this kind of action you’re punishing the LGBTQ people living in those states alongside everyone else. I think the community is very split on whether state boycotts are a good idea.”
Brinton said it was important to recognize that Republican governors like Hutchinson had recognized that the bills were “coming between parent, child, and professional.” All major medical organizations like the American Psychological Association had come out against the bills, said Brinton, to say, “Stop these bills. Leave trans youth alone. Let them have affirmative spaces. If I could talk to legislators, I would tell them trans youth are scared and anxious and worried about these bills. They just want live a happy, productive lives. I believe legislators want the same for all citizens. These bills create the opposite of that space for trans youth.”
Fighting the bills is important, said Brinton, but should not obscure other urgent issues. The Trevor Project is focused on ensuring that conversion therapy “ends up in the dustbin of history. Trans youth placed into conversion therapy are twice as likely to attempt suicide after experiencing it as those who are not transgender.” The organization also campaigns to ensure schools remain “affirming spaces” for trans youth, and to gather data to help address the problems they face.
Brinton said it was important to connect the legislative attacks to the effects of living through the pandemic. LGBTQ youth attempt suicide at 4 times the rate as their cisgender and heterosexual peers, Brinton said. The organization has, at times, had twice the normal volume of calls as it had pre-pandemic. “It is a wave of badness, and it just keeps growing,” said Brinton. “Regardless of these bills, trans youth were in harm’s way, and we are there to help them.”
Does this latest proliferation of anti-LGBTQ bills seem finite, or merely a foretaste of more virulent anti-LGBTQ lawmaking to come?
Alphonso David looks to history, recalling the days of bills that sort to prohibit lesbian and gay teachers serving in public schools, the attempts to limit the definition of marriage as a union between a man and woman, and the first bathroom bills era.
“I think we’re going through another phase of this,” said David. “Now, anti-equality extremists are targeting the most vulnerable in our community, and they’re going to lose this battle as well. I see this as their reaction to losing an election. They understand the demographics are changing. They understand the majority of the public oppose their ideology and philosophy. They are trying to hold on to hate and division, but they are ultimately going to lose.
“Is this going to be one cycle, two cycles? It’s too soon to tell,” said David. “It’s fair to anticipate they will use this platform against LGBTQ people going into the midterms to try and suggest there is a culture war, and they need elected officials in office to support that. But the reality is the majority of Americans don’t support it. The more we address their misinformation, the more we see people support equality.”
66 per cent of people may not want such legislation, but “when these bills do pass we do see it seems to embolden other states to try to pass their own bills,” Carl Charles said.
Also, 66 per cent of people may object to the bills, but while they are happy to tick a box to say so, they are not yet en masse lobbying their state legislators to stop introducing and passing them. If polling numbers were borne out in reality, there would be pro-LGBTQ and pro-trans equality measures being debated in state legislatures, not ones seeking to curtail LGBTQ human rights.
For Alphonso David, there will soon be more pro-equality voters than pro-anti equality voters, and so those legislators backing discrimination will be voted out of office.
“It is on all of us not just to check the values box to make us feel good,” said Carl Charles, “but to put some skin in the game and get involved.”
A photo of Ma'khia Bryant is held during a demonstration. (photo: Allison Zaucha/NYT)
I Should Only Know Ma'Khia From TikTok
Camille Squires, New York Magazine
Squires writes: "I learned Ma'Khia Bryant's name like everyone else when last week she was shot and killed by police in Columbus, Ohio."
wish I’d never known Ma’Khia Bryant’s name. Ideally, our only virtual encounter would have gone something like this: A TikTok-fluent teen, she uploads a hair-tutorial video in which she succinctly and expertly lays her baby hairs and pulls her curls into a side ponytail. A 27-year-old millennial, I watch the video on my phone while lying in bed, my own tangle of hair tucked under a bonnet. I notice how she places her finger in order to swoop her baby hairs just so, and make a mental note to try the technique myself sometime. I “like” the post, save it to a collection titled “hair,” and keep scrolling. Maybe my engagement would have been one more small piece of positive feedback, encouraging her to make another video, and another, because she would have had time.
Instead, I learned Ma’Khia Bryant’s name like everyone else when last week she was shot and killed by police in Columbus, Ohio (just minutes before the verdict was released in the Derek Chauvin trial in Minneapolis). According to her mother, 16-year-old Bryant had called the police seeking their help in breaking up a fight. Instead, once they arrived, an officer shot her in the chest after she appeared to lunge at another girl with a knife.
Like so many other people who have died at the hands of police, Ma’Khia’s life has been collapsed into those moments surrounding her death. Her image has been splashed across newspapers and protest signs, hashtags reminding us to #sayhername. The video of the incident made the rounds online, and almost immediately, people began to debate whether her holding a knife was grounds for a police officer to kill her within seconds of arriving on the scene.
To counter this narrative, others began sharing the hair tutorials Bryant had uploaded on TikTok. In each one, a wordless Ma’Khia can be seen conditioning and combing through her thick hair before slicking it into space buns or tying accent braids to frame her face, all over a backing track of neo-soul or ’90s R&B. I no longer watch videos of Black people being killed by police, but seeing these videos of Ma’Khia alive and happy felt almost as gutting.
In them I see not just the carefree innocence of a teenager, not just the hallmarks of an utterly quotidian life — the bunk beds in the background, the affordable beauty-supply-store products she used — I also see the potential of a life snuffed out so soon. It’s difficult to describe the precision it takes to really lay your edges flat against your forehead so that they look purposeful and not just greasy. But Ma’Khia had mastered it. She knew which products to use to make her curl pattern defined and not frizzy. She could apply false eyelashes! At 16, I was struggling to tame my hair with a headband.
Those videos, and what happened to their protagonist, are a reminder that police violence can penetrate even the sacred online spaces I visit. Natural-hair videos, and the community built up around them, have been a necessary balm amid all the other difficult news I consume. Girls like Ma’Khia were there to show me how to finally achieve a wash-and-go and how to stretch my hair without heat, and to remind me to trim my ends often. We created a little world of product recommendations and life hacks just for us.
By teaching one another how to style our hair — hair that for so long has been deemed difficult and ugly by a world centered on whiteness — we show love to one another. We say, “Hey, sis, check out how cute I look! You can look like this too.” This knowledge sharing is an extraordinary, banal gift that Black women give to one another. That an agent of the state would take one of us from the community, and someone so young who had so much left to give, is a remarkable act of violence whose effects ripple far out to places and time immeasurable.
Ma’Khia had a genuine eye for design. I wonder what she would have done with this skill as she got older, how else she would flourish if she had been allowed to. Her mother said that she had just made the honor roll. Maybe Ma’Khia had a knack for biology. Maybe she was a skilled writer. What else could she have done with her talents? Who could she have been in her community, and what more could it have poured into her? All of these questions without answers, because the police took these options from her.
These possibilities are what get obscured when even a well-meaning public turns victims of police violence into symbols of an entire structural problem. In less than a year from the day a Black man in Minneapolis suffocated under the knee of a police officer, the name “George Floyd” has become shorthand for a legacy of racist police violence, a global protest movement against that legacy, and a hundred different corporate entities’ pledges to “reckon with” that legacy. The flattening of an individual into an emblem is how we get Nancy Pelosi thanking Floyd for his “sacrifice,” when all he wanted was to buy some cigarettes on Memorial Day. It’s how we get the memeification of a woman who was shot to death in her sleep.
I am not sure how hard all of us observers really try to imagine these victims in all the fullness and complexity their lives contained. How earnestly we try to grasp the truth that Black people killed by police are neither threats with superhuman strength nor pious martyrs giving their lives over to a larger cause. They are ordinary, fallible people who may or may not be concerned with doing their hair. In Ma’Khia Bryant’s TikToks, we’re afforded a short glimpse of a three-dimensional life. We have a chance to honor the fullness of that life, and not just its end.
Rescue workers remove a body from a subway car in Mexico City on May 4, 2021, after an elevated metro line collapsed. (photo: Pedro Pardo/AFP/Getty Images)
At Least 23 Dead as Mexico City Metro Overpass Collapses
Rosa Sanchez and Morgan Winsor, ABC News
Excerpt: "At least 23 people were killed and dozens more were injured after an overpass for the Mexico City Metro collapsed on Monday night, sending a subway car full of passengers plunging toward a bustling boulevard below."
"There are unfortunately children among the dead," Mexico City's mayor said
The collapse occurred at around 10:30 p.m. local time on the newest of Mexico City's subway lines, Line 12, which runs underground through more central areas of Mexico's densely populated capital but then emerges onto elevated structures along the outskirts. A support beam "gave way" just as the train passed over it in the southern borough of Tlahuac, according to Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum.
Footage from the scene showed a crane working to hold up one subway car left hanging from the collapsed section of the overpass, with various cars buried under the rubble on the road about 16 feet below.
"We don’t know if they are alive," Sheinbaum said at a press conference early Tuesday, speaking about the people possibly trapped inside the train and cars.
Emergency crews worked through the night to remove people -- dead and alive -- from the scene. By early morning, authorities confirmed that there were no more bodies as they began to remove the wreckage.
At least 49 of the 65 people injured were transported to hospitals, including seven who were in serious condition and undergoing surgery, according to Sheinbaum
"There are, unfortunately, children among the dead," the mayor told reporters, without specifying how many.
The Mexico City Attorney General’s Office has opened an investigation into the deadly incident.
Authorities will inspect the rest of the subway line near where the collapse happened later Tuesday morning, according to Sheinbaum.
"This is an unfortunate and serious accident," she said. "We will report the truth."
Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard, who was Mexico City's mayor from 2006 to 2012, when Line 12 was built, called the incident "a terrible tragedy." Soon after Ebrard left office as mayor, the subway line became plagued by structural issues, technical faults and corruption allegations, leading to a partial closure in 2013 so tracks could be repaired.
"Of course, the causes should be investigated and those responsible should be identified," Ebrard wrote on Twitter. "I repeat that I am entirely at the disposition of authorities to contribute in whatever way is necessary."
'Though HFCs aren't intentionally emitted in the regular use of refrigerators and air conditioners, they often leak out at various phases in an appliance's life cycle, from manufacturing through disposal.' (photo: istock)
EPA to Restrict "Super Pollutant" Planet-Heating Gases in ACs and Fridges
Tim De Chant, Ars Technica
De Chant writes: "The US Environmental Protection Agency announced a rule Monday that would phase out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), the potent greenhouse gases that are widely used as refrigerants."
Hydrofluorocarbons saved the ozone layer, but they’re killing the climate.
he US Environmental Protection Agency announced a rule Monday that would phase out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), the potent greenhouse gases that are widely used as refrigerants.
Though HFCs aren’t intentionally emitted in the regular use of refrigerators and air conditioners, they often leak out at various phases in an appliance’s life cycle, from manufacturing through disposal. One of the most widely used HFCs, R-134a, causes 1,430 times more warming than an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide over 100 years. Another that is commonly used in supermarkets, R-404A, has a global warming potential of 3,900. Eliminating the use of HFCs worldwide would reduce emissions enough to avoid up to 0.5˚C (0.9˚F) of warming by 2100.
HFCs were first introduced in the mid-1990s as replacements for chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were the previous standard for refrigerants. CFCs deplete the ozone layer that protects the Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation, and decades of use led to a massive hole, discovered in 1974, in the atmosphere above Antarctica. As concern over the ozone hole grew, countries from around the world signed onto the Montreal Protocol, which called for the phaseout of CFCs and other ozone-depleting substances. Finalized in 1987 and ratified by the US Senate the following year, the treaty is widely seen as a success—as CFC use has dwindled, the ozone layer has begun to repair itself, and by 2040, experts believe the hole will begin to steadily close.
When HFCs were introduced, they were an appealing replacement for CFCs. They have shorter lifespans than CFCs and are less reactive with ozone. But as their use grew, so did concern over their potential as greenhouse gases. And the concerns are real—leaks in supermarket refrigerators and freezers are so widespread that the industry estimates supermarkets lose 25 percent of their refrigerant charge annually. Once again, countries from around the world came together to address the issue, signing the Kigali Amendment that updated the Montreal Protocol to include HFCs. Notably, neither the US nor China has ratified the agreement, but last month, the two largest greenhouse gas emitters both agreed to eliminate the use of HFCs.
Time for a change
In the US, the phaseout enjoys support from both major political parties, and there are already substitutes available for new refrigerators and air conditioners. One substitute that is already in many models of refrigerators is isobutane. Known in the industry as R-600a, it’s inexpensive, it has almost no ozone depletion potential, and it has a small global warming potential (three instead of R-134a's 1,430). Already, manufacturers have begun switching to the new refrigerant.
But the switch took decades longer than it needed to. Major chemical companies like DuPont, which produced CFCs, fought CFC regulations until the companies had replacement HFCs ready and patented, and a report by Inside Climate News shows they worked to slow the HFC phaseout, too. Isobutane is cheap, not patentable, and widely available—it’s most commonly known as a fuel for camp stoves.
Almost a decade ago, isobutane and other hydrocarbon refrigerants seemed poised for use in the market. In 2011, Underwriters Laboratories (UL) gave the refrigerants the go-ahead, and the EPA followed soon after. But then UL slashed their limits, citing a risk of fire if hydrocarbon refrigerants were to leak in a small room that also contained an open flame, like from a gas-fired water heater. Other experts have said the change was unwarranted and that UL’s fire risk scenario was extremely unlikely to occur. But in 2017, UL raised the limit again, and the EPA followed. Appliances using isobutane have begun to trickle onto the market.
Ultimately, the fire issue may be moot as some grocery stores have begun switching to using carbon dioxide as a refrigerant. Though it requires higher pressures throughout the cooling system, carbon dioxide is not detrimental to the ozone layer. And its global warming potential? One.
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