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Senator Bernie Sanders to Introduce Resolution of Disapproval on $735 Million US Arms Sale to Israel
Jacqueline Alemany, The Washington Post
Alemany writes: "The resolution aims to halt the planned sale to Israel by the Biden administration of JDAMs, or Joint Direct Attack Munitions, and Small Diameter Bombs, as the worst hostilities in years continue between Israel and Hamas."
The action comes as Biden calls for a ‘significant de-escalation of hostilities’ between Israel and Hamas
en. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is preparing to introduce a resolution on Thursday disapproving of the U.S. sale of $735 million in precision-guided weapons to Israel, according to a draft obtained by The Washington Post.
The resolution aims to halt the planned sale to Israel by the Biden administration of JDAMs, or Joint Direct Attack Munitions, and Small Diameter Bombs, as the worst hostilities in years continue between Israel and Hamas. The resolution needs only a simple majority to pass the Senate; but if it were to be vetoed by President Joe Biden, it would need a two-thirds majority in both chambers to take effect.
“At a moment when U.S.-made bombs are devastating Gaza, and killing women and children, we cannot simply let another huge arms sale go through without even a congressional debate," Sanders said in a statement to The Post.
"I believe that the United States must help lead the way to a peaceful and prosperous future for both Israelis and Palestinians. We need to take a hard look at whether the sale of these weapons is actually helping do that, or whether it is simply fueling conflict.”
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) introduced a similar resolution on Wednesday opposing the sale of weapons to the Israeli government. House Foreign Affairs Committee Democrats are expected to summon a senior Biden administration official to a meeting as soon as Thursday to discuss the arms deal.
“For decades, the U.S. has sold billions of dollars in weaponry to Israel without ever requiring them to respect basic Palestinian rights," Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement. "In so doing, we have directly contributed to the death, displacement and disenfranchisement of millions.”
The congressional action comes as President Biden yesterday bluntly demanded a de-escalation of hostilities between Israel and Hamas, opening a rare rift between the U.S. and one of its closest allies. The president did so in the face of increasing criticism from some liberal Democrats who have loudly condemned what they see as American willingness to turn a blind eye to human-rights abuses Palestinians have experienced at the hands of Israel’s government.
It marks the first major dissension between progressives and Biden, who have been cheerleaders for the president’s ambitious economic agenda during the pandemic. But actually getting the resolution from congressional passage to enactment is a big hurdle.
Lawmakers have never successfully blocked a proposed arms sale through a joint resolution of disapproval, according to the Congressional Research Service, although it has passed them in recent years. Former president Donald Trump vetoed three resolutions passed by Congress in 2019 to stop arms sales benefiting Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates after the House and Senate voted to block the arms deals worth more than $8 billion.
While Sanders’s resolution faces long odds, it appears to be guaranteed a vote in the Senate, according to procedures outlined in the International Security and Arms Export Control Act of 1976. “In some way or another, this starts the ball rolling with the Senate voting in one way or another on this sale to Israel,” said a source familiar with Sanders’s thinking.
Sanders penned an op-ed for the New York Times last week, panning the U.S. government for being too accommodating toward Israel. The Vermont senator also introduced a different resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire on Wednesday between the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas -- an alternative to Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) proposal to affirm U.S. support for Israel.
“The devastation in Gaza is unconscionable," Sanders said on the Senate floor on Wednesday. “We must urge an immediate ceasefire.”
If the resolution does garner substantial backing from Senate Democrats, it would still need 51 votes (and passage in the House) to head to Biden’s desk. That 51st vote would have to come from Vice President Harris, who would be put in the awkward position of bucking her boss’s line on the conflict if she had to cast a tie-breaking vote.
Support for a cease-fire among Senate Democrats is growing.
Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.) released a bipartisan statement last weekend calling for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), a staunch defender of Israel, signed on to the statement and told reporters Monday he wanted to see a cease-fire “reached quickly.”
Schumer is up for re-election in New York next year and has otherwise been quiet on the issue roiling the Democratic Party.
Cobalt miner in Democratic Republic of the Congo. (photo: AFP)
Michael Klare | Lithium, Cobalt, and Rare Earths: The Post-Petroleum Resource Race and What to Make of It
Michael Klare, TomDispatch
Klare writes: "Thanks to its very name - renewable energy - we can picture a time in the not-too-distant future when our need for non-renewable fuels like oil, natural gas, and coal will vanish."
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: A last reminder that you can get a signed, personalized copy of Andrew Bacevich’s new book, After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed, by donating at least $100 ($125 if you live outside the U.S.) to TD. Peter Beinart calls it “a timely, angry, deeply necessary book about the habits of mind that have damaged America, and how to change them.” Check out our donation page for the details. The offer, however, may not last much longer, given the number of requests that came in with Bacevich’s recent piece. The book (which you should definitely get your hands on) is due out on June 8th and he’ll send a signed copy to you as soon as he receives it himself. As ever, my thanks for supporting TomDispatch through such increasingly grim years!]
These days in Washington, it’s competition with and hostility to China all the way to the bank. The political class in Congress and the Biden White House, as well as the punditariat that goes with them, seem increasingly swept up in a new-cold-war mentality. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about the latest bipartisan Senate bill to support technological development in this country — that, by the way, House conservatives are already critiquing as not faintly anti-Chinese enough — or the CEO of Lockheed Martin fanning the anti-China flames in order to acquire rocket-engine maker Aerojet Rocketdyne without running into antitrust problems.
If you want something in Washington, whatever it might be, the most obvious way to frame getting it is as a response to the dangers of, or the need to compete better with, China. And the Pentagon has certainly taken note. Despite its ongoing wars elsewhere, it seems to have its “near-peer” competitor in its sights 24/7. And yet, as TomDispatch regular Michael Klare, author of All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change and founder of the Committee for a Sane U.S.-China Policy, makes clear today, such a new-cold-war framework is likely, among other things, to significantly undermine the path to Joe Biden’s renewable energy future.
If the two greatest greenhouse-gas emitters on this planet can’t work together, we’re all going to be living in a more or less literal hell (as the E.P.A. suggested just the other day in reference to this already overheating country of ours). If we can’t cooperate, whatever our differences, it will be a disaster for China — and for the U.S. In that context, consider the ways in which Biden’s focus on a green future will, in the most literal sense imaginable, need the support of that country, a reality Klare illuminates in a way I’ve not seen before.
-Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch
hanks to its very name — renewable energy — we can picture a time in the not-too-distant future when our need for non-renewable fuels like oil, natural gas, and coal will vanish. Indeed, the Biden administration has announced a breakthrough target of 2035 for fully eliminating U.S. reliance on those non-renewable fuels for the generation of electricity. That would be accomplished by “deploying carbon-pollution-free electricity-generating resources,” primarily the everlasting power of the wind and sun.
With other nations moving in a similar direction, it’s tempting to conclude that the days when competition over finite supplies of energy was a recurring source of conflict will soon draw to a close. Unfortunately, think again: while the sun and wind are indeed infinitely renewable, the materials needed to convert those resources into electricity — minerals like cobalt, copper, lithium, nickel, and the rare-earth elements, or REEs — are anything but. Some of them, in fact, are far scarcer than petroleum, suggesting that global strife over vital resources may not, in fact, disappear in the Age of Renewables.
To appreciate this unexpected paradox, it’s necessary to explore how wind and solar power are converted into usable forms of electricity and propulsion. Solar power is largely collected by photovoltaic cells, often deployed in vast arrays, while the wind is harvested by giant turbines, typically deployed in extensive wind farms. To use electricity in transportation, cars and trucks must be equipped with advanced batteries capable of holding a charge over long distances. Each one of these devices uses substantial amounts of copper for electrical transmission, as well as a variety of other non-renewable minerals. Those wind turbines, for instance, require manganese, molybdenum, nickel, zinc, and rare-earth elements for their electrical generators, while electric vehicles (EVs) need cobalt, graphite, lithium, manganese, and rare earths for their engines and batteries.
At present, with wind and solar power accounting for only about 7% of global electricity generation and electric vehicles making up less than 1% of the cars on the road, the production of those minerals is roughly adequate to meet global demand. If, however, the U.S. and other countries really do move toward a green-energy future of the kind envisioned by President Biden, the demand for them will skyrocket and global output will fall far short of anticipated needs.
According to a recent study by the International Energy Agency (IEA), “The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions,” the demand for lithium in 2040 could be 50 times greater than today and for cobalt and graphite 30 times greater if the world moves swiftly to replace oil-driven vehicles with EVs. Such rising demand will, of course, incentivize industry to develop new supplies of such minerals, but potential sources of them are limited and the process of bringing them online will be costly and complicated. In other words, the world could face significant shortages of critical materials. (“As clean energy transitions accelerate globally,” the IEA report noted ominously, “and solar panels, wind turbines, and electric cars are deployed on a growing scale, these rapidly growing markets for key minerals could be subject to price volatility, geopolitical influence, and even disruptions to supply.”)
And here’s a further complication: for a number of the most critical materials, including lithium, cobalt, and those rare-earth elements, production is highly concentrated in just a few countries, a reality that could lead to the sort of geopolitical struggles that accompanied the world’s dependence on a few major sources of oil. According to the IEA, just one country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), currently supplies more than 80% of the world’s cobalt, and another — China — 70% of its rare-earth elements. Similarly, lithium production is largely in two countries, Argentina and Chile, which jointly account for nearly 80% of world supply, while four countries — Argentina, Chile, the DRC, and Peru — provide most of our copper. In other words, such future supplies are far more concentrated in far fewer lands than petroleum and natural gas, leading IEA analysts to worry about future struggles over the world’s access to them.
From Oil to Lithium: the Geopolitical Implications of the Electric-Car Revolution
The role of petroleum in shaping global geopolitics is well understood. Ever since oil became essential to world transportation — and so to the effective functioning of the world’s economy — it has been viewed for obvious reasons as a “strategic” resource. Because the largest concentrations of petroleum were located in the Middle East, an area historically far removed from the principal centers of industrial activity in Europe and North America and regularly subject to political convulsions, the major importing nations long sought to exercise some control over that region’s oil production and export. This, of course, led to resource imperialism of a high order, beginning after World War I when Britain and the other European powers contended for colonial control of the oil-producing parts of the Persian Gulf region. It continued after World War II, when the United States entered that competition in a big way.
For the United States, ensuring access to Middle Eastern oil became a strategic priority after the “oil shocks” of 1973 and 1979 — the first caused by an Arab oil embargo that was a reprisal for Washington’s support of Israel in that year’s October War; the second by a disruption of supplies caused by the Islamic Revolution in Iran. In response to endless lines at American gas stations and the subsequent recessions, successive presidents pledged to protect oil imports by “any means necessary,” including the use of armed force. And that very stance led President George H.W. Bush to wage the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1991 and his son to invade that same country in 2003.
In 2021, the United States is no longer as dependent on Middle Eastern oil, given how extensively domestic deposits of petroleum-laden shale and other sedimentary rocks are being exploited by fracking technology. Still, the connection between oil use and geopolitical conflict has hardly disappeared. Most analysts believe that petroleum will continue to supply a major share of global energy for decades to come, and that’s certain to generate political and military struggles over the remaining supplies. Already, for instance, conflict has broken out over disputed offshore supplies in the South and East China Seas, and some analysts predict a struggle for the control of untapped oil and mineral deposits in the Arctic region as well.
Here, then, is the question of the hour: Will an explosion in electric-car ownership change all this? EV market share is already growing rapidly and projected to reach 15% of worldwide sales by 2030. The major automakers are investing heavily in such vehicles, anticipating a surge in demand. There were around 370 EV models available for sale worldwide in 2020 — a 40% increase from 2019 — and major automakers have revealed plans to make an additional 450 models available by 2022. In addition, General Motors has announced its intention to completely phase out conventional gasoline and diesel vehicles by 2035, while Volvo’s CEO has indicated that the company would only sell EVs by 2030.
It’s reasonable to assume that this shift will only gain momentum, with profound consequences for the global trade in resources. According to the IEA, a typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional oil-powered vehicle. These include the copper for electrical wiring plus the cobalt, graphite, lithium, and nickel needed to ensure battery performance, longevity, and energy density (the energy output per unit of weight). In addition, rare-earth elements will be essential for the permanent magnets installed in EV motors.
Lithium, a primary component of lithium-ion batteries used in most EVs, is the lightest known metal. Although present both in clay deposits and ore composites, it’s rarely found in easily mineable concentrations, though it can also be extracted from brine in areas like Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat. At present, approximately 58% of the world’s lithium comes from Australia, another 20% from Chile, 11% from China, 6% from Argentina, and smaller percentages from elsewhere. A U.S. firm, Lithium Americas, is about to undertake the extraction of significant amounts of lithium from a clay deposit in northern Nevada, but is meeting resistance from local ranchers and Native Americans, who fear the contamination of their water supplies.
Cobalt is another key component of lithium-ion batteries. It’s rarely found in unique deposits and most often acquired as a byproduct of copper and nickel mining. Today, it’s almost entirely produced thanks to copper mining in the violent, chaotic Democratic Republic of the Congo, mostly in what’s known as the copper belt of Katanga Province, a region which once sought to break away from the rest of the country and still harbors secessionist impulses.
Rare-earth elements encompass a group of 17 metallic substances scattered across the Earth’s surface but rarely found in mineable concentrations. Among them, several are essential for future green-energy solutions, including dysprosium, lanthanum, neodymium, and terbium. When used as alloys with other minerals, they help perpetuate the magnetization of electrical motors under high-temperature conditions, a key requirement for electric vehicles and wind turbines. At present, approximately 70% of REEs come from China, perhaps 12% from Australia, and 8% from the U.S.
A mere glance at the location of such concentrations suggests that the green-energy transition envisioned by President Biden and other world leaders may encounter severe geopolitical problems, not unlike those generated in the past by reliance on oil. As a start, the most militarily powerful nation on the planet, the United States, can supply itself with only tiny percentages of REEs, as well as other critical minerals like nickel and zinc needed for advanced green technologies. While Australia, a close ally, will undoubtedly be an important supplier of some of them, China, already increasingly viewed as an adversary, is crucial when it comes to REEs, and the Congo, one of the most conflict-plagued nations on the planet, is the leading producer of cobalt. So don’t for a second imagine that the transition to a renewable-energy future will either be easy or conflict-free.
The Crunch to Come
Faced with the prospect of inadequate or hard-to-access supplies of such critical materials, energy strategists are already calling for major efforts to develop new sources in as many locations as possible. “Today’s supply and investment plans for many critical minerals fall well short of what is needed to support an accelerated deployment of solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles,” said Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency. “These hazards are real, but they are surmountable. The response from policymakers and companies will determine whether critical minerals remain a vital enabler for clean energy transitions or become a bottleneck in the process.”
As Birol and his associates at the IEA have made all too clear, however, surmounting the obstacles to increased mineral production will be anything but easy. To begin with, launching new mining ventures can be extraordinarily expensive and entail numerous risks. Mining firms may be willing to invest billions of dollars in a country like Australia, where the legal framework is welcoming and where they can expect protection against future expropriation or war, but many promising ore sources lie in countries like the DRC, Myanmar, Peru, and Russia where such conditions hardly apply. For example, the current turmoil in Myanmar, a major producer of certain rare-earth elements, has already led to worries about their future availability and sparked a rise in prices.
Declining ore quality is also a concern. When it comes to mineral sites, this planet has been thoroughly scavenged for them, sometimes since the early Bronze Age, and many of the best deposits have long since been discovered and exploited. “In recent years, ore quality has continued to fall across a range of commodities,” the IEA noted in its report on critical minerals and green technology. “For example, the average copper ore grade in Chile declined by 30% over the past 15 years. Extracting metal content from lower-grade ores requires more energy, exerting upward pressure on production costs, greenhouse gas emissions, and waste volumes.”
In addition, extracting minerals from underground rock formations often entails the use of acids and other toxic substances and typically requires vast amounts of water, which are contaminated after use. This has become ever more of a problem since the enactment of environmental-protection legislation and the mobilization of local communities. In many parts of the world, as in Nevada when it comes to lithium, new mining and ore-processing efforts are going to encounter increasingly fierce local opposition. When, for example, the Lynas Corporation, an Australian firm, sought to evade Australia’s environmental laws by shipping ores from its Mount Weld rare-earths mine to Malaysia for processing, local activists there mounted a protracted campaign to prevent it from doing so.
For Washington, perhaps no problem is more challenging, when it comes to the availability of critical materials for a green revolution, than this country’s deteriorating relationship with Beijing. After all, China currently provides 70% of the world’s rare-earth supplies and harbors significant deposits of other key minerals as well. No less significant, that country is responsible for the refining and processing of many key materials mined elsewhere. In fact, when it comes to mineral processing, the figures are astonishing. China may not produce significant amounts of cobalt or nickel, but it does account for approximately 65% of the world’s processed cobalt and 35% of its processed nickel. And while China produces 11% of the world’s lithium, it’s responsible for nearly 60% of processed lithium. When it comes to rare-earth elements, however, China is dominant in a staggering way. Not only does it provide 60% of the world’s raw materials, but nearly 90% of processed REEs.
To put the matter simply, there is no way the United States or other countries can undertake a massive transition from fossil fuels to a renewables-based economy without engaging economically with China. Undoubtedly, efforts will be made to reduce the degree of that reliance, but there’s no realistic prospect of eliminating dependence on China for rare earths, lithium, and other key materials in the foreseeable future. If, in other words, the U.S. were to move from a modestly Cold-War-like stance toward Beijing to an even more hostile one, and if it were to engage in further Trumpian-style attempts to “decouple” its economy from that of the People’s Republic, as advocated by many “China hawks” in Congress, there’s no question about it: the Biden administration would have to abandon its plans for a green-energy future.
It’s possible, of course, to imagine a future in which nations begin fighting over the world’s supplies of critical minerals, just as they once fought over oil. At the same time, it’s perfectly possible to conceive of a world in which countries like ours simply abandoned their plans for a green-energy future for lack of adequate raw materials and reverted to the oil wars of the past. On an already overheating planet, however, that would lead to a civilizational fate worse than death.
In truth, there’s little choice but for Washington and Beijing to collaborate with each other and so many other countries in accelerating the green energy transition by establishing new mines and processing facilities for critical minerals, developing substitutes for materials in short supply, improving mining techniques to reduce environmental hazards, and dramatically increasing the recycling of vital minerals from discarded batteries and other products. Any alternative is guaranteed to prove a disaster of the first order — or beyond.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel Frostlands (the second in the Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.
Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is the five-college professor emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and a senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association. He is the author of 15 books, the latest of which is All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change. He is a founder of the Committee for a Sane U.S.-China Policy.
Cyber Ninjas owner Doug Logan, left, talks about overseeing a 2020 election ballot audit ordered by the Republican-led Arizona Senate at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum. (photo: Ross D. Franklin/AP)
Surreal GOP 'Audit': Off the Rails - and Just Getting Started
Kelly Weill, The Daily Beast
Weill writes: "As new Arizona audit blunders come to light, the recount is widening an already gaping rift between Republican officials in the state."
t long last, after weeks of absurd allegations, election auditors in Arizona suggested they’d finally found evidence of foul play in Maricopa County’s 2020 vote tallies.
“Breaking Update: Maricopa County deleted a directory full of election databases from the 2020 election cycle days before the election equipment was delivered to the audit,” the audit’s official Twitter announced last Wednesday. “This is spoliation of evidence!”
Actually, auditors conceded in a meeting with state officials Tuesday night, the directory had not been deleted. The auditors had just copied the files incorrectly. Nevertheless!
Maricopa County’s ongoing election audit is a disaster, even by the low, low standards of “Stop the Steal” mythology. Led by an out-of-state tech company with a conspiracy-minded CEO, the audit has been plagued from its conception by questions about auditors’ expertise and impartiality as they seek evidence that former President Donald Trump actually won the county in 2020. (He did not.)
But as new audit blunders come to light, the recount is widening an already gaping rift between Republican officials in the state, with some of them saying the audit is dangerous nonsense and others calling for the arrests of their anti-audit peers.
Maricopa County’s audit emerged from a conspiratorial crowd that cried foul when Joe Biden won Arizona in November. Seeking to challenge Biden’s victory, Trump supporters championed a series of quickly debunked theories, falsely claiming that Trump supporters’ votes had been invalidated with Sharpie markers, or that Maricopa County Republicans had placed ballots in a chicken barn and burned the barn to the ground. Many of those claims have originated in fringe chat groups, including those associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory. Still, state-level Republicans gave the claims a veneer of credibility when they ordered an independent audit earlier this year, in a move applauded by “Stop the Steal” diehards seeking to hold their own audits in other states.
The allegation that Maricopa County deleted voter data was the latest in a series of dubious claims to emerge from the byzantine process. But for some local Republicans, that allegation was a final blow to a fraying relationship with other members of their party.
Especially after Trump promoted the claim.
“The entire Database of Maricopa County in Arizona has been DELETED! This is illegal and the Arizona State Senate, who is leading the Forensic Audit, is up in arms,” Trump wrote in a long statement posted to his website last week. He also claimed that “many Radical Left Democrats and weak Republicans are very worried about the fact that this has been exposed” and that “the story is only getting bigger and at some point it will be impossible for the weak and/or corrupt media not to cover.”
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer—a Republican, and one of several who’s battled with far-right foes in the state in recent days—shared Trump’s statement with disbelief earlier this week.
“Wow. This is unhinged. I’m literally looking at our voter registration database on my other screen. Right now,” Richer tweeted. “We can’t indulge these insane lies any longer. As a party. As a state. As a country. This is as readily falsifiable as 2+2=5. If we don’t call this out…”
By now, Maricopa County’s GOP-majority leadership has grown accustomed to attacks from state and national-level Republicans after their hotly contested county voted for Biden last November. Those county officials oversaw multiple audits that confirmed Biden’s victory, despite persistent conspiracy theories that claimed Trump had won the area.
But those audits didn’t satisfy Trump fans around the country, who demanded another search for election oddities. This spring, Arizona’s Republican-majority state Senate mandated the current audit, this time overseen by the Florida-based company Cyber Ninjas, which has no elections experience and is helmed by a CEO who promoted voter fraud conspiracy theories on Twitter.
Auditors reported conducting bizarre tests, like checking ballots for bamboo fibers, on the basis of a conspiracy theory that claimed fake ballots had been shipped from Asia. In an essay for The Washington Post, an experienced elections expert who observed part of the audit reported procedures that changed “almost daily” and that their methods of counting votes “allowed for a shocking amount of error.”
Those audit issues—and the simmering feud between state and local Republicans—came to the fore in a Monday letter from the GOP-run Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. The letter, addressed to the head of the state Senate, objected to allegations that the county had deleted voter data.
“These accusations are false, defamatory, and beneath the dignity of the Senate,” the letter read, noting that the files still existed and that auditors had transferred them improperly, leading to a computer error.
“That the Senate would launch such a grave accusation via Twitter not only before waiting for an answer to your questions, but also before your so called ‘audit’ demonstrates to the world that the Arizona Senate is not acting in good faith, has no intention of learning anything about the November 2020 General Election, but is only interested in feeding the various festering conspiracy theories that fuel the fundraising schemes of those pulling your strings,” they wrote.
“You have rented out the once good name of the Arizona State Senate to grifters and con-artists, who are fundraising hard-earned money from our fellow citizens even as your contractors parade around the Coliseum,” the letter continued, “hunting for bamboo and something they call ‘kinematic artifacts’ while shining purple lights for effect.”
That same day, however, prominent elected Arizona Republicans were doubling down on conspiracy claims. One state senator appeared on a conservative talk show on Monday to promote the bamboo fiber theory. “There’s a rumor out there that ballots were shipped in from overseas that were made of bamboo,” she said. “This process can determine that."
Kelli Ward, chair of the Arizona Republican Party, appeared on One America News, a far-right news network whose anchors launched a fundraiser for the audit, to imply that local officials might be arrested if they did not comply with legislators’ demands.
“There have to be consequences,” Ward said. “There could be arrests of people who are refusing to comply." (Ward did not return a request for comment.)
It wouldn’t even be the first time state-level Republicans threatened Maricopa County’s Board of Commissioners—again, dominated by their own party—with arrest. While the county was arguing against the audit in court earlier this year, Senate Republicans co-sponsored a resolution calling for the arrest of the commissioners on contempt of court charges.
On Tuesday, Maricopa County officials referenced the arrest threats in a Twitter missive.
“The Senate President says the dispute over elections isn’t personal,” read a tweet from the official county Twitter account. “The subpoena, the attempt to hold the Board in contempt w/ possible jail time, and the @ArizonaAudit lie that the county deleted files all suggest otherwise.”
Ward quote-tweeted the county to accuse its commissioners of being the real bullies. “FYI: Personal: name calling & falsely attributing motives to state senators & voters,” she wrote. “Not personal: legislative subpoenas, consequences for contempt, asking questions about irregularities in election & post election processes.”
By Tuesday evening, however, even the audit’s backers conceded that Maricopa County officials had not secretly deleted files. In a meeting that night, a state Senate contractor testified that the files existed after all, on at least four computers that he examined.
Maricopa County’s apparently fed up social media manager was not impressed.
“Just want to underscore that AZ Senate’s @ArizonaAudit account accused Maricopa County of deleting files- which would be a crime- then a day after our technical letter explained they were just looking in the wrong place- all of a sudden ‘auditors’ have recovered the files,” the county tweeted Tuesday night.
The audit is scheduled to continue into next month. If the process so far is any indication, the GOP rift in the state will proceed right along with it.
The Idaho statehouse in Boise. The five rural counties voted Tuesday in favor of considering a permanent move into Idaho. (photo: Shutterstock)
Five Oregon Counties Plot Move to Idaho to Be With Conservative Friends
Coral Murphy Marcos, Guardian UK
Marcos writes: "Five rural Oregon counties voted Tuesday in favor of considering a permanent move to Idaho in efforts to join a more conservative political environment."
Voters in Malheur, Sherman, Grant, Baker and Lake counties passed a measure that would require county officials to promote and discuss moving the Idaho border west, and incorporate their populations. The counties would join Union and Jefferson counties in Idaho. The predominant industries in the counties that voted to join Idaho are timber, mining, trucking and farming.
The measure might capture local sentiment, but actually moving the border would require much wider support, including the approval of both Oregon and Idaho state legislatures. It would also require approval from Congress.
The efforts were led by the grassroots group Move Oregon’s Border for a Greater Idaho, which believes adding conservative counties to Idaho would benefit the state. The group cites Oregon’s lack of rural representation in the legislature, the state’s 2020 drug decriminalization law, and the state’s tax rate as reasons to move out of the state.
“If Oregon really believes in liberal values such as self-determination, the legislature won’t hold our counties captive against our will,” said Mike McCarter, the leader of the movement, in a statement. “If we’re allowed to vote for which government officials we want, we should be allowed to vote for which government we want as well.”
The grassroots organization also strives to grow Idaho west and south into counties in northern California.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents question and detain suspected undocumented immigrants in Charlotte, Jan. 8, 2020. (photo: Eamon Queeney/The Washington Post)
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ICE to Stop Detaining Immigrants at Two County Jails Under Federal Investigation
Maria Sacchetti, The Washington Post
Sacchetti writes: "The Biden administration has decided to stop detaining immigrants in a pair of county jails facing federal probes in Georgia and Massachusetts, calling the decision an 'important first step' in a broader review of the nation's sprawling network of immigration jails."
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to immediately terminate its contract with the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office in Massachusetts and to transfer the few remaining detainees elsewhere, according to documents provided to The Washington Post. He also directed ICE to rescind an agreement with the sheriff’s office, which trained deputies to screen inmates arrested for crimes to see if they are also eligible for deportation.
Mayorkas also directed ICE to “as soon as possible” sever its contracts with the Irwin County Detention Center in rural Georgia, a more complicated endeavor because the facility is county-owned but run by a private contractor.
Federal officials chose the two facilities mainly because their detention rosters have shrunk and they are “no longer operationally necessary,” said a DHS official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s deliberations. Bristol is holding seven detainees out of nearly 200 beds; Irwin has 114 detainees out of almost 1,000 beds.
Both county jails are also under federal investigation for complaints of abuses against immigrants — allegations that remain open and unresolved — and those factored into Mayorkas’s decision, the official said.
In a memo to ICE directing the changes Thursday, Mayorkas said his “foundational principle” is that “we will not tolerate the mistreatment of individuals in civil immigration detention or substandard conditions of detention.”
“We have an obligation to make lasting improvements to our civil immigration detention system,” Mayorkas said in a statement Thursday. “This marks an important first step to realizing that goal. DHS detention facilities and the treatment of individuals in those facilities will be held to our health and safety standards. Where we discover they fall short, we will continue to take action as we are doing today.”
Officials said the moves are part of the Biden administration’s broader plan to overhaul the nation’s network of more than 200 county jails and detention centers housing civil immigration detainees in deportation proceedings. More changes could come as Mayorkas conducts a sweeping review of detention facilities in the coming weeks.
President Biden has pledged to end for-profit immigration detention and reverse former president Donald Trump’s push to detain as many immigrants as possible. He warned Congress last week that it is “long past time” for lawmakers to pass a bill that would allow millions of undocumented immigrants to apply for U.S. citizenship.
And his changes are having measurable impacts: Immigration arrests in the interior of the United States have plunged by more than half, records show. Jails that were holding more than 50,000 detainees a day under Trump are detaining approximately 20,000 now.
The Biden administration has been under increasing pressure from left-leaning lawmakers and advocacy groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union to close detention facilities.
The Bristol County Sheriff’s Office came under state and federal investigation a year ago when staff members deployed pepper balls, a flash-bang grenade, and canines against immigrant detainees amid a dispute over coronavirus testing. Irwin is facing federal investigations after a former nurse filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that women held at the facility were subjected to unwanted gynecological procedures, including hysterectomies; the doctor who treated them has denied wrongdoing.
Mayorkas said in the memo that the Bristol facility southeast of Boston “is of minimal operational significance to the agency” and there is “ample evidence that the Detention Center’s treatment of detained individuals and the conditions of detention are unacceptable.”
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (D) faulted Sheriff Thomas D. Hodgson and his staff for a May 1, 2020, incident at the jail, and urged DHS to terminate its agreements with Bristol, according to a December report. She said some detainees who had refused to submit to coronavirus testing and isolation, partly because of fear of catching the disease, threw plastic chairs at staff members, smashed walls and attempted to barricade the unit with tables, trash bins and appliances.
Healey said she did not condone the detainees’ behavior, but she said they had largely quieted when officers attacked with pepper spray and other materials. Three detainees had to be taken to the hospital and a fourth had to be revived by chest compressions, but she said he was not taken to the emergency room. Healey concluded that the sheriff’s office violated the detainees’ civil rights via “a series of institutional failures and poor decisions.”
Bristol also faced a class-action lawsuit last year alleging unsafe conditions during the pandemic that led to the release of dozens of detainees. U.S. District Judge William Young, a Ronald Reagan nominee, barred Bristol from accepting new detainees. But he also said in a May 2020 ruling that the jail’s staff had “admirably taken significant steps toward protecting the detainees” from covid-19.
Hodgson — an outspoken Trump supporter who once offered to dispatch jail inmates to build the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border — criticized the judge’s rulings and disputed the attorney general’s findings, saying the DHS Office of Inspector General is still investigating the incident.
“I’d love to show everyone the security footage from the incident that night, because it shows my staff did everything right and by the book, and dispels many of the false claims being peddled by the political activist attorneys/publicists,” Hodgson wrote in a letter to the editor of the Sun Chronicle, a local newspaper.
Mayorkas did not detail in the memo to ICE acting director Tae Johnson his reasoning for closing the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Ga., almost 200 miles south of Atlanta. But he said the agency should relocate staff, release or transfer detainees, and preserve evidence and witnesses needed for ongoing investigations.
The DHS inspector general’s office and the FBI are investigating allegations that surfaced last year when a former nurse at the Irwin facility filed a whistleblower complaint saying that a doctor — later identified as Mahendra Amin — was performing hysterectomies and other unwanted procedures on female detainees. Amin has denied wrongdoing, and no charges have been filed. Prism reported the FBI investigation earlier this month.
Irwin no longer houses women at the facility; many have been released as the investigation is ongoing, and some have been deported.
Mayorkas said in the memo he would schedule a meeting next week to lay out the plan to close Irwin and to “discuss my concerns with other federal immigration detention centers” across the United States.
Johnson, the acting ICE director, has said that the agency will continue to arrest immigrants who match the new administration’s criteria.
“ICE will continue to ensure it has sufficient detention space to hold noncitizens as appropriate,” Johnson said in a statement Thursday. “Withdrawing from the Bristol agreement, and planning to close the Irwin facility, will not impair or in any way diminish ICE operations.”
A pro-Israel supporter at a rally to send the message to the United Nations of 'no more anti-Israel documents or resolutions,' January 12, 2017, in New York. (photo: Don Emmert/Getty)
ALSO SEE: The Bombs Raining Down on Gaza? They're American
A History of the US Blocking UN Resolutions Against Israel
Creede Newton, Al Jazeera
Newton writes: "The United States has vetoed dozens of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions critical of Israel, including at least 53 since 1972, according to UN data."
he United States has vetoed dozens of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions critical of Israel, including at least 53 since 1972, according to UN data.
With the latest escalation of violence between Israel and the Palestinians now in its tenth day, the US has stuck to that playbook. On Monday, Washington blocked a joint statement calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas – the US’s third such veto reportedly within a week.
The US’s unequivocal support of Israel has seen it thwart resolutions condemning violence against protesters, illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank built since 1967 and even calls for an investigation into the 1990 killing of seven Palestinian workers by a former Israeli soldier.
Critics say Washington’s blanket support of Israel encourages a disproportionate use of force against Palestinians, including Israel’s current bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip, which has killed at least 219 Palestinians, including 63 children.
Here is a list of some of the major vetoes cast by the US over the years:
Great March of Return
Palestinians in Gaza began protesting at the Israeli border fence in March 2018, calling for the “right of return” to ancestral homes from which their families were expelled in 1948 during what Palestinians call the “Nakbah”, or the creation of the state of Israel. The UN estimates 750,000 Palestinians were expelled that year.
Palestinians faced sniper fire from Israeli forces during the year-long protests, which killed at least 266 people and injured roughly 30,000 more, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
On June 1, 2018, the UNSC drafted a resolution (PDF) expressing “grave concern at the escalation of violence and tensions” since the protests began and “deep alarm at the loss of civilian lives and the high number of casualties among Palestinian civilians, particularly in the Gaza Strip, including casualties among children, caused by the Israeli forces”.
The US vetoed the resolution (PDF), with then-US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley saying it presented “a grossly one-sided view of what has taken place in Gaza in recent weeks”.
Haley blamed Hamas for the violence.
US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital
East Jerusalem is meant to be the capital of a future Palestinian state, as outlined in international agreements. But the area has been occupied by Israel since 1967, when Israeli forces defeated forces from Jordan – which controlled East Jerusalem and the West Bank at the time – Egypt, Syria and allied Palestinians, to occupy all of historic Palestine.
The status of occupied East Jerusalem was meant to be determined through peace negotiations. International law, including UNSC resolutions, state that East Jerusalem is not to be considered Israeli territory.
But former President Donald Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017.
A draft resolution (PDF) from December 18, 2017, wrote “that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered, the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with relevant resolutions of the Security Council”.
In vetoing the resolution, Haley said (PDF) the US “had the courage and honesty to recognize a fundamental reality. Jerusalem has been the political, cultural and spiritual homeland of the Jewish people for thousands of years.”
Demanding end to Israeli-Palestinian violence during the Second Intifada
The Second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, ignited on September 28, 2000, when then-Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon, accompanied by heavily armed forces, entered the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem.
The provocative act sparked long-simmering frustrations over the failed promises of the Oslo Accords to end Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands.
The Oslo Accords were signed by then-Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1993.
But the occupation continued into 2000, with Israeli settlements increasing and Palestinian sovereignty nowhere in sight.
In contrast to the First Intifada in the late 1980s and early 1990s that was largely peaceful, the Second Intifada was very violent, with Palestinian armed groups attacking Israeli forces and a sharp increase in suicide attacks against Israeli civilian centres.
The death toll stood at over 3,000 Palestinians and close to 1,000 Israelis, along with 45 foreigners, according to a BBC tally.
A draft UNSC resolution (PDF) from December 2001 expressed “grave concern at the continuation of the tragic and violent events that have taken place since September 2000”, condemned attacks against civilians and called for peace talks to resume.
When vetoing the resolution, then-US Ambassador to the UN John Negroponte said “the draft resolution before us fails to address the dynamic at work in the region. Instead, its purpose is to isolate politically one of the parties”.
Settlement expansion
The US has vetoed at least four UNSC resolutions condemning Israel’s settlements on Palestinian land, which are considered illegal under international law.
There are between 600,000 and 750,000 Israeli settlers in at least 250 settlements (130 official, 120 unofficial) in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
These settlements have exploded under the rule of hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who began his current term in 2005. They have long been considered a major roadblock to achieving a Palestinian state.
US vetoes of resolutions condemning Israel’s settlements date back to at least 1983. The most recent was in 2011 (PDF), when a draft resolution aimed to reaffirm “all Israeli settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, are illegal and constitute a major obstacle to the achievement of peace on the basis of the two-State solution”.
Then-US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said Washington agreed that settlement activity is illegal, but “we think it unwise for this Council to attempt to resolve the core issues that divide Israelis and Palestinians. Therefore, regrettably, we have opposed this draft resolution.”
Rice served under former President Barack Obama, who caused diplomatic controversy in 2016, months before he left office to be succeeded by Trump, when he instructed the US to abstain from vetoing a similar UNSC resolution against settlement activity.
US President Joe Biden, who served as Obama’s vice president, is known for his support of Israel. But he is facing pressure from progressive Democrats and others to take a greater role in supporting Palestinian rights.
Biden publicly voiced support for a ceasefire on Monday, a demand posed in a letter signed by 25 Democratic lawmakers. But he has also stuck with Washington’s long-established policy of failing to acknowledge the deeply asymmetric nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by expressing his unwavering support for Israel and its “right to defend itself”.
President Joe Biden arrives at the Climate Leaders Summit in the East Room of the White House on Earth Day, April 22. (photo: Al Drago/Getty)
The US Helped Craft the Most Important International Treaty to Protect Nature - but Won't Join It
Benji Jones, Vox
Jones writes: "As President Joe Biden moves quickly to reinstate the full slate of environmental policies weakened by former President Donald Trump, including the landmark Migratory Bird Treaty Act, he's signaling that climate change and biodiversity loss are now major priorities for the US."
America’s absence from the Convention on Biological Diversity hurts global efforts to avert extinction, experts say.
Earlier this month, the Interior Department also launched a campaign to conserve 30 percent of US land and water by 2030, joining more than 50 other countries that have committed to that goal. Biden is pursuing the target, known as 30 by 30, alongside a new and more ambitious commitment to cut carbon dioxide emissions.
Yet there’s one big problem with this post-Trump environmental renaissance: The US still hasn’t joined the most important international agreement to conserve biodiversity, known as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). And it isn’t just a small, inconsequential treaty. Designed to protect species, ecosystems, and genetic diversity, the treaty has been ratified by every other country or territory aside from the Holy See. Among other achievements, CBD has pushed countries to create national biodiversity strategies and to expand their networks of protected areas.
Since the early 1990s — when CBD was drafted, with input from the US — Republican lawmakers have blocked ratification, which requires a two-thirds Senate majority. They’ve argued that CBD would infringe on American sovereignty, put commercial interests at risk, and impose a financial burden, claims that environmental experts say have no support.
With Biden now in office, some experts see a pathway to ratification — certainly, environmental groups are calling for it — while others say there’s no chance of wooing enough Republicans. But they all agree on one thing: The US’s absence from the agreement harms biodiversity conservation at a time when such efforts are desperately needed.
President Bush refused to sign a biodiversity treaty that the US helped craft
Nearly half a century ago, scientists were already warning that scores of species were at risk of going extinct — just as they are today. In fact, headlines from the time are eerily familiar: “Scientists say a million species are in danger,” read one in 1981, which is almost identical to a headline from 2019.
Those concerns ignited a series of meetings among environmental groups and UN officials, in the ’80s and early ’90s, that laid the groundwork for a treaty to protect biodiversity. US diplomats were very much involved in these discussions, said William Snape III, an environmental lawyer and an assistant dean at American University and senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity, an advocacy group.
“It was the United States who championed the idea of a Biodiversity Treaty in the 1980s, and was influential in getting the effort off the ground in the early 1990s,” Snape wrote in the journal Sustainable Development Law & Policy in 2010.
In the summer of 1992, CBD opened for signature at a big UN conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It laid out three goals: conserve biodiversity (from genes to ecosystems), use its components in a sustainable way, and share the various benefits of genetic resources fairly.
Dozens of countries signed the agreement then and there, including the UK, China, and Canada. But the US — then under President George H.W. Bush — was notably not one of them. And it largely came down to politics: It was an election year that pitted Bush against then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, and a number of senators in Bush’s party opposed signing the treaty, citing a wide range of concerns.
Among them was a fear that US biotech companies would have to share their intellectual property related to genetics with other countries. There were also widespread concerns that the US would be responsible for helping poorer nations — financially and otherwise — protect their natural resources, and that the agreement would put more environmental regulations in place in the US. (At the time, there was already pushback, among the timber industry and property rights groups, on existing environmental laws, including the Endangered Species Act.)
Some industries also opposed signing. As environmental lawyer Robert Blomquist wrote in a 2002 article for the Golden Gate University Law Review, the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association and Industrial Biotechnology Association both sent letters to Bush stating that they were opposed to the US signing CBD due to concerns related to IP rights.
President Clinton signed the treaty but failed to find support for ratification
In 1992, Clinton won the election and, in a move hailed by conservationists, signed the treaty shortly after taking office. But there was still a major hurdle to joining CBD — ratification by the Senate, which requires 67 votes.
Clinton was well aware of the CBD opposition in Congress. So when he sent the treaty to the Senate for ratification in 1993, he included with it seven “understandings” that sought to dispel concerns related to IP and sovereignty. Essentially, they make it clear that, as party to the agreement, the US would not be forced to do anything, and it would retain sovereignty over its natural resources, Snape writes. Clinton also emphasized that the US already had strong environmental laws and wouldn’t need to create more of them to meet CBD’s goals.
In a promising step, the bipartisan Senate Foreign Relations Committee overwhelmingly recommended that the Senate ratify the treaty, making it seem all but certain to pass. At that point, the biotech industry had also thrown its support behind the agreement, Blomquist wrote.
Nonetheless, then-GOP Sens. Jesse Helms and Bob Dole, along with many of their colleagues, blocked ratification of the convention from ever coming to a vote, Snape said, repeating the same arguments. The treaty languished on the Senate floor.
And that pretty much brings us up to speed: No president has introduced the treaty for ratification since.
GOP lawmakers still resist treaties — any treaties
Two and a half decades later, concerns related to American sovereignty persist, especially within the Republican Party, and keep the US out of treaties. Conservative lawmakers stand in the way of not only CBD but also several other treaties awaiting ratification by the Senate, including the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities.
“Conservative nationalists in the United States (including the Senate) have long mistrusted international agreements,” Stewart Patrick, director of International Institutions and Global Governance at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in an email to Vox. They view them, he added, “as efforts by the United Nations and foreign governments to impose constraints on US constitutional independence, interfere with US private sector activity, as well as create redistributionist schemes.”
In other words, not a whole lot has changed.
A week after Biden was sworn into office, the Heritage Foundation, an influential right-wing think tank, published a report calling on the Senate to oppose a handful of treaties while he’s in office, “on the grounds that they threaten the sovereignty of the United States.” They include CBD, the Arms Trade Treaty, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, among others. (Environmental treaties like CBD tend to draw a stronger opposition from conservative lawmakers, who often fear environmental regulations, relative to other agreements, Snape said.)
Legal experts say concerns related to sovereignty aren’t justified. The agreement spells out that countries retain jurisdiction over their own environment. Indeed, US negotiators made sure of it when helping craft the agreement in the ’90s, Patrick recently wrote in World Politics Review. “States have ... the sovereign right to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental policies,” reads Article 3 of CBD. (Article 3 goes on to say that states are also responsible for making sure they don’t harm the environment in other countries.)
“The convention poses no threat to U.S. sovereignty,” wrote Patrick, author of The Sovereignty Wars.
And what about the other concerns? The agreement stipulates that any transfer of genetic technology to poorer nations must adhere to IP rights in wealthier nations, Patrick writes. Clinton’s seven understandings also affirmed that joining CBD wouldn’t weaken American IP rights, and clarified that the treaty can’t force the US to contribute a certain amount of financial resources.
Joining the CBD is also unlikely to require anything in the way of new domestic environmental policies, Snape and Patrick said. “The U.S. is already in compliance with the treaty’s substantive terms: It possesses a highly developed system of protected natural areas, and has policies in place to reduce biodiversity loss in environmentally sensitive areas,” Patrick wrote.
Then again, given the country’s strong environmental laws, does it even matter if the US joins the agreement?
It would be a big deal if the US joined CBD
Many environmental groups and researchers say, yes, it does matter and are urging Biden to work with the Senate to ratify CBD. In a January 8 op-ed published in the Hill, Sarah Saunders, a researcher at the National Audubon Society, and Mariah Meek, an assistant professor at Michigan State University, wrote that “global biodiversity policy is at a pivotal crossroads, and the US needs to have a seat at the table before it is too late.” They also urged the US to fully fund the CBD secretariat, which oversees the convention.
The convention has its big meeting this coming fall in Kunming, China, at which parties will build a strategy for biodiversity conservation over the next decade and out to 2050, that’s likely to include a 30 by 30 pledge. The US plans to send a delegation to the conference, the State Department confirmed with Vox, but as a non-member, the country doesn’t have the right to vote (such as on CBD procedures, including the location of a meeting, and in elections for various leadership roles).
Some experts, including Patrick of the Council on Foreign Relations, say ratification is still possible. Conservation is among the few issues that have bipartisan support, he writes, mentioning that nearly a third of US House and Senate members are a part of the bipartisan International Conservation Caucus (ICC). (Vox reached out to all eight ICC co-chairs, including four GOP lawmakers. They all declined interview requests or did not respond.)
“Eventual US accession is possible,” Patrick wrote, assuming the treaty is accompanied by “specific reservations, understandings, and declarations to reinforce the intellectual property rights of American companies and mollify conservative Republican senators with unrealistic fears that the convention could undermine U.S. sovereignty.”
That sounds a lot like what Clinton tried to do back in the ’90s, leaving others with little optimism. Snape, for one, says there’s no chance of ratification in the next two years — and unlikely in the next 10. That view is shared by Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. There’s simply not enough appetite among GOP lawmakers to sign treaties of any kind, they said. To get the required 67 votes, you’d need 17 of their votes, assuming all Democrats voted in favor of ratification.
(In response to a request for comment, the White House directed questions about the treaty to the State Department. A State spokesperson said the US “has always supported the objectives of the CBD and continues to be actively involved in its processes.” The department declined to comment on whether Biden would make ratifying the treaty a priority.)
But what experts can all agree on is that, by failing to join CBD, the US — which has a huge environmental footprint — is hampering global conservation efforts. “Our absence from the CBD keeps international biodiversity ‘out of sight, out of mind’ at a time when its priority needs to be elevated,” Brian O’Donnell, director of Campaign for Nature, a conservation group advocating to conserve at least 30 percent of Earth by 2030, said by email.
Nature isn’t bound by political borders, O’Donnell said. So, reaching the goals of CBD — which we have so far failed to do — requires international cooperation and coordination. The US’s absence makes that harder, he said. The US is also home to some of the world’s best conservation researchers and tools, including those used for monitoring wildlife populations, Snape added. “The rest of the world needs us,” he said.
There’s another key reason to join the agreement: The US could help other countries develop conservation strategies that don’t come at the expense of Indigenous people and local communities, which has been the case historically.
While the US is itself guilty of harming native populations for the sake of protecting wildlife (most famously when creating Yellowstone National Park), the country is trying to turn a new leaf on conservation, under the direction of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who is a member of the Laguna Pueblo. In its new 30 by 30 initiative, Interior vowed to do right by tribal organizations.
“Now that there’s a chance the US does the right thing on conservation, it’s important for them to join [CBD],” said Andy White, a coordinator at the nonprofit Rights and Resources Initiative. “The US participating in the CBD could bring a more rights-based approach to conservation.”
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