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Jeannie Suk Gersen | Did Trump and His Supporters Commit Treason?
Jeannie Suk Gersen, The New Yorker
Excerpt: "Punishments for disloyal acts are a means of insisting on who has legitimate power in our constitutional democracy, and of deterring those who are shown to be trying to destroy it."
or years, Carlton F. W. Larson, a treason scholar and law professor at the University of California, Davis, has swatted away loose treason accusations by both Donald Trump and his critics. Though the term is popularly used to describe all kinds of political betrayals, the Constitution defines treason as one of two distinct, specific acts: “levying War” against the United States or “adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” Colluding with Russia, a foreign adversary but not an enemy, is not treason, nor is bribing Ukraine to investigate a political rival. Ordering the military to abandon Kurdish allies in Syria, effectively strengthening ISIS, is not treason, either—though that is getting warmer. During Trump’s Presidency, Larson told me, his colleagues teased him by asking, “Is it treason yet?” He always said no. But the insurrection of January 6th changed his answer, at least with regard to Trump’s followers who attacked the Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress’s certification of the election. “It’s very clear that would have been seen as ‘levying war,’ ” he said.
Both of Trump’s impeachments, in 2019 and 2021, were for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” but the Constitution also names treason as an offense for which a President can be impeached. Individuals, including a former President, may also be criminally punished for treason, perhaps the highest offense in our legal system, carrying the possibility of the death penalty. Fearing abuse of treason charges, the Framers gave treason a narrow definition and made it extremely difficult to prove.
The Treason Clause dictates that a conviction can rest only “on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.” Partly as a result, there have been around forty treason prosecutions. No American has been executed for treason against the U.S., although Hipolito Salazar (a Mexican who officials thought was American) was federally executed for treason during the Mexican-American War, and some states have executed people for treason, including the abolitionist John Brown.
Larson wrote in his book “On Treason: A Citizen’s Guide to the Law,” from 2020, that the Framers “had a very specific image in mind—men gathering with guns, forming an army, and marching on the seat of government.” Few events in American history, if any, have matched that description as clearly as the insurrection of January 6th, which, court documents suggest, was planned by milita members who may have intended to capture elected officials. The American most associated with treason was one who did not “levy war” but rather gave “aid and comfort” to the enemy: Benedict Arnold. He at first fought heroically in the Revolutionary War but then attempted to aid the British; he fled to the enemy when his betrayal was discovered, and so was never punished. Treason prosecutions for levying war were brought against some individuals who took part in the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, in which armed men burned down a tax collector’s house, and the Fries Rebellion of 1799, in which armed men stormed a prison and forced the release of tax resisters. Both resulted in conviction followed by pardon. The Jefferson Administration prosecuted the former Vice-President Aaron Burr, in 1807, for allegedly conspiring with a group of armed men to overthrow the U.S. government in New Orleans, but he was acquitted. In connection with that planned rebellion, the Supreme Court held that a mere conspiracy to levy war does not count as actually levying war. Another treason case resulted from the Christiana Riot, in which dozens of men fought the return of slaves to their owners as required by the Fugitive Slave Act. Supreme Court Justice Robert Grier, presiding at trial (as Justices did in those days), held that “levying war” had to involve an intent to overthrow the government or hinder the execution of law.
Southern secessionists who waged war against the United States were treasonous under any reading of the Treason Clause’s “levying war” standard. Jefferson Davis, the former U.S. senator turned President of the Confederacy, was indicted for treason in 1866. Before trial, however, Chief Justice Salmon Chase made clear his view that the Fourteenth Amendment, which had been ratified a few months earlier, precluded any other treason penalties for Confederates. Section 3 of the amendment bars from holding public office anyone who took an oath to support the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection against” or gave “aid or comfort to the enemies” of the United States. Because of the Chief Justice’s interpretation, President Andrew Johnson gave up on the prosecution of Davis and granted amnesty to all former Confederates if they swore an oath to defend the Constitution and the Union.
In the past century, federal treason prosecutions generally have been “aid and comfort” cases. After the Second World War, a Japanese-American woman named Iva Toguri D’Aquino, better known as Tokyo Rose, was convicted of treason for broadcasting anti-American propaganda on Radio Tokyo; she was pardoned in 1977, after witnesses recanted. The poet Ezra Pound was famously prosecuted for Fascist propaganda broadcasts on Italian radio; the case was dropped in 1958, when he was found incompetent to stand trial. During the Cold War, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted and executed for conspiracy to commit espionage, not treason; the Soviet Union was not technically an enemy. After a half century of no federal treason cases, the indictment of the Al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn, in 2006, was the first to concern giving aid and comfort to an enemy that was not a nation. Had Gadahn ever been tried, the defense might have argued that a terrorist group such as Al Qaeda isn’t an enemy as envisioned in the Treason Clause, though a federal district court assumed, in 2013, that it was. Gadahn was killed in Pakistan in 2015, by a C.I.A. drone strike.
Since the Capitol insurrection, there has been little talk of treason charges. Carlton Larson suggested that this was because “everybody now tends to think of treason as mostly aiding foreign enemies.” In his book “On Treason,” he even states that “levying war is arguably archaic, of interest only to historians,” and that, in the twenty-first century, “armed rebellions to overthrow the government are simply not going to happen.” But, to the Framers, such an insurrection was a paradigmatic case of treason. The founding-era Chief Justice John Marshall held in the treason trial of Aaron Burr that levying war entails “the employment of actual force” by “a warlike assemblage, carrying the appearance of force, and in a situation to practice hostility.” If some of those who attacked the Capitol assembled in order to incapacitate Congress—perhaps even by kidnapping or killing lawmakers—then their actions could be construed as an attempt to overthrow the government, and federal prosecutors could plausibly consider treason charges. As Larson put it, “At some point, you have to say, if that’s not levying war against the United States, then what on earth is?”
Last Tuesday, Mitch McConnell, who is now the Senate Minority Leader, said that the attackers “tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like,” offering a narrower purpose than government overthrow. Investigators examining the emerging evidence on the scope of the plot might disagree. Federal law also makes it a separate felony for anyone who owes allegiance to the U.S. and knows of the commission of any treason to conceal it or not tell authorities. That vastly widens the net of those who could potentially be charged, including friends, acquaintances, and co-workers of the attackers. (Since the attack, many such individuals have, in fact, come forward to give information to law enforcement.)
The Treason Clause’s strict evidentiary rule of two witnesses to the act makes it exceedingly difficult to convict anyone of treason, even with so much conduct captured on video. But a treason case against Trump himself might conceivably be built, if prosecutors could establish that he knew in advance that his supporters planned to violently assault the Capitol, rather than peacefully protest; that he intended his speech urging them to “fight harder” to spur them to attack Congress imminently; and that he purposely didn’t do anything to stop the insurrection while it was unfolding—or, worse, intentionally contributed to a security failure that led to the breach. Then Trump would have engaged in treason along with supporters who attempted, in his name, to overthrow the U.S. government. At a minimum, it appears that Trump, along with top government officials, was aware that his followers were planning acts of violence. Trump did, however, say, in the midst of his incendiary speech, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Short of treason, a related federal law prohibiting rebellion or insurrection states that a person who incites “any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto,” has committed a serious felony and is disqualified from holding federal office. This description is similar to the current article of impeachment against Trump: “for inciting violence against the Government of the United States.” If two-thirds of senators vote to convict Trump, a majority of the Senate could then vote to bar him from future federal office. But a Senate conviction requires the votes of at least seventeen Republicans and, so far, looks unlikely. A federal criminal conviction for inciting rebellion or insurrection may offer an alternative route to disqualifying Trump from holding office.
For the time being, the government has indicted more than a hundred and fifty people for crimes related to the insurrection, including unlawful entry, disorderly conduct, theft, destruction of property, firearms offenses, assault on police, conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, obstruction of justice, and even curfew violation. Ongoing investigations will likely produce more indictments. In addition to potential homicide and terrorism charges, prosecutors have pledged to pursue the charge of “seditious conspiracy.” That crime overlaps with but covers more than treason; federal law defines it as any conspiracy “to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States.”
While federal prosecutors could charge some of the leaders of the riot with treason, seditious conspiracy would be far easier to prove. It is clear that the rioters’ goal was, at a minimum, to delay Congress’s legally mandated counting of electoral votes. Prosecutors would need to prove that two or more people had agreed to undertake the seditious conduct, but, with respect to the rioters who were explicit about their aims and coördinated their actions, the evidence may well be sufficient, particularly given the violent result. More evidence might even enable charges against individuals who conspired to attack the Capitol but didn’t take part in the events. Some of those individuals might be elected officials. Representative Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat of New Jersey, has alleged that unnamed members of Congress “had groups coming through the Capitol that I saw on January 5th, a reconnaissance for the next day.” Soon afterward, the U.S. Government Accountability Office and the Capitol Police opened investigations into what roles members might have played in the siege.
If evidence were to emerge that members of Congress intentionally aided or incited the attack, they may face criminal consequences. It’s more likely, however, that Republicans who amplified Trump’s election-fraud lies will be sanctioned by their colleagues. Seven Democratic senators have filed an ethics complaint against the Republican Senators Ted Cruz, of Texas, and Josh Hawley, of Missouri, who led the effort to overturn the election in Congress. Representative Cori Bush, a Democrat of Missouri, has introduced a House resolution to investigate and potentially expel members of Congress who challenged states’ electoral votes. Bush said, in a tweet, that they “incited this domestic terror attack through their attempts to overturn the election.” Mitch McConnell may agree. He has pointedly acknowledged that the mob was “provoked by the President and other powerful people,” implying that fellow-lawmakers might bear responsibility. But, whatever moral condemnation or political remedy is appropriate, criminal charges cannot be brought against congresspeople such as Hawley and Cruz solely for using a legal process to challenge electoral votes in Congress. It is unlikely that any Republican politician thought they’d succeed in overturning the election, and it may be hard to distinguish their moves in Congress, at least legally, from a few Democrats’ challenges to states’ electoral votes in 2001, 2005, and 2017.
Even if Congress doesn’t censure or expel any of its members, the Senate declines to convict Trump, and federal prosecutors decline to bring charges against any of them, Trump and lawmakers who tried to overturn the election could still be held accountable through Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, the same provision that was intended to prevent former Confederates from holding office. If Trump and the officials tried to run for office again, a lawsuit could claim that they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, and, if the evidence bears it out, some could be disqualified from holding office. But, apart from any of these remotely possible legal remedies, Republicans who helped foment the attack are facing political repercussions: in the weeks since the riot, Hawley has had a fund-raiser and a book contract cancelled, and Missouri’s two biggest newspapers have called for his resignation. But, alas, in our divided country, Republican officials who denounced the insurrection or voted to impeach Trump may also face the ire of many Republican voters.
The past month has required both affirmation of the strength of our democracy and recognition of its fragility. Laws against treason, sedition, rebellion, and insurrection may seem obscure or arcane, but they are on the books for those real instances in which the expression of strong beliefs, which is constitutionally protected, crosses into actions that fundamentally betray and threaten our government. In times of intense division, such actions pose more danger even as their meaning becomes more contestable. The deep split that cracked open during one of the most consequential transfers of power in history—which, as it turned out, was militarized and not exactly “peaceful”—is apparent in the fact that one side’s patriot is the other side’s traitor. Punishments for disloyal acts are a means of insisting on who has legitimate power in our constitutional democracy, and of deterring those who are shown to be trying to destroy it. The legal terms may seem archaic, and sometimes have been misused or abused, but that should not blunt their precise relevance to our unfortunate contemporary situation.
A Gwinnett County voting location in Atlanta for the Georgia Senate runoff on Jan. 5. (photo: Megan Varner/Getty)
ALSO SEE: Republicans Considering More Than 100 Bills
to Restrict Voting Rights
'Ready to Take Power': Progressives Mobilized Latino Voters in Georgia, and Here Are the Lessons
Suzanne Gamboa, NBC News
Gamboa writes: "Days before the Senate runoffs in Georgia this month, a canvasser with the Latino progressive political group Mijente knocked on the door of an 80-year-old man who didn't know there was an election or who was running."
“I hope this election served to convince people that if you invest in our community, we will turn out,” said Mayra Macias, executive director of the progressive group Latino Victory.
The man asked the canvasser to talk to him about who was best for the community, and that’s who would get his vote, said Tania Unzueta Carrasco, political director for Mijente, who related the story told to her by a canvasser.
“Here in Georgia, the support of the two candidates was a little bit of a trust exercise,” Unzueta Carrasco told NBC News. “We were looking at the bigger picture. We were looking at the fact that if they didn’t win, we wouldn’t have a Democratic majority.”
They did win. And the twin victories for Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in the Jan. 5 runoffs gave Democrats control of the Senate. But the violent and deadly storming of the Capitol the next day largely eclipsed that news and threatened to overshadow what Latinos in the state had contributed to the campaigns.
The day before the runoff, Mijente PAC announced that it had contacted every Latino voter in Georgia, knocking on more than 310,000 doors amid a pandemic, calling more than 257,000 cellphones and landlines, and sending more than 376,000 texts.
Those numbers left no doubt among local and national Latino activists—as well as their financial backers—that something important had happened in Georgia, and that the years-long struggle to turn out Latino voters for Democratic candidates yielded results.
Moreover, ahead of upcoming congressional elections, it showed what's possible.
“I hope this election served to convince people that if you invest in our community, we will turn out,” said Mayra Macias, executive director of Latino Victory, a progressive Latino group that established a chapter in Georgia in 2017 after seeing the growth of the Latino electorate.
Leaders of the many Latino groups that descended on the state, along with Georgia Latino community groups, said there was a concerted, cooperative and multicultural effort to mobilize the estimated 377,000 Latinos in Georgia that are eligible to vote. The Latino electorate tends to be younger as well.
Granted, just having runoffs in one state meant resources didn’t have to be divided among several states, as in the general election. But several group leaders said they saw more bilingual and Spanish language ads in Georgia, as well as more mailings and digital outreach.
“For us Georgia was already important. The community there was ready to take power and use it to make changes,” said Yadira Sanchez, co-executive director of Poder Latinx, a social justice group.
Harnessing, funding grassroots groups
Although there was a need to educate some voters about why they were having to return to the polls, several progressive organizers said many of the state's Latino voters were well aware of what Democratic control of Congress could mean for them, after years of fights against 287(g) agreements, which allow local law officers to enforce federal immigration laws.
"Talk to anyone on the ground and they can cite better than folks who work in politics what 287(g) is and how it harmed the community," Macias said. "So much of the Latino community was really driven to be active this election cycle because of the effects of 287(g) raids that happened early in the Trump administration.
But they also gave credit to Stacey Abrams, the voting rights activist and former Georgia state House minority leader who built a mobilization infrastructure and relationships with grassroots Latino groups who had worked to turn out voters in her unsuccessful campaign for governor in 2018.
Tory Gavito, co-founder and president of Way to Win, a network of progressive donors and organizations, said the network was tracking about $5.8 million in funding for groups such as Mijente, the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights and others trying to mobilize Latinos.
“I’m looking at what we can extrapolate from the lessons of what we do when we fully fund the community from the Georgia level to the national level moving forward because it is pretty phenomenal,” Gavito said.
Esteban Garces, treasurer of Votar es Poder PAC, the political action committee of Poder Latinx, said the PAC had spent $1 million to fund a Latino registration and mobilization program in Florida and took lessons from that effort to Georgia. The PAC partnered with the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement and the Decatur, Georgia-based International Union of Painters and Allied Trades.
Poder Latinx reported it made at least 400,000 phone calls and knocked on at least 15,000 doors after the November elections, building on what it had done in the state for the presidential election on Nov. 3. It raised $300,000 for the Georgia effort. Its spending included $120,000 for an ad on Univision the week before the runoffs.
One of the PAC's most visible endeavors during the runoff campaigns was the sponsorship of the East Los Angeles band Las Cafeteras for their remake of the classic song “Georgia on My Mind”. It also sponsored a digital ad using the Latina superhero La Borinqueña, who also was featured in digital ads sponsored by Voto Latino and Fair Fight Action, an Abrams organization.
“The hope was for folks to know communities of color need investment and we invested,” said Sanchez, of Poder Latinx.
So did other groups.
Mi Familia Vota, which has canvassed in the Latino community in several states for years, said it had made 1.4 million attempts to reach Georgia voters, including 42,517 unique door knocks and 755,800 text messages; it registered 861 voters. The group partnered with the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials.
Trust community groups, 'especially minority organizations'
Latinos were not the reason Warnock and Osoff defeated Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. Black voters were key. Their turnout was higher than any other demographic group, and white voter turnout dropped, according to exit polling and other analyses.
But Latinos far outperformed their own turnout for other statewide runoffs and were part of a critical multicultural coalition and infrastructure.
Seventy-eight percent of those Latinos who voted in the general election returned to vote in the runoffs, according to Bernard Fraga, an associate professor of political science at Emory University and author of "The Turnout Gap: Race, Ethnicity and Political Inequality in a Diversifying America." Exit polls put the percentage at around 71 percent.
That was a huge jump from a 2018 secretary of state runoff election, when just 15 percent of Latinos who voted in that year's general election returned.
Ossoff won his race by 54,944 votes and Warnock by 93,272, according to the Georgia Secretary of State.
Fraga said the takeaway from the election is that Democrats won with a multicultural, multiethnic coalition focused on voter mobilization with on the ground work. This ensured that minority turnout did not drop off between the general and the runoff elections as much as it had in the past.
“Republicans hit their targets. They hit the numbers they needed to hit. It’s just that turnout was so high among Black voters and other Democrats on Election Day that it didn’t matter,” Fraga said. Republicans did the work, Fraga said, but it wasn’t enough because of all the work that was done to get minority voters out.
“Trust the mobilization organizations that are on the ground doing this work, every election, but also between elections," said Fraga. "Trust those organizations, especially minority organizations, to know what it takes to mobilize communities."
Gavito said the lessons for Democrats from Georgia are important, since they got a wake-up call in November in that Trump and other Republican candidates made inroads with Latino voters, particularly in rural areas.
“Democrats have to take the Latino vote more seriously," she said, "and that means engaging it, and I hope that is the lesson moving forward."
The Senate races were the most expensive ever, with at least $470 million spent on them, according to OpenSecrets.org.
There were last-minute fights over poll closures and only two counties in the state provided bilingual ballots, compelling many groups to send their own workers to the polls to help provide translations on Election Day.
The pandemic still raged in the state and Georgia was contending with Trump’s attempts to overturn the Nov. 3 election results.
“Despite all of the obstacles that our communities encountered,” Garces, of Votar es Poder, said, “we still went out in record numbers and we changed Georgia.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (right) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. (photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Progressives Are Just Getting Started on Their Fight to Abolish the Filibuster
Ryan Brooks, BuzzFeed
Brooks writes: "Progressives are warning that Joe Biden's agenda could collapse if Democrats don't change the Senate. And they're already putting pressure on whoever stands in the way."
constellation of progressive groups is making the first big fight of Joe Biden’s presidency about Senate procedure, with progressives convinced they cannot get their priorities made into law unless Democrats fundamentally change how the Senate passes legislation.
The groups, many of which opposed Biden in the 2020 primary, are pushing to frame the Senate filibuster as a tool of racism and oppression, tying the procedural mechanism that makes it impossible to pass most legislation without 60 votes to its historic use in blocking anti-lynching and civil rights bills in the 1950s. And they’re already showing how willing they are to use that message against Democrats who aren’t already on board.
“We see the work of abolishing the filibuster as one of the major blockages to democracy reform,” said Rev. Stephany Spaulding, a professor and founder of Truth and Conciliation, which joined a new coalition dedicated to democracy reforms like abolishing the filibuster, expanding courts, and Washington, DC, statehood. “If we think about the history of the filibuster, it has impacted Black and brown communities for centuries because of the way it has upheld white supremacist ideas.”
Groups like the Sunrise Movement and Justice Democrats were encouraged after Democrats won Senate control this month, seeing it as a sign that they could actually pass some of their priorities, like the Green New Deal, policing reform, and expanded coronavirus relief. They just don’t believe there’s much chance of doing that with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell empowered with the ability to block most legislation if Democrats aren’t able to win over at least 10 votes outside of their majority.
In a Jan. 18 memo, Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement urged the Biden administration not to water down legislation to entice Republicans to vote for bills and argued that Democrats in the Senate should eliminate the filibuster, which they argue would be easier to explain politically than failing to pass priority legislation.
“A quick strike against the filibuster in January will set Biden up to shepherd his entire agenda through regular order, with full committee involvement and proper levels of oversight and transparency,” the groups wrote.
Indivisible, a national progressive grassroots organizing network formed by former Hill staffers after former president Donald Trump’s 2016 election, also called for the elimination of the filibuster in its updated organizing guide, pointing back to former president Barack Obama’s difficulty in negotiating with Republicans early in his presidency despite Democrats controlling the Senate.
“The parallels between 2009 and 2021 are impossible to ignore,” the guide reads, warning that the party spent too much time negotiating and lost their majorities in the 2010 midterms.
Eli Zupnick, spokesperson for the Fix Our Senate Coalition, a group including unions and progressive groups dedicated to abolishing the filibuster, said they expect it’s only a matter of time before one issue becomes the tipping point. Republicans are broadly expected to block Biden’s agenda on high-profile issues like climate change, healthcare, gun control, and voting rights. Any one of those could serve as the fight that brings Democrats to the point of nuking the filibuster.
“Strip everything away and this is a fundamental choice: Do Democrats actually want to govern or do they want to not and then blame the minority?” said Zupnick.
Now progressives are pointing to the early struggles for power with McConnell as evidence that trying to get any agreements with Republicans will be fruitless. The Senate still hasn’t passed its organizing rules for this Congress after McConnell spent days insisting that Democrats agree to keep the legislative filibuster. He backed away from the demand earlier this week, but the stalemate delayed committee assignments.
“I think McConnell succeeded in dragging Senate business for a few days and one of the things we know is to expect Republicans to obstruct, delay, and engage in bad faith bullshit,” said Leah Greenberg, cofounder of Indivisible. “He is trying to run down the clock until the moment when he can take back Senate seats and resume his powers as majority leader.”
Groups like Indivisible and the Working Families Party have joined a coalition of social justice and progressive organizations called Just Democracy to pressure senators to abolish the filibuster. In a recent ad displayed in New York City’s Time Square, Just Democracy urged Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to eliminate the filibuster. The group has also launched ads that feature clips of Obama calling the procedural tool a “Jim Crow relic” that should be eliminated to enact legislation like a new voting rights act.
“We think about the over 200 anti-lynching laws that have been blocked by the filibuster, and even right now, while we’re thinking about COVID relief and criminal justice reform,” said Spaulding. “We can’t even get conversations brought to the Senate floor because of the way in which the GOP has used the filibuster to not legislate. This isn’t just for Black and brown people — this is for America. No one elects someone to not legislate.”
Groups like the Working Families Party, Indivisible, Sunrise Movement, and Just Democracy have all worked to connect the filibuster to problems that Americans are facing and have highlighted bills that could be obstructed by the filibuster if it remains in place.
“When we keep hitting a wall after a certain point, you have to decide if you’re going to just keep banging your head up against the wall or if you’re going to dismantle the wall through structural changes,” said Maurice Mitchell, the director of the Working Families Party. “We understand that Democrats have a razor-thin margin in the Senate and we also understand the nature of the rules of the Senate. Folks voted these Democrats in to figure out the solutions to create bold legislation to meet the crises that we’re in.”
A standoff between Schumer and McConnell this month over how to run an evenly split Senate ended after the minority leader was encouraged that any vote to abolish the filibuster wouldn’t pass because moderate Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema reaffirmed that they were opposed to getting rid of it. But Schumer himself refused to explicitly rule out attempting to change the rule later.
Progressives say that sets them up for more substantive fights around the filibuster when legislation like the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and coronavirus relief packages need to be voted on in the coming months. They say they’ll now also have time to get Democrats like Manchin and Sinema on board through pressure campaigns.
Indivisible members across the country have already begun pressuring Democrats to abolish the rule and have left the door open to more targeted campaigns directed at the two senators.
"For Indivisibles in Arizona, our new Democratic Senate is a huge deal! Over the past four years, we've worked tirelessly to flip both our Senate seats because we know a trifecta is our only shot at getting progressive legislation passed," said Lis Haskell, an Indivisible member in Sinema’s home state of Arizona. “If Senator Sinema wants to deliver for the people who pulled her across the finish line, she's got to be a strong advocate for getting rid of the filibuster in the Senate."
No Excuses PAC, a progressive political action committee formed by former staffers to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zack Exley, a cofounder of Justice Democrats, has already begun targeting Sinema with ads centered around the filibuster that have aired in Arizona.
“Sen. Kyrsten Sinema seems to think things are working just fine in Washington, DC — she’s OK with the gridlock because it protects her,” says an ad airing in Arizona, narrated by former top Ocasio-Cortez aide Corbin Trent. “She thinks the filibuster should stay right where it is,” the ad narrated by Trent says.
“One of the things we want to highlight with the ads is that there’s a commitment to dysfunction and inaction that’s literally being supported by Kyrsten Sinema,” Trent explained in an interview with BuzzFeed News. “That inaction is costing us the ability to get checks out, to ramp up vaccinations, and the ability to save our economy in a real way. The trade-off of the filibuster is not worth it.”
The PAC also targeted Manchin in ads that aired in West Virginia about his reluctance for $2,000 stimulus checks — after the ads aired for a week, Manchin told local outlets that he was open to supporting $2,000 stimulus checks. Trent said the PAC plans to use the same strategy in Arizona to blanket the state with ads about Sinema’s stance on the filibuster on radio and in local newspapers.
“The PAC exists to say that Democrats have a once-in-a-generation chance to turn things around, and we hopefully have a once-in-a-generation need to turn things around,” Trent said. “We’ve got a slim majority, and we can’t screw around. We’ve got to get in there as a party and do tangible things for the American people. We can’t let half-assed, silly, old traditions hold us back.”
An ambulance arrives at a Brooklyn nursing home on June 11, 2020. (photo: Annie Wermiel/NY Post)
New York Undercounted Nursing Home Deaths by as Much 50 Percent
Shannon Young, POLITICO
Young writes: "The New York attorney general on Thursday accused the state of drastically undercounting Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes, saying in a stinging new rebuke of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration that the official tally of about 8,500 may be off by as much as 50 percent."
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The online pranksters behind the great GameStop bubble of 2021 are probably going to lose a lot of money. (photo: Getty)
The GameStop Bubble Is a Lesson in the Absurdity and Uselessness of the Stock Market
Doug Henwood, Jacobin
Excerpt: "The online pranksters behind the great GameStop bubble of 2021 are probably going to lose a lot of money. But they've done the world a service by reminding us of the utter uselessness of the stock market, an institution that serves no purpose besides making a small number of undeserving people rich."
ho knew GameStop would itself become such a game?
Last summer, the video game retailer was seen as a fading brick-and-mortar operation. It was losing money, sales had been shrinking for years, and the stock was trading for around $4 a share. As I’m writing this on the afternoon of Wednesday, January 27, its stock is trading at $339 a share. At the close of trading on Tuesday, it was a mere $148. Not a bad overnight return, 129 percent. Three days earlier, it was at $38. It was up nearly tenfold in less than a week. Why?
To answer that requires explaining the concept of short selling, which most civilians find nearly incomprehensible. A short sale is a bet that a stock (or any other speculative asset, like bonds or gold) is going to decline in price. But to make that bet, you have to sell something you don’t already own, which is not normal behavior. To accomplish this, you have to borrow the stock from somebody who does own it. As with any loan, you have to pay interest on the borrowed asset. And you also have to keep some collateral on deposit with your broker as an assurance you’re good for the money. The hope is that the price will fall, and you can buy the shares — cover the short, in the jargon — at a lower price. Your profit would be the difference between the original sale price and the closing purchase price, minus any interest paid on the borrowed asset.
But what if you’re wrong, and the price rises? Then you’re in trouble. When you buy a stock, your risk is that you could lose the entire purchase price — but no more. With short selling, if you’re wrong, there’s no predetermined limit to how much you can lose if the price keeps rising. And if the price keeps rising, your broker will demand more collateral in the form of real money. You have a choice between giving up — covering the short and taking the loss — or keep pouring more collateral into a losing position in the hope that things will finally turn your way.
Back to GameStop. Last August, the investor Ryan Cohen, who founded the online pet food merchant Chewy and sold it for a handsome profit, started buying GameStop shares. He told the company that it needed to get with the digital age, close a lot of stores, and move online. Investors, expecting a better future for the flailing retailer, snapped up shares, tripling their price by the end of November. That was unjustified optimism, perhaps, but not outlandish. But some hedge funds, notably Melvin Capital Management, began shorting GameStop, believing the tales of recovery were delusional.
Cue the habitués of the subreddit Wall Street Bets, with a user known as DeepFuckingValue among the ringleaders, who began talking up the stock and buying shares. They were motivated not merely by the prospect of making money, but also for the lulz of bankrupting some hedgies. They began buying the stock in size, as they say on Wall Street. The ensuing price rise forced the shorts like Melvin to cover. Their demand for the stock, plus the Redditors’, launched the share price on a moon shot.
GameStop has turned into one of the great bubbles of our time. On Tuesday, January 26, more stock in GameStop was traded than in Apple, the biggest stock of all, with a total market value 108 times the retailer’s. As James Mackintosh of the Wall Street Journal put it, the price action and trading volume together suggest “widespread disturbance to people’s judgment.”
Bubbles like this always end in a crash, and those Redditors who haven’t sold their shares will be left holding a very depleted bag. (Surprisingly, news that Melvin closed out its short position late on Tuesday seems not to have dampened the party. A bubble usually goes on far longer than mere rationalists can predict.) In the meanwhile, it’s funny to see some Wall Streeters complain that there’s something unfair about this action, since these are the sorts of games they play with each other and the general public all the time. They talk up stocks or talk them down, depending on their interests, and plot against what they see as weak or vulnerable players all the time. It’s just that the speculators with names like DeepFuckingValue who are savaging them for now are the wrong kind of people. They don’t live in Greenwich in houses with twenty-car garages.
Even more amusing are the earnest sorts who think these games somehow pervert the function of the stock market. As Business Insider columnist Josh Barro declared on Twitter: “I know people think this is fun but — why do we have a stock market? So productive firms can raise capital to do useful things. Detaching stock price from fundamental value (Gamestop is now worth almost as much as Best Buy) makes the markets serve the real economy worse.”
What’s funny about these comments, aside from their earnestness in the midst of low comedy, is that the stock market has almost nothing to do with raising money for productive investment. Almost all the stock that trades on the market, including GameStock, was issued years ago, meaning that companies don’t see a dime of the daily action. Firms do issue stock now and then, in so-called initial public offerings (IPOs), but over the last twenty years, according to finance professor Jay Ritter’s data, IPOs have raised a cumulative total of $657 billion, well under 2 percent of total business investment in things like buildings and equipment over the same period. In the real world, as opposed to Barro’s imagination, firms raise almost all their investment funds internally, through profits. Rather than raising money from shareholders, businesses shovel out vast buckets of money to them. Since 2000, the five hundred large companies that make up the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index have spent $8.3 trillion buying their own stock to boost its price — over half their profits over the period, and equal to almost 20 percent of business investment over the two decades. Stock buybacks not only make the shareholders happy, but they also fatten CEOs’ paychecks, since bosses these days are paid mainly in stock.
Lulz aside, this drama, like the seemingly endless rise in stock prices since 2009, interrupted briefly by the COVID-19 scare last March, is a sign of a financial system totally out of touch with economic reality. Trillions in government aid to business and Federal Reserve infusions into the financial markets have created a monstrous gusher of money with nowhere to go but speculative assets, at a time when ICUs are at capacity and 24 million people tell Census Bureau interviewers that they’re having trouble getting enough to eat. Barro would do better to worry about that.
Police patrolling Wonpo township, Kandze (Ch: Ganzi) prefecture, a Tibetan area within Sichuan province, in late 2019. (photo: Human Rights Watch)
Tibetan Monk Dies From Beating in Chinese Custody
Human Rights Watch
Excerpt: "Chinese police and prison authorities routinely torture and abuse inmates, and the situation is particularly severe in ethnic minority regions."
6 Others, Including Boy, Get Up to 5 Years for Distributing Leaflets, Video
hinese authorities should account for the death of a 19-year-old Tibetan monk recently released from police custody, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities also should release six other young Tibetans – including a 16-year-old boy – sentenced to up to five years in prison for involvement in the same peaceful protests.
The young monk, Tenzin Nyima (also called Tamay), was from Dza Wonpo monastery, in Wonpo township, Kandze (Ch: Ganzi) prefecture, a Tibetan area within Sichuan province. The authorities initially detained him on November 9, 2019, two days after he and three other Wonpo monks briefly distributed leaflets and shouted slogans calling for Tibetan independence outside the local Wonpo government office. The protests occurred as local officials increasingly put pressure on forcibly resettled nomads and local residents to publicly praise the government’s “Poverty Alleviation” program.
“Chinese authorities have once again turned arbitrary detention into a death sentence,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. “They should hold to account all those responsible for the brutal killing of the Tibetan monk Tenzin Nyima.”
The authorities released Tenzin Nyima in May 2020, but rearrested him on August 11, apparently for sharing news of the arrests online, including with contacts in India. In early October, prison authorities told his family to collect him from the prison due to his medical condition. Tibetans in exile with knowledge of the case said he was unable to speak or move and was suffering from serious injuries and an acute respiratory infection, which they believed was due to beatings, malnourishment, and mistreatment in custody.
On October 9, Tenzin Nyima was admitted to a hospital in the provincial capital, Chengdu, by which time he had lost consciousness. A hospital report that Human Rights Watch obtained indicates that he had been in critical condition for 10 days before being handed over to his family. Hospital treatment appears to have been delayed until his relatives raised the necessary funds (RMB 40,000, or US$6,200). After he spent several weeks in the hospital, doctors declared his injuries to be beyond treatment and discharged him.
On December 1, his family succeeded in having him admitted, still comatose, to a hospital in Kandze prefecture, Dartsedo (Ch: Kangding). Doctors at that hospital also discharged him on the grounds that his condition is terminal. Further evidence seen by Human Rights Watch indicated that he was paralyzed and gravely ill. He died soon after relatives brought him home.
Chinese police and prison authorities routinely torture and abuse inmates, and the situation is particularly severe in ethnic minority regions. The Chinese government should order a prompt and impartial investigation into the alleged torture of Tenzin Nyima and hold his abusers accountable, Human Rights Watch said. Authorities should provide his family with fair and adequate compensation, as required under the United Nations Convention against Torture, to which China is a party.
United Nations standards adopted by the General Assembly set out that all death-in-custody cases should be subjected to “prompt, impartial and effective investigations into the circumstances and causes” of the death. As the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions has noted, since there is a presumption of state responsibility due to the custodial setting and the government’s obligation to ensure and respect the right to life, the government has to affirmatively provide evidence to rebut the presumption of state responsibility. Absent proof that it is not responsible, the government has an obligation to provide reparations to the family of the deceased.
Chinese government rules dealing with deaths in custody require the police to “immediately conduct” an investigation into the cause of death by viewing and preserving the surveillance video of the detention cell, and questioning fellow detainees, doctors, and guards, among other measures.
The need for independent investigation of the range of human rights violations by the Chinese government was underlined by a collective statement from UN human rights experts in June 2020. They expressed grave concern over China’s failures to respect human rights and abide by its international obligations, and recommended the establishment of an impartial and independent UN mechanism to monitor and report on abuses “in view of the urgency of the situations” in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet.
The trials of Tenzin Nyima and six other Tibetans took place at the Intermediate People’s Court in Sershul on November 10 and 12. On December 14, four other monks from Wonpo monastery and two local youths, all between ages 16 and 23, were sentenced for involvement in one of two protests in Wonpo in November 2019 or for spreading news about the first incident. The sentences ranged from one to five years.
The court sentenced the Wonpo monks Choephel (also called Kunsel), 20, to four years; So-tra (also called Woezer), to three years; and Tsultrim, 16, to one year. All three were accused of distributing leaflets and shouting slogans on the night of November 7, 2019, and were charged with “incitement to split the country.” Tenzin Nyima was charged with the same offense, but the court did not announce his sentence, presumably because of his medical condition.
The longest sentence, five years, was imposed on Nyimay, a 22-year-old monk who had not taken part in the leafleting protests, but had posted news on social media about the detention of the four other monks. Nyimay had been detained on November 18, 2019, 11 days after the others, also on grounds of “incitement to split the country,” but local sources report that he was also accused of revealing state secrets for posting news of the earlier detentions.
The sentencing of Tsultrim, who was 15 or under at the time of the protest, is contrary to Chinese law, since children under age 16 are not deemed criminally responsible in China and cannot be tried for criminal offenses, except for certain violent crimes such as murder and arson (Chinese Criminal Code 1997, article 17). Under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which China is a party, the detention of children shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period.
Two other young men from Wonpo, Nyimay’s elder brother Choegyal and his friend Yonten, were sentenced to four years in prison, also for “incitement to split the country,” after distributing leaflets and shouting slogans outside the local government offices in Wonpo on November 21, 2019. In court they testified to having also sent a video clip showing pro-independence leaflets and photos of the Dalai Lama to Choegyal’s uncle in Switzerland shortly before their protest.
Choegyal and Yonten had also posted statements on social media. Choegyal had written, “Loyalty to our people rests on each of our shoulders, and must never be abandoned.” Yonten wrote, “I heard of the misery suffered by those heroes who have given their lives for the sake of our people, the warriors who have struggled for our independence, and now I am terribly saddened that our brothers from Wonpo have been thrown in jail. May our brothers soon be released!”
Altogether, the authorities detained about 30 Wonpo residents, both monastic and lay people, following the protests on suspicion of involvement in the incidents or of showing support for protesters. Armed police were deployed in the town to patrol the streets and conduct military exercises, apparently intended to intimidate residents. Local officials also held two weeks of political education meetings at Wonpo monastery. By the end of December, all of those detained had been released except for the seven who were eventually brought to trial.
“Urgent, grim cases like the imprisonment of the young Tibetans have prompted UN experts to call for a mechanism to monitor and report on grave abuses by Chinese authorities,” Richardson said. “A failure to hold accountable those responsible for Tenzin Nyima’s death enables further appalling violations.”
For details about the situation in Wonpo and about the people detained, please see below.
Situation in Wonpo
Informants in exile with knowledge of developments in the Wonpo area said that the November 2019 protests took place against a background of heightened discontent after local officials placed increasing demands on resettled herders and other residents. The officials had required the former herders to publicly praise the Chinese government’s “Poverty Alleviation” policies, which are being carried out throughout China and which in Tibet generally include the compulsory resettlement of nomads and other rural dwellers.
Officials had reportedly ordered former herders and other poor families in Wonpo, which has approximately 2,000 households, to declare on camera or to visiting officials that their lives had improved as a result of the anti-poverty drive. “Poor families are made to borrow other peoples’ cattle and furniture and so on in order to put on a show of having been made richer,” the source said, and local officials “threatened many poor households that if they didn’t have those things, then they should borrow them from others and put on a show, or else later they would be detained and punished.”
The source said that local officials in Wonpo “were planning another such show just before November 7 [2019] and … this made people angry. There was a lot of opinion and writing about it and it was at that time that this protest took place.”
Radio Free Asia reported that during the first Wonpo protest in November 2019, “the nomads’ livelihoods have gone from bad to worse [following resettlement], and, not having any other sources of income, they have to depend solely on government subsidies for their survival.” The report quoted a local source as saying at the time, “during tours to the area by Chinese officials, the resettled nomads
are forced to put up pictures of Chinese national leaders and praise China’s ruling Communist Party in public speeches, which are then filmed and distributed to Chinese mass media.”
During a wave of protests by Tibetans against Chinese rule in 2008, monks at Wonpo monastery refused to hoist Chinese national flags on the monastery’s roofs. An ensuing crackdown led to searches of Tibetan homes and scores of detentions, with at least three monks given prison sentences, according to foreign media reports.
Armed police were deployed in the local community, which was singled out for surveillance and restrictions by the authorities, leading to further protests and arrests in 2012. Two other Wonpo monks, Lobsang Lhundrub and Choechok, were detained in December 2017 and March 2018 respectively; Choechok was released two years later.
Summary of Cases
Choephel, Ch.:Qiupai 求排, also known as Kunsel, 20, father’s name Shiring, mother’s name Jangri. Monk at Wonpo monastery. Detained on November 9, 2019 for involvement in protest on November 7, 2019. Sentenced on December 14, 2020 to four years for incitement to split the country (煽动分裂国家).
So-tra, Ch.: Suozha 所扎, also known as Woezer, about 20, father’s name So-tse, mother’s name Golo. Monk at Wonpo monastery, detained November 9, 2019 for involvement in a protest on November 7, 2019. Sentenced on December 14, 2020 to three years for incitement to split the country.
Tsultrim, Ch.:Cicun 次村, 16, father’s name Pembar, mother’s name Yangchuk. Monk at Wonpo monastery, detained November 9, 2019 for involvement in a protest on November 7, 2019. Released May 9, 2020; re-detained August 11, 2020. Sentenced on December 14, 2020 to one year for incitement to split the country.
Tenzin Nyima, Ch.: Danzeng Nima 旦增尼玛, also known as Tamay, born August 5, August 2001, father’s name Punday, mother’s name Drolma. From Ajia Village. Monk at Wonpo monastery, detained November 9, 2019 for involvement in a protest on November 7, 2019. Released around May 9, 2020, but re-detained August 11, 2020. Released on medical grounds in early October 2020. Tried on December 14, 2020 for incitement to split the country but awaiting sentence. Died in January 2021.
Nyimay, Ch.: Niming 尼名, 22, father’s name Yonga, mother’s name Tolha. Detained on November 18, 2019 for distributing news about the protest on November 7. Sentenced on December 14, 2020 to five years for incitement to split the country and distributing state secrets.
Choegyal, Ch.: Qujia 曲加, 23, father’s name Yonga, mother’s name Tolha. Detained on November 21, 2019 for involvement in a protest on that day. Sentenced on December 14, 2020 to four years for incitement to split the country.
Yonten, Ch.: Yongdeng 拥等, 22 or under, father’s name Oepa. Detained on November 21, 2019 for involvement in a protest on that day. Sentenced on December 14, 2020 to four years for incitement to split the country.
The southern end of Yellowstone National Park is seen at the Lewis River and Lewis Falls in Wyoming on July 12, 2018. (photo: Patrick Gorski/Getty)
Biden Executive Order Pushes for Protection of 30% of America's Land, Oceans
Center for Biological Diversity
Excerpt: "President Joe Biden will issue an executive order today directing federal officials to protect 30% of the country's lands and ocean waters by 2030, part of an effort to slow the wildlife extinction crisis and curb global warming."
“This is a crucial step to stopping the wildlife extinction crisis, which threatens the future of all life on our planet,” said Kierán Suckling, executive director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We’ve got to preserve the most biologically rich ecosystems to have any hope of bringing nature back from the brink. Human activity got us to this heartbreaking point, and we’re grateful the Biden administration will address this global crisis by working to protect 30% of the nation’s lands and oceans by 2030.”
Under the president’s order, the Interior Department will determine how to measure the country’s progress toward the 30x30 goal and outline steps to achieve it. Federal officials also will support local, state, private and tribal conservation and restoration efforts and work to improve access to nature for low-income communities and communities of color.
Three-quarters of the planet’s lands and two-thirds of its ocean have been heavily altered by humans. Habitat loss and degradation remains the largest driver of extinction in the United States and around the world. The U.S. loses a football-field worth of natural area every 30 seconds to human development, severely affecting wildlife, fresh water and clean air.
The United Nations last year said more than 1 million plant and animal species are heading toward extinction. Species are dying out at hundreds to thousands of times the natural rate. For example, there are less than 400 North Atlantic right whales left, just 14 red wolves known in the wild in North Carolina, and likely around 10 vaquita porpoises in Mexico. In the Southeast extinction looms for 28% of the region’s fishes, 48% of crayfishes and nearly 70% of freshwater mussels.
A year ago the Center launched Saving Life on Earth, a plan that calls for a $100 billion investment to save species and the creation of new national monuments and parks, wildlife refuges and marine sanctuaries so that 30% of U.S. lands and waters are fully conserved and protected by 2030 and 50% by 2050.
