04 July 22
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Kyiv’s success against Moscow forces us to reexamine our assumptions about what it means to be powerful.
Until, that is, a war breaks out. The Russia-Ukraine war is now cutting through much of the nonsense that dominated the discussion of international power politics, posing particular challenges to blasé assumptions about what makes a state powerful, and what makes a country’s leadership effective. This reassessment doesn’t just concern the question of debatable prewar military analysis of Russia and Ukraine, or theories of international relations. Instead, it is aimed at the whole way we think about how countries interact with one another, about national power, and about leadership.
The best place to start is the widespread notion going into the war that we were witnessing a clash between a great power controlled by an experienced, savvy—some even said brilliant—leader and a small state weakened by national division and led by a second-rate former comedian. This great power–small power dynamic was accepted practically universally among a group of scholars and analysts who have proclaimed themselves “realists.”
Maybe the most famous realist in the world is Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. secretary of state and a longtime believer in the notion of great leaders and great powers. Kissinger, who met regularly with Vladimir Putin, has been arguing for forcing Kyiv to make concessions such as the handing over of the Crimea, internationally recognized as part of Ukraine but annexed by Moscow in 2014, to the Russians. To Kissinger, it has been important that the United States treat Russia as a “great power” and that it accepted Moscow’s claim to have a special interest in Ukraine.
Academics, too, subscribe to this notion. In lectures, media appearances, and articles in the months before the invasion, well-known figures such as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt described the Russia-Ukraine relationship as operating in the well-worn great power–small power framework. In this analysis, Putin was the clever strategist with a strong grasp on what he wanted, while the Ukrainians were weak, and it would be better for the world if their status was determined by the strong. Russia was, in Mearsheimer’s view, one of only “three great powers” in the world, and Putin was a rationalist, just wanting to secure a buffer state on his border, something Ukraine would have to deal with. Meanwhile, as Walt put it, Ukraine would have to accept the oppression and subjugation of its people to Russian interests because “great-power war is worse and brings much more suffering.” Other analysts, such as Samuel Charap, even believed that Russia was so strong, and would crush a weak Ukraine so easily, that the West should provide no support for Kyiv, because it would all be wasted when the Russian steamroller attacked.
This all sounded eminently reasonable, but then Russia invaded Ukraine and the great power–small power dichotomy was revealed to be the opposite of realism. The fundamental problem was that Russia was exposed at the start as not a “great” power at all. Having sent in almost all of its frontline military units, the Russian army has seized only 20 percent of Ukraine—a far cry from its initial efforts to take Kyiv and subjugate the entire country—and is suffering horrific losses in casualties and equipment. It’s already desperately trying to regenerate its forces by finding soldiers wherever it can, even allowing citizens as old as 49 to enlist, while throwing more and more older, second-rate equipment into the fight.
Russian strength has shown itself to be so overrated that it gives us an opportunity to rethink what makes a power “great.” Going into the war, Russia’s military capabilities—including a large nuclear stockpile and what was thought to be one of the biggest and most-advanced armed forces in the world—were pointed to as the reason for its strength. What this war might be showing us, however, is that a military is only as strong as the society, economy, and political structure that assembled it. In this case, Russia was nowhere near a great power, but in fact a deeply flawed, in many ways weakening, state.
From this point of view, indeed, it can be seen as a power in relatively steep decline. Its economy is about the tenth largest in the world, comparable to Brazil’s, but even that masks how remarkably unproductive it is, basing most of its wealth on extracting and selling natural resources, rather than on producing anything advanced. When it comes to technology and innovation, Russia would hardly rank in the top 50 most important countries in the world.
Moreover, the Russian leadership, and most obviously its president—hailed in many quarters as a canny operator—has shown itself to be the head of a disastrously constructed state that fed misperceptions, stifled real debate, and allowed one man to launch this disaster. It’s odd that this is a lesson that we need to learn again and again: Dictatorial regimes tend to decompose the longer they stay in power, because appealing to the source of power becomes a higher priority to officials in all echelons of the state than simply doing a good job. Putin’s state fed his delusions and created an inefficient military, hobbled by corruption and inefficiency.
We must also reevaluate our understanding of the more basic notions of morale and psychological commitment. One of the most surprising things to analysts who perceived Ukraine as a small power, and Russia as a great one, is that the Ukrainian military and people have resisted with extraordinary tenacity while Russian military behavior points toward serious issues with motivation and commitment. The Ukrainians have shown a national wherewithal that has made any idea of a Russian conquest of the whole country, Putin’s original goal, laughable.
We have seen this play out time and time again in modern history, when a smaller country—or parties within a smaller country—with a willingness to fight can wear down a larger power. Be it Afghanistan (twice) or Vietnam (twice), morale and commitment to a fight mean more than which side is the more “powerful.”
We have much to thank the Ukrainians for, but to some extent, one of the most important things they have done is force us to reexamine many of our assumptions about national power and the balance between states.
We need to reconsider—in many ways, entirely reconstruct—how we judge what makes a great power, or what is the most important part of national power. Militaries, perhaps, should be seen more as creations of the underlying economic, technological, and political characteristics of a country. Military power still matters hugely, but in this view reflects its creators, rather than superseding them. A weak, relatively backward, and uninventive economy will struggle to operate a modern military, even if that military has what are considered advanced weapons.
Further, we need to be careful about praising the ability of authoritarian or dictatorial states to wage war. In times of peace, such states can seem decisive and the possessors of well-thought-out plans, but their systemic weaknesses in crushing dissent and encouraging deceptions that appeal to the throne can lead to strategic disasters in both how wars start and how they are conducted. Finally, national power has a basis in commitment and identity that cannot be overlooked.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has not been a situation in which a great power assaulted a smaller neighbor. It’s an example of a large, deeply flawed power invading a smaller, but very committed one. The balance of power between the two does still matter—but what makes up that balance needs to be much better understood.
Abortion rights demonstrators gather outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on June 24, 2022. (photo: Yasin Oztark/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
Democrats don’t have the votes right now for major Supreme Court reform. But if they pick up seats, they could have many options.
It’s likely that the worst is yet to come. Three “shadow docket” decisions this past term suggest that the Court is about to slash safeguards against racial gerrymandering. Another case looming in the next term, involving North Carolina’s gerrymandered congressional maps, is likely to give Republican state legislatures the power to defy their state constitution when writing election laws. And that’s after the Court has spent the last decade dismantling the Voting Rights Act and stripping the federal courts of any authority to fight partisan gerrymanders.
The Court’s Republican majority isn’t simply handing down bold conservative policy decrees, it is undermining democracy itself.
Indeed, the GOP owes its control of the Court to an anti-democratic system that effectively gives extra votes to Republicans. Only three justices in American history were appointed by a president who lost the popular vote, and confirmed by a block of senators who represent less than half of the country. All three were appointed by Donald Trump, and all three sit on the Court right now.
Neither Congress nor President Joe Biden, however, are powerless against an anti-democratic Supreme Court. The elected branches have broad powers to rein in a rogue judiciary, or to limit the scope of at least some of the Court’s decisions. The greatest of these powers is court-packing — adding additional seats to the Supreme Court to dilute the votes of Trump justices who lack democratic legitimacy.
Realistically, Democrats lack the votes to push that or other meaningful Supreme Court reform through Congress right now. Such a proposal would require changing or abolishing the filibuster, as it’s nigh impossible to imagine 10 Republican senators voting to diminish the power of an institution controlled by Republicans. And at least two members of the Senate’s narrow Democratic majority oppose filibuster reform.
But just because court reform isn’t currently politically viable doesn’t mean it’s not worth considering, especially if Democrats somehow manage to pick up larger majorities in a future Congress. There are several options to deal with an increasingly partisan Supreme Court. Here are 10 of them.
1) Court-packing
Let’s get the biggest weapon in the arsenal of democracy out of the way first. If Congress has the votes, it could simply add more seats to the Supreme Court. President Biden would then name several new justices to fill those vacant seats, who could be confirmed by a Democratic Senate.
Although the Constitution provides that there must be a Supreme Court, it does not say how many justices shall serve on that Court. Over the course of American history, the Court has had as few as five seats and as many as 10. A bill pending in Congress right now would add four seats to the Court, transforming the 6-3 Republican majority into a 7-6 Democratic majority.
That said, there are several good reasons for Democrats to be cautious of packing the court, at least as an initial tactic to rein in the Court’s current majority.
One is that getting a court-packing bill through Congress would probably require extraordinarily high levels of public anger at the Supreme Court. Shortly after President Franklin Roosevelt won his first reelection bid in an historic landslide, he proposed adding seats to the Supreme Court as a solution to reactionary justices who sabotaged many of his New Deal policies. But even at the apex of his political might, Roosevelt struggled to build support for his plan.
Indeed, some historians blame Roosevelt’s court-packing proposal for shattering his coalitions and preventing him from pushing bold policies through Congress. Perhaps because of this history, Biden has been reluctant to embrace court-packing in the past.
The other problem with adding seats to the Court is that, absent a constitutional amendment fixing the number of justices on the bench, Republicans could potentially retaliate if they regain control of Congress and the White House.
Just as a Democratic Congress can transform a nine-member Court with a Republican majority into a 13-member Court with a Democratic majority, a Republican Congress could add any number of seats to the Court if they have the votes to do so — and that new majority might be even more hostile to democracy than the current crop of justices.
Ways to change the makeup of the Supreme Court without giving a clear advantage to one party
Assuming that the next Congress does not have the votes to simply add new seats to the Supreme Court and let a Democratic president fill them, Congress still has several options that could change the makeup of the Court in ways that are less overtly partisan.
2) A “balanced” Court
One of the leading alternatives to simply adding and filling new seats on the Court with Democratic judges is still a form of court-packing. But the aim is to create a politically balanced Court where neither party dominates.
In a 2019 paper, law professors Dan Epps and Ganesh Sitaraman proposed a 15-justice Court made up of five Democrats, five Republicans, and five justices chosen by the other 10. The idea behind this proposal, which now-Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg featured during his bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, is that the balance of power on the Supreme Court would be held by moderate judges acceptable to both political parties.
There are a number of concerns about this proposal. One is that it is likely to be declared unconstitutional. The Constitution gives the president the power to appoint new justices; it does not give that power to a panel of 10 other justices.
A more fundamental problem is that any attempt at court-packing, even an attempt that installs a centrist Supreme Court, is likely to enrage Republicans and invite retaliation if Republicans regain control of the government. And there’s no guarantee that a centrist Court will overrule the Roberts Court’s previous decisions undercutting voting rights. Democrats could wind up triggering all the downsides of packing the Court without gaining the benefits of a more democratic system.
But if there was ever enough energy to make a 13-justice Court with a Democratic supermajority a real possibility, perhaps Republicans will be willing to negotiate a compromise — the kind of compromise that could be written into a constitutional amendment if both parties agree to it. And a balanced Court proposal similar to the one offered by Epps and Sitaraman could potentially be that compromise.
3) The “Supreme Court lottery”
A separate proposal from Epps and Sitaraman would transform the Supreme Court from a permanent panel of nine justices to an ever-changing panel of judges. These judges would briefly rotate onto the Supreme Court before returning to their regular job on a federal appeals court.
The basic idea is that each of the approximately 170 active federal appeals court judges would be appointed as associate justices of the Supreme Court. Then, every two weeks, nine of these judges would be randomly selected to serve on the nation’s highest Court. After two more weeks, a different panel of nine would be selected. (In this system, the current justices could also be eligible to rotate onto a temporary panel of nine, but they would no longer sit permanently on that panel.)
It may seem random, but this is more or less how federal appeals courts already operate. Most appeals court cases are heard by randomly selected panels of three judges, although a larger panel consisting of all the active judges on the court will occasionally hear exceptional cases.
One problem with this proposed lottery system from a Democratic (and democratic) perspective is that the rotating Supreme Court panel would, at least in the short term, more often than not be controlled by Republicans who may share the current Court’s hostility toward voting rights. There are currently 172 active appeals court judges in the United States, and 92 of them were appointed by a Republican president, although Democratic appointees could control a majority of these judgeships by the end of Biden’s current term, if Democrats retain a Senate majority that will confirm Biden’s nominees.
Another risk is that a panel of anti-democratic radicals will be randomly chosen to hear a crucial voting rights case — or that such a panel will resolve a disputed election. Suppose, for example, that a “Supreme panel” that happened to be sitting when Donald Trump sought to overturn the 2020 election included judges like Neomi Rao, Andy Oldham, Edith Jones, Kurt Engelhardt, and Clarence Thomas — all of whom are known for taking extraordinary liberties with the law to advance conservative causes. That panel may very well have handed Trump the presidency.
In the long term, however, a rotating Supreme Court could, in Epps and Sitaraman’s words, “depoliticize the appointments process by making confirmations more numerous and less consequential.” And it would mean that individual justices “would no longer have the ability to shape constitutional law for a generation by strategically timing their retirement” so that their seat is filled by a president of their same party.
4) Term limits
Another way to prevent justices from “strategically timing their retirement” is term limits.
The leading term limits proposal, which has at times enjoyed support from prominent Democrats and Republicans, would require each justice to step down after 18 years. Terms would be staggered so that a justice steps down every two years, meaning that two justices would be replaced during each presidential term, although whoever is president when this proposal is implemented might get to replace more justices depending on how Congress decided to manage the transition to the new system.
If such a proposal had been implemented on the first day of a Biden presidency, Biden might have immediately gotten to replace Justices Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer, both of whom have served more than 18 years. The next justice in line to leave the Court would be Chief Justice John Roberts.
It is far from clear, however, that term limits may be imposed on a sitting justice. The Constitution provides that federal judges “shall hold their offices during good behaviour,” and the particular “office” held by each of the current justices is a seat on the Supreme Court for life. (Future justices could probably be term-limited, on the theory that they are being confirmed to a different “office” that only allows them to sit on the nation’s highest Court for 18 years before they are rotated onto a lower court.)
Moreover, even if there is a constitutional way to impose term limits on sitting justices — Yale Law School’s Jack Balkin has a clever proposal to achieve this goal — the question of whether sitting members of the Supreme Court can be subjected to term limits would be decided by, well, the Supreme Court. And it’s unlikely that a majority of sitting justices would willingly agree to term limits.
Ways to weaken the Supreme Court
As an alternative to changing the personnel on the Supreme Court — or, perhaps, in addition to changing the personnel of the Court — Congress might also enact several reforms that seek to diminish the Supreme Court’s nearly unchecked power to hand down binding interpretations of the Constitution.
The president may also be able to diminish the Court’s authority by refusing to enforce particularly egregious Supreme Court decisions.
5) Jurisdiction stripping
The Constitution gives the Supreme Court power to hear most federal cases on appeal from a lower court, but it may only assert jurisdiction over cases “with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.” Accordingly, Congress has at least some power to tell the Supreme Court that it is not allowed to hear certain cases.
It’s not clear how much power Congress has to limit the Court’s power to hear particular cases. Congress has unlimited power to restrict the jurisdiction of lower federal courts, a power that a Democratic Congress could use to prevent Trump-appointed trial judges from blocking new progressive laws as soon as those laws are enacted. But the Supreme Court’s decisions concerning Congress’s power to limit the high court’s jurisdiction are not a model of clarity.
In Ex parte McCardle (1868), the Supreme Court held that it did not have jurisdiction over a case, brought by a newspaper publisher who claimed that he was wrongly jailed for publishing attacks on Reconstruction, because Congress enacted a law stripping the Court of jurisdiction to hear this case.
McCardle, however, is a very old case. And the opinion in that case does not explain the Court’s reasoning in much detail. In the years since McCardle, many scholars and at least some justices have argued that Congress’s power to limit the Court’s jurisdiction is not unlimited. Concurring in Felker v. Turpin (1996), for example, Justice David Souter suggested that Congress may only be able to prevent the Court from hearing a particular case if there is some other way that the issue presented by that case could reach the justices.
In any event, there are two closely related problems with this tactic — known as “jurisdiction stripping” — as a solution to a partisan Supreme Court. The first is that the question of whether Congress has the power to enact a particular jurisdiction-stripping law will be decided by the Court itself, so the justices may simply strike down an act of Congress that seeks to limit the Court’s jurisdiction.
The other problem is that most federal statutes do not enforce themselves; they need to be applied to individual parties through court orders. Congress might be able to prevent the Supreme Court from striking down the Voting Rights Act, for example, by stripping the Court of jurisdiction to hear voting rights cases. But if voting rights plaintiffs cannot obtain a court order enforcing the Voting Rights Act, then that law ceases to function.
Similarly, jurisdiction stripping would not allow Congress to restore a constitutional right to an abortion. Indeed, if Congress passed a law stripping federal courts of the power to hear abortion cases, that would strip them of their authority to hear a case seeking to reinstate Roe v. Wade.
But jurisdiction stripping could prevent a rogue Court from creating new “rights” — think of early 20th-century decisions inventing a right to pay workers less than the minimum wage, or a right to employ a non-unionized workforce — that implement conservative policy preferences from the bench.
6) Supermajority voting requirements
In a 2021 law review article, law professors Ryan Doerfler and Samuel Moyn propose that Congress could require a supermajority of justices to vote to strike down federal laws. This proposal could potentially be implemented in two different ways: Congress could either impose a universal rule requiring a 7-2 majority on the Supreme Court to strike down a federal law or identify particular laws, such as the Voting Rights Act, which can only be struck down by a supermajority.
Such a law would need to be coupled with provisions stripping the lower courts of the power to strike down such laws, or else judges on the lower courts could potentially block laws that the Supreme Court would be unable to strike down with a bare majority vote.
A supermajority requirement, Doerfler and Moyn argue, “would functionally reallocate decision-making authority to the democratically legitimate branches of government in cases in which a countermajoritarian faction on the Court enjoys only a simple majority.” In effect, the Court’s conservatives would have to convince at least one Democratic appointee to strike down a federal law if Congress imposed a 7-2 supermajority requirement.
This proposal, however, is vulnerable to one of the same problems facing jurisdiction stripping. What happens if a 5-4 Supreme Court strikes down the law imposing a 7-2 supermajority requirement? The result could be a constitutional crisis, as Congress and the Supreme Court would be fundamentally at odds regarding whether particular laws are constitutional, and there would be no clear way to resolve this dispute under the Constitution.
Another problem is that the Supreme Court does not need to declare a federal law unconstitutional in order to sabotage it. If Congress requires a supermajority to strike down the Voting Rights Act, for example, the Court could still interpret the individual provisions of this law so narrowly that they would do very little to protect voting rights.
7) Presidential (or congressional) resistance to the Supreme Court
Abraham Lincoln began his presidency with a broadside against the Supreme Court. Reacting to the Supreme Court’s pro-slavery decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1856), Lincoln attacked the very idea that the justices should have the final say on constitutional matters in his first inaugural address:
[I]f the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.
Though Lincoln conceded that Dred Scott was binding upon the particular parties to that litigation, he rejected the idea that the president or Congress is bound by the Court’s understanding of the Constitution. The Lincoln administration issued a passport to a Black man, defying Dred Scott’s holding that Black people cannot be citizens. And Lincoln signed legislation banning slavery in the territories, defying Dred Scott’s conclusion that slaves remained slaves even after entering a free territory.
A similar drama nearly played out in the Franklin Roosevelt administration. During Roosevelt’s first term, many contracts contained “gold clauses” requiring debtors to pay back creditors in gold dollars valued at the time the contract was made. Because of rampant deflation due to the Great Depression, these contracts effectively increased the amount of debt owed under these contracts by as much as 69 percent.
Among other things, these gold clauses drove up the returns railroads owed on their bonds so high that they could have bankrupted most of the railroad industry, potentially shutting down much of the nation’s shipping in the process. And the clauses threatened to ruin homeowners who suddenly owed the equivalent of $1.69 for every dollar they borrowed to buy their house.
Congress declared these gold clauses null and void. But Roosevelt, fearing that the Supreme Court would reinstate the clauses, prepared a speech announcing that he would not obey such a decision. “To stand idly by and to permit the decision of the Supreme Court to be carried through to its logical, inescapable conclusion,” Roosevelt would have said in a speech the Court never forced him to deliver, “would so imperil the economic and political security of this nation that the legislative and executive officers of the Government must look beyond the narrow letter of contractual obligations.”
The theory that each branch of government may decide on its own how to interpret the Constitution, even in defiance of the Supreme Court, is known as “departmentalism.” Under this theory, a president potentially has significant (although not entirely unlimited) power to undermine the judiciary’s determination that a particular law is unconstitutional.
Suppose, for example, that the Court strikes down the Affordable Care Act. A Democratic president could order the US marshals not to enforce this decision. They could order the Treasury to continue to provide subsidies to states and individuals entitled to receive them under Obamacare. And the president could routinely pardon executive branch officials who continue to make these payments, neutralizing a federal law that plausibly could subject these officials to prosecution in a future administration.
Departmentalism would not allow the president to completely neutralize such a Court decision. Lower federal courts would remain bound by the Supreme Court’s decision, so the president would not be able to obtain a court order against states or private insurers who violate their obligations under Obamacare.
Similarly, departmentalism probably could not be used to restore lost abortion rights, because state abortion bans are enforced by state law enforcement officers and not by anyone who answers to the president. But departmentalism would, at the very least, allow the president to mitigate the harm created by a decision that would otherwise strip health coverage from tens of millions of Americans.
8) State resistance to the Supreme Court
Just as the executive or legislative branch might resist a Supreme Court decision through departmentalism, states might invoke a theory known as “interposition” to defy a court order.
The history of interposition, which posits that a state may “interpose” its authority between the Supreme Court and its citizens, is not a happy one. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) Southern segregationists relied on interposition to justify defying Brown. Martin Luther King Jr. called out segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace, in King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, for “having his lips dripping with the words of ‘interposition’ and ‘nullification.’”
Yet there are constitutional systems where something similar to interposition exists without this same tainted history. Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, for example, contains a provision known as the “notwithstanding clause,” which allows either the national parliament or a provincial legislature to declare that at least some laws shall operate “notwithstanding” a court decision declaring that the law violates Canada’s charter. These overrides, however, automatically expire after five years if they are not renewed.
In the US system, if a state defies a Supreme Court order, the executive branch may use force to enforce that order — think of President Dwight Eisenhower ordering the Army to enforce a desegregation order in Little Rock, Arkansas.
But, as Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers, the judiciary “has no influence over either the sword or the purse” and “must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.” If the Supreme Court hands down a decision that a state government deems abhorrent, the Court cannot enforce that order if the president decides it should not be enforced.
Ways to override Supreme Court decisions
As Congress has grown more and more dysfunctional, the Supreme Court has gained a nearly unchecked power to determine the meaning of federal laws. Though Congress lacks the power to overrule a Supreme Court decision interpreting the Constitution, Congress may amend a federal statute if it disagrees with the Court’s reading of that statute.
Yet Congress uses this power far less than it used to, according to a 2012 study by University of California Irvine law professor Rick Hasen. Hasen found that between 1975 and 1990, Congress enacted “an average of twelve overrides of Supreme Court cases in each two-year Congressional term.” Between 2001 and 2012, by contrast, the number of overrides dwindled to a mere 2.8 per two-year term. (Hasen defines the term “override” to include acts of Congress that “overturned, reversed, or modified a Supreme Court statutory interpretation holding.”)
But there’s no reason Congress — especially a filibuster-free Congress controlled by a single party — must continue to defer to the Supreme Court.
9) Omnibus legislation overruling past Supreme Court decisions
One model that Congress could follow is the Civil Rights Act of 1991, a bill signed by President George H.W. Bush back when it was still possible to achieve a bipartisan consensus against discrimination.
In its 1988 term, the Supreme Court handed down five decisions that, in the words of one scholar, “substantially eroded Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” which prohibits many forms of employment discrimination. Congress enacted the 1991 civil rights bill to overrule, or, in some cases, modify those five decisions.
Similarly, Congress could enact a Civil Rights Act of 2023 that overrides several Supreme Court decisions at once.
This bill could include, for example, provisions tossing out the Supreme Court’s entire forced arbitration jurisprudence, which allows companies to force their workers and customers into a privatized justice system that favors corporate parties. It could overrule decisions weakening the Voting Rights Act. It could also override less famous decisions such as Vance v. Ball State University (2013), which made it much harder for workers who are sexually harassed by their boss to sue their employer; or Gross v. FBL Financial Services (2009), which weakened protections against age discrimination.
Such an omnibus bill would serve two purposes. It would get rid of Court decisions that weakened laws intended to protect our democracy and halt practices such as discrimination, and it would send a clear message to the justices that there’s a new sheriff in town who is keeping a close eye on them.
10) Expedite legislation seeking to overrule Supreme Court decisions
The Congressional Review Act (CRA) lays out an expedited process that Congress can use to swiftly overrule regulatory decisions by the executive branch. A bill overruling a federal regulation through the CRA still must pass both houses of Congress and be signed by the president, but the CRA’s streamlined process makes it relatively easy for lawmakers who oppose a particular regulation to override it quickly.
In an essay published in the Atlantic, Sitaraman suggests enacting similar legislation allowing Congress to swiftly overrule Supreme Court decisions:
If the Court issued a decision interpreting a statute or regulation, Congress would have 30 days to vote on whether to open a reconsideration process. If Congress voted yes, the speaker of the House, the Senate majority leader, and the minority leaders would appoint a special committee in each chamber (with proportional party membership) to design a legislative fix for the full body to vote on within the next 30 calendar days. The bill would then go to the other house, where it would be voted on within 10 days through a privileged, fast-track process, which would avoid common legislative snags like the filibuster and committee hearings. The president would then sign the law or veto it, as with any ordinary piece of legislation.
Such legislation could create a normalized process whereby Congress routinely reviews the Supreme Court’s decisions and corrects decisions that read federal laws in damaging or implausible ways. It would also act as a complement to an omnibus bill in the vein of the Civil Rights Act of 1991. The omnibus would take care of past decisions that misread federal law, while the review act would prevent new decisions from having much effect.
Democrats will not have much time to decide how to deal with the Supreme Court
Setting aside the more detailed proposals described above, Congress has a great deal of power to restrict a Supreme Court that seems determined to undermine democracy.
In its 2020 budget request, for example, the Supreme Court requested $106.8 million in funding from Congress. Congress could have, if it wanted, drastically reduced these funds (though the Constitution does not permit Congress to reduce a sitting justice’s salary and benefits).
Similarly, Congress could also impose onerous new duties on the justices. For most of the nation’s history until 1911, Supreme Court justices had to spend at least some of their time “riding circuit” — traveling to various parts of the country to hear ordinary federal cases. Congress could revive this practice. Or it could expand the Court’s (currently very limited) mandatory jurisdiction, forcing it to hear thousands of routine cases involving uncontroversial legal issues.
The point isn’t that Congress necessarily should strip the Court of its staff, order the justices to spend half their year flying around to random federal courthouses, or drown them in an ocean of routine appeals. Rather, it’s that Congress has tremendous power to fight back against an anti-democratic Supreme Court.
Realistically, however, if Congress wants to prevent the Supreme Court from entrenching its power to veto federal laws and manipulate voting rights, it’s likely to only have a short window in which to do so. Indeed, that window could already be closing. If there is one lesson from the past two decades, it is that full Democratic control of the elected branches does not happen very often — and even when it does happen, a Democratic majority can be held hostage by its most conservative members.
Supreme Court justices, by contrast, serve for life. They can afford to bide their time, waiting until their party controls at least one house of Congress or the White House to hand down decisions that could entrench that party in power for a very long time.
Alexis McGill Johnson, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and other abortion rights activists demonstrate on June 30 in Washington. (photo: Jabin Botsford/WP)
Abortion misinformation might only get worse, researchers warn
On TikTok, videos suggesting that people use herbs to self-manage an abortion have racked up thousands of views. Antiabortion activists have shared false information on Twitter about the supposed dangers of abortion. And the New York attorney general sent a letter to Google last week urging the company to point abortion seekers on Google Maps to valid health-care offices that offer the treatment, rather than to “crisis pregnancy centers,” which try to dissuade people from getting abortions.
Disinformation researchers, as well as reproductive rights advocates, are concerned that what abortion-seekers find online can sometimes leave them even more confused and point them toward options that may be misleading or even dangerous.
“People always want to help themselves, and in this era of connectivity, we trust what we see,” said Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Virginia who researches law and technology. Citron is worried that abortion misinformation and intentional disinformation will only increase now.
Social media companies have struggled for years to reliably and completely remove harmful information from their sites, including misleading coronavirus information, lies about the 2020 election and anti-vaccine propaganda — despite, in many cases, the companies taking significant efforts to moderate the problematic posts. Many of the platforms were built on the premise of free speech, although the companies have had to add algorithms and thousands of humans to police rule-breaking content on their sites.
The nature of social media means that millions of people are making millions of posts every day, creating a challenge for companies’ employees and artificial intelligence. Tech companies have faced significant backlash and concern about their lack of action, and advocates say some misleading abortion posts have already been left up for far too long.
The Supreme Court last month overturned Roe v. Wade, triggering laws around the country that made abortion illegal for millions of Americans. The decision sparked real-life and online protests, including from many abortion rights supporters who told followers online that if they ever needed to go “camping” out of state, they would have a place to stay. The code word has been used widely across social media to signal to supporters that they would have a safe place to travel to get an abortion, sometimes coupled with a song by the Chainsmokers.
Jenna Sherman, the program manager of the digital health lab at tech nonprofit Meedan, said since the court’s decision she has seen posts from abortion rights supporters online offer health-care access tips and sometimes worrisome advice to manage abortions.
One trend has been the posting of videos, tweets and images of herbs including mugwort, pennyroyal and blue cohosh. Those posts advise that these herbs “can be used to cause a miscarriage.” One video on TikTok, which has since been removed, showed a caption that read, “Herbs that can cause abortion since the gov. is being sus,” which means suspicious. It had racked up more than 23,000 views.
Abortion rights supporters are trying to help people access care, experts say, but their methods could be harmful.
“There are no safe, effective herbs or botanicals to cause abortion,” Jen Gunter, a gynecologist and author of “The Vagina Bible” said in her own TikTok video in response to the trend. “People might be spreading this with good intention, but they’re wrong.”
Nisha Verma of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists noted that people have been “self-managing their abortions for decades with the support of community organizations and medical experts.” She noted that people can do this now with medications like misoprostol.
“It is important for people to understand that social media posts can be unreliable and can sometimes propagate misinformation,” Verma said in emailed comments. “Misinformation can be harmful, because it may lead people to try to end their pregnancies in an unsafe way, potentially exposing them to serious bodily harm.”
In an emailed statement, TikTok spokeswoman Jamie Favazza said the company allows mentions of abortion and abortion access, and will remove videos that encourage “herbal” or “natural” abortions. Many posts were removed following reporting by Rolling Stone and Input Mag. Some similar posts were removed from TikTok and Instagram after The Washington Post inquired about them.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said it allows posts and ads promoting health-care services, including abortion. Spokesman Kevin McAlister said the company prohibits the direct sale of all prescription drugs, including abortion medications misoprostol and mifepristone. The company also bans posts that target people related to their sexual activity and targeting people with lethal violence, he said.
Twitter spokesman Trenton Kennedy said the company generally allows discussion of abortion and contraceptives. Twitter does not have a specific misinformation policy for the topic.
Google said on Friday it would delete some places people have visited from their location histories online, including medical facilities like abortion clinics.
The biggest online concern for Erin Matson, the executive director of Reproaction, which works to increase access to abortion, is false information spread by antiabortion activists.
“The antiabortion movement has long been flooding the internet with disinformation about how abortion works, about how pregnancy works,” she said. Common false statements include the claim that abortion causes infertility or that medication abortion is dangerous.
Verma of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said that medication abortions and abortion procedures are safe. “Importantly, abortion is much safer than pregnancy and childbirth,” she added.
The legal review will analyze the department’s target demographics and how the police officers use the targets. (photo: Chris Howes/Wild Places Photography/Alamy)
Photos showing targets were taken during a Boy Scouts field trip to the Farmington Hills police department in April
The photographs were taken during a Boy Scouts field trip to the Farmington Hills police department in April, prompting allegations of racial bias after the images showed targets of Black men holding weapons and children gathered around one of the targets.
Policing in the US has come under immense criticism after a series of police shootings of often unarmed Black men that have led to anti-racism protests. Over the weekend video emerged of police killing Jayland Walker in Akron, Ohio, after he fled the scene of a car chase. Walker was shot dozens of times by multiple police officers despite running away and being apparently unarmed at the time police opened fire.
The family that made the allegations in Michigan does not want to be identified for fear of reprisal, according to local attorney Dionne Webster-Cox.
“This community does not need an overly aggressive police officer who wants to flex his authority,” said Webster-Cox in a Facebook post. “No matter how many defenses the police offer to justify this incident, to have school children or adults exposed to this practice is ignorance.”
In a council meeting in late June, the department’s police chief, Jeff King, issued an apology, and said the images were intended to represent a mix of both threat and non-threat targets.
“I’ll take this one on the chin, I apologize to each and every person in this room, this community, my department, my city council, my city manager,” said King.
King added that the human depictions were in compliance with the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards, and that the targets used during the training are 85% Caucasian and 15% Black.
The legal review will analyze the department’s target demographics and how the police officers use the targets. King said that any future visits from community organizations will receive an explanation on how targets are selected. He also apologized to the Boy Scouts troop for not providing a full explanation of the targets.
The targets have been removed from the practice area, according to city officials.
“I don’t see a good reason to use those targets at all,” said councilman Michael Bridges during the council meeting in June.
Emma Chambers and her coworkers were fired after organizing for a union at their Los Angeles Starbucks store. (photo: Hamza Inayat/Unsplash/Emma Chambers)
Emma Chambers tried to unionize her Los Angeles Starbucks store. As a result, she was fired and lost stable housing and health care. But she says that if she knew all that going in, she’d still have stood up for herself, her coworkers, and the working class.
Emma Chambers, twenty-two, is from the San Fernando Valley and worked at the I-5 Starbucks in Los Angeles. Emma and her coworkers organized for a union at their store and were fired for doing so. The consequences have deeply impacted her life, and she has filed a complaint against the corporation with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
But despite losing stable housing, losing mental health care, being forced to withdraw from class, and possibly being marked as ineligible for unemployment due to the nature of her firing, Chambers says she would do it all over again. Jacobin’s Will Shattuc spoke with her about her experience taking on the megacorporation.
Will Shattuc: How did you find yourself working at Starbucks?
Emma Chambers: Starbucks was actually my first job ever. I ended up picking Starbucks because they offer free college and I was trying to get my degree in counseling. The amount of time I worked there was like two years and two months. I really loved it; I got Partner of the Quarter my first three months there. But I moved, so that’s how I ended up at the I-5 store that I got fired from.
I went from a tiny Burbank café to this top ten in America store. I-5 is a drive-through so it’s really crazy. I didn’t even get proper training and was working nights for the first time. I would literally cry after work every day because it was so difficult.
Will Shattuc: What were the conditions like that made it so difficult to work there?
Emma Chambers: The fast pace of the drive-through: the store usually makes $90,000 a week with wages of about $17 an hour. I was getting paid like I was at my old store, but now I’m doing three times the work. I felt exhausted; I could barely do school after work.
We also had a lot of safety issues at that store that were not handled well. I don’t know how to deal with someone overdosing or people verbally abusing us every day. Someone tried to run me over, we’ve had some guy with a gun come through the drive-through. I remember one time there was a guy who came up in a Joker costume and just stared at us with a little jack-in-the-box, just winding it up. I was so scared.
Will Shattuc: So you’re dealing with all these terrible working conditions. How do you get from there to unionizing?
Emma Chambers: I heard of all the unionizing because my boyfriend kept telling me, “You should unionize, you should unionize,” and one day, I was like, “Maybe I should.” I started talking to the people that I worked with that night, because I was super close with them, asking them what they would think if we did this. I ended up talking to just about everybody, and if I didn’t talk to them somebody else did. I would describe what a union is and then tell my coworkers the kind of things that we could be benefiting from in a union: it was as big as pay increases to as small as like the music we listened to in the store.
When it got to a majority yes, I messaged Starbucks Workers United on Twitter. I got the union cards, handed them out, and had people sign them in the moment because I know people just take them home and forget. Once the cards went out, it was super fast. We petitioned that next week.
Will Shattuc: What was management’s reaction to you unionizing?
Emma Chambers: We had this terrible manager who was part of the reason everyone was into unionizing. Right before we petitioned, she ended up getting sick and we never heard from her again.
We got the assistant manager who hired me at that store. He called me and he’s like, “I’m gonna have a one-on-one with everyone at the store to understand where everyone’s at.” We were like, “Oh, my God, guys, is this union busting? I feel like this is union busting,” and we didn’t know. We like him and we wanted to trust that it wasn’t. But we also wanted to put our guard up. There’s a lot of things that I look back now and am like, That was union busting.
He told us that he wanted to keep a neutral workplace so we agreed, which was my demise.
Will Shattuc: And then you were fired.
Emma Chambers: Four of us got fired — me, the two other union leaders, and a pro-union coworker — the week that our union ballots were going out.
The reason they gave for firing me is that they said that I instructed people to steal cups. Not that I stole, but that I instructed people to. But there’s literal footage of them paying for these cups. And they said I took a juice and didn’t mark it out. They asked me to write a statement, and I said there was a miscommunication.
I found that I was getting fired from someone else. I knew the entire day. My district manager had a paper with notice of separation, and included was my statement — but they rewrote it! My manager kept repeating to me, “It’s just a decision you made at a certain point in time.” It was so frustrating to have someone sit there and tell you something that you’re not. We’d been with the company with no previous problems, completely clean records.
I’m losing all my resources. I was getting a raise and moving into a new apartment, and now I’m couch surfing. I got my therapy through Starbucks, so I had to stop seeing my therapist I’d been seeing for two years. I got a W on my transcript because I had to withdraw from a class. The person who fired me was my reference. And because I got fired for technically stealing, I might not get unemployment.
Will Shattuc: So where is your store at now?
Emma Chambers: They actually took the petition out. My union rep asked if I thought that people were going to vote yes. And I genuinely didn’t. Having four people fired in a day the week of the vote is enough to scare people. I wish that people still had the opportunity to vote, but also I hated the idea of giving Starbucks that satisfaction.
Will Shattuc: But you’re not done.
Emma Chambers: No, no. My lawyer put in a complaint with the NLRB. I still really want to fight for justice, but it’s like their word against mine. I cannot believe that I’m fighting against a corporation’s word.
Will Shattuc: Why not just walk away?
Emma Chambers: Being able to be reinstated is enough of a reason to sue, but I also feel backstabbed. It frustrates me that Starbucks is just gonna get away with that. I’ve worked my ass off for them. We were running the store, and to just be tossed aside because I want something a little bit more from them feels like enough for me to fight.
Will Shattuc: Would you do it again, knowing what you know now?
Emma Chambers: Even just trying to unionize the store was such an experience in and of itself. Just being part of the larger labor uprising, just being able to fight for the working class in a little way, to be a drop in the water of laborers standing up for themselves against corporations. I would never go back and change that. That is enough of a reason for me to do this again, and again and again.
Don’t be scared out of getting a seat at the table to advocate for things that you need. You’re the person working on the floor, therefore you should have a say in what’s going on on the floor, not these corporate people who have never made a coffee in their life. As long as we’re all inspired and working together, they literally can’t stop us. It’s like six guys and then all of us workers.
'A thunderstorm was brewing, and lightning flashed through the Salvadoran sky. Alfredo and I ordered more beer.' (photo: Belen Fernandez/Al Jazeera)
A short visit to the auspiciously named San Salvador neighbourhood, ’10 de Octubre’.
I met Alfredo, who works at a barely remunerated job at a San Salvador school, when I spent three months in the country just prior to the onset of the pandemic in March 2020. We bonded over a shared affinity for excessively shabby venues to drink beer and an excessive dislike of the United States – my homeland, where Alfredo had travelled years earlier on someone’s else’s passport but had promptly determined that poverty in El Salvador was preferable to the “American dream”.
Despite my nagging requests for a tour of his intriguingly titled neighbourhood, I would not visit Alfredo at his own home until April of 2022. I returned to El Salvador for one month just in time to experience the newly inaugurated state of emergency – the response by exuberantly totalitarian president and Twitter aficionado Nayib Bukele to the spike in homicides in late March that had followed the breakdown in negotiations between his administration and the Salvadoran gangs.
When Alfredo picked me up from the airport in a borrowed car on April 12, he lamented that drinking at the shabby bars downtown was no longer the same now that stormtrooper-type security forces demanded your identity card every other second and made you lift your shirt to verify you had no gang tattoos.
Just the previous day, a massive security operation had gone down in 10 de Octubre itself, during which, the Salvadoran newspaper La Prensa Gráfica reported, 22 alleged gang members as well as “mothers of accused gang members” had been arrested. Salvadoran security minister Gustavo Villatoro was quoted as proclaiming the territory a “breeding ground” for gang leaders from the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13). A female TikToker had additionally been detained for allegedly diffusing gang propaganda.
The lead photograph in the Prensa Gráfica article features 17 men and five women surrounded by camouflaged figures in balaclavas and face masks. Most of the male detainees are shirtless; the three with conspicuous tattoos have had them conspicuously photoshopped out – an editorial undertaking that Alfredo suspected may have had something to do with Bukele’s new fantastically ambiguous law criminalising the sharing of information about gangs.
The 10 de Octubre operation boosted the number of detained “terrorists” to more than 10,000 in 15 days. By June, when the state of emergency was extended a third time, the number would reach well over 41,000 – with at least 40 detainees having died in state custody.
I resumed pestering Alfredo to let me visit him in 10 de Octubre, where, he said, the small house he shared with his teenage son, former suegra (mother-in-law), and other relatives was continuously on the receiving end of visits by police, who continuously wanted to view everyone’s identity cards – and to know if any gang members had taken up residence in the dwelling since their last visit.
As Alfredo later told me, his reluctance to welcome me to the neighbourhood had to do with his concern that, in the event of another massive security operation, he would then be tagged as a police informant. But welcome me he did one afternoon in late April.
The taxi driver who transported me at breakneck speed down the highway to 10 de Octubre – all the while blasting an inspirational religious tune about the blood of Jesus Christ – helpfully informed me, as he deposited me next to the local football field, that this was where “bad and dangerous” people lived. To be sure, it is always handy to have an appointed domestic bogeyman to detract public attention from the dangers of a government that has spontaneously done away with basic rights and civil liberties.
Alfredo rescued me from Christ’s blood and we walked the short distance to his house, passing bougainvillea bushes, a food stand, and some vans bearing the markings of the friendly neighbourhood US Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL). As per the INL website, the organisation’s local programmes “build the capacity of the Government of El Salvador to improve its ability to mitigate the influence of gangs, improve citizen security, and combat corruption” – a premise that might be more convincing were it not coming from the government of the country that spawned the entire gang phenomenon in the first place after backing right-wing terror during the Salvadoran civil war of 1980-92.
According to Alfredo, the INL’s manoeuvres in 10 de Octubre had included efforts to teach schoolchildren that the police were a force for good – which, he said, had not stopped all the kids from wanting to play the latter role in every game of “cops and robbers”.
Alfredo’s son was, as usual, at sports practice – although the son’s dedicated athleticism and aspiring football stardom did nothing to assuage the family’s fears that he, too, could be branded as a gang member at any minute and carted off to jail. Long before the state of emergency kicked off, Alfredo told me, a neighbour’s son – whom “we were all sure was going to be the Cristiano Ronaldo of 10 de Octubre” – had been expeditiously charged with a crime and interned for 15 years at the infamous prison known colloquially as Mariona but whose cruel official title is La Esperanza, meaning “hope”.
Inside Alfredo’s cramped and damp house, children were dashing about among decrepit sofas and hammocks, and the ex-suegra was presiding over an assortment of pots on the stove. Alfredo’s ex-wife, the daughter of the ex-suegra and mother of his son, lived as an undocumented worker in the US, and occasionally sent money for whatever technological apparatus or footwear her offspring currently desired.
The ex-suegra’s husband, who had fought in the civil war with the leftist guerrillas against crushing socioeconomic injustice, had been disappeared by the right wing during the conflict. The ex-suegra had survived the 1982 El Calabozo massacre of some 200 people, including children and the elderly, perpetrated by the elite Atlacatl Battalion, which was trained and funded by the US and which also perpetrated the notorious 1981 El Mozote massacre of an estimated 1,000 civilians.
As misfortune would have it, one of Alfredo’s own cousins had gone on to join this very battalion at the age of 17, near the end of the war, only to die some eight years later in a traffic accident. Even after the signing of the peace accords, Alfredo once told me, his cousin never went anywhere without a hand grenade, and he “saw ‘terrorists’ everywhere – even in his soup”.
Now, one “terrorist” enemy has been replaced with another, and socioeconomic injustice in El Salvador is as brutal as ever – which is perhaps one reason Bukele so fervently promotes historical amnesia. After all, if folks were to think about it too much, they might notice a pattern of right-wing terrorisation by the state under the guise of fighting terrorism.
The ex-suegra had little time to chat, as she was about to commence her daily intake of Turkish soap operas dubbed into Spanish – which had apparently become so all-consuming that, Alfredo said, he would often return home to find her engaged in shouting matches with neighbours over the latest transgression of one or another soap opera character. At any rate, he reckoned, it was a useful escape from the drama of existence under the world’s “coolest dictator”, as Bukele has described himself.
Alfredo had no desire to remain at the house that afternoon, anyway, as he had already spent more than enough time there during the pandemic on account of the “coolest” dictatorial lockdown – which had entailed things like Salvadoran security forces shooting people for going outside. Having promised to give me the grand tour of 10 de Octubre, Alfredo led me outdoors and a few hundred metres up the road in the direction of misty, shack-covered hills. We reached a roundabout, where upon Alfredo announced that the tour had ended and that it was time to turn back.
Of course, there was much more to 10 de Octubre than those few hundred metres. But El Salvador is saturated with invisible gang-related boundaries, and, for Salvadorans, crossing a given street can be a matter of life and death. If Alfredo hadn’t gone beyond that roundabout in more than 10 years, he was obviously not going to do it with some white gringa in tow.
To one side of the roundabout was a rather lackadaisical evangelical gathering accompanied by incongruously deafening music from a loudspeaker; to another side was a properly shabby establishment with a large refrigerator that appeared to contain beer. Alfredo consented to an end-of-tour drink, and we made our way over to the middle-aged woman on duty, who hastily declared that the beer truck had not made its scheduled delivery and that we could be on our way – even as various beer bottles adorned the counter.
On our return trip down the road, we found a stand selling beer, flip-flops, hair clips and other necessities. The proprietor of this stall allowed us to sit on the curb and consume our drinks, and remarked that he had not gone beyond the roundabout in more than 10 years, either, despite the presence of a lookout point with a spectacular view on the nearby hill. A thunderstorm was brewing, and lightning flashed through the Salvadoran sky. Alfredo and I ordered more beer.
Following my departure from El Salvador, Alfredo learned that the woman from the roundabout beer establishment was in fact the mother of the proprietor – who had herself been arrested under the state of emergency, Alfredo said, for being the girlfriend of a presumed gang member. Her mother was thus rightly terrified of being deemed guilty of “terrorism” by association at any moment – particularly given that Salvadoran police are being forced to fulfil daily arrest quotas.
Now, three months after my visit to the neighbourhood, the Bukele government is still refusing to provide pertinent information to families of detained persons in 10 de Octubre and across El Salvador – and by pertinent information I mean even details like the location of their detention. The nation’s president incessantly takes to Twitter to scorn the very concept of “human rights”, and Salvadorans continue to die accordingly – such as 21-year-old musician Josué Sánchez Rivera, who was jailed in El Salvador’s Izalco prison in April and emerged a few weeks later as a battered corpse.
In the microcosm of Salvadoran dystopia in 10 de Octubre, then, it seems maybe the earthquake was the least of the problems.
The US/CIA trained murderers, torturers and monsters at the School of the Americas, installed the likes of Elliott Abrams to cover it up. It's time for the US/CIA to stop meddling, destabilizing nations, installing thugs and continuing the killings.
The Tragic Life of the War Criminal Elliott Abrams
BY
BRANKO MARCETIC
Elliott Abrams was once an innocent child. And then he decided to spend the rest of his life covering up brutal atrocities and defending right-wing dictatorships.
lliott Abrams once said the animating force behind his and Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy was that the world is “an exceedingly dangerous place.” And this is true, largely because men like Elliott Abrams exist in it.
Last month, Abrams was tapped by Trump to serve as his special envoy to Venezuela, to essentially help steer the Trump administration’s slow-burn effort to topple that country’s government — or as Mike Pompeo put it, “restore democracy” in the country.
It should go without saying that the idea the Trump administration is pursuing regime change in Venezuela for the sake of democracy and human rights is as laughable as calling Jamal Khashoggi’s murder a surprise party gone wrong. But in case you need to explain this to politically confused friends and relatives, here are eight good reasons why the appointment of Abrams, in particular, makes a mockery of any such high-minded rhetoric.
1. He was knee-deep in human rights atrocities
et’s start with the most obvious point, which is that Abrams’ chief claim to fame is his role in Ronald Reagan’s blood-soaked foreign policy in Central America in the 1980s, for which he earned the nickname, “contra commander-in-chief.” The contras were the brutal right-wing paramilitary groups in Nicaragua who terrorized civilians throughout the decade, cutting a swath of torture, rape, and murder aimed at everyone from the elderly to children. Their methods were similar to those of right-wing paramilitaries in the other countries of the region, including El Salvador and Guatemala, all of which were supported by the Reagan administration. If you have the stomach to read about them, there’s no shortage of sources that outline their barbarity.
To Abrams, however, they were “freedom fighters,” their work in El Salvador was a “fabulous achievement,” and he mocked critics of Reagan as people forced to “run the risk” of arguing that such groups were “doing something wrong and ought to stop it.” He himself had no illusions about what it is that the contras were doing. “The purpose of our aid is to permit people who are fighting on our side to use more violence,” he said in 1985.
How involved was Abrams? “Sure, there was excessive micromanagement [of the contras],” he told Policy Review in 1989; “and I was one of the people who engaged in it. But I’m not going to go around trying to assess blame, because the contras were an enormous success.” The contras would have floundered and faded away were it not for the tens of millions of dollars Abrams helped funnel to them, including personally soliciting $10 million from the Sultan of Brunei for their cause (that money never made it because Abrams gave the Sultan the wrong account number).
This “micromanagement” at one point also involved Abrams secretly delivering military equipment to the contras under the guise of humanitarian aid. As commentators have noted, this is particularly relevant now, when the Trump administration attacks Maduro for refusing to let humanitarian aid from the US into Venezuela.
2. He covered up brutal acts of terror
Key to Abrams’ role under Reagan was playing down and denying the copious human rights abuses being committed by the forces and governments he and the administration supported.
As Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar pointed out in her grilling of Abrams earlier this week, part of the Reagan administration’s “fabulous achievement” in El Salvador was the horrific El Mozote massacre, which took place shortly before Abrams took up his post. In his attempt to convince the Senate to certify that El Salvador’s government was improving its human rights record — a precondition for receiving US aid — Abrams testified that the massacre had been “publicized when the certification comes forward to the committee,” and was “being significantly misused, at the very best, by the guerrillas.” He claimed he had sent military officers to investigate the reports, and that the massacre couldn’t be confirmed.
Another incident was the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, killed on the orders of Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, one of the administration’s partners in the country. “Anybody who thinks you’re going to find a cable that says that Roberto d’Aubuisson murdered the archbishop is a fool,” said Abrams. In fact, two such cables existed. Abrams would later insist that any criticism of the Reagan administration’s activities in El Salvador were simply “a post-Cold War effort to rewrite history.”
Meanwhile, as Guatemalan dictator Ríos Montt embarked on a campaign of genocide in the country, Abrams said he had “brought considerable progress” on human rights. He defended Reagan’s lifting of a military aid embargo on Montt’s government, claiming the slaughter of civilians was “being reduced step by step” and that it was “progress” that had to be “rewarded and encouraged.”
3. He’s an unrepentant liar
Abrams told Omar that it is “always the position of the United States” to protect human rights, including in Venezuela, and he stressed the US didn’t want to arm anti-Maduro forces. Besides his well-documented record of doing exactly the opposite, Abrams’ words are even less relevant when you consider his history of outright lying.
We’ve already seen how Abrams regularly lied to cover up or play down abuses by the right-wing forces he supported. This practice would ultimately land him in trouble when he misled Congress about the Iran-Contra affair with statements that ranged from outright lies (“we’re not in the fund-raising business”), to lawyerly parsing of the truth (“I said no foreign government was helping the contras, because we had not yet received a dime from Brunei,” he would write later).
Abrams would forever maintain he did nothing wrong, later writing a sanctimonious book that painted himself as the victim of an unjust, vindictive system that had criminalized “political differences.” “This kind of prosecution is something new in America, and it is wrong,” he wrote, before bleating about the “bloodsuckers” and “filthy bastards” who wanted to do him in.
Abrams rained ire upon Lawrence Walsh, the special prosecutor tasked with investigating the Iran-Contra scandal: “You, Walsh, eighty years old, and nothing else to do but stay in this job till the grim reaper gets you. Is this your idea of America?” Abrams insisted the independent counsel law under which Walsh (along with Watergate prosecutor Archibold Cox) served was unconstitutional, despite the fact that the Supreme Court had upheld it 7-1, with even the conservative chief justice Rehnquist affirming (Scalia dissented). It didn’t matter anyway, because the late George H. W. Bush pardoned him.
Abrams managed the trifecta of showing contempt for the truth, the constitution’s separation of powers, and the concept of checks and balances, all in one fell swoop. There’s no reason to believe any of his assurances now.
4. He hates democracy
Abrams has also shown a lifelong contempt for the very thing he’s now meant to be advancing: democracy.
When the Uruguayan military government imprisoned Wilson Ferreira, the country’s most popular politician and a fierce liberal opponent of its rule, Abrams defended the Reagan administration’s meek response, which the New York Times had called “stunning.” Abrams explained that “the transition [to elected government] itself is more important than the immediate situation of any individual politician.” Abrams had earlier insisted there was no evidence the Uruguyan military was stifling political freedom, even as it closed newspapers, arrested its opposition, and continued to ban political leaders, among other things.
Around this same time, Abrams was one of a number of Reagan officials who supported Oliver North’s call to pardon Honduran general Jose Bueso Rosa, despite his having received a relatively lenient sentence. Rosa had been convicted after being caught in Florida plotting to overthrow the Honduran government.
In 2002, Abrams reportedly “gave a nod” to the military coup that attempted, ultimately unsuccessfully, to remove the democratically elected Hugo Chavez from power. The Observer, which broke the story, called Abrams “the crucial figure around the coup.” Abrams has had his eye on toppling Venezuela’s government for some time.
When Hamas defeated Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, Abrams, then the point man for George W. Bush’s Middle East policy, helped implement a scheme to nullify the results by fomenting a Palestinian civil war which, they hoped, would remove Hamas from power. When the plan backfired, with Hamas emerging victorious and in full control of Gaza, Abrams accused Hamas of staging a “coup.”
5. His only political principle was anticommunism
Abrams’ disregard for democracy is part and parcel of his general philosophy, which views left-wing governments uniformly as threats to be stamped out.
Abrams, who once told a reporter that he’s “been a counterrevolutionary for a long time,” cut his teeth opposing student protesters at Harvard in the 1960s. He believes the idea that human rights extend past the political and into the economic realm to be “nonsense” and “old Soviet bromides.” As such, he viewed defeating the Soviet Union as the greatest US priority, telling one interviewer that “the greatest threat to human rights is the Soviet Union, not Guatemala or the Philippines.”
In 1984, Abrams quite candidly explained to Policy Review that his human rights policy was one of double standards: fierce opposition to communist rights abusers, and coddling of oppressors friendly to the US.
“Liberalization for purposes of letting out steam always involves line drawing,” he said. “How much steam should you let out? At what point do you risk anarchy and destabilizing the regime?” He went on to explain that “the line drawn varies from country to country,” and that “even a highly imperfect regime may well give a much better prospect of democratization than would the Communist regime that might follow.”
In other words, no matter how brutal or outright fascist a government, it was by default preferable to a communist one, a philosophy he applied in obvious ways to his work in the Americas. It was also evident in his treatment of Cuba, whose prisons he denounced in 1984 as “barbaric” and whose leader, Fidel Castro, he labeled “oppressive” and accused of “betrayal.” He attacked human rights groups, politicians, reporters, and church groups who praised Cuba as “apologists” who “will never take off their rose-colored glasses” and had spent “years defending tyrants” and “years obfuscating the truth.”
At literally the same time he was doing this, Abrams publicly defended Turkey, a key regional ally, from criticism of its human rights record. Abrams praised Turkey, which had recently been pilloried in an Amnesty International report for widespread torture of its people, for “extraordinary progress,” charging that “some who criticize Turkey’s human rights situation have no interest in human rights in Turkey or anywhere else,” but “simply use this issue as a weapon with which to attack a vital member of the Western alliance.” He dismissed Amnesty’s claims as “false history,” criticized human rights groups for “an appalling shallowness of analysis” that ignored social, political, and historical context, and charged that the Turkish people “resent the activists’ shrill and uninformed criticisms of their country.”
As Abrams had earlier said, “the line drawn varies from country to country.” If you played nice with the Reagan administration, your human rights record was tempered by nuance and context, and it was getting better anyway. And if you didn’t, you were beyond redemption.
6. He dislikes journalists and accountability
Abrams no doubt sympathized with Turkey’s rulers because he himself had first-hand experience dealing with pesky journalists and human rights groups.
He said critics of Reagan’s support of the contras would have “blood on their hands,” and accused human rights groups of having communist sympathies. He hopped aboard the Reagan administration’s McCarthyite attempt to shame congressional critics into giving him a blank check in Latin America, claiming that there was an “elaborate and skillful” campaign by Nicaragua’s Sandinista government to “manipulate Congress and the press.” When the GAO released a report alleging contra corruption that was inconvenient for the administration’s attempts to secure aid, Abrams dismissed it as a “smear campaign” cooked up by Democrats.
While Abrams didn’t have a police state at his disposal, that didn’t prevent him from lobbing heavy-handed broadsides against reporters he didn’t like. He refused to be questioned by or debate certain journalists he perceived as critical. Most infamously, from 1986 to 1987, Abrams accused left-wing Colombian journalist Patricia Lara of being a “Cuban agent” and “an active liaison” between Colombian terrorist organization M-19 and “the Cuban secret police.” In October 1986, Lara was stopped by New York immigration officials and imprisoned, before being sent back home, without explanation.
Abrams claimed to have “concrete evidence” that Lara was “heavily engaged” with M-19, but when challenged to reveal evidence, claimed it was based on “intelligence information” that he couldn’t reveal. The Colombian Defense Ministry, then battling M-19, categorically denied they had any such information, and assigned her a bodyguard because Abrams’ accusation had put her in danger. The country’s foreign minister said “we don’t know where the US government obtained” such information.
Abrams also granted a “meritorious honor” award on the Office of Public Diplomacy, a government body responsible for waging an illegal domestic propaganda campaign, in which Iran-Contra architect Oliver North was closely involved, that disseminated Abrams’ preferred narrative about the region. Abrams praised it for “setting out the parameters and defining the terms of the public discussion on Central America policy” and countering the “formidable and well established Soviet/Cuban/Nicaraguan propaganda apparatus.”
7. He’s a fan of regime change
Like any neoconservative worth his salt, Abrams has an abiding faith in the US government’s ability to simply remove world leaders it dislikes at will. (He’s also continued the neocon tradition of never personally fighting in any war, avoiding Vietnam thanks to a hurt back that happened to clear up once the war was over.)
When Abrams wanted to remove former ally Manuel Noriega from power in Panama, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Reagan wrote, he threatened sanctions, then actually imposed sanctions, then established a Panamanian government-in-exile on a US military base. Abrams finally called outright for the US military to topple Noriega, in an op-ed titled “Noriega Respects Power. Use It,” which is what George H. W. Bush ultimately did. It was a chilling preview of where US policy on Venezuela may now be heading if Maduro stays in power.
Reflecting on the mistakes of Reagan’s Latin American policy in 1989, Abrams’ regret was that it hadn’t been more forceful. “You can make a very good argument that after the successful rescue mission in Grenada the president should simply have said, ‘Look, we have to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, we cannot have a Communist government in Nicaragua,’ and done whatever we needed to do to get rid of it, including a naval blockade or possibly even an invasion,” he said.
In 2007, Abrams blessed Bush’s plan to launch a covert operation to destabilize Iran’s government. Two years later, he mused about what should happen if Iran develops a nuclear weapon. “Responsible leadership cannot allow this to happen,” he said. “Preventing it through military action perhaps is the second worst decision we could make. The only worse one being to say it’s all right now, it’s acceptable, we will not act.” But this wouldn’t involve regime change or the killing of civilians, he stressed; just a strike on nuclear facilities. Iran, Abrams warned, was one to three years away from developing a nuclear weapon.
In 2013, Abrams told a House Armed Services Committee hearing that the US had to get militarily involved in Syria. Why? Because “a display of American lack of will power in Syria will persuade many Iranian officials that while we may say ‘all options are on the table,’ in reality they are not — so Iran can proceed happily and safely toward a nuclear weapon.” Two years later, he said at a Council of Foreign Relations event that Netanyahu had two options: either strike Iran right then, or wait two years and see if an administration willing to take a tougher line, or sanction an Israeli strike, would be elected. Abrams, it seems, got his wish.
8. He’s beloved by the Right
In case anyone still believes the fiction that “anti-Trump” conservatives actually oppose Trump, Abrams is a living reminder that there’s no daylight between Trump and the establishment Right that pretends to dislike him.
Abrams was once an “anti-Trump” Republican who signed a letter opposing his candidacy in 2016. He tutored Paul Ryan in foreign policy when he was Mitt Romney’s 2012 running mate, and served on Marco Rubio’s so-called National Security Advisory Council in 2016. It’s no surprise the Florida senator, long viewed as an establishment-friendly, “sensible” conservative alternative to Trump, is now all but directing Trump’s Latin American policy, sounding virtually indistinguishable from Abrams.
Abrams has now served in every Republican administration since he first entered government bar one. In between, he’s worked at the Heritage Foundation (whose head of Latin American policy just called him “a patriot and dedicated voice for repressed communities”), helped found “anti-Trump” Bill Kristol’s Project for the New American Century, was a fellow for the Council on Foreign Relations, and was a board member of the National Endowment for Democracy, the US government’s arm for foreign political meddling.
Meanwhile, just look at who came to Abrams’ defense after his grilling by Rep. Omar. The National Review — which not long ago put out a much-celebrated “Against Trump” issue whose purpose, according to its editor, was to say, “He’s not one of us. He’s not a conservative, and he’s not what conservatism is” — just published an editorial calling Abrams “one of the wisest, most experienced foreign-policy heads in this country,” and “a steadfast advocate of freedom, democracy, and human rights.”
A former Bush administration official and current Harvard professor defended Abrams as “a devoted public servant who has contributed much of his professional life to our country.” The newly rebranded neocon Max Boot, who very publicly proclaims he’s seen the error of his ways and broken with the ugliness he now sees in the GOP, deemed him “a leading advocate of human rights and democracy.” Unfortunately, it’s not just the Right; the Center for American Progress’ vice president of National Security and International Policy called him “a fierce advocate for human rights and democracy” who simply “made serious professional mistakes.”
That someone like Abrams, who’s now leading Trump’s regime change efforts in Venezuela, is warmly embraced by the coterie of establishment and “never-Trump” conservatives should tell you everything you need to know about these groups.
https://jacobin.com/2019/02/the-tragic-life-of-the-war-criminal-elliott-abrams
A tourist takes in Liberty Cap and Nevada Falls at Yosemite National Park in California. (photo: Getty Images)
"It was really striking to see that every single tree seems to be getting hit by either climatic changes; it could be dying from drought, or it could be insect attack or fungus, but they're certainly weakened," Dickman, a forest ecologist with the National Park Service, told CNN. "There's a big shift happening right now, and it's right in front of our eyes."
The consequences of the climate crisis -- more wildfires, devastating drought, sea level rise, flooding, ecological disease -- are plaguing the country's national parks. Most recently, unprecedented flash flooding overwhelmed Yellowstone National Park and some of its surrounding areas.
Scientists and officials say it signals a dramatic change unfolding at the nation's most prized parks. And unless the planet slashes fossil fuel emissions, scientists believe the climate crisis could drastically alter the landscapes, cultural sites and ecosystems in the parks, potentially making them inaccessible for humans and uninhabitable for other species.
What happened at Yellowstone is also a classic example of the climate crisis converging with failed emergency disaster response, said Marcy Rockman, a former climate change adaptation coordinator for the Park Service.
"When I heard they were evacuating every visitor from Yellowstone, I was like, 'Oh my god, evacuating every visitor was not a part of our climate change scenarios,' " Rockman told CNN. "Seeing what my former colleagues at Yellowstone are having to deal with now, it's like ... I'm worried for them."
That the parks' climate change response "now involves 'how do you evacuate everyone from a park' is just a gut-punch that I don't think we had fully taken in when we started the climate program," she said.
As more climate change-fueled events occur, CNN talked to Park Service officials and scientists to see how the climate crisis may alter the ecosystems and landscapes of some of the country's most beloved national treasures.
Yosemite National Park
Climate change has already touched one of the Sierra Nevada's most valuable sites. Yosemite National Park has been forced to close several times in recent years because of extreme heat, deadly wildfires or dangerous air quality from fire smoke.
The average temperature in Yosemite may increase by up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, which is several degrees higher than global temperatures are predicted to surge.
And it's not a future threat. Park rangers and scientists have already observed the shrinking snowpack, dried-up waterfalls, increasing fire activity and more tree die-offs like those Dickman observed.
"People come to Yosemite because we have some of the biggest trees on Earth," Dickman said. "But the whole experience in Yosemite is starting to be altered ... We're just kind of seeing that tree line lift up in a weird way."
As average temperature increases, it increases the elevation of where trees can grow. Dickman said forecast models show this part of the Sierra Nevada could look more like the mountains around Los Angeles, where trees can grow at a higher elevation because of the warmer temperatures.
Studies have also showed the range of small mammals in Yosemite has shifted upslope over the last century as the area warmed.
Dickman told CNN even 10 years ago he was concerned about different threats, pointing to how the park dealt more with flooding from powerful storms coming off the Pacific Ocean and less with dangerous wildfires.
"For our preparedness now, it's really going to be around fire, and to get fire back on the ground in a good way to ward off some of the effects of these climate- and fuels-driven fires," he said.
Glacier National Park
Scientists at Glacier National Park are bracing for its namesakes to disappear entirely.
"If you wanted to see a glacier, go to Glacier National Park in Montana," Beissinger said "But you better get there soon, because the glaciers are going to be gone from Glacier National Park, probably sometime in the next decade or two. They've been disappearing."
In the past 50 years, some of the Montana park's 26 glaciers have lost as much as 80% of their area. Loss of glacier ice is a huge threat for aquatic ecosystems within the park that rely on cold freshwater. It also threatens the surrounding area with increased flooding.
Much like the flooding at Yellowstone in June, the climate crisis is expected to trigger more flooding at Glacier. As Yellowstone closed down to visitors during its flooding disaster, officials at Glacier warned visitors their park was also experiencing dangerous water levels.
Melting glaciers are also a significant source of sea level rise. Caitlyn Florentine, a research physical scientist at the US Geological Survey who studies US glaciers, noted the glaciers at Glacier National Park are already quite small. But when taken together with other glaciers globally under a warming climate, they are enough to cause significant sea level rise around the planet.
"The meltwater from these glaciers affects the streams that are very high in the alpine environment," Florentine told CNN, pointing to a study which found "the presence or absence of glacier meltwater will be felt by water in the rivers that feed agricultural communities to the east of the park."
Given the rate at which climate change is accelerating, researchers say the timing of the loss depends highly on how much fossil fuel we burn in the future.
Sequoia National Park
Just south of the Yosemite Valley in California, the West's megadrought is weakening and destroying the nation's largest, oldest trees in Sequoia National Park.
Six fires over the course of six years burned more than 85% of the giant sequoia grove acreage across the larger Sierra Nevada, compared to around 25% over the previous 100 years, the National Park Service reported. Three of those fires crossed into Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, forcing officials to close the parks to the public and take dramatic steps to protect the trees.
In September 2021, park biologists wrapped the base of General Sherman -- the planet's largest living tree -- in protective foil as the flames of the KNP Complex fire approached. General Sherman is estimated to be anywhere from 2,200 to 2,700 years old, and has grown to 275 feet.
The tree's diameter is more than 36 feet at its base, which is about as wide as six average cars.
Park scientists have already seen "major effects" of climate change, said Christy Brigham, chief of resource management and science at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, mainly in the form of hotter, drier droughts and how they fuel extreme wildfires.
"We had a historic superintendent's building burned down in a recent wildfire," Brigham told CNN. "So those kinds of impacts are already happening in lots of national parks, and will continue to happen."
Brigham added the climate crisis is "already changing our day-to-day operational business of managing our national parks."
Besides maintaining public amenities and ensuring endangered species are safe, she said park employees -- who have also been personally impacted by wildfires -- are working even harder to clear up trails and engage in new emergency response systems to prepare for events such as fire risks.
"People who work in these places like me and all the other staff really care deeply about keeping these places the spectacular environments that they are for the enjoyment of visitors, and we are seeing changes," Brigham said. "I came to Sequoia National Park from a different Park in 2015, and we were already seeing lots of dead trees from hotter drought, and that's only been made worse by the wildfires."
National parks, like Sequoia National Park, "is a place where we share values, as Americans, in terms of our heritage," she added. "It's a place where we can connect and see the impacts and maybe make some choices to reduce those impacts in the future."
Grand Canyon National Park
The impact of warmer temperatures, severe lack of rainfall and stunted streamflow on the Colorado River is alarming at Grand Canyon National Park, said Mark Nebel, the park's geosciences program manager.
The climate crisis is critically altering the Arizona park's ecosystems, habitats for species, as well as its hydrology, Nebel told CNN.
"We're seeing snow melting about a month earlier than it did a century ago, and there's evaporation as well, and that really affects the levels of water in the [Grand Canyon's groundwater] aquifer," Nebel said. "We're concerned about how it will affect the springs, which are our drinking water source, as well as the vast majority of the biodiversity around the springs."
Vasey's Paradise Spring is one which has gone from consistently reliable to bone dry.
The West's megadrought has devastated the Colorado River, which is a vital resource for the national park. Increased flooding, rock slides, wildfires, and heavy storms also pose severe challenges to Grand Canyon's cultural sites, infrastructure, surrounding communities, fisheries and other wildlife.
Because of a hotter and drier climate, as well as aging infrastructure, Nebel said the park is changing the source of their water supply from groundwater, which has long relied on one of Grand Canyon's springs, to surface water supply elsewhere.
The plummeting level of Lake Powell upstream on the Colorado River -- the nation's second-largest reservoir -- is affecting species in the river downstream and at the park according to Nebel.
"With the water level lowering at Lake Powell, these warm-water invasive fish that are normally near the surface are coming through the dam and getting into the Grand Canyon National Park and threatening native fisheries," he said. "Our fisheries folks have been working really hard to remove like invasive trout from streams, where these native fish reproduce."
Nebel acknowledge for most visitors who are only there for a few days, the impacts of climate change in the park are largely imperceptible. It's different for the park researchers and staff who live with them day in and day out.
"For most of us who work at Grand Canyon, we see these crises, we see the danger, we see the damage," Nebel said, and "we see that it's gonna get worse."
Joshua Tree National Park
For Steve Beissinger, ecology professor at the University of California in Berkeley, national parks like Joshua Tree in Southern California are vital for scientific research. But over the years he has seen how climate change has threatened the park's biodiversity by pushing many species -- including small mammals and birds -- toward the brink of extinction.
"When we go back and resurvey places [in Joshua Tree] that the early scientists at UC Berkeley visited a century ago, we find about half as many birds, and that's because it's warmed and dried so much," Beissinger told CNN. "What we're seeing is a whole kind of change in a community; a collapse in the case of birds. For park managers, there's limits of what they can actually do to reverse this because of the climate change effects."
The extreme heat, dire lack of rain and drought conditions at Joshua Tree have triggered a decline in several species, including the cactus mouse, kangaroo rat, mountain quail and other bird species.
Joshua trees themselves are also at risk. Scientists have concluded the western Joshua trees could lose up to 90% of its current habitat in the Mojave Desert by as early as 2070. In mid-June, the California Fish and Game Commission considered whether to list the tree under the state's Endangered Species Act. The four-person commission was split down the middle and so failed to secure a majority vote to give the species protected status.
Jane Rodgers, chief of science and resource stewardship at Joshua Tree National Park, said they're "fortunate to have some longer term data which is hard to come by for land managers to be able to inform and make decisions." She said such comprehensive data allows park managers to be proactive rather than reactive to extreme weather and drought.
"We are looking at a holistic portfolio of things we can do to protect these areas," Rodgers told CNN. "It's not just continuing to collect data, but also protecting these areas by managing fuels or creating fuel breaks, so that firefighters have a higher probability of stopping a fire. We want to be prepared for that ahead of time as much as we can."
Everglades National Park
As US national parks in the West continue to be plagued with drought, the opposite is taking shape in the eastern end of the country.
Everglades National Park in southern Florida is disappearing because of sea level rise. The vast wetlands are now half their original size not only due to rising sea levels but also rampant urban development.
Researchers with the National Park Service have observed an increase in water level at some inland, freshwater areas in the Everglades over the last 50 years, on par with the pace of rising seas in the region.
The park has also been battered by intense hurricanes in recent years. The Everglades, which encompasses 1.5 million acres of mangroves, marshes and upland forest, is a critical buffer, absorbing the fury of tropical storms. Hurricane Irma pummeled the region in 2017, and the Everglades took much of the storm's wrath and protected inland communities.
But scientists warn the barriers won't be around for much longer. Because of the dramatic changes seen in US national parks, Dickman said people should make climate-conscious choices to help preserve the landscapes for future generations.
"The history of America is painted [in these parks], anything from some of the good in our history, some of the bad of our history, and it protects some of the most incredible landscapes on Earth," Dickman said. "I have traveled around the Earth and it is hard to go to a place more beautiful than the national parks of America. And we so owe the next generation the ability to experience these places as we have."
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