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Monday, July 25, 2022
URGENT: New high-capacity magazine lawsuit!
Over $5 million in one House primary
AIPAC, a political organization funded by right-wing foreign policy hawks and billionaires, spent millions against Justice Democrats this year in Democratic primaries. But they’re not just spending in primaries against us.
Any progressive that strays the littlest bit from AIPAC’s right-wing ideological bent can see millions spent against them. Recently, AIPAC’s super PAC spent a whopping $6 million in a single House primary to beat a former Democratic Congresswoman who had the support of party leadership.
When AIPAC spent $3 million against Justice Democrat Summer Lee, we came together and eked out a victory in PA-12’s democratic primary. But AIPAC has defeated some of our candidates and other progressives in primaries this year.
If this isn't a crystal clear sign of the undemocratic power that corporate, right-wing super PACs wield in elections, then we don't know what is. We must bolster our fundraising right now so we can compete with AIPAC’s spending and upend a political establishment that accepts AIPAC’s unlimited spending. Contribute $10 to Justice Democrats today to help us fight back, re-elect the Squad, and shake up the status quo.
With this kind of unfettered spending in Democratic primaries, it will be difficult for progressives to win in the future. In primaries next week, Rashida Tlaib is facing at least $1 million from a corporate super PAC and Cori Bush is contending with a wave of corporate money and self-funding on her opponent’s side.
We envision a different future where unlimited corporate spending doesn’t decide elections — a future where the Democratic Party swears off this kind of overwhelming corporate-backed support, especially in Democratic primaries.
In order to win that future, we need the support of our grassroots donors to help re-elect the Squad and expand our bloc of Justice Democrats in Congress. Can you chip in today to help us contend with AIPAC’s massive spending in Democratic primaries?
We appreciate anything you can give and all the ways you support our movement. We know we can only do this together with you.
In solidarity,
Justice Democrats
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
JusticeDemocrats.com
10629 Hardin Valley Rd, #226, Knoxville, TN 37932
Email us: us@justicedemocrats.com
RSN: FOCUS: Robert Reich | Trump’s Attempted Coup Continues – Even After January 6 Hearings
25 July 22
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Reader Supported News
The committee has produced history’s most detailed account of an American president’s cruel and seditious pursuit of power. Even now, Trump continues to push states to alter the outcomes of the 2020 election
But Trump’s attempted coup continues.
He has not stopped giving speeches to stir up angry mobs with his big lie that the 2020 election was stolen. He gave another fiery address Friday evening in Arizona.
He is actively backing congressional candidates who propound his big lie.
Trump continues to push states to alter the outcomes of the 2020 election. Just last week he urged Wisconsin assembly speaker Robin Vos to support a resolution to retract Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes cast for Biden.
He is encouraging Republican lawmakers in several states to pass legislation allowing them to take over election machinery and ignore the popular vote.
Meanwhile, the lives of committee members and their families have been threatened. Witnesses have received gangster-style warnings not to cooperate.
The committee’s message to all of America, including Republicans: stop supporting this treachery.
The committee has made that treachery crystal clear.
It has shown the deception behind Trump’s big lie, including Trump’s attorney general William Barr, saying “I saw absolutely zero basis for the allegations” and that promoting it was “a grave disservice to the country”.
It has demonstrated non-partisan repulsion toward Trump’s attempted coup, even in Trump’s White House. As former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson said, “I was disgusted. It was unpatriotic, it was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.”
It has made open appeals to Republican lawmakers to stop supporting the attempt. The Republican vice-chair of the committee, Liz Cheney, warned her Republican colleagues “who are defending the indefensible” that “there will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain”.
It has revealed how average Americans fell for Trump’s treachery, with disastrous results. Witness Stephen Ayres, who described himself as “nothing but a family man and a working man”, participated in the January 6 attack because Trump “basically put out, you know, come to the Stop the Steal rally, you know, and I felt like I needed to be down here”.
And it has reminded Americans of their duties to democracy. As committee chair Bennie Thompson put it: “When you’re on the losing side, that doesn’t mean you have to be happy about it … but you can’t turn violent.”
Committee member Jamie Raskin recalled Lincoln’s warning that politicians who encourage mobs to rampage and terrorize will destroy the bonds of social trust necessary for democracy to work.
It is impossible to know whether the hearings will lead to criminal indictments and convictions of Trump and his enablers.
But the hearings already appear to have convinced some Trump supporters that he is a dangerous charlatan.
The percentage of Republicans who say Trump misled people about the 2020 election has ticked up since last month, while Trump’s enormous fundraising operation has slowed. A New York Times/Siena College poll last week showed that nearly half of Republican primary voters would rather vote for a Republican other than Trump in 2024.
History teaches that it is possible to bring down an American demagogue by putting his wickedness on display for all to see.
In 1954, I watched the Army-McCarthy hearings. The Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy – whose communist witch hunt was ending careers and debasing much of the US government – had charged the US army with lax security at a top-secret army facility. The army hired Boston lawyer Joseph Welch to make its case.
At a session on 9 June 1954, after McCarthy accused one of Welch’s young staff attorneys of being a communist, Welch responded in words that led to McCarthy’s undoing: “Until this moment, senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.”
When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, Welch angrily interrupted, “Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”
Almost overnight, McCarthy’s immense national popularity evaporated. Censured by his Senate colleagues, ostracized by his party and ignored by the press, McCarthy died three years later, 48 years old and a broken man.
Now, the January 6 committee has produced history’s most detailed account of an American president’s cruel and seditious pursuit of power.
Will it be enough to stop Trump’s ongoing attempted coup? That depends on whether Americans heed the committee’s implicit plea to ensure that American democracy endures.
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RSN: Jennifer Bendery | Clarence Thomas Isn't the Only One Ready to Reduce Women to Baby Incubators
25 July 22
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The vast majority of House Republicans just voted to take away women's right to travel, to access contraception and to marry who they love.
In the past week alone, House Republicans have overwhelmingly voted against a woman’s right to travel for abortion care, to access birth control and to marry someone they love.
Each of these votes was appalling in its own right.
When the House voted last week to ensure that women are able to travel across state lines for an abortion, 205 Republicans voted no. When the House voted Tuesday to codify same-sex marriage, 157 Republicans voted no. On Thursday, when the House voted to protect women’s right to access birth control and other contraception, 195 Republicans voted no.
Taken together, the broader message that Republicans are sending with these votes is even more horrifying: Women should be viewed as little more than baby incubators.
House Democratic leaders lined up votes on all of these bills in direct response to the Supreme Court striking down Roe v. Wade last month, breaking from 50 years of precedent to deny women a constitutional right to an abortion.
Republicans in Congress argued that none of these bills are necessary because the right to birth control and the right to same-sex marriage are safe.
“In no way, shape or form is access to contraception limited or at risk of being limited,” Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) said during Thursday’s debate on the birth control bill. “The liberal majority is clearly trying to stoke fears and mislead the American people once again because in their minds stoking fear clearly is the only way that they can win.”
But this is the same thing Republicans said about Roe v. Wade. And there’s no reason to think the current crop of conservatives on the Supreme Court ― all of whom are there because of their ties to the very anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ legal organization, the Federalist Society ― won’t try to roll back more of these protections. They’ve said so themselves.
“In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion when the court overturned Roe v. Wade. He was referring to the rights recognized in Griswold (contraception), Lawrence (sexual conduct with a member of the same sex) and Obergefell (same-sex marriage).
Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito previously called for revisiting same-sex couples’ constitutional right to marry, too. In October 2020, they said the court’s 2015 decision on marriage equality was “undemocratic” and that “the court has created a problem that only it can fix.”
Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) said Thursday that it’s not hard to connect the dots between what the Supreme Court just did and what Republicans in Congress are making very clear they’d like to do when it comes to legislating what women can and can’t do with their bodies.
“When Clarence Thomas said he wanted to take away a woman’s right to birth control, some told me that is just his opinion,” Kim tweeted. “But now I saw 195 of my Republican colleagues reject protection for contraceptives. This is not just an opinion of one man. This is their plan.”
Even GOP Rep. Nancy Mace (S.C.), who opposes abortion rights and who celebrated when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, said that barring women from having access to birth control is a step too far. She was one of just eight GOP lawmakers who voted for the bill guaranteeing a woman’s access to birth control. That’s out of 211 House Republicans.
During the House vote on that bill, Mace wore a sign on her back that read, “My state is banning EXCEPTIONS. Protect CONTRACEPTION.”
“My state is banning almost all exceptions for women including who’ve been raped & victims of incest. Today I voted to protect access to contraceptives ― to protect every woman in South Carolina,” Mace tweeted. “You can’t ban abortion and then not protect women’s access to contraceptives.”
Despite so many Republicans voting against these bills, they all passed because Democrats hold the majority. But there’s a good chance Republicans will win control of the House in November. That would put Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) ― both of whom just voted against protecting women’s rights to travel, to birth control, to abortion care ― in charge of setting the chamber’s agenda.
Where is the highest-ranked GOP woman in the House, Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), amid all of these votes aimed at protecting women’s rights? She just introduced a bill barring the use of federal dollars for medical transportation for women going across state lines for abortion care.
Of course, even if Republicans win control of the House in the midterms, they’d have to win control of the Senate, too, to control all of Congress. And even in that scenario, Joe Biden will still be in the White House until at least 2024. That means even a GOP-led Congress wouldn’t be able to pass laws rolling back these kinds of protections for women until a willing Republican is in the White House.
But if this week showed anything, it’s that Clarence Thomas is not an isolated case of a conservative ready to strip fundamental protections from women in order to make them more likely to get pregnant, stay pregnant and make babies. It’s virtually everyone in the House Republican conference.
Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro and his wife Michelle attend the launching ceremony for him to officially become a candidate for the presidential re-election, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (photo: Ricardo Moraes/Reuters)
ALSO SEE: Brazil's Bolsonaro Officially Launches
Re-Election Bid, Says Army on His Side
The president kicks off his candidacy in Rio de Janeiro with a speech focusing on God, guns and family.
The right-wing Liberal Party (PL) tapped Bolsonaro as its nominee on Sunday for the October 2 vote before an audience of several thousand in Rio’s Maracanazinho stadium, a move considered the official beginning of Bolsonaro’s candidacy under Brazilian law.
The nomination comes as the president continues to launch baseless attacks on the reliability of the nation’s electronic voting system, casting doubt on whether he would accept defeat.
While the president did not touch directly on those matters on Sunday – focusing instead on socially conservative stances popular with his base – his speech was heavy with praise for the armed forces, which he said shared his concerns.
“The army is on our side,” he told cheering supporters. “It’s an army that doesn’t accept corruption, doesn’t accept fraud. This is an army that wants transparency.”
With his image battered by inflation, Bolsonaro is down almost 20 percentage points in some polls compared to Lula, who governed the nation from 2003 through 2010 and lifted millions out of poverty thanks to aggressive social spending during a period of rapid commodity-driven growth.
Lula’s star has fallen in recent years due to high-level corruption probes – he spent more than a year and a half in jail due to a corruption conviction that was later overturned – but he remains a relatively popular figure among Brazilians.
For Bolsonaro fans here, however, waving Brazilian flags and bedecked in the national football jersey, the possibility of a Lula comeback is unconscionable.
The biggest jeers came when Bolsonaro mentioned Brazil’s Supreme Court, whose members have gone to battle with Bolsonaro allies over unfounded election fraud claims.
Vera Carvalho, 59, a Rio schoolteacher, said she hoped there would not be a coup, but if there were, it would be the fault of the left for attempting to install a corrupt president.
“I hope there isn’t one, but I fear that there could be,” she told Reuters news agency. “Lula needs to go back to jail. He is vermin.”
The left-wing Workers’ Party (PT) officially nominated Lula on Thursday, while left-of-centre candidate Ciro Gomes, running in a distant third, was nominated by the Democratic Labor Party (PDT) on Wednesday.
In the coming weeks, the already tense battle between the top two candidates should heat up even further. In mid-August, Lula and Bolsonaro will be freed up by authorities to engage in most forms of political advertising.
Marina Ovsyannikova outside a Russian court in March after being fined for breaching protest laws. The journalist had been arrested for interrupting a TV news broadcast holding a 'No war' poster. (photo: AFP/Getty Images)
Marina Ovsyannikova detained days after she demonstrated near the Kremlin holding placard criticising Putin and Ukraine war
Her detention on Sunday came a few days after 44-year-old Ovsyannikova demonstrated alone near the Kremlin holding a placard criticising Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and president Vladimir Putin.
“Marina has been detained,” her entourage said in a message posted on the journalist’s Telegram account. “There is no information on where she is.”
The message included three photos of her being led by two police officers to a white van, after apparently having been stopped while cycling.
Shortly after, Ovsyannikova posted images of herself and two dogs on her Facebook page.
“Went for a walk with the dogs, just stepped outside the gate, people in uniform approached me,” she wrote. “Now I’m sitting in Krasnoselsky ministry of internal affairs,” referring to a police station in a Moscow district.
Three hours later, Ovsyannikova said she had been released. “I’m home. Everything is okay,” she wrote on her Facebook page. “But now I know it’s always best to bring a suitcase and passport if you go out.”
Her lawyer, Dmitri Zakhvatov, earlier confirmed her arrest to the Ria-Novosti news agency, saying: “I assume that it is linked one way or another to her act of protest.”
In March, Ovsyannikova, an editor at Channel One television, barged on to the set of its flagship Vremya (Time) evening news programme holding a poster reading “No war” in English.
On Friday, Ovsyannikova posted photos of herself on Telegram showing her near the Kremlin and carrying a protest placard raising the deaths of children and denouncing Putin as a “killer”.
Declarations of this kind expose her to criminal prosecution for publishing “false information” about and “denigrating” the army – offences that can carry heavy prison sentences.
Ovsyannikova became internationally famous overnight in March when she staged her live TV protest. Pictures of her interrupting the broadcast went around the world.
She was briefly detained and then released with a fine, but while a number of international observers praised her protest, it was not universally acclaimed by Russia’s opposition.
Some critics said she had spent years working for a channel, Pervy Kanal, that they said was effectively a mouthpiece for the Kremlin.
In the months following her March protest, Ovsyannikova spent some time abroad, including a brief period working for the German newspaper Die Welt.
In early July, she announced that she was returning to Russia to settle a dispute over the custody of her children.
Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. (photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
People cheer as Trump arrives on stage during the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in Tampa on July 23. (photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The right has a tested formula to brainwash its base. From the Big Lie to attacking a 10-year-old rape victim, here’s how they do it.
Conservatives’ attempts to minimize, and then weaponize, the horrific story of a 10-year-old rape victim highlights their tried-and-tested four-part strategy to manufacture lies and outrage to fuel their march toward fascism.
Ohio was one of 13 states with automatic “trigger bans” that went into effect immediately after the Supreme Court overturned Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. As a result, Ohio now has zero exceptions for rape and incest. A 10-year-old rape victim who missed the state’s new six-week deadline by three days was forced to travel to Indiana for her abortion. Earlier this month, the girl’s alleged rapist, Gershon Fuentes, was arrested and charged with felony first-degree rape.
One would assume this sordid story would force most Republicans to pause in horror and reflect on the brutal consequences unleashed by the Court taking away the constitutionally protected right to abortion.
How would they feel if this was their daughter or loved one? Would they want to force an innocent girl to endure unnecessary trauma by carrying her abuser’s child? Could they at least create exceptions for rape and incest, which are supported by 69 percent of Americans, including 56 percent of Republicans?
At the very least, this story should open them up to empathize with this young girl’s dilemma, right?
The entire right-wing ecosystem unleashed its full arsenal to discredit the 10-year-old girl as a liar, intimidate her physician, demonize liberals, and continue its march backward, undeterred, in its quest to make Handmaid’s Tale cosplay a reality—in an America that subordinates and punishes women for having the audacity to control their own bodies.
To achieve its goal, the right uses a now familiar four-part strategy.
First, Republicans use any means necessary to achieve power and promote their unpopular, extremist, counter-majoritarian agenda.
Second, they create and promote disinformation and lies to frighten their base and Jedi mind-trick them into believing they are being oppressed by the actual victims.
Third, they create a specific villain, target them, and then attack them through scapegoating, smearing, and intimidation.
Fourth, they never apologize or back down once their lie is exposed, but instead, they double down, and in times of doubt, always pivot towards racism and fear-mongering.
WHAT DOES THE FOUR-POINT PLAN LOOK LIKE IN PRACTICE?
To illustrate the strategy, look no further than the GOP’s rationalization of the Jan. 6 insurrection and embrace of the Big Lie—which gave them the successful blueprint to promote their hateful anti-abortion policies.
First, Donald Trump deliberately promoted lies and conspiracy theories about election fraud conducted by Democrats. Instead of accepting his defeat, he unleashed a premeditated, coordinated strategy to engage in a failed coup, which eventually resulted in thousands of his supporters overtaking the U.S. Capitol in an effort to overturn a free and fair election.
To get to the point where a 10-year-old rape victim has to cross state lines for an abortion, look to the GOP’s four-decade effort to kill Roe v. Wade. Republicans finally got their wish by packing the Supreme Court with right-wing extremists in black robes handpicked by the Federalist Society. Sen. Mitch McConnell stole Merrick Garland’s seat by refusing to hold a confirmation hearing, citing the need to wait until after the 2016 election. Then, he went against his own bullshit precedent and bum-rushed Justice Amy Coney Barrett on to the Court after millions of votes had already been cast in the 2020 election. That’s how they got a right-wing majority to dutifully overturn Roe, which led to Republican-controlled states imposing draconian laws that are punishing women and their health-care providers.
Second, the right-wing media ecosystem continues to amplify the Big Lie and fuel conspiracy theories, which has since resulted in a majority of GOP voters falsely believing Biden was not fairly elected. More than 100 Republicans who have won their recent primaries support the Big Lie, which has transformed into a MAGA litmus test for aspiring GOP candidates.
Similarly, both Fox News and the Wall Street Journal used their platforms to help discredit the story of the 10-year-old rape victim. Fox host Jesse Watters referred to it as a “hoax” that, according to him, follows a “pretty dangerous pattern of politically timed disinformation” by Democrats. On his top-rated cable news show, Tucker Carlson said “politicians are lying about this [story].” MAGA politicians like Rep. Jim Jordan tweeted that the story was a lie and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost called it a fabrication. Fox labeled it the “Biden abortion story.”
However, the story, which has nothing to do with Biden, is true. The young girl was actually raped and forced to travel to another state for her abortion. Instead of owning up to their mistake and apologizing, right-wingers instead implemented the third part of the strategy by targeting a manufactured villain.
In the MAGA world, villains like Kyle Rittenhouse and Michael Flynn are rebranded and exalted, while actual heroes are ignored, ridiculed, or dismissed. This includes Capitol Hill police officers, election workers Lady Ruby and her daughter, and fellow Republicans who didn’t go along with the Big Lie—such as Rusty Bowers, Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, who received death threats and is now censured by fellow Republican colleagues for putting country above party.
If this is how MAGA treats its own, then what hope do a 10-year-old girl and her physician have at redemption? On Watters’ show, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita put a target on the girl’s physician by announcing he would be open to prosecuting her for failing to report the abortion. In reality, Dr. Caitlin Bernard had already reported the case, but truth doesn’t matter when you’re simply trying to rile up your base to score political points and ratings. (Earlier this week, Dr. Bernard announced she was thinking about suing Rokita for defamation.)
Sadly, this isn’t Dr. Bernard’s first rodeo with right-wing extremists. She is listed as a “local abortion threat” and her name and workplace, along with those of five other physicians, are published on the Right to Life Michiana’s website. In 2006, Justice Barrett, then a law professor, signed a two-page ad published by the extremist anti-abortion group that referred to Roe as “barbaric” and “defend[ed] the right to life from fertilization to natural death.” Last year, Dr. Bernard testified that she was forced to stop providing first-trimester abortions at a South Bend, Indiana, clinic after she was warned about kidnapping threats against her daughter.
Finally, the modern right-wing movement can never apologize, own up to its mistakes, or back down. Humility, grace, and decency are perceived by the base as signs of weakness. Instead, they ratchet up the lie, amp up the terror, and add more villains.
For example, despite numerous election audits supporting Biden’s victory, and even loyal Trumpers—such as former Attorney General Bill Barr—affirming the 2020 election results, the GOP has instead chosen to feed its base the Big Lie.
Even after the 10-year-old rape victim’s story was confirmed, Republicans who called her a liar refused to offer an apology or correction. When pressed, Rep. Jordan said he “never doubted the child” and instead blamed the media. Fox News hosts didn’t correct the story for their audience, but instead decided to engage in their usual xenophobia by attacking the alleged rapist’s immigration status.
After previously saying the story wasn’t true, Carlson, playing to racist type, pivoted and said “the obvious headline here was not about abortion. It was about the crime committed against the child—‘Who raped a 10-year-old.’” His answer: “an illegal alien.”
Unfortunately, this 10-year-old rape victim is one of the many girls who will suffer from the GOP’s anti-abortion policies. But unlike her, most of their stories will be forgotten statistics that never receive a headline or a column.
Perhaps that is a blessing. These victims won’t be subjected to the lies manufactured by a right-wing ecosystem willing to demonize girls and health care providers simply to advance their perverse and regressive cultural agenda.
If Republicans have no mercy for 10-year-old rape victims, then the rest of us should expect nothing but cruelty and contempt in their violent and barbaric efforts to achieve minority rule.
Representative Cori Bush. (photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Roe v. Wade's reversal means more people from the United States are fleeing to Mexico to receive abortion care.
And as many of you probably recall, last month, the United States decided to go in the total opposite direction, and reverse Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision granting the constitutional right to an abortion.
The decision has gone over as expected. As it stands at least eight states have banned abortion outright. And in Georgia abortion is now banned before six-weeks, which is often before someone would know they’re pregnant.
When state lawmakers return from their vacations for a new session, we will almost certainly see new abortion restrictions. And advocates argue that roughly half of all states could ban the procedure within the year.
As this has all unfolded, our neighbors to the south, Verónica Cruz, founder of Las Libres, an abortion advocacy group in Mexico, have been paying close attention:
“It surprised me that Mexico is going forward, and the United States is going backward,” Cruz says. “I never imagined that.”
Cruz says she and other advocates in Mexico have been watching closely as an increasing number of US states passed abortion restrictions. And by the time the US Supreme Court decision came down, she says, they were ready to help.
People from the United States coming to Mexico for medicine is not a new phenomenon. In 2020, Vox news reported that Utah’s government insurance program was paying for people to travel to Mexico or Canada to get their prescriptions because it was cheaper than buying them in the US.
But the new wave of people going south for abortion care is a recent development, although with some strong pre-Roe historical roots.
Cruz’s group primarily helps pregnant people in Mexico access medication abortion, according to CNN, but since Roe was reversed they’ve seen a huge uptick in callers in English.
It’s a clear sign that demand for help from people living in the United States is growing as abortion becomes more and more inaccessible in the US south.
“The numbers are going to keep growing,” Crystal P. Lira, founder of Bloodys Red Tijuana, another group that facilitates medication abortion told CNN. “It’s a snowball effect.”
A worker at a hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal, readies bags of Covid-19 waste for treatment, December last year. (photo: Prakash Mathema/AFP/Getty Images)
With its products proving indispensable to combatting Covid-19, the plastics business is reinvigorated. What will it take to bring this major polluter to heel?
In the two years leading up to the pandemic, the public backlash against plastic was a major concern for industry leaders. As a corporate executive remarked during an industry event early in 2019: “We need to get the image of plastic in oceans out of the public’s mind. Otherwise, we could lose our social licence to operate.” Of course, the pandemic did not take the image of plastic in oceans out of the public’s mind. However, it did highlight in a very real and urgent way the importance of many plastic products for healthcare and hygiene. At the virtual World Petrochemical Conference in April 2020, an industry analyst commented on this unexpected shift: “Ironically, sustainability, the issue that was dominating the conversation until just a few weeks ago, seems to be fading into the background, at least for the moment. And polyethylene may even be gaining some public favour as it plays a high-profile role in combating the greatest health risk to our planet in modern history.”
This temporary respite from public anti-plastic sentiment opened the door for industry to push back against single-use plastics bans. In July last year, the European Commission rejected the industry’s request to delay the EU Directive on Single-Use Plastics. However, multiple single-use plastics bans and deposit return schemes were reversed or delayed in countries around the world, across North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
During the pandemic, plastic was restored to its original paradoxical status as both a miracle and a menace for society. As far as industry was concerned, this was enough: it had regained its social licence to operate. By the end of 2020, industry leaders had fully embraced the new pandemic narrative about the essential role of plastics in society and many expressed optimism about their future growth. At the virtual World Petrochemical Conference in March 2021, industry analysts identified four key “Covid demand drivers”: food packaging, bag ban delays, online shopping, and hygiene and medical.
As one petrochemical industry executive enthused: “The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted how essential all our products are to everyone in society around the globe. We saw record sales and record volumes for our products throughout the pandemic… over the long term we can continue to see that kind of growth, and we’re going to see that accelerate as economies reopen around the world. All of this is really driven by the world’s growing global middle class, and that’s going to drive demand for the products we produce. Covid-19 didn’t change our long-term view on the fundamentals.”
Hearing these glowing industry reports about single-use plastics growth, I couldn’t help feeling guilty about the plastics that have entered my home in the UK during the pandemic. Many environmental activists and researchers have pointed out that one of the key tactics of industry is to blame the consumer for plastic waste, which diverts attention from corporate responsibility. The plastics crisis is a systemic problem, however, and most people are locked into supply chains and infrastructures, unable to simply opt out of plastics consumption.
According to a recent study published in the journal Science Advances, the United Kingdom is second only to the United States in terms of the amount of plastic waste generated per person, at 99kg and 105kg per person per year respectively. Supermarkets with over-packaged food are one of the main problems. By contrast, the global average of plastic consumption is 45kg per person per year, and as little as 4kg per person per year in India. Looking at the consequences of one’s own actions, from a privileged standpoint, multiplied and intensified across the planet, invites a kind of vertigo.
While voluntary corporate commitments to end plastic waste have flooded in, the plastics crisis has kept getting worse. Some of the most scathing reports have emerged during the pandemic, such as the Changing Markets Foundation’s report Talking Trash, which concluded that “the Covid-19 health crisis has, once again, shown that Big Plastic is always primed and ready to co-opt a crisis to its advantage, pushing to undermine environmental legislation or any restrictions on its products… [T]he plastics industry does not have people’s best interests at heart; instead, it is making cold calculations to carry on with business as usual.” The Talking Trash report focused on the inadequate voluntary commitments of the top plastics polluters in the consumer goods and beverage industries, and the corporate “playbook” for undermining plastics legislation, particularly deposit-return schemes and single-use plastic bans.
One important lever for changing the plastics industry has gained traction during the pandemic: the dawning realisation by many investors and policymakers that green recovery paths to net zero will need to phase out fossil fuels altogether, including virgin (brand new) plastic. In September 2020, the thinktank Carbon Tracker warned investors in plastics about the risk of holding stranded assets in the transition away from fossil fuels. Plastic is the last pillar of oil demand growth, its researchers argued, but this pillar would be removed very soon by increasing regulatory and recycling pressures, accelerated by green recovery packages.
The need to reduce the reliance of plastics on fossil fuels has also featured in a number of policy proposals, dovetailing with the momentum to respond to the climate emergency through green recoveries after the pandemic. The US Break Free from Plastic bill re-emerged early in 2021 under the Biden presidency, incorporating calls from environmental activists and frontline communities to halt petrochemical projects and to hold corporations accountable for waste and emissions throughout the plastic life cycle. Plastics sustainability, incorporating net zero emissions targets, is also a prominent part of the European Green Deal. Furthermore, reducing virgin plastic production is a core (if contested) topic for debates about the scope of a new UN treaty on plastics, amid growing recognition from many governments, organisations and researchers that the problem of plastic pollution extends through the plastics life cycle, from the extraction of raw materials through to manufacturing, consumption, waste and pollution.
If there is any insight that can be gained from looking at the ways corporations have responded to the plastics crisis, which has magnified during the pandemic, it is the power of legislation. Binding laws and regulations offer less room for manoeuvre than voluntary commitments, especially when it comes to bans. The plastics industry is more concerned about the threat of the European Single-Use Plastics Directive, which is binding legislation, than the Ellen MacArthur New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, which is based on voluntary circular economy commitments. Outright bans of specific plastic products, on the grounds of protecting the environment or public health, effectively take these products off the market.
The pandemic has made clear that we need legislation and binding regulations to address the plastics crisis, but we also need another lever of change. We need to keep questioning the dominant assumption that there can be continual plastics growth on a finite planet. If this assumption could be overturned, aligning with the growing consensus that the world needs to transition away from fossil fuels, that would be a starting point for meaningful change.
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