17 March 23
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The GOP wants to expand the work requirements for food stamp eligibility.
HuffPost reports that congressional Republicans have recently “signaled they want to cut federal programs that help low-income Americans buy food and go to the doctor.” On Tuesday, Representative Dusty Johnson introduced legislation to expand “work requirements” for eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a.k.a. SNAP, a.k.a. food stamps. The federal program helps more than 20 million low-income households buy food, but apparently Johnson doesn’t think low-income households are working hard enough to deserve that food. While the program currently requires able-bodied adults under 50 without dependents to work at least 20 hours a week, the congressman wants people to have to work until their early 60s (to be able to eat). He also wants to reduce states’ abilities to make exceptions as they see fit. “Work is the best pathway out of poverty,” Johnson declared in a press release. “With more than 11 million open jobs, there are plenty of opportunities for SNAP recipients to escape poverty and build a better life.”
Meanwhile, Representative Chip Roy has said the House Freedom Caucus—an extremely conservative faction of House Republicans that Speaker Kevin McCarthy is currently beholden to—would also like to see work requirements for Medicaid, the federal program that provides health care for low-income households.
As HuffPost notes, all of this comes as Republicans are in a battle with Joe Biden over spending, with the GOP threatening to hold up an increase to the government’s borrowing limit if the president doesn‘t bow to its demands. Should the government be unable to borrow money, it would not be able to pay its bills, and a default would likely lead to a massive financial crisis. So Biden is in a not-great spot.
As for the cuts Republicans are calling for, HuffPost also points out that tightening “eligibility for a relatively small number of SNAP recipients wouldn’t have much effect on the federal budget, since the entire SNAP program amounts to about 2% of U.S. annual spending.” And yet, you know who it would have a big effect on? The people who would suddenly be unable to eat.
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The International Criminal Court said Friday it has issued an arrest warrant for Putin and his children's rights commissioner for possible war crimes. (photo: Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik)
The arrest warrant relates to allegations of war crimes in Ukraine.
In a statement, the ICC said Putin was allegedly responsible for unlawfully deporting Ukrainian children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia, a war crime.
“The crimes were allegedly committed in Ukrainian occupied territory at least from 24 February 2022. There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Putin bears individual criminal responsibility for the aforementioned crimes,” the statement from ICC judges said.
An arrest warrant has also been issued for Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s children’s commissioner, over the same allegations.
It was reported earlier this week by the New York Times and Reuters that the prosecutor at the ICC would ask pre-trial judges to approve arrest warrants over the allegations of mass abduction of Ukrainian children following last year’s invasion.
These are the first ICC warrants issued in relation to the invasion.
Russia is not a member of the ICC and is not about to hand Putin or Lvova-Belova over to the court in The Hague, in the Netherlands.
In 2008, Omar al-Bashir, then the president of Sudan, became the first sitting head of state to be served with an arrest warrant by the ICC. The Sudanese government of the day did not recognise the warrant or the court. However after Al-Bashir was overthrown following large-scale protests in 2019, Sudanese authorities said they would hand him over to the ICC.
In theory, any country that is a signatory to the Rome Statute which established the ICC has a duty to arrest Putin, but he is extremely unlikely to travel to any of these countries.
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'Countries outside the west have an interest in defending the principle that sovereignty should be respected.' (photo: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA)
Two Decades Later, It Feels as if the US Is Trying to Forget the Iraq War Ever Happened
Stephen Wertheim, Guardian UK
Wertheim writes: "Two decades ago, the United States invaded Iraq, sending 130,000 US troops into a sovereign country to overthrow its government. Joe Biden, then chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, voted to authorize the war, a decision he came to regret."
In framing the Ukraine war as a fight between democracy and autocracy, Biden shows that the US hasn’t learned from Iraq
Today another large, world-shaking invasion is under way. Biden, now the US president, recently traveled to Warsaw to rally international support for Ukraine’s fight to repel Russian aggression. After delivering his remarks, Biden declared: “The idea that over 100,000 forces would invade another country – since world war II, nothing like that has happened.”
The president spoke these words on 22 February, within a month of the 20th anniversary of the US military’s opening strike on Baghdad. The White House did not attempt to correct Biden’s statement. Reporters do not appear to have asked about it. The country’s leading newspapers, the New York Times and Washington Post, ran stories that quoted Biden’s line. Neither of them questioned its veracity or noted its hypocrisy.
Did the Iraq war even happen?
While Washington forgets, much more of the world remembers. The flagrant illegality of bypassing the United Nations: this happened. The attempt to legitimize “pre-emption” (really prevention, a warrant to invade countries that have no plans to attack anyone): this mattered, including by handing the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, a pretext he has used. Worst of all was the destruction of the Iraqi state, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and nearly 4,600 US service members, and radiating instability and terrorism across the region.
The Iraq war wasn’t the only law- or country-breaking military intervention launched by the US and its allies in recent decades. Kosovo, Afghanistan and Libya form a tragic pattern. But the Iraq war was the largest, loudest and proudest of America’s violent debacles, the most unwarranted, and the least possible to ignore. Or so it would seem. Biden’s statement is only the latest in a string of attempts by US leaders to forget the war and move on.
Barack Obama, who came into the White House vowing to end the “mindset” that brought America into Iraq, decided that ending the war was good enough. “Now, it’s time to turn the page,” he said upon ordering the withdrawal of US forces from the country in 2011. Three years later, he sent troops back to Iraq to fight the Islamic State, which had risen out of the chaos of the invasion and civil war. It fell to Donald Trump to harness public outrage over not only the war but also the refusal of elites to hold themselves accountable and make policy changes commensurate with the scale of the disaster.
Tempting though it is to look forward, not backward, the two are not mutually exclusive. And it might not be possible to reach a better future without understanding and appreciating why past attempts failed.
Ukrainians are now paying part of the price for western misdeeds. Russia’s invasion was an act of blatant aggression. Moscow violated the UN charter and seeks to annex territory as part of an explicitly imperial project (in this respect unlike America’s war in Iraq). Few people outside Russia have genuine enthusiasm for Putin’s effort. Yet, much of the world sees the conflict as a proxy war between Russia and the west rather than a fight for sovereignty and freedom.
According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, approximately 58% of the world’s population (excluding the two direct belligerents) lives in countries that are either neutral toward the war or lean toward Russia’s side. Over the past year, support for the west’s position has shrunk rather than grown: a handful of countries initially critical of Russia have shifted toward neutrality. Just last month, 39 countries did not support a UN resolution demanding that Russia withdraw its forces from Ukraine. Those that took a neutral stance, including China and India, represented an estimated 62% of the population of the global south.
Russia has not become the international pariah that western leaders claim it to be. Its economy has mostly weathered international sanctions, in part because the only countries willing to impose them are wealthy strategic partners of the US.
In this context, the White House should think about the message that Biden sent the world when he acted as though the war in Iraq never happened. When the US commits aggression, he implied, America’s misdeeds do not count. Or perhaps, in saying that “since world war II, nothing like that has happened”, Biden was thinking only of Europe but neglected to say so – in which case he treated the west’s history as synonymous with the world’s, effacing the experience of most of humanity. Either way, Biden conveyed that support for Ukraine is mere power politics, not a principled cause in which all countries have a stake.
Hypocrisy alone is not the problem. Hypocrisy is all around us. What matters is whether we are working to build a better world.
When Biden memory-holes the obvious, he is not doing so. He is perpetuating the hegemonic project that brought the US into Iraq in the first place. He sends a similar message when he routinely frames the Ukraine war as a struggle of democracy against autocracy – as though countries deserve support against an unprovoked invasion only if the nature of their government meets with Washington’s approval.
Countries outside the west have an interest in defending the principle that sovereignty should be respected. They have no interest in defending the principle that sovereignty is conditional. If Washington still claims the right to judge who is sovereign, then has it really renounced the right invade Iraq after all?
The US should admit past errors frankly and demonstrate, through words and deeds, that it has learned difficult lessons. No time is too late to build a better world. But even as the US takes the right side of the latest war, it is far from clear what lessons it has learned.
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Studies Weekly, whose curriculum reaches 45,000 schools, went to extreme lengths to avoid mentions of race. (photo: Peacock)
Studies Weekly, whose curriculum reaches 45,000 schools, went to extreme lengths to avoid mentions of race
The crude update follows a push by the Florida governor to place a widespread ban on the teaching of topics deemed related to Critical Race Theory (CRT), and the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Although a judge recently denied a request from Florida’s government to block an injunction against DeSantis’ “Stop-Woke” act in the state’s public colleges, DeSantis’ administration rejected dozens of math books—claiming some contained CRT. In January, Florida blocked the College Board from testing a pilot Advanced Placement African American Studies (APAAS).
In the lesson by Studies Weekly used in elementary schools today, segregation is clearly defined: “The law said African Americans had to give up their seats on the bus if a white person wanted to sit down.” But in the initial version created for Florida’s review, the lesson reads: “She was told to move to a different seat because of the color of her skin.” And in the second updated version, race is removed completely: “She was told to move to a different seat.”
While NYT reports that it’s unclear which of the alternate versions were submitted for state review, the second update—which includes no mention of race—was posted on the publisher’s website until last week.
The company also made “similar changes to a fourth-grade lesson about segregation laws that arose after the Civil War,” according to the report. While the initial version for the textbook review refers to African Americans and explains how they were impacted by Jim Crow, the second version deletes mentions of race. In the second update, it simply states that it was illegal for “men of certain groups” to be unemployed and that “certain groups of people” were not allowed to serve on a jury.
While the publisher has since taken down its fact-less version of history and withdrawn from the state’s review following inquires from NYT, potential profit losses may coax them to offer another revision to DeSantis’ chopping block.
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Members of South Carolina's Freedom Caucus, a group of the General Assembly's most conservative members, held a press conference in the State House lobby on Feb. 28, 2023. (photo: Fox 57)
South Carolina’s Freedom Caucus is one of eleven such groups in state legislatures across the country. Funded by right-wing dark money, they’ve shown an obsession with enforcing their own bizarre hang-ups over race and gender.
A handful of lawmakers had proposed a bill (H. 3868) to designate the second Saturday of November as “Women in Hunting and Fishing Awareness Day.” This is the kind of frivolous nonsense that pads out the horrors of every legislative season — but we haven’t gotten to the asinine part yet.
Rep. R. J. May III, a Lexington County Republican and vice chair of the state’s hard-right “Freedom Caucus,” rose to propose an amendment. He looked a little nervous as he rose to speak, the way an honor roll kid might rise to sass his teacher.
“Thank you, Mr. Speaker,” May said. “Uh, simply, we are defining what a woman is. Uh, for the purpose of this section, ‘women’ means individuals whose sex at birth was female.”
Everyone could see what Rep. May was doing. He was making an impish jab at transgender people, just another small indignity in a national campaign to eradicate transgender people from public life.
House Republicans overwhelmingly went along with May’s gimmick, and a motion to table the amendment failed 24-86. So Women in Hunting and Fishing Awareness Day was placed in limbo pending further debate, and May’s caucus pulled off a cheap stunt at the expense of my transgender friends and neighbors in South Carolina.
When I say this was an asinine spectacle, I don’t mean that the parties involved were unintelligent. As a policy I assume that the conservatives running my state have a basic level of cunning, even when their strategy involves outwardly oafish stunts like this one. I mean the word in the original sense, that the people in question are prone to braying like asses.
“Democrats and RINOs then tried to table the amendment. . . ” the SC Freedom Caucus account crowed on Twitter afterward. “Evidently they aren’t sure what a woman is. . .”
Living in a state under single-party rule, I confess I sometimes get a thrill out of watching factions and rifts open up within the ruling party. When the factions attack one another over shades of difference in their cruelty, I savor the moment — but I also recognize that these shades of difference are significant, and they can be exploited.
So, in the spirit of knowing one’s enemy, here’s what I could find out about the South Carolina Freedom Caucus.
The South Carolina Freedom Caucus is the largest of eleven state-level caucuses like it, counting twenty members in the South Carolina House of Representatives.
It’s part of the State Freedom Caucus Network, which launched in December 2021 under the aegis of Tea Party granddaddy Jim DeMint’s Conservative Partnership Institute.
The members of this caucus are, from what I can tell, obsessed with enforcing their own hang-ups regarding race and gender. They’re a young-ish group with few legislative wins under their belt, but they make a lot of noise.
Legislative priorities for the caucus members this year include:
- Censoring teachers and defunding public schools through punitive bans on “prohibited concepts,” such as privilege and gender identity (H. 3728)
- Ensuring that the representatives of church-operated childcare centers are from “registered faith-based centers” (H. 3745)
- Vehemently opposing the Clementa C. Pinckney Hate Crimes Act (H. 3014), which would finally provide penalties for hate crimes in South Carolina
- Blocking a bill defining antisemitism (H. 3686) on the grounds that it might sneak anti-bias and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training into the state
Here’s a list of who they’re currently suing:
- Lexington County School District 1, for the alleged inclusion of “critical race theory” and “liberal indoctrination” in a successful literacy curriculum from a company called EL (Expeditionary Learning). They are doing this after releasing a doctored sting video of a curriculum provider talking about “culturally relevant pedagogy,” which they see as a bad thing.
- Charleston County School District (full disclosure, I have three kids attending school in this district), for the same reason.
- The South Carolina House Ethics Committee, whose Republican members they say are “muzzling” them by refusing to recognize them as a legislative caucus. Freedom Caucus chair Rep. Adam Morgan said in a news conference about the lawsuit that his group wants the right to “raise money, hire staff, [and] openly endorse candidates.”
The SC Freedom Caucus has enough members to force roll-call votes, but not enough to take the steering wheel of the state’s Republican supermajority. They’ve ruffled the feathers of the more genteel leadership in their party, including House Speaker Murrell Smith, who has said he wants to “enforce respect and decorum” in the statehouse chambers.
“This is just about self-promotion for the sake of their own egos,” mainline Republican Rep. Micah Caskey groused to the Charleston City Paper recently.
I don’t want to overstate the size of the rift. Many of the politicians decrying the SC Freedom Caucus’s tactics fundamentally agree with them on policy. But in a state where Democrats can only call foul from the sidelines, it’s worth considering the power dynamics at play within the Republican Party.
The risk is that, like the Tea Party before it, the Freedom Caucus might succeed in dragging its host party further to the right. The risk is especially pronounced because the Freedom Caucus has a mountain of dark money behind it.
For that, we can thank former senator Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican. Since leaving the Senate and doing a stint leading the Heritage Foundation, DeMint has built an entire ecosystem of dark-money nonprofits under his Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), which reported $45.7 million in revenue on its IRS filing from 2021.
CPI is an umbrella organization whose other subsidiary groups include the American Accountability Foundation, America First Legal, Center for Renewing America, American Cornerstone Institute, American Moment, and the Election Integrity Network. In addition to its connection with the usual morass of Republican megadonors, it has at least one strong tie to Trumpworld.
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, currently under investigation after being caught pressuring Georgia election officials to throw the 2020 election for Donald Trump, joined the leadership of CPI in January 2021. In December 2021, the day after the House January 6 Committee recommended Meadows be held in criminal contempt of Congress, Meadows flew to Atlanta to attend the launch gala for the State Freedom Caucus Network. This is clearly an important project for him, made all the more ominous by the prominence of the Tenth Amendment (you know, the “states’ rights” one) on the SFCN website.
The members of the various state freedom caucuses may give the appearance of terminally online clout chasers. Maybe they are, in part. But we have to take them seriously because they have an extreme agenda and a pile of cash to back it up.
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A protester throws cardboard to feed burning pallets during a demonstration at Concorde square near the National Assembly in Paris, Thursday, March 16, 2023. (photo: Thomas Padilla/AP)
His calculated risk set off a clamor among lawmakers, who began singing the national anthem even before Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne arrived in the lower chamber. She spoke forcefully over their shouts, acknowledging that Macron’s unilateral move will trigger quick motions of no-confidence in his government.
The fury of opposition lawmakers echoed the anger of citizens and workers’ unions. Thousands gathered at the Place de la Concorde facing the National Assembly, lighting a bonfire. As night fell, police charged the demonstrators in waves to clear the elegant Place. Small groups of those chased away moved through nearby streets in the chic neighborhood setting street fires. At least 120 were detained, police said.
Similar scenes repeated themselves in numerous other cities, from Rennes and Nantes in the east to Lyon and the southern port city of Marseille, where shop windows and bank fronts were smashed, according to French media. Radical leftist groups were blamed for at least some of the destruction.
The unions that have organized strikes and marches since January, leaving Paris reeking in piles of garbage, announced new rallies and protest marches in the days ahead. “This retirement reform is brutal, unjust, unjustified for the world of workers,” they declared.
Macron has made the proposed pension changes the key priority of his second term, arguing that reform is needed to keep the pension system from diving into deficit as France, like many richer nations, faces lower birth rates and longer life expectancy.
Macron decided to invoke the special power during a Cabinet meeting at the Elysee presidential palace, just a few minutes before the scheduled vote in France’s lower house of parliament, because he had no guarantee of a majority.
“Today, uncertainty looms” about whether a majority would have voted for the bill, Borne acknowledged, but she said “We cannot gamble on the future of our pensions. That reform is necessary.”
Borne prompted boos from the opposition when she said her government is accountable to the parliament. Lawmakers can try to revoke the changes through no-confidence motions, she said.
“There will actually be a proper vote and therefore the parliamentary democracy will have the last say,” Borne said.
She said in an interview Thursday night on the TV station TF1 that she was not angry when addressing disrespectful lawmakers but “very shocked.”
“Certain (opposition lawmakers) want chaos, at the Assembly and in the streets,” she said.
Opposition lawmakers demanded the government step down. One Communist lawmaker called the presidential power a political “guillotine.” Others called it a “denial of democracy” that signals Macron’s lack of legitimacy.
Marine Le Pen said her far-right National Rally party would file a no-confidence motion, and Communist lawmaker Fabien Roussel said such a motion is “ready” on the left.
“The mobilization will continue,” Roussel said. “This reform must be suspended.”
The leader of The Republicans, Eric Ciotti, said his party won’t “add chaos to chaos” by supporting a no-confidence motion, but some of his fellow conservatives at odds with the party’s leadership could vote individually.
A no-confidence motion, expected early next week, needs approval by more than half the Assembly. If it passes — which would be a first since 1962 — the government would have to resign. Macron could reappoint Borne if he chooses, and a new Cabinet would be named.
If no-confidence motions don’t succeed, the pension bill would be considered adopted.
The Senate adopted the bill earlier Thursday in a 193-114 vote, a tally largely expected since the conservative majority of the upper house favored the changes.
Raising the retirement age will make workers put more money into the system, which the government says is on course to run a deficit. Macron has promoted the pension changes as central to his vision for making the French economy more competitive. The reform also would require 43 years of work to earn a full pension.
Leftist leader Jean-Luc Melenchon told the crowd at the Concorde that Macron has gone “over the heads of the will of the people.” Members of Melenchon’s France Unbowed party were foremost among the lawmakers singing the Marseillese in an attempt to thwart the prime minister.
Economic challenges have prompted widespread unrest across Western Europe, where many countries, like France, have had low birthrates, leaving fewer young workers to sustain pensions for retirees. Spain’s leftist government joined with labor unions Wednesday to announce a “historic” deal to save its pension system.
Spain’s Social Security Minister José Luis Escrivá said the French have a very different, unsustainable model and “has not addressed its pension system for decades.” Spain’s workers already must stay on the job until at least 65 and won’t be asked to work longer — instead, their new deal increases employer contributions for higher-wage earners.
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A derailed BNSF train on the Swinomish tribal reservation near Anacortes, Washington, on Thursday. (photo: Washington Department of Ecology)
Officials said there were no indications the spill reached the water or affected any wildlife.
No injuries were reported. It wasn’t clear what caused either derailment.
The derailment in Washington occurred on a berm along Padilla Bay, on the Swinomish tribal reservation near Anacortes. Most of 5,000 gallons of spilled diesel fuel leaked on the land side of the berm rather than toward the water, according to the state Ecology Department.
Officials said there were no indications the spill reached the water or affected any wildlife.
Responders placed a boom along the shoreline as a precaution and removed the remaining fuel from two locomotives that derailed. Four tank cars remained upright.
The derailment in western Arizona, near the state’s border with California and Nevada, involved a train carrying corn syrup. A spokeswoman for the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office, Anita Mortensen, said that she was not aware of any spills or leaks.
BNSF spokeswoman Lena Kent said an estimated eight cars derailed in Arizona and were blocking the main track. The cause of the derailment was under investigation, and it was not immediately known when the track will reopen.
The derailments came amid heightened attention to rail safety nationwide following a fiery derailment last month in Ohio and a string of derailments since then that have been grabbing headlines, including ones in Michigan, Alabama and other states.
The U.S. averages about three train derailments per day, according to federal data, but relatively few create disasters.
Last month, a Norfolk Southern freight train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, near the Pennsylvania border, igniting a fire and causing hundreds of people to be evacuated.
Officials seeking to avoid an uncontrolled blast intentionally released and burned toxic vinyl chloride from five rail cars, sending flames and black smoke high into the sky. That left people questioning the potential health impacts even as authorities maintained they were doing their best to protect people.
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