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Thursday, March 23, 2023
POLITICO NIGHTLY: TikTok’s hearing from hell
FOCUS: Ruth Ben-Ghiat | Ron DeSantis, Devoid of Charisma, Builds a Leader Cult on Instagram
23 March 23
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Do you need charisma to succeed as an authoritarian? Not always
Do you need charisma to succeed as an authoritarian? Not always. General Francisco Franco had little before he became head of state in 1939; General Augusto Pinochet, who became dictator after the U.S.-backed 1973 military coup in Chile, had even less. "He was a man in the second row, a man you did not notice," a retired Chilean general told the American journalist Mary Helen Spooner. As for Russian President Vladimir Putin, the former intelligence officer blended into a crowd by design. “Everyone could invest this gray, ordinary man with what they wanted to see in him,” as Masha Gessen notes.
The strongman's secret is that he works hard to develop that ineffable charismatic glow. In the 1920s, when he was trying and failing to get to power, Adolf Hitler hired Heinrich Hoffman to photograph him rehearsing hand gestures as he figured out how to stand out as a speaker. Voice lessons he took with the actor Emil Jannings also paid off.
Even Trump's easy performances, which have been key to the bonds he forges with followers, are the product of decades of practice. New York Times photographer Doug Mills, whose photo sessions with three decades' worth of U.S. presidents usually lasted just a few minutes, found that his sessions with Trump took "up to 90 minutes" because Trump was so "camera-conscious" and attentive to every detail of his image.
The history of authoritarian personality cults is useful for understanding the evolution of the DeSantis leader image as it is presented on Instagram. As he positions himself as a presidential contender, the governor trails in polls against Trump, even in Florida. It doesn’t help that he is wooden in public. This is a function of his coldness, his autocratic character, and the insecurity that his bullying is meant to cover up. Yet he's gaining confidence in front of the camera as he's grown from a sycophant under Trump's thumb (he ran for governor in 2018 as a "pitbull Trump defender") to his own (strong)man who is a thorn in Trump's side.
Since the days of Benito Mussolini, authoritarian personality cult canons dictate that the leader must be received as a man of the people as well as a man above all other men. Followers of the DeSantis governor persona on Instagram cannot have missed the photos of the governor posing with the people, standing next to employees of Florida bakeries, restaurants, and small businesses.
Those egalitarian images, which depict DeSantis as visually on the same level as his constituents, now share space with photographs of DeSantis in presidential setups (flags, seals) and often above the human fray. These leader photos have increased as he has exerted more executive overreach over the Florida legislature and state agencies, emerging as a mini-autocrat who requires loyalty at all times, in the Trump manner. The continuous use of children as props is part of this elevation of his authority. Any adult who could be a rival is off-screen. He alone occupies center stage.
These "presidential" images are notable because they stand out from his more typical leadership stylings, which are also used by many other politicians and by military commanders, in which he's flanked by emergency, disaster relief, or law enforcement personnel.
Unsurprisingly, given DeSantis’s seeming desire to turn Florida into a replica of Viktor Orbán's illiberal Hungary, we also see some experimentations with authoritarian aesthetics, such as when he is photographed from the back, dominating space as he gazes upon crowds or sports arenas.
DeSantis's new persona owes much to Trump's, starting with his hand gestures (although he still doesn't always know what to do with his hands, as in this "presidential" compilation video posted on his Instagram a week ago). That imitation is appropriate, given that DeSantis and Trump are two expressions of the same extremist agenda to wreck democracy, protect White Christians, persecute LGBTQ communities, and suppress the rights and erase the histories of non-whites.
Yet DeSantis would convert America to autocracy in his own manner: less noisy insurrection, more weaponization of the law. If the Murdoch family now lionizes him, and dozens of billionaires have donated to him, it's because he is seen as being able to get the job done with less emotion and less drama.
As Jason Stanley argued in December 2021, American fascism was entering its "legal phase," with extremist agendas and ideological fanaticism enshrined in law. DeSantis, who is a lawyer by training, knows that what far-right elites behind him crave now is less a showboating figure, all bluster and charisma, than a cold and calculating bureaucrat. That DeSantis can easily deliver.
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David Remnick | The Curtain Rises on Trump's Legal Dramas
23 March 23
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rump is shrewd enough to reap political gain if he is indicted this week. But his strategy of playing the martyr may have run its course.
On Saturday morning, at seven-twenty-six to be precise, came word from Trump suggesting that he would be indicted by a grand jury in Manhattan on charges related to his alleged intimate affections, falling-out, and subsequent financial arrangements with the actress Stormy Daniels. Trump posted the message on Truth Social, his social-media site, in thundering capital letters: “THE FAR … AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE … FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” He seemed almost to brag about the possibility of indictment—an assertion of his continuing relevance and centrality. At the same time, with his call to arms, he deliberately aroused memories of the Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021, which he did so much to organize and incite.
Trump lives in a state of constant auto-excitement. If he is not at the center of things, he is dead. Traditionally, former Presidents take differing but familiar roads: Jimmy Carter chose the path of pure service, as near to selflessness as one could imagine; nearly all the rest find ways to make a fortune, take up golf, and manage their historical reputations. They retreat. Trump, of course, moves ever forward, a white shark leading a white movement. He is undeterred by rejections, impeachments, abandonments by former allies, and multiple legal threats. He wants only to return to the White House, where he would assemble an Administration of the vengeful; and, if he cannot win, he will at least enjoy the pleasures of remaining at the center of things for a while longer.
While he campaigns and devises new nicknames for his Republican rival Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump faces potential prosecution on multiple fronts: the case in New York, for which his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, was already convicted and served time in federal prison; his central role in inciting the January 6th insurrection and obstructing the certification of the Electoral College votes; and the attempt to commit election fraud in Georgia. There is also the matter of his handling of classified documents, which led to the F.B.I. search of his residence at Mar-a-Lago, and his potential role in any financial crime committed at his business, the Trump Organization.
Just because Trump said he is going to be arrested Tuesday does not mean it is true. But when Trump was recently given the opportunity to testify before a grand jury, in Manhattan, that was indeed a signal that indictment could be imminent. According to NBC News, officials in New York have been meeting to put in place adequate security measures in and around the Manhattan criminal court should Trump be indicted. Trump no longer commands the platform of the White House to mobilize supporters in the way he did two years ago: “Will be wild!” But he finds ways to get the word out.
The legal and political sources I’ve spoken with tell me that if, in fact, Trump is right and that the first indictment he faces is from the Manhattan D.A., Alvin Bragg, he is fortunate, at least in the short term. Those sources say that the Stormy Daniels case is the least significant and the weakest one facing Trump. Bragg will have to prove that the hush money provided to Daniels to cover up their affair amounts to felonious election fraud. A caveat: if indeed an indictment is coming, we do not know the specifics. Nevertheless, as the Washington Post associate editor and columnist Ruth Marcus writes, the problems with the New York case are manifold. Under state law, the hush-money payments would be only a misdemeanor. “It could rise to the level of a felony charge if prosecutors could show that Trump ordered falsification of records to conceal another crime,” she writes. But it’s unclear whether that other crime would need to be a federal offense, or whether a state offense would suffice.
Trump is shrewd enough to reap political gain if he is indicted this week in New York. Just as he played the martyr when the F.B.I. recovered classified files from Mar-a-Lago or when he was investigated, repeatedly, in Congress, he will once more complain that he, like his loyal followers, is the victim of élite disdain and persecution.
But this strategy of martyrdom is unlikely to prevail. Time will run out for Trump, be it in Georgia, at the Department of Justice, or, if it goes on that long, at the ballot box. It’s not even clear that the most vociferous of the pro-Trump groups such as the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters, which have endured intense investigation and legal charges for their roles in the Capitol insurrection, will be eager to take to the streets again in Trump’s name. Recently, Ali Alexander, one of the organizers of the Stop the Steal rallies that followed the 2020 election, posted on social media, “Previously, I had said if Trump was arrested or under the threat of a perp walk, 100,000 patriots should shut down all routes to Mar-a-Lago. Now, I’m retired. I’ll pray for him though!”
Ukrainian soldiers test-fire a T-64 tank Sunday in a field in the Donetsk region. (photo: Heidi Levine/The Washington Post)
But while President Biden has pledged to stand with Kyiv “for as long as it takes,” Ukrainian officials, Western diplomats and analysts warn that the help is simply taking too long. As both sides gird for a spring fighting season that could tilt the outcome of the war, Ukraine still lacks the force strength and weapons to fully expel the Russian invaders from its territory.
The announcement of fighter jets was highly symbolic and loudly applauded in Kyiv, but the Soviet-era planes are of limited use given the nature of the war, largely a close-range artillery fight in which neither side controls the skies. The Abrams tanks will add major armored muscle but won’t arrive until fall — some six months after an anticipated spring Ukrainian counteroffensive.
“What’s clear is that time is on Russia’s side, meaning it has the soldiers and materiel to grind out a long war along a massive front,” said Rachel Rizzo, an analyst in the Atlantic Council’s Europe program. “Ukraine doesn’t have that advantage. … If weapons aren’t delivered fast enough, it makes it extremely difficult for Ukraine to push back against Russian gains.”
Delays aren’t the only challenge. Despite the professions of Western support, other key items on Ukraine’s weapons wish list remain unfulfilled. Kyiv is asking for everything from sophisticated equipment, such as American F-16 fighter jets and longer-range rocket artillery, to basic ammunition, especially shells for its existing Soviet-era tanks and artillery pieces.
Publicly, Ukraine’s leaders are projecting confidence, and voicing gratitude. “We expect increased supplies of exactly what we need,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said this week. “And we need it right now.”
Some of Kyiv’s supporters are clearly stepping up. Britain confirmed this week that it is sending Ukraine tank munitions with depleted uranium, rebuffing claims from Russian President Vladimir Putin that such shells have “a nuclear component.” The heavy metal aids in piercing tanks and other armor.
Germany, which initially equivocated over whether it would release Leopard tanks to Ukraine, now hopes to pull together two Leopard 2 battalions — totaling about 70 tanks, though repairs and checks still needed to be carried out on many of those vehicles, which were built in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
At the same time, there are palpable concerns that the West dithered too long.
“The side with more resources arriving faster has the upper hand on the battlefield,” said Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. “Artillery ammunition is the highest priority. … The faster we get more shells, the more Ukrainian lives will be saved; the more effective Ukrainian defense and counteroffensive operations, the sooner Ukraine will be able to end this war and restore peace through decisive battlefield victories.”
Estonia’s ambassador to Ukraine, Kaimo Kuusk, said allies should have provided “more and faster … [the] day before yesterday. But complaining will not change the past.” He added: “We should help Ukraine to change the future, at the moment.”
The Kremlin has denounced the United States and its allies for supplying weapons to Ukraine, angrily insisting that they are merely prolonging the conflict and delaying Russia’s inevitable victory.
Defenders of the incremental strategy say the West did as much as it could while successfully avoiding direct conflict with Russia, even though the approach undeniably cost Ukraine more casualties. The spring counteroffensive — intended to take back a large chunk of territory occupied by Russia — could prove a decisive test.
Ukraine is holding back certain soldiers from the bloodiest front lines in the country’s east, where neither side has made notable territorial gains recently. Those troops will make up newly assembled assault brigades, and many have been receiving training abroad on new equipment that Western countries have promised to Ukraine.
Kyiv, for instance, is creating special battalions for the fighting vehicles and tanks that Western nations are providing, officials said. A battalion organized around U.S.-provided Bradleys will have about 30 of the fighting vehicles.
But even those already pledged supplies could face further delays if supply lines and transport hubs are overwhelmed by equipment deliveries, potentially giving Russia an upper hand.
One European diplomat expressed hope that after the announcements by Poland and Slovakia, other supporters would also supply aircraft. “Polish jets’ main significance: breaking a glass ceiling — showing that giving fighter planes is not a taboo, and will not lead to a World War III,” the diplomat said.
But at a House hearing last month, Pentagon policy chief Colin Kahl rejected suggestions that Ukraine would be more successful in the short term if the United States granted its requests for F-16s. Manufacture and delivery of new planes would take many years, he said, and even shipment of existing aircraft would take at least 18 months, as would training of Ukrainian personnel.
Supplying even half the number of requested planes, he added, would also be overly expensive, and U.S. officials have stressed that extensive air defenses on both sides have made combat aircraft of limited value to Ukraine and Russia alike.
But in an interview with The Washington Post in February, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s ground forces commander, said the main value of modern fighters such as F-16s is their long-range strike capability. Russian forces have adjusted to Ukraine’s use of the U.S.-provided High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, which has a range of about 50 miles, by moving many of their ammunition depots and logistical bases beyond that distance, Syrsky said.
“If we are talking about aviation, we are not talking about aircraft as such. We are talking about aviation platforms with a specific set of missiles, long-range missiles,” Syrsky said. “An increase in range will automatically move the front line, and the enemy’s capabilities will radically diminish.”
On the ground, Ukrainian tank crews have long yearned for modern battle tanks — both to give them an edge over the Russians and to better protect them if hit.
Washington’s accelerated delivery plan for the Abrams was greeted with tempered enthusiasm by leaders of the 17th Separate Tank Brigade. In an interview in the eastern Donetsk region, where he is deployed, the chief of staff for the 1st Tank Battalion, who goes by the call sign Wolf, said that “it’s relevant, but only if they’ll give more M1A2s further down the line.”
“They’re probably choosing not to give us their best weapons immediately but do it step-by-step,” Wolf said, referring to the Pentagon’s decision to send the older model M1A1 Abrams tanks faster instead of providing the more advanced variant, which could have taken a year or more to build.
For now, the Ukrainians are operating with a hodgepodge of their own Soviet-era equipment and armor captured from the Russians.
The T-64, a workhorse of the Ukrainian tank fleet, was fielded in the 1960s, and tanks built on the model have since received better armor and electronics. But soldiers said even those upgrades cannot compete with Western tanks like the Abrams, which are dripping in technology like advanced optics.
For Ukraine, one advantage of older tanks like the T-64 and T-72 over Western systems is that crews and mechanics know how to use and maintain them. One soldier said a T-64 can be fixed quickly with “[crud] on a stick,” using an expletive to describe how soldiers make repairs in the field with few resources.
By contrast, the Abrams carries a high logistical burden, the Pentagon has said, with officials expressing concern that the Ukrainians will struggle with support and maintenance. “The Abrams tank is a very complicated piece of equipment,” Kahl told reporters in January. “It’s expensive. It’s hard to train on. It has a jet engine. I think it’s about three gallons to the mile of jet fuel. It is not the easiest system to maintain.”
Rizzo said that even if the United States moves to deliver the Abrams as fast as possible, “we just don’t know where this war will be six months from now.”
Some officials and diplomats acknowledge that the West’s strategy has come at a cost to Ukraine, but say it also reflected the political realities of mustering a broad, international coalition.
“I’m sure it would have been nice to be where we are now six months ago,” Mark Gitenstein, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, told journalists late last month. “And I think it would have made a difference. But I don’t think it was possible to move it any faster than [Biden] was able to move it. And he had to bring the American people along, too.”
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Conservative Daniel Kelly is a Trump ally who provided legal support to an effort by Wisconsin Republicans to overturn the 2020 election results through the use of 'fake electors'. (photo: John Hart/AP)
Democrats must throw everything they have into this race – and not neglect potentially pivotal voters of color
The question of whether Trump or another Republican election denier will have a second chance to try to disrupt a democratically decided election – and this time perhaps succeed – could be determined by this one judicial election in the midwest. Recognizing what is at stake, both sides have spent a staggering $27m so far on this race.
The election will probably be tight and every vote will count. Wisconsin is majority white, at around 80%, but the state is also at least 20% people of color, according to census data. If Democrats fail to prioritize investing in mobilizing voters of color and inspiring them to turn out to vote, they may lose.
Typically, this type of judicial election would barely register as a blip in Wisconsin, let alone gain this much national attention. But the stakes in this battleground state are sky-high, not only because Wisconsin’s future hangs in the balance when it comes to abortion, voting rights, redistricting and elections policy, but also because the judicial seat could be crucial to ensuring a fair presidential election outcome in 2024.
In 2020, the Wisconsin supreme court rejected by a one-vote margin an effort by Trump allies to challenge the election result. The state’s seven-member court has been controlled by conservatives since 2008, and the winner of this race will serve a 10-year term.
The progressive Milwaukee county circuit judge Janet Protasiewicz is up against conservative Daniel Kelly, a former state supreme court justice who lost his seat in 2020. Kelly is a Trump ally who provided legal support to an effort by Republicans to overturn the 2020 election results through the use of “fake electors”.
On the surface, Protasiewicz may seem to be in the better position, funding-wise. According to AdImpact, Protasiewicz campaign has spent $9.1m in the past few weeks on TV ads, and outside groups supporting her have spent $2m.
But forces on the right – namely conservative billionaires like Barre Seid, Trump’s “judge whisperer” Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, and the Uihleins shipping supply magnate family – are expected to inject millions for Kelly, most likely in TV ads painting Protasiewicz as soft on crime. Already $3.9m has poured in for Kelly from these and other outside funders, and there’s plenty more where that came from.
Yet Democrats might sleep on properly investing in mobilizing voters. How do we know? Because national Democrats failed to truly step up when it came time to support Mandela Barnes’s US Senate campaign last fall.
Groups on the right spent $62m on behalf of Republican Ron Johnson, compared with the left’s $41m for Barnes. The right’s $29m last-minute attacks included unabashedly racist ads against Barnes, who is Black. In the end, Johnson – a skeptic of Covid-19 who was tied to a 2020 Republican scheme to have the state’s Republican-dominated legislature choose Wisconsinites’ presidential electors – won narrowly, 50.5% to Barnes’s 49.5%.
With the fate of access to safe abortions on the line, Protasiewicz’s campaign, as well as the Democratic and progressive ecosystem at large, will understandably focus on turning out pro-choice white women voters, mostly via ads. Her campaign’s messaging is heavily centered on protecting abortion rights and painting Kelly as an anti-abortion extremist. Yet there’s reason to be concerned that very little of Protasiewicz’s campaign funds, or any money raised from the outside, will be spent on targeting and mobilizing voters of color.
According to the census, Wisconsin is about 7% Black, 3% Asian, 7.5% Latino, and 1% Native. Republicans in Wisconsin are well aware of the power of voters of color, and of the fact that they tend to vote Democratic. That’s why Wisconsin Republicans have been working hard to suppress voters of color and to create division between white voters and voters of color, especially in Milwaukee, which is home to close to 70% of the state’s Black population.
In an example of saying the quiet part out loud, the Wisconsin elections commissioner Robert Spindell, a Republican, gloated after the 2022 election about depressing Black and brown turnout in Milwaukee. Spindell was tacitly admitting that when the multiracial Obama coalition turns out, Republicans lose.
Democrats and progressives must increase investing in on-the-ground grassroots organizations with track records of turning out voters of color – especially Black voters – and fast. The work of organizations such as Souls to the Polls, Voces de la Frontera and the Workers Center for Racial Justice can make all the difference in this year’s most important election. Our democracy can’t afford to continue to overlook voters of color.
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The Silicon Valley Bank logo is seen at an open branch in Pasadena, Calif., on March 13, 2023. (photo: Damian Dovarganes)
A handful of red-state Democrats were instrumental in helping Republicans secure a rollback of banking regulations sought by then-President Donald Trump in 2018
That unlikely coalition voted in 2018 to roll back portions of a far-reaching 2010 law intended to prevent a future financial crisis. But those changes are now being blamed for contributing to the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank that prompted a federal rescue and has stoked anxiety about a broader banking contagion.
The rollback was leveraged with a lobbying campaign that cost tens of millions of dollars that drew an army of hundreds of lobbyists and it was seeded with ample campaign contributions.
The episode offers a fresh reminder of the power that bankers wield in Washington, where the industry spends prodigiously to fight regulation and often hires former members of Congress and their staff to make the case that they are not a source of risk to the economy
“The bottom line is that these banks would have faced a tougher supervisory framework under the original ... law, but Congress and the Trump regulators took an ax to it,” said Carter Dougherty, a spokesman for Americans for Financial Reform, a left-leaning financial sector watchdog group. “We can draw a direct line between the deregulation of the Trump period, driven by the bank lobby, and the chaos of the last few weeks.”
President Joe Biden has asked Congress for the authority to impose tougher penalties on failed banks. The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission have started investigations. And congressional Democrats are calling for new restrictions on financial institutions.
But so far there is no indication that another bipartisan coalition will form in Congress to put tougher regulations back in place, underscoring the banking industry's continued clout.
That influence was on full display when the banking lobby worked for two years to water down aspects of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law that had placed weighty regulations on banks designed to reduce consumer risk and force the institutions to adopt safer lending and investing practices.
Republicans had long looked to blunt the impact of Dodd-Frank. But rather than push for sweeping deregulation, Sen. Mike Crapo, an Idaho Republican who led the Senate banking committee, hoped a narrowed focus could draw enough support from moderate Democrats to clear the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold.
Crapo broached the idea with Democratic Sens. Jon Tester of Montana, Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota — all on the ballot in 2018 — as well as Mark Warner of Virginia. By the fall of that year, the bipartisan group met regularly, according to a copy of Tester’s office schedule posted to his Senate website.
A lobbying strategy also emerged, with companies and trade groups that specifically mention Crapo's legislation spending more than $400 million in 2017 and 2018, according to an Associated Press analysis of the public lobbying disclosures.
The bill was sold to the public as a form of regulatory relief for overburdened community banks, which serviced farmers and smaller businesses. Community bankers from across the U.S. flew in to Washington to meet repeatedly with lawmakers, including Tester, who had 32 meetings with Montana bank officials. Local bank leaders pushed members of their congressional delegation when they returned home.
But the measure also included provisions sought by midsize banks that drastically curtailed oversight once the Trump Fed finished writing new regulations necessitated by the bill’s passage.
Specifically, the legislation lifted the threshold for banks that faced a strict regimen of oversight, including mandatory financial stress testing.
That component, which effectively carved large midsize banks out of more stringent regulation, has come under new scrutiny in light of the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, whose executives lobbied on behalf of the 2018 rollback.
“The lobbyists were everywhere. You couldn’t throw an elbow without running into one," Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who vehemently opposed the bill, told reporters last week.
Campaign checks were written. Ads were cut. Mailers went out.
As a reward for their work, Heitkamp ($357,953), Tester ($302,770) and Donnelly ($265,349) became the top Senate recipients of money from the banking industry during the 2018 campaign season, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan group tracking money in politics.
Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer freed members to vote for the bill, a move intended to bolster the standing of vulnerable moderate incumbents. But the move also bitterly divided the Democratic caucus, with Warren singling out the moderates as doing Wall Street's bidding.
In the hours before the bill passed the Senate with 17 Democratic votes, Heitkamp took to the chamber floor to inveigh against the “diatribe,” “hyperbole” and “overstatement” from opponents of the bill.
Tester, meanwhile, huddled with executives from Bank of America, Citigroup, Discover and Wells Fargo, who were there on behalf of the American Bankers Association, according to his publicly available office schedule.
The American Bankers Association, which helped lead the push, later paid $125,000 for an ad campaign thanking Tester for his role in the bill’s passage, records show.
Less than a month after the bill was passed out of the Senate, Tester met Greg Becker, the CEO for the now-collapsed Silicon Valley Bank, according to his schedule. Becker specifically lobbied Congress and the Federal Reserve to take a light regulatory approach with banks of his size. Lobbyists with the firm the Franklin Square Group, which had been retained by Silicon Valley Bank, donated $10,800 to Tester's campaign, record show.
Heitkamp was the only member of the group invited to the bill signing ceremony, beaming alongside Trump. Later, Americans for Prosperity, the grassroots conservative group funded by the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers, ran an online ad commending Heitkamp for taking a stand against her party.
In an interview, Heitkamp pushed back against suggestions that the legislation was directly responsible for the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. She acknowledged, however, that there was an open question about whether new rules put in place by the Fed after the measure was signed into law could have played a role.
“I’m willing to look at the argument that this had something to do with it,” Heitkamp said, adding: “I think you will find that (the Fed) was engaged in some level of some supervision. Why that didn’t work? That’s the question that needs to be resolved.”
In a statement issued last week, Tester did not directly address his role in the legislation, but he pledged to "take on anyone in Washington to ensure that the executives at these banks and regulators are held accountable.”
Cam Fine, who led the Independent Community Bankers of America trade group during the legislative push, said the overall the bill was a good piece of legislation that offered much needed relief to struggling community banks.
But like any major piece of legislation that moves through Congress, final passage hinged on support from a broad coalition of interests — including those of Wall Street and midsize banks.
“Was it a perfect piece of legislation? No. But there’s an old saying in Washington: You can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” said Fine.
Many of the moderate Democrats who supported the measure did not fare as well.
Of the core group who wrote the bill, only Tester won reelection. Others from red states who supported it, including Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Bill Nelson of Florida, lost.
Tester will be on the ballot again in 2024. Last week he was in Silicon Valley for a fundraiser.
One of the event's sponsors was a partner at a law firm for Silicon Valley Bank.
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Brandon Johnson, one of the two candidates in the runoff election for Chicago mayor, in Selma, Ala., this month. (photo: Andi Rice/The New York Times)
Brandon Johnson, a county commissioner who once taught in struggling neighborhoods, soared in the polls after an endorsement and donations from the Chicago Teachers Union.
But he had something those other contenders did not: the Chicago Teachers Union.
Loved and loathed, the teachers’ union has emerged over the last dozen years as a defining voice on Chicago’s political left, putting forth a progressive vision for the city that extends well beyond its classrooms. After highly public fights with the last two mayors that led to work stoppages, union leaders see in Mr. Johnson a chance to elect one of their own, a former teacher who shares a goal of rebuilding Chicago by spending more on schools and social programs.
Boosted by the union’s endorsement — and perhaps more critically, its money — Mr. Johnson, a paid C.T.U. organizer since 2011, faces Paul Vallas, a former public school executive who has far more conservative views on policing and education, in an April 4 runoff. With the two finalists coming from opposite ideological ends of the Democratic Party, the runoff will test whether voters prefer Mr. Vallas’s plan to crack down on crime, hire more police officers and expand charter schools, or Mr. Johnson’s call to spend more on public education and social services, add new taxes and look to neighborhood schools as an engine for broader social change.
“Our school communities really are a microcosm of all of the political problems that exist,” said Mr. Johnson, who taught social studies to middle schoolers in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green public housing complex, and who frequently refers to the time a student raised her hand and told him that he should be teaching at a good school, not hers.
“It was in that moment where I recognized how much our system has failed, where our students and our families can recognize quality, but do not believe that they deserve it,” Mr. Johnson said in an interview. “And so where I am today is the result of that moment.”
Mr. Johnson, who is on leave from his job with the teachers’ union, entered the field in October with low name recognition and a daunting path to electoral relevance. One early poll showed him with about 3 percent support. But as the weeks went by, he shot up in the polls, introducing himself to voters with 15-second TV spots and surprising competitors who focused their early attack lines on better-known candidates.
Mr. Johnson, 46, who is Black, came in second in a first round of balloting last month. He performed especially well in liberal, mostly white wards along the city’s northern lakefront and in areas northwest of downtown with large Hispanic populations. Mr. Vallas, 69, who is white, came in first place, running up large margins around downtown and also carrying majority-white areas on the Northwest and Southwest Sides.
Mr. Johnson’s rapid ascent was fueled by his gift for retail politics, a message that resonated with the city’s sizable bloc of liberal voters and large donations from labor unions. State records show that of the more than $5.6 million in contributions Mr. Johnson’s campaign reported between the start of 2022 and earlier this month, more than $5.2 million came from organized labor, including significant sums from the Chicago Teachers Union, the American Federation of Teachers, the Illinois Federation of Teachers and branches of the Service Employees International Union. Since last fall, the Chicago Teachers Union and its political action committee have contributed more than $1 million to the Johnson campaign.
Stacy Davis Gates, the president of the Chicago Teachers Union, which has more than 20,000 members, said there was no expectation that Mr. Johnson would be in lock step with the union if elected. But she said the possibility of having a mayor who understood the struggles of classroom educators and would listen to their concerns had motivated teachers to support him.
“It’s been difficult for my members over the course of these few years,” said Ms. Davis Gates, whose union engaged in work stoppages in 2012, 2019 and, after a dispute with Mayor Lori Lightfoot over Covid-19 protocols, again in 2022. “They have not been respected or treated as the stakeholder that they are in this city,” Ms. Davis Gates added. “They’re looking for partnership.”
Mr. Johnson’s close ties to the teachers’ union can be helpful: Liberal politicians covet the union’s endorsement, and in a 2019 poll reported by The Chicago Sun-Times, 62 percent of voters said they had a favorable opinion of C.T.U.
But among Vallas supporters, Mr. Johnson’s C.T.U. ties have become a point of criticism. As a C.T.U. member and organizer, Mr. Johnson helped the union exert its influence and challenge the mayor on several issues.
“He’s going to do what the union wants to be done,” said Gery Chico, who led Chicago’s school board when Mr. Vallas was the chief executive of Chicago Public Schools, and who has endorsed Mr. Vallas for mayor.
As the C.T.U.’s political influence has grown over the last 12 years — first as a chief antagonist of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who oversaw school closures, then with Ms. Lightfoot, who fought with the union about work conditions and Covid reopenings — some have questioned its role in Chicago politics. In an interview in 2021, Ms. Lightfoot suggested that both the C.T.U. and the local chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, which has endorsed Mr. Vallas and whose leaders often support Republicans, had moved beyond the traditional role of labor unions and become more overtly political, creating inevitable conflict.
Mr. Johnson, the son of a pastor, plans to end his membership in the teachers’ union if elected mayor. When asked whether there were areas where he expected to have to tell the union no, Mr. Johnson did not provide specific examples.
If elected mayor, “my responsibility is to the entire city of Chicago,” he said. “And look, I’m getting new friends every single day. And I have a bunch of old friends that we will have to have hard conversations with.”
Mr. Vallas has repeatedly criticized the C.T.U. and tied Mr. Johnson to the union’s reluctance to return to in-person instruction during the pandemic.
“Brandon was in part responsible for the shutting down of one of the poorest school systems in the country, with devastating consequences,” Mr. Vallas said during a recent debate, adding that “if you look at the crime statistics, and you look at the violence, and you look at the dislocation and declining test scores, you can see the results.”
During the campaign, Mr. Johnson has described a Chicago dogged by inequality, plagued by violence and constrained by schools that lack the resources they need. That worldview, he said, was shaped by his time in Room 309 of Jenner Academy in Cabrini-Green, where he taught from 2007 to 2010, a time when many of his students’ homes were being demolished as part of a citywide push to knock down public housing high-rises.
“The children were waking up to bulldozers — literally just bulldozers staring at us all day long,” Mr. Johnson said in an interview in Selma, Ala., where he traveled this month as a guest of the Rev. Jesse Jackson for the annual commemoration of Bloody Sunday. “And there were families where their homes had already been dismantled, so we had students who were taking two buses and a train to come back to the school.”
In Cabrini-Green, former colleagues said, Mr. Johnson was a rare Black male teacher at a school where almost all of the students were Black. He revived defunct basketball and flag football teams, gaining a reputation as a nurturing coach with a competitive streak. And he was known as an engaging but demanding teacher who asked students to dress up on days when they gave a presentation.
“The discipline that he showed and the love that he showed for the kids, the kids respected him,” said Pat Wade, a school security officer and coach who worked with Mr. Johnson in Cabrini-Green. “And they worked hard because of what he gave to them. A lot of people can’t do that.”
Mr. Jackson, a Chicagoan who has endorsed Mr. Johnson’s bid for mayor, emphasized the candidate’s record of working with children in a city where many young people lack opportunity and are caught up in the criminal justice system.
“These troubled youth in Chicago,” Mr. Jackson said, “he represents a face of hope for them.”
But Mr. Johnson has faced criticism for his views on crime, the biggest issue in the campaign. In 2020, he described defunding the police as a political goal and supported a County Board resolution to “redirect funds from policing and incarceration to public services not administered by law enforcement.”
As a candidate, Mr. Johnson has tried to distance himself from questions about defunding, and he has called for hiring more police detectives as well as increased funding for mental health services.
Mr. Johnson said he saw similarities between the criticisms he has faced on policing and those leveled against Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor, 40 years ago.
“This is not new to the city of Chicago: Yet another attack on a Black man as an elected leader who is committed to investing in people,” Mr. Johnson said.
But just as his ties to the teachers’ union have been seized on by his political opponents, skepticism about Mr. Vallas’s endorsement from the police union could provide an opening for Mr. Johnson.
Scott Lewis, a North Side resident, said he agreed with Mr. Vallas that crime was out of control. But he still planned to vote for Mr. Johnson.
“Compared to the others, he seems a little too cozy with the F.O.P. for my taste,” Mr. Lewis said of Mr. Vallas. “The police do have an important role, but I think reform is important.”
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An Iraqi family grieves after three relatives were shot dead by U.S. Marines on April 9, 2003. (photo: Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times)
In my hometown of Basra, we watched U.S.-led coalition troops surging into the city. Yet people still couldn’t believe it — that longtime dictator Saddam Hussein was gone. For it to be real, we had to wait for Baghdad to fall and only once we saw that on television did we trust this new reality. On our screens, a coalition-run TV channel called al-Hurriya, or “Freedom” in Arabic, broadcast the iconic scene of Hussein’s statue in Baghdad being demolished and the bronze face covered by an American flag.
Two decades on, we have learned that spectacle was mere propaganda, and that freedom cannot be imposed by an occupying force. And all these years later, I’m still struck by this contrast: The magnitude of what Iraqis lost — and continue to lose — and how vivid our memories are of the war, as we must deal with the repercussions in our daily lives, whereas the war has become a blurry image for Americans.
On the day the statue fell, I recalled that historic scene with a widowed neighbor in his 60s. He sarcastically portrayed it this way: “This is what would happen if you dismantled a scary toy, which kids have tried desperately to dismantle by themselves for 30 years!” For him, Hussein represented the shattered toy, and the crowds who previously would have been too afraid of him were now kicking his statute fearlessly. Weeks later, the neighbor, who had been a prominent member of Hussein’s Baath Party, knew that civilian militias were out for revenge. Before they got to him, he shot himself in his bathroom.
By then, the entire city had sunk into chaos. Masses of people roamed Basra barefoot, with happiness and tears, while searching for their missing relatives who had been detained by the Baath Party for decades. I too became enthusiastic and curious. There were rumors of underground prisons. People believed voices were coming out from the concrete walls of the Baath party offices, where their loved ones may have been trapped for decades, like ancient fossils.
Myths and truths shuffled simultaneously. I observed a real crowd of prisoners, their pale-yellow faces exposed to the sun after years of darkness. They broke out of the jails and chased people who avoided them due to their stinky smell. They kept roving, asking, “Where is the exit?” as though they were still inside.
Despite so many conflicting feelings those days, Iraqi souls were fueled by hope. If you’d asked them then what was the worst scenario they could imagine for their future, they would never have envisioned themselves where they are now. It was a moment of great expectations. The decades of tyranny by Baath men in olive uniforms were over; we supposedly were reaching the end of the tunnel, but what was a bright light at the end turned out to be a flare of a forthcoming hell.
We got the TV channel Freedom, but freedom didn’t materialize, and what followed were two decades of brutal civil wars, political turmoil, widespread corruption, sectarian tensions, looting of our history from museums and archaeological sites, interventions of adjacent countries and Islamic State’s extremist insurgency that seized a third of the country.
Under Hussein’s rule, we recited three words every morning at school: Unity, freedom, socialism.
During the first decade after the American invasion, that dictionary changed a bit. American missiles were to bring us “democracy” from the sky, while the language of suicide bombers and religious radicals took root on the earth. Each new Iraqi ministry was supplemented by a U.S. advisor, yet almost half a million people had been killed.
Iraqis became badly divided. Shrines and mosques started exploding, as sectarian checkpoints cropped up to examine your identity and figure out your sect. Hundreds of civilians were slaughtered just because their names pointed to the opposite sect. Then, in the second decade, Islamic State carried out a reign of terror in northern Iraq that included rape, abductions, executions, mass murder, extortion and seizure of state resources. In Iraq’s parliamentary system today, new mini-Saddams have emerged in national politics out of the country’s various religious and political factions, carrying on his regime’s brutal legacy.
Looking back 20 years, the invasion didn’t just change Iraq’s future, it altered the world’s memory about Iraq and its people. Once known as the home of Mesopotamia, one of the world’s early civilizations, Iraq became associated with terror. Its two legendary rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, are choking, as Iraq’s new leaders have failed to protect our water resources, and climate change threatens to run them dry. Iraqis who had the ability to leave fled to wherever they could be safe and build a life.
I came to the U.S. seven years ago; it wasn’t easy to leave my home. When I tell Americans that I’m from Iraq, they typically have negative perceptions about the country and its people, and lack basic knowledge, including place names or even where it is on the map. Often, I run into American soldiers who did a tour there. A few weeks ago, a woman told me she served in Mosul. “I helped people there,” she said, excitedly. It’s very hard for Iraqis to see the American military presence as having helped us, given what we’ve lived through.
Despite all the tragedy, our country is not broken forever. I know young activists, artists and journalists expressing themselves, even risking their lives. We’re still working on democracy, on our own terms, and we know democracy is a long process — after all, the U.S. is still working on its democracy, even after 200 years.
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Pump jacks pull up hydrocarbons in the Three Rivers oil field southwest of Vernal, near Pelican Lake and the Green River, pictured on June 14, 2019. (photo: Brian Maffly/The Salt Lake Tribune)
Since the Standing Rock protests in 2017, 19 states have passed so-called critical infrastructure laws.
Utah’s legislature passed two separate bills containing stricter penalties for tampering with or damaging critical infrastructure earlier this month. House Bill 370 makes intentionally “inhibiting or impeding the operation of a critical infrastructure facility” a first degree felony, which is punishable by five years to life in prison. A separate bill allows law enforcement to charge a person who “interferes with or interrupts critical infrastructure” with a third degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. Both bills were signed into law by the governor last week.
Of the two bills, First Amendment and criminal justice advocates are particularly concerned about HB 370 due to its breadth, the severity of penalties, and its potential to curb environmental protests. The bill contains a long list of facilities that are considered critical infrastructure including grain mills, trucking terminals, and transmission facilities used by federally licensed radio or television stations. It applies both to facilities that are operational and those under construction.
Since the bill doesn’t define activities that may be considered “inhibiting or impeding” operations at a facility, environmental protesters may inadvertently find themselves in the crosshairs of the legislation, according to environmental and civil liberties advocates. Protesters engaging in direct action often chain themselves to equipment, block roadways, or otherwise disrupt operations at fossil fuel construction sites. Under the new legislation, such activities could result in a first degree felony charge.
“This bill could be used to prohibit pipeline protests like we saw with the Dakota [Access] Pipeline project,” said Mark Moffat, an attorney with the Utah Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, referring to the 2017 protests at Standing Rock in North Dakota. “It elevates what would be basically a form of vandalism or criminal mischief under the laws of the state of Utah to a first-degree felony.”
A first-degree felony is typically reserved for violent crimes like murder and sexual assault. Moffat said that the state’s sentencing guidelines are indeterminate, which means the amount of time someone spends in prison is at the discretion of the Board of Pardons.
“When you increase these to first degree felonies, you increase the likelihood of incarceration,” said Moffat. “In my experience, those people are going to go to prison as opposed to receiving a term of probation,” he said.
Similar bills are pending in at least five other states, including Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, Idaho, and North Carolina. These bills include various misdemeanor and felony charges for trespassing, disrupting, or otherwise interfering with operations at critical infrastructure facilities.
In the last five years, 19 states (including Utah) have passed legislation that criminalize protest activity. In many states, attention-grabbing protests at pipeline construction sites, such as those over the Dakota Access Pipeline and Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline, prompted lawmakers to pass tougher penalties for trespassing, damaging equipment, and interfering with operations. The penalties ranged from a few thousand dollars in fines to several years behind bars. Many of these bills also bore a striking resemblance to model legislation developed by the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a membership organization for state lawmakers and industry representatives best known for drafting model legislation that’s later enacted by conservative states.
However, the stated justification for the Utah legislation does not seem to be past fossil fuel protests. Instead, proponents of the bill repeatedly referred to the recent spate of attacks on electrical substations in the U.S.
“Why is the bill needed? Because we’re seeing increased attempts by individuals across the country to damage critical infrastructure,” said Utah state Representative Carl Albrecht, a Republican and one of the sponsors of the bill.
In recent months, at least nine substations in North Carolina, Washington, and Oregon have been attacked, causing power outages for thousands. An analysis of federal records by the news organization Politico found that attacks on electrical equipment are at an all-time high since 2012, with more than 100 incidents in the first eight months of last year. Most recently, the FBI foiled plans by a neo-Nazi group to take down the electric grid in Baltimore, Maryland.
The Utah bill received broad support from several utilities in the state, including Dominion Energy, Deseret Power, and Rocky Mountain Power, which own and operate pipelines, power plants, substations, and transmission lines that are considered “critical infrastructure” by the bill. Jonathan Whitesides, a spokesperson for Rocky Mountain Power, said that the company has dealt with copper theft and vandalism at its electrical substations in recent months. The resulting power outage affected more than 3,500 customers.
“As an electric utility we have a commitment to provide safe and reliable power to customers, and having increased penalties for criminal activity is one piece of a comprehensive approach for electric reliability,” he said.
Whatever the initial motivation, the bills in Utah and other states can still be used against peaceful protesters, said Elly Page, an attorney with International Center for Not for-Profit Law, a group that has been tracking anti-protest legislation around the country. ****LOOK AT THE STATES ON THIS LINK****
“It’s still concerning because they’re fairly broadly drafted,” she said. “Many of these bills carry very severe penalties that are likely to make people think twice before engaging in protected First Amendment activities and raising their voice around infrastructure projects that affect our communities and that affect our planet.”
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