22 January 21
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21 January 21
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Robert Reich | 10 Bold Moves Biden Can Make Without Congress
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
Reich writes: "We did it. We took control of the Senate from Mitch McConnell. Even so, Republicans may still be able to block key parts of Joe Biden's agenda. But there are plenty of critical policies he can and must enact without them."
Biden’s first task is to undo Trump’s litany of cruel and disastrous executive orders. He has already announced he’ll rejoin the Paris Climate Accord, re-enter the World Health Organization, and repeal Trump’s discriminatory Muslim travel ban. And there are at least 48 other Trump policies that he can reverse on day one.
In addition, here are 10 critical policies Biden can implement without Congress:
FIRST: He can lower drug prices through Section 1498 of the federal code, which gives the government the power to revoke a company’s exclusive right to a drug and license the patent to a generic manufacturer instead.
SECOND: He can forgive federal student loans – thereby helping to close the racial wealth gap, giving a financial boost to millions, and delivering a major stimulus to the economy.
THIRD: He can use existing antitrust laws to break up monopolies and prevent mergers -- especially in Big Tech and the largest Wall Street banks.
FOURTH: He can institute pro-worker policies for federal contractors – who are responsible for a fifth of the economy – such as requiring a $15 minimum wage and paid family leave, and refusing to contract with non-union companies.
FIFTH: He can empower the Labor Department to aggressively monitor and penalize companies that engage in wage theft and unpaid overtime, and who misclassify employees as independent contractors – as Uber and Lyft do.
SIXTH: He can make it easier for people to get health care by eliminating Medicaid work requirements, reinstating federal funding to Planned Parenthood, and expanding access to Affordable Care Act plans. Then it’ll be up to us to push him to enact Medicare for All.
SEVENTH: He can ban the sale of public lands and waters for oil and gas drilling. He can further tackle the climate crisis by reinstating the 125 environmental regulations rolled back by Trump and directing federal agencies to deny permits for new fossil fuel projects, and halting all fossil fuel lease sales and permits.
EIGHTH: His Securities and Exchange Commission can reinstate its ban on stock buybacks – so that corporations are more likely to use their cash to invest in workers instead of enrich their shareholders. And he can rein in Wall Street by strengthening the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other financial regulators, while his Treasury Department can close many tax loopholes.
NINTH: He can address the cruelty of capital punishment by granting clemency to everyone on federal death row, effectively ending the death penalty with the stroke of a pen. He can address other injustices by having the Department of Justice implement mass commutations for low-level drug offenders, strengthening the department’s Civil Rights Division, and reining in rampant police misconduct through consent decrees. And he can undo some of the damage wrought by the racist war on drugs by directing his Attorney General to reclassify marijuana as a non-dangerous drug.
TENTH: He can reverse Trump’s cruel immigration agenda by restoring and expanding DACA and raising the yearly number of refugees who can be admitted.
Even with control of the Senate, Democrats’ slim majority means that Republicans can still obstruct Biden’s policy agenda at every turn. Biden can and must wield his presidential powers through Executive Orders and regulations. The problems America is facing demand it.
Activists in Los Angeles protest the rising costs of student loans in September 2012. (photo: David McNew/Getty)
'It's the Right Thing to Do': Biden Urged to Cancel Student Loans in First 100 Days
Lauren Aratani, Guardian UK
Aratani writes: "Thousands of student debtors have launched a campaign urging Joe Biden to enact full student loan cancellation within the first 100 days of his presidency."
President campaigned on promises to make higher education more affordable for middle-class families
The Debt Collective, which has more than 9,300 members, has tapped 100 debtors to be a part of the “the Biden Jubilee 100” – 100 people going on a debt strike, one representing each day during Biden’s first 100 days. Many have over $100,000 of student debt.
“It’s the right thing to do as the first step to ensuring a fairer higher education system,” said the collective in a petition to Biden. “Even before Covid-19, one million new student debtors were defaulting on their student loans every year. Student loans defaults are hitting women, Black, Indigenous and brown borrowers the hardest.”
Biden campaigned on promises to make higher education more affordable for middle-class families, including debt-free community college and making tuition at public institutions free for families who earn under $125,000 a year.
While Biden fell short of promising to cancel student debt, as the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren had pushed for during her campaign, he promised to halve student loan payments by implementing a program where anyone making over $25,000 will pay 5% of their discretionary income – which does not count taxes or necessary spending like housing and food – to pay for their loans. Anyone who has paid loans for more than 20 years will have their loans forgiven.
About 45 million Americans have student debt worth over $1.5tn. The Federal Reserve has reported that 43% of adults who went to college, about 30% of all adults in the country, took on debt to pay for their education. Race also plays a big role in who has debt: Black and Hispanic Americans with student debt are more likely to be behind on their loans than their white peers.
Last week Biden officials pledged to extend the nearly year-long pause on federal student loan payments on “day one” but the administration’s plans for tackling the debt mountain remain unclear.
The Covid-19 pandemic, which has left millions of Americans unemployed, has worsened racial economic disparities and has made it more difficult for borrowers to pay back their loans.
When commenting on the first coronavirus stimulus bill that was passed in March, Biden urged Congress to provide some student loan relief.
“We should forgive a minimum of $10,000/person of federal student loans, as proposed by Senator Warren and colleagues,” Biden wrote on Twitter. “Young people and other student debt holders bore the brunt of the last crisis. It shouldn’t happen again.”
The $2tn Cares Act ended up having a pause on some federal student loans and a waiver on interest for others, both of which were extended through 2020.
Relief for student debt was not included in the $1.9tn coronavirus stimulus proposal Biden unveiled last week, though the president-elect has signaled some relief for borrowers. A Biden aide told reporters in early January that Biden will ask Congress to cancel $10,000 of debt for borrowers, and his team has indicated a continuation of the pause of federal student loans will be one of a handful of executive orders Biden will enact in his first 100 days in office.
Debt Collective says canceling $10,000 will not be enough given the scale of student debt, and top Democrats have urged Biden to do more with his executive power. The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said in December that Biden can “forgive $50,000 of debt [per borrower] the first day he becomes president” without Congress. Biden has pushed back on this call to action, saying that kind of executive power is “arguable” and that he is “unlikely to do that”.
The major concern is that Covid-19 mutations could undercut the effectiveness of the vaccines. (photo: Emmanuel Dunand/Getty)
ALSO SEE: Biden to Sign Order Thursday Requiring Masks on Planes,
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Why Scientists Are More Worried About the Covid-19 Variant Discovered in South Africa
Julia Belluz and Umair Irfan, Vox
Excerpt: "On January 15, US public health officials warned that a more contagious variant of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 could dominate infections in the United States by March. That grim warning referred to B.1.1.7, a variant that was first identified in the United Kingdom."
The variant carries mutations that may weaken the effect of vaccines.
But now, one week later, scientists are increasingly concerned about another variant that emerged in South Africa.
There’s evidence from several small, and not-yet-peer-reviewed, studies that mutations in the South Africa variant — known as 501Y.V2 and already present in at least 23 countries — may have a higher risk of Covid-19 reinfection in people who’ve already been sick and still should have some immunity to the disease.
Scientists haven’t confirmed that this variant is more contagious, though evidence is pointing in this direction. They’re also concerned that 501Y.V2 could have implications for treatments for Covid-19. Regeneron, a company that has developed a cocktail of two monoclonal antibodies as a therapy for patients with the illness, reported that 501Y.V2 may be able to evade one of the antibodies in its mix. The drug is still effective, but subsequent mutations could render it less so.
But perhaps most alarming is the prospect that the mutations in the variant could limit the effectiveness of existing vaccines, one of the best tools we have for controlling the pandemic.
The results of these recent studies are “a serious indication we have to look hard at how well vaccines might work,” Penny Moore, a virologist at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa, told Vox. Taken together, they highlight the dangers of letting Covid-19 spread unchecked and also portend the challenges that lie ahead as the virus continues to evolve.
What the 501Y.V2 coronavirus variant might mean for Covid-19 vaccines
Moore is the lead author of a recent study on 501Y.V2, out Tuesday as a preprint on BioRxiv. She and her team in South Africa took blood plasma samples from 44 people who had been infected with the coronavirus during the country’s first wave of infections last summer and then checked how their existing antibodies responded to 501Y.V2 as well as older variants.
The researchers sorted the plasma samples into categories — high and low antibody concentrations. Though antibodies can wane after infection, that doesn’t necessarily mean that protection fades completely. Another recent study showed that immunity stemming from infection lasts at least five months in most people, so the antibodies in those who’ve had the virus should still shield against earlier versions of the virus if someone is infected again.
In 21 cases — nearly half — the existing antibodies were powerless against the new variant when exposed in test tubes. This was especially true for plasma from people who had a mild previous infection, and lower levels of antibodies, to begin with.
The findings suggest a prior Covid-19 infection might not help individuals fend off the new variant if they’re exposed, particularly if their earlier case was mild or symptom-free.
For Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center scientist Trevor Bedford, who was not involved in the research, the study also came as a possible warning sign about the vaccines. As early as autumn this year, manufacturers may need to begin reformulating their shots to respond to the changes in the virus’s genetic code, he wrote on Twitter:
The specific mutation scientists are most worried about
The 501Y.V2 variant carries one mutation of particular concern, known as E484K. This change appears in the part of the virus, the spike protein, that fits into the receptor in human cells. The spike protein is also the major target for the currently available mRNA vaccines, from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna.
“This mutation sits right in the middle of a hotspot in the spike,” Moore said. And it’s become notorious among virologists for its ability to elude coronavirus antibodies.
Scientists have demonstrated how this might happen in other cell culture experiments. In another recently published BioRxiv preprint, researchers in Washington state tracked how mutations altered the effectiveness of the antibody response in convalescent plasma of 11 people — and also found E484K had particularly potent antibody evasion capabilities.
Other variants of concern also carry the E484K mutation, including one first identified in Manaus, Brazil, known as P.1. And one case study suggests reinfection in some people might be possible when they’re exposed to the new variant.
In a preprint, researchers in Brazil documented the case of a 45-year-old Covid-19 patient with no co-morbidities, who months after her first bout with the illness, was reinfected with the new variant. The patient experienced more severe illness the second time around. While it’s limited evidence, it “might have major implications for public health policies, surveillance and immunization strategies,” the authors wrote.
The study’s broader context is also concerning: After more than three-quarters of the population in Manaus were estimated to be infected with the virus during a spring surge, cases are piling up again and hospitals are filling up. Researchers suspect reinfections with the new variant could be the driver.
“The news is not all grim”
But “the news is not all grim,” said University of Utah evolutionary virologist Stephen Goldstein. A preprint, led by Rockefeller University scientists, suggested antibodies from the vaccine may be more potent than antibodies from a previous infection. Researchers tested blood samples from 14 people who had received the Moderna vaccine and six who were immunized with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. The E484K mutation, and two others found in the South Africa variant, were associated with a “small but significant” drop in antibody activity, the researchers found.
Still, said Goldstein, the antibodies induced by the vaccine “are so high to start with that the serum was still extremely potent against the mutant.”
To fully understand the threat the mutations pose to vaccines, we’ll need clinical trials involving vaccinated people, Moore said. “These studies flag a problem,” she added, “but how that translates to real life, we can’t tell.”
There’s also huge variation in immune responses among people, Goldstein said. In the Washington paper, the researchers found “extensive person-to-person variation” in how the mutations affected an individual’s antibody response.
“The bottom line there is some reason for concern about reduced efficacy but efficacy will not fall off a cliff,” Goldstein said. “The vaccines are incredibly potent. ... If [they go] from 95% [efficacy] to 85% or even a little lower, we are still in great shape.” That’s why researchers and public health officials are heavily advocating for everyone to be vaccinated as quickly as possible.
Even so, Moore cautioned: “From an immune escape point of view, the variants first detected in Brazil and South Africa are more of a concern but this is just the beginning. It’s our first indication that this virus can and does change.”
It’s possible that as we learn more, even the E484K mutation won’t turn out to undermine the vaccines. But there may be other changes to the virus lurking out there or evolving that will escape even vaccine-induced antibodies. “So many people now are infected that this is an arm’s race — the virus is now given every opportunity to mutate,” Moore said, “so it can take those steps on the pathway to immune escape more easily.”
President Biden signs executive actions hours after his inauguration on Wednesday. He is expected to reverse several Trump-era policies. (photo: Evan Vucci/AP)
Biden to Rescind Controversial Abortion Rule in Coming Days
Jessie Hellmann, The Hill
Hellmann writes: "President Biden will rescind a controversial policy in the coming days that bans the use of U.S. funding for foreign organizations that provide or promote abortions."
The so-called Mexico City policy, first established by former President Reagan in 1984 and named for the city he announced it in, requires that foreign groups receiving family planning aid from the U.S. government agree not to provide or promote abortions — even with funding from other sources.
Described as a “global gag rule” by reproductive health advocates, the policy has been rescinded by Democratic presidents and reinstated by Republicans since Reagan, and has been in effect for 19 of the past 34 years.
“It will be our policy to support women’s and girls’ sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights in the United States, as well as globally,” Anthony Fauci said in remarks to the World Health Organization Thursday morning.
“To that end, President Biden will be revoking the Mexico City policy in the coming days, as part of his broader commitment to protect women’s health and advance gender equality at home and around the world.”
Trump reinstated the ban upon taking office in 2017 and later expanded it to cover all global health assistance, including funding for HIV, maternal and child health and malaria programs.
Biden’s expected rescission of the ban means foreign organizations will no longer have to certify that they don’t perform or promote abortions to receive U.S. global health aid.
Opponents of the ban argued it forced organizations to choose between funding for critical global health issues and providing patients with advice and information about abortions. Organizations that accepted the funding were also banned from performing abortions, funding other organizations that offer abortions, or advocating for changes to a country’s abortion laws.
U.S. funding for abortion is already banned through other laws, but supporters of the Mexico City policy argue any funding that goes to organizations performing or promoting abortions indirectly supports the procedure.
A review by the Trump administration found that more than 50 organizations declined to accept the awards under the new policy, including programs that funded family planning, services for HIV and AIDs, maternal and child health, tuberculosis and nutrition, mostly impacting efforts in sub-Saharan Africa.
Access to care had been disrupted or delayed in some countries where some grantees declined to participate under the abortion ban and alternative providers could not be found.
Documents obtained by The Hill show Biden plans to rescind the Mexico City Policy Jan. 28 and on the same day disavow a multilateral declaration organized by the Trump administration that asserts there is no “international human right to abortion.”
The “Geneva Declaration,” which was signed by countries like Egypt and Uganda, was intended as a rebuke of the United Nations’s support for “sexual and reproductive rights,” language the Trump administration had argued endorses abortion.
On Jan. 28, Biden will also order a review of the Trump administration’s controversial changes to the Title X family planning program.
Those changes required family planning providers participating in the program to stop providing or promoting abortions to remain eligible for funding.
The rule, which has been in effect for more than a year now, resulted in Planned Parenthood and other providers leaving the program, meaning some states no longer have any Title X providers.
Russ Travers is a distinguished veteran of the post-9/11 security apparatus. (photo: Tom Williams/AP)
Biden Taps a War on Terror Veteran to Stop White Supremacists. Is This What Is Needed?
Spencer Ackerman, The Daily Beast
Ackerman writes: "President Biden was sworn into office Wednesday under the shadow of the Jan. 6 insurrection with a pledge to take down the kind of extremists who took over the Capitol. To help lead that effort, he has tapped a distinguished veteran of the War on Terror - an appointment that raises the question of whether the new administration will draw from a disastrous conflict with jihadists to confront a much different threat from far-right terrorists."
Russ Travers spent four decades in the intelligence and security apparatus, rising to become acting head of the National Counterterrorism Center. Former President Donald Trump ousted Travers from that position in March as part of a purge of the intelligence agencies. Travers’ allies say he was ousted for trying to reposition the NCTC, a key creation of the post-9/11 security state, to analyzing domestic terror. They describe him as an energetic and often contrarian figure who has put in the time in recent years to understand a resurgent threat that the post-9/11 counterterrorism apparatus neglected.
Last week, Biden announced that Travers will return to government service, this time as his deputy homeland security adviser. Notably, Travers’ boss, White House Homeland Security Adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, is a former deputy energy secretary with expertise in nuclear weapons and Russia, not terrorism, teeing up Travers for an important portfolio. “Russ will be an essential leader on DVE [domestic violent extremism] issues,” said a source familiar with his new job, though not the only point person on the issue.
But some worry that it will be natural—indeed, human—for Travers to apply his post-9/11 experience to far-right and white-supremacist terror. That would be a disaster, they warn, both for the Constitution and for success. With debate underway amongst Democrats over new domestic terrorism statutes, the path Biden chooses is likely to define his early tenure as president.
“War-on-terrorism tactics aren't the solution to our current problems. In many ways, they are a cause of them,” said Michael German, a retired FBI special agent who arrested white supremacists in the 1990s, and who spoke generically and not about Travers particularly.
Travers has marinated in the War on Terror, holding multiple positions in NCTC before becoming its acting director. He’s held other jobs within the office of director of national intelligence, the National Security Council, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Not long after Trump appointed him acting director in August 2019, Travers began speaking publicly about a threat that NCTC largely did not address: domestic terrorism, something that by bureaucratic design was in the FBI and Department of Homeland Security’s purview instead. Travers’ interest resulted in a September 2019 conference on domestic terror; one of the driving forces behind the conference, Clare Linkins, recently the NCTC executive director, is now senior director for counterterrorism on Biden’s National Security Council. At a think-tank speech that November, Travers observed that the U.S. was increasingly seen as an “exporter” of far-right terror, as evidenced by events like the Christchurch mosque murders, and contended that such extremism was unfortunately becoming a a global movement.
George Selim, a former DHS official now with the Anti-Defamation League, recalled Travers soliciting his views over the past several years seeking to get up to speed about far-right and white supremacist violence. “He’d look at all our analysis,” said Selim. “He was curious about this. I had those conversations first-hand. He really wanted to understand and contextualize the threat picture, given the increased nature of the threat of extremism in the homeland.” Selim said it was valid to be concerned about a longtime counterterrorism official adopting a 9/11-era framework for the threat of far-right terrorism, but he considers Travers "a knowledgeable, fact-driven person who is looking for what worked and its applicability."
Travers has been at times prescient about far-right terror. In an August interview, he told Yahoo News’ Sean Naylor that such terror was likely should Trump lose the election. Travers considered it absurd to change the subject to comparatively marginal instances of left-wing violence, as Trump did, as the greater danger from the right made it appear like “night and day.”
He’s also made some questionable statements along the way. One of his themes after his firing has been that “Americans should think twice before undoing any” of the post-9/11 security apparatus. In an article for Foreign Affairs, about the continued relevance of counterterrorism Travers portrayed “a much longer fight ahead,” including with white supremacists at home. He portrayed the current terror threat as one from “people inspired by radical Islam but also from non-Islamist extremists,” although the available data points to a far greater threat from those “non-Islamist extremists.”
Even after acknowledging the threat from “white supremacists, who account for most of the recent terrorist violence in the United States,” Travers judged that “[r]ight-wing extremism is probably still best characterized as a fringe phenomenon, but it is a fringe that is growing, and it is a fringe that has the megaphone of social media.”
It was an alarming statement to read after Dylann Roof, Charlottesville, the Tree of Life Synagogue, El Paso and a summer of cars ramming into Black Lives Matter protesters. Four days after Travers’ piece, 17-year old Kyle Rittenhouse drove to Kenosha, Wisconsin, with a rifle and shot three people protesting the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
The Biden team declined to make Travers available for an interview. But some who have worked with him consider that line an unfortunate but unrepresentative choice of words.
“I don’t know if post-Jan. 6 he’d say it’s fringe,” said Elizabeth Neumann, who until April was DHS’ counterterrorism chief and who has known Travers for 15 years. “He was the one that had the guts to encourage the lawyers at NCTC to look at how NCTC could help DHS and FBI in the fight against domestic terrorism. Historically, the presumption has been NCTC, like the overall intelligence community, cannot touch anything inside the homeland. He had the lawyers go study it and figure out a way within certain aspects of their authority to help us with the fight.”
Neumann suggested that such actions, like his willingness to address domestic terror, got Travers fired. “Multiple times he stuck his neck out to do the right thing in the Trump administration,” she said, “and it caught up with him and he was pushed out.”
Nick Rasmussen, a former National Counterterrorism Center director himself, doubted that Travers would simply cut and paste the post-9/11 template onto a much different challenge.
“I look at Russ as being an ideal person for this position right now, because he knows where the seams are, where we’re not as equipped to deal with the more pressing challenges,” Rasmussen said. “Russ is sometimes a bit of a contrarian by nature, ‘don’t pat ourselves on the back too much,’ and a skeptic’s eye is a useful thing right now—do we have it right, can we rely on tools as we’ve developed them in the past? I think his answer would be to say no.”
But Travis has been less skeptical about the American effort against jihadi terrorists. He contends that “the United States’ post-9/11 counterterrorism effort has been nothing short of extraordinary,” he wrote in Foreign Affairs. Yet post-9/11 counterterrorism cost $6 trillion, killed at least 800,000 people and created at least 22 million refugees, all to see al Qaeda give way to the far worse so-called Islamic State, both of which persist today. The War on Terror normalized the militarization of society, securitized American politics, and progressively damaged important legal and Constitutional safeguards protecting all Americans from invasive law enforcement and intelligence access to their lives. And it created an atmosphere of domestic paranoia focused on internal enemies, untrustworthy elites and dangerous nonwhites. All of that contributed to today’s explosion in right-wing violence. Travers acknowledged elsewhere in his piece that “there are far more radicalized individuals now than there were on September 11, 2001, perhaps by a factor of three or four.” An expansion of a problem that a policy is supposed to solve is typically considered failure, rather than “extraordinary,” but the War on Terror is a security bureaucrat’s perpetual motion machine.
“Many of those pushing to apply war on terrorism tools to address white supremacist violence in the U.S. overstate their success in quelling Middle Eastern terrorist groups, which are larger, more numerous, and widespread across the world since 9/11. Worse, many of their tactics sowed racist hostility toward Arab and Muslim Americans at home, increasing social divisions that put many in law enforcement and the military on the same side as white supremacists and nativist militant groups on issues of security and immigration,” noted German, now with the Brennan Center for Justice.
It’s not clear if Travers supports a domestic-terrorism law. Travers’ public writings provide some reason to think he looks skeptically upon formally designating domestic organizations as terrorists similar to international-terror designations—a key component of a domestic terror law some liberals are urging Biden to adopt. He wrote that it would be “of questionable legality for amorphous domestic groups.” But two people who know Travers said they didn’t know if he favors one.
Daryl Johnson is a longtime analyst of far-right extremism, and he favors a different approach. As far back as 2009, Johnson, a DHS analyst, assessed that the “economic downturn and the election of the first African American president present unique drivers for rightwing radicalization and recruitment.” A Republican backlash led to Obama administration capitulation, and it was the beginning of the end for Johnson at DHS. Johnson remains an analyst of domestic far-right and white-supremacist extremism and said he’s unfamiliar with any work on the issue that Travers has contributed.
What the administration needs to do now, Johnson argued to The Daily Beast, is revitalize a local-police training program against domestic extremism known as SLATT, which he called “the best training I’ve attended in my career.” States need to enforce laws against illegal militias—that is, every militia not controlled by the state—and social and religious organizations need to have “kind of like a rehab program” for those detoxing from conspiracy theories like QAnon. “Using our churches, our veterans groups, we need to have a program to help talk about this subject and persuade people that extremism and violence is toxic – it affects your health [and] your mental stability,” he said.
As well, Johnson added, combating far-right violence isn’t just a criminal matter. “You can go after them civilly,” he said. That’s what a nonprofit called Integrity First for America has been doing since Charlottesville.
After the Justice Department under Jeff Sessions opted against conspiracy charges for the organizers of the deadly 2017 march, Integrity First for America filed suit against the event’s leaders to target their money. They relied on statutes like the Reconstruction-era Klu Klux Act of 1871 passed to protect recently emancipated people from vigilantism. The case is expected to go before a Charlottesville jury in the fall—just a few blocks from Heather Heyer Way, even—but it’s already taken tens of thousands of dollars from far-right leaders in court fees and fines. Richard Spencer said the case had been “financially crippling” during a hearing in June, according to court papers.
“If we as a small nonprofit can take on these white supremacists and neo-Nazis in court and financially cripple Richard Spencer—his words—using civil litigation, imagine what can be done by the Justice Department, criminally and civilly, using the current tools that they have,” said Amy Spitalnick, Integrity First for America’s executive director. “We’re doing this already. It’s working. Use us as a model. Use our case as validation that this strategy works.”
None of it involves a domestic War on Terror. It involves, as German and others have pointed out, the will to challenge the practitioners of white terror politically, socially and legally, rather than securitizing a fundamentally political problem. With the new administration underway, Biden and key aides like Travers face a momentous choice, as does the new leadership of the Justice Department.
“Many of us were working successful domestic terrorism cases against violent white supremacists long before the al Qaeda attacks, using traditional law enforcement tools that strengthened rather than undermined the rule of law and American values,” said German. “The failure of the FBI to use these tools to greater effect against violent white supremacists and far-right militants over the last two decades was a choice. It prioritized investigations against far less violent groups like animal rights activists, environmentalists, Standing Rock water protectors, and Black Lives Matter protesters, creating greater social divisions that white supremacists and conspiracy theorists exploit.”
Pedestrians in Havana. (photo: Lisette Poole/The New York Times)
Trump's Sanctions Caused $20 Billion in Damages to Cuba
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Cuban Foreign Affairs Ministry's official Johana Tablada on Wednesday informed that former U.S. President Donald Trump's arbitrary sanctions against her country left damage of US$20 billion."
Along his mandate (2017-2021), former President Donald Trump imposed over 240 unilateral measures against Cuba.
Trump, who concluded his presidential term on Wednesday, imposed over 240 unilateral measures against Cuba from 2017.
"He took advantage until the very last moment. Trump identified COVID-19 as an opportunity to assault Cuba with additional coercive measures, rather than allowing relief," Tablada assured.
On Jan. 11, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Cuba's inclusion on the U.S. list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. Early this month, he also informed on sanctions against Interior Minister Lazaro Alvarez and his family.
Washington attempted to discredit Cuba's international medical cooperation and promoted the end of agreements with several Latin American countries.
The United States persecuted oil-related ships and companies to prevent Cuba from having access to fuel in 2019.
"There is a palpable damage to the Cuban people's wellbeing because of measures that were exactly taken to cause harm," Tablada said, assuring her country hopes to improve relations with the U.S. under the Biden administration.
The economic blockade against Cuba, in place since 1962, was eased in 2015 after diplomatic relations were restored by President Barack Obama's administration (2009-2017). Biden was a vice president at the time.
But upon coming to power, Trump banned U.S. cruise ships from calling in Cuba, blacklisted companies and leaders, and prevented U.S. citizens from sending remittances to family members on the island, among other measures.
In an unprecedented move, he also reactivated Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, which allowed U.S. citizens to sue companies that profit from property seized in Cuba. So far, 28 legal proceedings have been opened in U.S. courts.
Trump's Affordable Clean Energy rule eliminated a provision mandating that utilities move away from coal. (photo: Joe Sohm/Getty)
Federal Court Tosses Trump's Clean Power Plan Replacement
Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch
Rosane writes: "A federal court on Tuesday struck down the Trump administration's rollback of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants."
Trump's Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, which was finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2019, moved away from imposing national limits on greenhouse gas emissions, instead allowing states to set their own. It also did away with a provision mandating that utilities move away from coal. The new rule would have reduced electricity emissions by less than half of what would be necessary to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius and, according to the EPA's initial estimate, would have led to between 470 and 1,400 additional air pollution deaths a year by 2030.
"Despite [EPA Administrator] Andrew Wheeler's frequent protests, the EPA's role is to protect the American people from dangerous pollution and act on the greatest threat to our country: the climate crisis," Sierra Club Chief Climate Council Joanne Spalding said in a statement. "The Dirty Power Plan didn't do either of these things and the court rightly vacated it."
At stake in Tuesday's decision was the meaning of the Clean Air Act. The Trump EPA argued that the law only allows the agency to limit pollution from individual sources, not across an entire sector, Reuters reported. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit disagreed.
"Because the ACE Rule rests squarely on the erroneous legal premise that the statutory text expressly foreclosed consideration of measures other than those that apply at and to the individual source, we conclude that the EPA fundamentally 'has misconceived the law,' such that its conclusion 'may not stand,'" the three-judge panel ruled.
Some environmental groups hailed the ruling as a boon to the incoming Biden administration, since they will now have an easier time replacing it, The Washington Post reported.
"Today's decision is the perfect Inauguration Day present for America," Environmental Defense Fund Senior Attorney Ben Levitan said in a statement. "It confirms that the Trump administration's dubious attempt to get rid of commonsense limits on climate pollution from power plants was illegal, it reaffirms that the Clean Air Act and the Endangerment Finding are the law of the land, and it restores the vibrancy of the rule of law. Now we can turn to the critically important work of protecting Americans from climate change and creating new clean energy jobs."
However, the Washington Post reported that the Clean Power Plan also ran into legal challenges. When the Trump administration took office, the plan had been put on hold by the Supreme Court while the court battle continued. In a dissent from part of the ruling Tuesday, Judge Justin Walker, a Trump appointee, said the EPA never had the authority to implement the Clean Power Plan either.
Columbia Law School Professor Michael Gerrard noted that Walker was a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.
"[The dissent could be a bad sign for how the Supreme Court might rule if these issues ever go there," he told The Washington Post.
