The redistricting maps in Suffolk county were voted upon and the legal hurdles were overcome. And this just hours before the county legislature was ceded to Republican control!
But (as per Newsday), despite Friday’s vote, the fate of the map remains uncertain. The court battle is expected to continue in the new year, and County Executive Steve Bellone, whose office did not respond to requests for comment, has not said whether he will sign the legislation.
On a national scale too, Dems did not fare too badly. It’s interesting that Republicans were playing defense in some places because of demographic shifts.
It is a pretty convincing (and depressing) opinion piece in WaPo. I quote: “…The legal system grows less legitimate by the day. Trust in government at all levels is in freefall, or, like Congress, with approval ratings hovering around 20%, cannot fall any lower. Right now, elected sheriffs openly promote resistance to federal authority. Right now, militias train and arm themselves in preparation for the fall of the Republic. Right now, doctrines of a radical, unachievable, messianic freedom spread across the internet, on talk radio, on cable television, in the malls….”
I am vacationing in the Caribbean (on Turks and Caicos). This morning we encountered a turtle. It might have been a (a) leatherback (b) green (c) hawksbill or a (d) loggerhead according to local tourist websites. Some local Jet ski enthusiasts diagnosed the turtle with an injury and I contacted the local preservation society. But islanders retain a culture of turtle use, with the current regulated and legitimate harvest likely to be one of the largest among the Caribbean Islands. One of the presumed rescuers joked that he would catch the turtle and offer it to me for supper. I think the turtles probably have a more uncertain future than we do, civil war or not. And certainly, they don’t deserve their fate.
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I understand it is the holiday season, but the fight for democracy does not rest! Right now the Suffolk County Legislature is considering adopting a fair map that doubles the minority-majority districts from two to four, and in areas where new minority districts could not be created, they were left whole so that their votes are not diluted. This map follows town lines and zip code boundaries as much as possible and politically is an even split.
IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT THIS MAP GETS VOTED ON AND SIGNED BY COUNTY EXECUTIVE STEVE BELLONE ON FRIDAY!! Come January the bill will automatically die if it is not voted for and the Republicans will hold control of the legislature next year.
The Republicans have held up the vote on this bill several times, we cannot let them run out the clock!
PLEASE TAKE ACTION NOW!
Please call & email Steve Bellone’s office and urge him to sign the bill! Here is an example script you can use.
Call/email script: Hello, my name is ____________ and I live in ______________. I am calling/emailing in support of IR 1964. This is a fair and equitable map that reflects the demographic changes in Suffolk County and creates representation that aligns with those changes. Signing these maps into law will be a step towards racial justice in our communities. I ask that County Executive Bellone sign IR 1964, and stand in solidarity with the communities that would benefit from increased representation.
There is also a petition on this matter you can sign!
I’ve been meeting some Climatarians lately. It’s a lifestyle that is starting to trend, especially with millennials.
“What Is a Climatarian?” the NY Times headlined, describing this new climate-centered lifestyle. I think of it as “dining with the Earth in mind.” Wikipedia says the Climatarian diet has no strict rules so much as “mindfulness about food production, where food comes from, and where it goes.” I like that. A big part of being a Climatarian is being mindful of where your food goes — do you use it all? Give excess away or feed animals? Any leftover scraps — do they end up as compost, enriching soil, not in the landfill releasing the potent GHG methane?
Self-described Climatarians are giving Tedtalks. One of my favorites is Australian Mark Pershin’s Reclaim our Future with the Climatarian Diet whose dark eyes flash talking about his love of shashlik, a shish-kabob from his native Russia. He defines Climatarian as healthy for both humans and earth, eating more traditional cuisines, not the unhealthy “meat-heavy Western diet” pushed by industrialized “concentrated animal feedlot operations, CAFOs.” Then he smiles, suggesting we try kangaroo. With a 97% smaller footprint “they don’t burp methane, and you don’t need to cut down trees for them to graze.” Mark’s ending salvo: they are native, adapted to our dry climate, are lean and versatile and when he substitutes kangaroo for beef in dishes, friends say it’s delicious. (Think venison!)
Meet Amanda and Taylor
Amanda_the_climatarian I met earlier this summer. Living in western MA, 30-year-old wildlife biologist Amanda and her husband dine on mushrooms (they are members of a South Deerfield CSA) and frequent farmers markets for all the wonderfully-ripe in-season produce. Amanda says her cooking is richly plant-based. A favorite dish is mushroom pizza with truffle oil and homemade tofu “ricotta.” Other specialties a la mansion are mushroom tacos and “king oyster mushroom ‘scallops’ with pasta.” Do they compost? You bet. “I have an outdoor, dual compartment barrel composter. I love it!”
“Eating with a climatarian ethos” Amanda told me “means consuming intentionally with the planet in mind.” She puts locally grown food first, then considers how it’s grown — are resources being conserved, especially water. “Each meal we eat in a day is an opportunity to vote with our dollars for more regenerative food systems. I think anyone who does the best they can–within the limits of their own abilities, access, and resources–to choose more climate-friendly foods can be a Climatarian.”
Brooklynite Taylor loves oysters, so when she visits her parents in Orient, she has plenty of oyster stands to choose from. As for eating out “I always order the local Long Island options, to try more varieties.” Alot of her friends are “flexitarian” which she says is really a health choice. One friend likes to add seafood to her basically vegetable cuisine, another stays with vegetarian “unless they know the fish or meat is coming from a humane and sustainable source.”
“I’m absolutely drawn to the aspect of reducing food waste,” says newly-minted Climatarian Taylor.” There are so many points of the food consumption process that generate waste, and any waste we can reduce is important. We should consider the packaging and transport, how much we purchase at a time, how much we cook at a time, how we save leftovers, what we do with scraps, everything.”
In the backyard at her parent’s place Taylor is planning a compost. Meanwhile she puts eggshells and tea leaves in the garden and freezes veggie scraps to take to Deep Roots farm in Southold “for the chickens.” In Brooklyn Taylor took part in the municipal food scrap program which she explained paused during the pandemic but now “the city is starting composting pick up again this fall which I am very excited about.” It’s a wonderful resource, she says, “you can compost nearly anything–including bones, proteins, greasy food, and soiled paper.” For now she delivers her Brooklyn scraps to the nearby farmers market.
Meet More Climatarians at the January Drawdown Festival
“Join the Regeneration” says acclaimed Australian filmmaker ( 2040 ) keynote speaker and festival partner for the 2022 Drawdown Festival – Tools For Regeneration: Forums! Fun! Films! coming again to the Southampton Arts Center, Friday- Sunday, January 21-23, 2022, with talks, workshops and films, scheduled all weekend (in person and virtual). Registration is free, hosted by Southampton Arts Center, who is also accepting donations to cover costs.
Will the Climatarian trend make a difference?
Consider this. Today’s food system has become the single greatest cause of global warming (34% GHG emissions) and soil loss, chemical poisoning, rainforest destruction, dying oceans. Our current system of “Big Ag” chemical farming and food waste can be changed to a regenerative system. (Regeneration by Paul Hawken)
The #1 Solution for the US calculated in Project Drawdown’s Table of Solutions is to Reduce Food Waste. Here 40% of food grown is wasted with a whopping 70% generated at the household level. I calculate, based on Drawdown’s math, that if we can
1) bring our food waste down by 60% (think soups, pasta sauce, and, this is critical, no food to the landfill),
2) make a healthy habit of once-a-week-red meat (or source beef and chicken from regenerative farmers, not those cruel CAFOs), and
3) buy local first, we can shift our wasteful food system to use-everything regenerative, with compost enriching our soils and sequestering tons and tons of carbon.
Sounds do-able, dollar-saving, and delicious. Try it! Check out the #Climatarian trend happening @Climatarian.Cafe.
We have all seen the lines: people on the Upper Eastside are willing to wait over 1 hour to get tested and in the Lexington Ave. / 86th Street neighborhood I counted 5 free testing sites just this morning.
Here is a scary story I heard firsthand. You know all major offices and businesses are having Christmas parties. So this one happened about 7 days ago: 100 guests and some catering people. Everyone was tested for Covid the day of the party. Everyone was negative. Everyone was vaccinated x2 and most had had a booster shot. 2 days after the party one person had Covid (symptomatic cold-like illness). So they test all 100 guests again 3-7 days after the party. Now 25/100 are positive and some of them have symptoms.
25% of vaccinated people were apparently NOT protected? Wow!
Well, perhaps they were protected from having a severe disease requiring an ER visit or even hospitalization. It is a bit too early to tell.
Avoid office parties! Perhaps we need to lock down again?
A covid testing site in Washington: The mayor reinstated an indoor mask mandate on Monday.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
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Anti-Vaxxer husband and wife long-time patients of mine were both hospitalized last week with COVID pneumonia. I had on numerous occasions tried to convince them to be vaccinated – to no avail. That said, the vast majority of my patients are vaccinated.
Data bottom lines locally: COVID-19 test positivity rate has increased to 5.98%, MA vaccination rates are significantly higher than national ones: All ages: 71% fully; 86% at least one dose 12 and older. For 65 and older: 92% fully; >99% at least one dose. Key points: Vaccine Breakthrough cases in MA are rare but do occur 1.6% of fully vaccinated individuals have been diagnosed with COVID-19 infection (I have one of those patients who Friday received monoclonal antibody as she has a risk factor – elderly like me) Since vaccines were introduced 3% of these vaccine breakthrough cases have been hospitalized less than 1% (0.77%) of vaccine breakthrough cases have died from COVID-19 (Colin Powell who had significant chronic illnesses is one example). Key points: Cases are >5-times higher and deaths are >13 times higher in the unvaccinated; most hospitalized COVID cases were not vaccinated. Unlike all other industrialized countries, we are unable as a country to come together on vaccine mandates.
Vaccine-induced immunity wanes over time; this is especially noteworthy in older people. This and omicron are driving the booster initiative nationally. At the same time, Republicans are not only decrying efforts to increase vaccination rates, but threaten people at the individual level. The result: people living in counties that went 60% or higher for Trump in November 2020 had 2.7 times the death rates of those that went for Biden. Counties with an even higher share of the vote for Trump saw higher COVID-19 mortality rates. In October, the reddest tenth of the country saw death rates that were six times higher than the bluest tenth. This is occurring in tandem with health care workers quitting. Omicron might change this. Dylan Scott this week highlighted key Omicron questions/points:
1) How transmissible is the omicron variant?
2) Does omicron cause more severe disease?
3) How well can omicron evade the Covid-19 vaccines?
4) How do the existing Covid-19 treatments hold up against omicron?
Bottom line for me: We have good treatment available; vaccines work very well but better to err on the side of caution and most importantly: get your booster, wear masks, avoid large crowds.
COVID is just one health challenge. Health insurance saves lives. Medicaid expansion saves lives but here are two stories of why communication matters if voters decide to expand Medicaid- Oklahoma and Missouri. The “Better Building Act” passed by the House of Representatives will pass permanent funding of children’s health insurance plans and make it harder for children to lose Medicaid benefits due to eligibility issues, thereby supporting children’s continued access to health insurance.
The political corollary of Republican resistance to vaccines is the benefit that Republicans accrue at last month’s electoral box. Vaccine mandates feed into the cultural narrative that Republicans are capitalizing on with misinformation. Challenging for me as the child of Holocaust survivors is comparisons of vaccine mandates to the Nazi regime. Apathy on the part of those favoring vaccines (and electoral reform) is still widespread. ‘Ask Nurses and Doctors’ will continue to work on vaccine hesitancy – trying to work with health professional societies to, in turn, encourage businesses on vaccine hesitancy and support, for example, the pharma price control provisions of the Better Building Act. We will switch over to electoral support in the next few months but are preparing now. In addition, we are trying to encourage universal vaccine access – without vaccines for all (need to address patents and not America First) we will continue our current path. AND is working with Justice is Global on this. Consider supporting their efforts. Engagement on any issue discussed here is welcome. The picture below, courtesy of my wife who took this picture in Northampton MA says it all.
Norbert Goldfield, M.D.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on COVID Notes: Anti-vaxer husband and wife both hospitalized…
It has been less than 9 months since Biden took office — so we are less than a year into a 4 year presidency.
What have Biden and the Democrats accomplished in that time? A lot.
The press likes to focus on the PANIC they can induce while we wait for Democrats to figure out their differences on major legislation. It gets clicks. What they are ignoring is a party that has gotten a heck of a lot done for the American people in less than a year.
Let’s share some good news about Democrats for a change!
Here are 50 of my favorites of their accomplishments:
1. Run a real and important investigation into January 6th
I am jumping the gun on this one a little bit because it is just starting, but everything I am seeing here makes me really hopeful. Mark my words, this committee will shine light onto a lot of dark corners. You betting against Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi? Good luck with that!
2. Got the US is back in the UN Human Rights Council
Remember when we were such an embarrassment that we weren’t even allowed to weigh in on other country’s human rights? Who changed that? Democrats.
3. Wind Farms Are Seeing Huge Expansion
Biden has been working behind the scenes to make huge changes in energy production. This is one outcome.
The Biden administration is planning to aggressively expand offshore wind energy capacity in the United States, potentially holding as many as seven new offshore lease sales by 2025.
The move was announced Wednesday by US Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and first reported by The New York Times.
Haaland said the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is exploring leasing sales along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, in the Gulf of Maine, the New York Bight, the central Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, as well as off the Carolinas, California and Oregon.
As part of that initiative, which spans multiple government agencies, the Departments of the Interior, Energy and Commerce committed to a shared goal of generating 30 gigawatts of offshore wind in the US by 2030. The Interior Department estimates that reaching that goal would create nearly 80,000 jobs.
4. The COVID plan is working
Biden took a potential hit and a lot of anger for his vaccine mandates. Guess what? They work and are getting us closer to ending this nightmare.
In the quest to get more Americans vaccinated, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: Vaccine mandates work.
Nowhere is that more apparent than at United Airlines. On Aug. 6, United became the first U.S. airline to tell its workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19 if they wanted to keep their jobs.
The company says 99.5% of United employees have been vaccinated, not counting the roughly 2,000 who have applied for religious or medical exemptions. Elsewhere, other employers also report success with mandates. Tyson Foods, New York City schools, major hospital systems in Maine and the NBA are among those with vaccination rates topping 90%.
5. Biden’s smart actions saved us from a shipping disaster you might not have even known was coming
This is one of MANY things the Biden administration is doing behind the scenes to make our country work. This, my friends, is what a functional government looks like!
President Joe Biden announced Wednesday morning, Oct. 13, that the Port of Los Angeles will begin operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, continuing months-long efforts from the White House and trade officials to clear supply chain disruptions that threaten the holiday shopping season and the nation’s economic recovery from the pandemic.
The federal push stems from a record-breaking cargo surge that’s lasted since mid-2020, creating huge backups of ships off the Southern California coast and maxing out warehouses in the Inland Empire.
Biden on Wednesday also announced major shippers and retailers, including Walmart, FedEx, UPS, Samsung, Home Depot and Target, have agreed to speed up operations to clear cargo out of the ports and free more space on the docks.
“The supply chain is essentially in the hands of the private sector,” the White House official said, “so we need the private sector to step up to help solve these problems.”
6. Biden negotiated an international deal to end tax havens
This is HUGE and the result of MORE behind the scenes work of the Biden Harris team
The world’s most powerful nations agreed on Friday to a sweeping overhaul of international tax rules, with officials backing a 15 percent global minimum tax and other changes aimed at cracking down on tax havens that have drained countries of much-needed revenue.
The agreement is the culmination of years of fraught negotiations that were revived this year after President Biden took office and renewed the United States’ commitment to multilateralism.
7. Biden and the Democrats raised social security for 70 million people
Oh, just more of our party saving old people from poverty….
The Social Security Administration announced Wednesday that its beneficiaries will see a 5.9 percent increase in their benefit checks starting next year — the largest boost to benefits in close to four decades.
The adjustment will be made for 64 million Social Security beneficiaries as well as 8 million Supplemental Security Income recipients. Some Americans receive both benefits.
8. Biden and the Democrats protected people from foreclosure and eviction
So many of my favorites fit into one theme: making life better from the 99% of Americans that Republicans don’t care about.
Biden directed key agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Department of Veterans Affairs; the Department of Agriculture; the Department of Housing and Urban Development; and the Federal Housing Finance Agency to extend the current pause on federal evictions and foreclosures
The Biden administration unveiled a raft of measures to prevent people who lost income during the pandemic from losing their homes on Thursday, including by extending nationwide eviction and foreclosure bans until July 31.
The White House and other federal agencies sprang into action amid growing concerns that state and local governments were not prepared to protect renters if the federal eviction ban expired next Wednesday. More than six million renter households are behind on rent, according to a recent survey by the Census Bureau.
9. Biden extended the US Russia nuclear deal
And here is Biden keeping us safe from nuclear war. No biggie 😉
The United States and Russia have extended a crucial nuclear arms control treaty until 2026, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday.
The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty or New START is the last nuclear treaty between the two countries and was set to expire Feb. 5. Renewing the agreement was one of the first national security challenges facing President Joe Biden’s administration.
“Especially during times of tension, verifiable limits on Russia’s intercontinental-range nuclear weapons are vitally important,” Blinken said in a statement, noting that Russia has remained in compliance since 2010 when the treaty was signed.
Extending the treaty made “the world safer,” he said, adding that “unconstrained nuclear competition would endanger us
10. Biden eliminated some student debt
Not one big dramatic action like we would like, but little by little, this is getting done. It is actually impressive how they are inching this in, bit by bit, without anyone noticing
Biden is immediately directing the Education Department to continue to freeze monthly payments and interest on most federal student loans until “at least” Sept. 30.
As one of his first actions in office, Biden extended the pause on student-loan payments through September, coupled with zero growth in interest, to ensure borrowers suffering financially would not have to worry about paying off their loans. Since then, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has cancelled student debt for borrowers with disabilities and borrowers defrauded by for-profit schools. He’s also started conducting reviews of student loan forgiveness programs that don’t work as they should.
He has also asked the Justice and Education Departments to review his authority to cancel student debt
The U.S. Department of Education has canceled approximately $3 billion in student loans since President Joe Biden entered office in January 2021. The agency first forgave $1 billion in March for 72,000 borrowers with approved fraud claims against colleges, universities and career schools. Another $500 million was forgiven in June for 18,000 loan holders under the same borrower defense rule. And $1.3 billion was also canceled in March for 41,000 borrowers with total and permanent disabilities.
11. Biden rejoined the Paris Climate Accords!
What have Democrats done for us? Just put us back on path to protect the freakin’ planet.
Biden signed an order to rejoin the Paris climate accords that President Trump exited last year, sending the United Nations a document that will make the U.S. party to the agreement in 30 days. The international pact aims to push all countries to slash their greenhouse gas emissions
12. Biden strengthened protections for dreamers
Again, here are the Democrats taking real action to help actual people.
Biden directed the secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the attorney general, to take actions to shore up the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that shielded hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation. The Trump administration tried to abolish the program but was stopped by federal courts.
13. Biden cracked down on big tech monopolies
And the 1%? Biden and the Democrats are holding them accountable.
President Biden on Friday will encourage federal agencies to crack down on the way major tech companies grow through mergers and gain a competitive advantage by leveraging reams of consumer data, as part of a larger executive order aimed at dispersing corporate consolidation throughout the economy.
The executive order includes several measures specifically targeting big tech companies like Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon, people with knowledge of its contents said.
Mr. Biden has already put some vocal critics of Big Tech in leadership positions. In the White House, he appointed Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor and outspoken proponent of breaking up companies like Facebook, as a special adviser on competition. He named Lina Khan as chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Ms. Khan has also called for the breakup of big tech companies and worked on a House antitrust investigation into Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google.
President Biden is set to unveil a new plan on Friday taking aim at powerful industries where a handful of players have so much market clout that they can drive up prices, depress wages and make it hard for small companies to break in.
His executive order on competition contains directives for a dozen government agencies to take 72 measures — some big, some small — to shake up key markets for consumers, workers, farmers and small businesses, White House officials told NPR. They spoke on the condition of anonymity ahead of Biden’s announcement.
Biden also will create a new competition council at the White House to track progress on the 72 ideas and come up with new measures to add to the list.
That systematic approach should pay dividends, Furman said. He explained that a series of small and medium measures can add up to big changes.
For example, he said, hearing aids — an expensive market dominated by a few players — is one area ripe for competition. The Obama administration tried to make it possible to buy more types of hearing aids at pharmacies, just like reading glasses, rather than treating them like expensive medical devices.
“That won’t transform our economy,” Furman said, “but for a lot of people, that’ll save them thousands of dollars. And that’s the type of action you want to do over and over again.”
14. Biden reinvested in cybersecurity
Another big behind the scenes move. This is just one example of all the Biden admin has done to increase cyber security
Biden is hiring a group of national security veterans with deep cyber expertise, drawing praise from former defense officials and investigators as the U.S. government works to recover from one of the biggest hacks of its agencies attributed to Russian spies.
“It is great to see the priority that the new administration is giving to cyber,” said Suzanne Spaulding, director of the Defending Democratic Institutions project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Cybersecurity was demoted as a policy field under the Trump administration. It discontinued the Cybersecurity Coordinator position at the White House, shrunk the State Department’s cyber diplomacy wing, and fired federal cybersecurity leader Chris Krebs in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s Nov. 3 election defeat.
It is focused on protecting federal workers and contractors, in part by restoring collective bargaining power and worker protections by revoking measures that President Donald Trump had signed. It also eliminates Schedule F, a class of worker that Trump had established that stripped many federal civil service employees of job protections.
It asks agencies to take a look at which federalemployees are earning less than $15 per hour and come up with recommendations to get them above that wage.
On Tuesday, Joe Biden demanded the resignations of all 10 of Donald Trump’s appointees to the Federal Service Impasses Panel, a powerful labor relations board, in a major victory for federal unions. Eight members resigned, and two were fired after refusing to step down. Trump’s appointees—a group of partisan anti-labor activists—had hobbled federal unions for years, sabotaging their ability to organize and bargain collectively. Biden’s clean sweep, which was first reported by Government Executive’s Erich Wagner, marks a crucial step toward ending his predecessor’s campaign of federal union busting.
President Joe Biden made a historic statement in favor of workers’ right to organize and against employer intimidation of workers in a video released Sunday evening. “I made it clear when I was running, that my administration’s policy would be to support unions organizing and the right to collectively bargain,” he said. “I’m keeping that promise. You should all remember the National Labor Relations Act didn’t just say that unions are allowed to exist, it said that we should encourage unions.
“So let me be really clear: It’s not up to me to decide whether anyone should join a union,” Biden continued. “But let me be even more clear: it’s not up to an employer to decide that either. The choice to join a union is up to the workers—full stop. Full stop.”
Biden’s video came days after a group of progressive organizations called on him to support the Amazon workers’ effort. Labor historians and worker advocates hailed the video as a major step beyond those Biden’s predecessors took.
“It’s almost unprecedented in American history,” Erik Loomis, a labor historian at the University of Rhode Island, told The Washington Post. “We have the sense that previous presidents in the mid-20th century were overtly pro-union, but that really wasn’t the case. Even FDR never really came out and told workers directly to support a union.”
”We haven’t had this aggressive and positive of a statement from a president of the United States on behalf of workers in decades,” said Faiz Shakir, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign manager and the founder of More Perfect Union. “It is monumental that you have a president sending a message to workers across the country that if you take the courageous step to start to unionize you will have allies in the administration, the NLRB, and the Labor Department. It means a lot.”
16. Biden got rid of burrowing
This is just one of many moves they made to get rid of corruption
President Biden plans to sign an order on Friday that will toss a plan that would have made it easier to fire top career civil servants and hire political appointees into high-ranking positions — a practice known as “burrowing.”
Former President Donald Trump’s plan to create the “Schedule F” category had been decried by federal unions as an attack on people he called the “deep state” when it was announced in October. The Biden White House was quick to cancel the classification, saying it “undermines the foundations of the civil service.”finally…..
17. Biden ordered all federal contractors to pay their workers a $15 minimum wage and provide emergency paid leave.
Biden plans to sign an executive order that will expand protections for federal workers, including putting federal agencies on a path to require a $15 minimum wage for contractors.
18. Fighting domestic violent extremism
Again, lots more of this going on behind the scenes. The Democrats are protecting us.
In the wake of the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, President Joe Biden is directing the intelligence community to assess the threat of domestic violent extremism in the U.S. and explore new policies to counter extremist networks.
A three-pronged effort, unveiled Friday by Press Secretary Jen Psaki, includes tasking the Office of the Director of National Intelligence with leading a “comprehensive threat assessment” to help shape policies to address the rise of domestic violent extremism. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security will consult on the work.
The Biden administration is stepping up efforts to combat domestic extremism, increasing funding to prevent attacks, weighing strategies historically used against foreign terrorist groups and more openly warning the public about the threat.
The attempts to more assertively grapple with the potential for violence from white supremacists and militias are a shift from President Donald J. Trump’s pressure on federal agencies to divert resources to target the antifa movement and leftist groups despite the conclusion by law enforcement authorities that far-right and militia violence was a more serious threat.
The Biden administration on Tuesday unveiled a national strategy to combat domestic extremism, calling for aggressive steps such as hiring more intelligence analysts and screening government employees for ties to hate groups.
The 32-page plan highlights a shift in the government’s approach to counterterrorism, which for decades has prioritized fighting foreign terrorists. But violent attacks by American extremists are growing, a problem laid bare by the deadly Capitol riot on Jan. 6.
“We cannot ignore this threat or wish it away,” President Biden wrote in the strategy document. “Preventing domestic terrorism and reducing the factors that fuel it demand a multifaceted response across the federal government and beyond.”
Lawyers are still trying to locate the parents of 506 children who had been split from their families at the US-Mexico border by the Trump administration, according to a new court filing — down from a month ago, when attorneys were looking for the parents of 611 children.
Wednesday’s filing is the first under the Biden administration, which is now responsible for the reunification of families separated at the US-Mexico border as a result of former President Donald Trump’s controversial “zero tolerance” immigration policy.
The Biden administration’s task force for reuniting migrant families separated by the Trump administration will give separated families the option to be reunified in the U.S. or their countries of origin, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Monday.
Mayorkas said in a White House briefing that the separation of thousands of migrant families during the Trump administration was “the most powerful and heartbreaking example of the cruelty that preceded this administration.”
“We are hoping to reunite the families either here or in their country of origin. We hope to be in a position to give them the election, and if, in fact, they seek to reunite here in the United States, we will explore lawful pathways for them to remain in the United States and to address the family needs,” he said.
Fulfilling a campaign promise, President Joe Biden plans to reopen the HealthCare.gov insurance markets for a special sign-up opportunity geared to people needing coverage in the coronavirus pandemic.
Nearly one million Americans have signed up for Affordable Care Act coverage during the first 10 weeks of a special open enrollment period the Biden administration began in February.
A total of 940,000 people enrolled in Obamacare coverage between Feb. 15 and April 30, new data released Thursday by Health and Human Services shows. Of those new enrollees, nearly half bought coverage last month, after Congress added billions in subsidies included in the most recent stimulus package.
With that additional funding, the average monthly premium that Healthcare.gov consumers paid fell to $86 for those signing up in April, down from $117 in February and March (before the new subsidies).
21. Democrats passed one of the largest industrial bills in US history
Making moves to protect our long term economic interests? ✅
22. Democrats got increased access to voting in a lot of places
We often hear about the flip side of this (which is really distressing). But Democrats have been working hard too.
As GOP-controlled state legislatures push through a wave of laws to restrict voting, a new report from the Voting Rights Lab suggests that Democratic state legislatures have enacted their own proposals to increase voting access at an even faster rate.
In the first six months of 2021, a “tidal wave” of voting rights legislation has resulted in the enactment of 153 new laws in 38 states—with over half increasing access to voting.
23. Biden and the Democrats ushered in a great covid relief bill
The history books will tell the story of how Democrats saved our economy from COVID/Trump damage. This was step one.
Many cynically expected (I expected!) Democrats to capitulate to Republican demands like they did while negotiating the 2009 health care bill when they eliminated the public option for no fucking reason. But they didn’t. Senator Chuck Schumer, emboldened by either the majority leader’s gavel or fear that he’s about to be primaried by somebody who New York voters find more appealing, has stood up to Mitch McConnell, stood up to bad faith negotiating by Republicans. What may have been an opportunity for Democrats to blame Republicans for watering down COVID relief became an opportunity for Democrats to show strength.
24. Biden and Democrats saved the pensions of over 1 million unionized workers
the $86 billion is a taxpayer bailout for about 185 union pension plans that are so close to collapse that without the rescue, more than a million retired truck drivers, retail clerks, builders and others could be forced to forgo retirement income.
The bailout targets multiemployer pension plans, which bring groups of companies together with a union to provide guaranteed benefits. All told, about 1,400 of the plans cover about 10.7 million active and retired workers, often in fields like construction or entertainment where the workers move from job to job. As the work force ages, an alarming number of the plans are running out of money. The trend predated the pandemic and is a result of fading unions, serial bankruptcies and the misplaced hope that investment income would foot most of the bill so that employers and workers wouldn’t have to.
25. Biden and Democrats invested more in Black farmers than any government act in history
A little-known element of President Biden’s massive stimulus relief package would pay billions of dollars to disadvantaged farmers — benefiting Black farmers in a way that some experts say no legislation has since the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Of the $10.4 billion in the American Rescue Plan that will support agriculture, approximately half would go to disadvantaged farmers, according to estimates from the Farm Bureau, an industry organization. About a quarter of disadvantaged farmers are Black. The money would provide debt relief as well as grants, training, education and other forms of assistanceaimed at acquiring land.
“This is the most significant piece of legislation with respect to the arc of Black land ownership in this country,” said Tracy Lloyd McCurty, executive director of the Black Belt Justice Center, which provides legal representation to Black farmers.
Black farmers in America have lost more than 12 million acres of farmland over the past century, mostly since the 1950s, a result of what agricultural experts and advocates for Black farmers say is a combination of systemic racism, biased government policy, and social and business practices that have denied African Americans equitable access to markets.
26. Biden and Democrats provided huge sums to victims of domestic abuse
The Biden administration has begun to distribute hundreds of millions of dollars in funds to support victims of domestic abuse, a group that faced greater hardships and more danger while sheltering at home during the pandemic.
The Department of Health and Human Services said Monday that it will award $200 million to help abuse victims get counseling, emergency and transitional housing and help with safety planning and other resources.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is preparing to issue new guidelines to agents this week that could sharply curb arrests and deportations, as the Biden administration attempts to assert more control over an agency afforded wide latitude under President Donald Trump, according to internal memos and emails obtained by The Washington Post.
Biden revoked a Trump executive order that massively expanded immigration officials’ interior enforcement work and broadened the categories of who they should try to detain and deport. His acting DHS secretary then issued a memo pausing deportations for 100 days beginning on Jan. 22.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will no longer detain most pregnant, nursing and postpartum women for deportation, reversing a Trump-era rule that permitted officials to jail thousands of immigrants in those circumstances, according to a new policy to be released Friday.
ICE’s new policy is even more expansive than it was during the Obama era, when President Biden was vice president. The Obama administration generally exempted pregnant women from immigration detention, but the Biden administration is also including women who gave birth within the prior year and those who are nursing, which could last longer than a year.
the president has said he wants a more humane approach to immigration, especially for parents and children arriving in increasing numbers from regions such as Central America.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday issued a memo ordering U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to stop mass worksite raids.
Driving the news: Mayorkas said the Biden administration would instead focus on pursuing employers who hire and take advantage of immigrants without work authorizations, rather than the employees.
The Biden administration on Friday will notify states it plans to revoke Medicaid work requirements, starting the process of dismantling one of the Trump administration’s signature health policies.
The move is one of several steps that Biden’s health department is expected to take this week to unravel the contentious work rules long criticized by Democrats, according to internal documents obtained by POLITICO.
President Biden on Friday pledged that the United States is “fully committed” to NATO after four years of President Donald Trump railing against the alliance. During a major address to the Munich Security Conference, Biden also warned that “democratic progress is under assault” in many parts of the world, including the United States and Europe.
President Biden on Tuesday announced a truce in a long-running trade war with the European Union, saying it was time to put aside the fight and focus together on the growing trade threats posed by China.
“I’ve been making the case that the U.S. and Europe — and democracies everywhere — are stronger when we work together to advance our shared values like fair competition and transparency. Today’s announcement demonstrates exactly how that can work in practice,” Biden said in a statement
On his first day in office, President Biden issued a sweeping executive order making it clear that gay and transgender people are protected against discrimination in schools, health care, the workplace and other realms of American life.
Biden’s order calls on agencies across the federal government to review existing regulations and policies that prohibit sex discrimination, and to revise them as necessary to clarify that “sex” includes sexual orientation and gender identity.
“Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports,” Biden’s executive order states. “Adults should be able to earn a living and pursue a vocation knowing that they will not be fired, demoted, or mistreated because of whom they go home to or because how they dress does not conform to sex-based stereotypes. People should be able to access healthcare and secure a roof over their heads without being subjected to sex discrimination.”
The executive order set the stage for an administration that has pledged to pursue a “bold” agenda on LGBTQ issues and that has already named LGBTQ leaders to prominent positions in the administration.
The Pentagon on Wednesday scrapped restrictions on transgender troops imposed by the Trump administration, and unveiled new rules designed to end discrimination and provide medical care for those service members.
A nightclub that was the site of a horrific shooting in Florida became a national memorial Friday.
President Joe Biden signed a law designating the Pulse nightclub in Orlando as a national memorial at a White House ceremony that included survivors of the 2016 attack.
“A place of acceptance and joy became a place of unspeakable pain and loss. We’ll never fully recover, but we’ll remember,” Biden said before signing the law designating the memorial. Pulse survivors stood around the president as pictures of the 49 killed displayed on video screens.
“May no president ever have to sign another monument like this,” Biden said.
President Joe Biden will name Jessica Stern as the US Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of LGBTQI+ Persons Friday, according to a White House official.
Stern currently serves as Executive Director of OutRight Action International, an organization aimed at ensuring human rights for LGBTQ people both domestically and abroad and will join Biden at the White House Friday for remarks commemorating Pride Month, the official told CNN Thursday.
She’s the second person to be named to the role — her predecessor, Randy Berry, served in the then-new role from its inception in 2015 until 2017, at which point the position was left vacant by former President Donald Trump
President Biden on Friday commemorated LGBTQ+ Pride Month, signing legislation designating the National Pulse Memorial and urging passage of the Equality Act. “Pride Month represents so much,” Biden said at a White House gathering. “It stands for courage. … And above all, Pride month stands for love.”
31. Biden Recognized indigenous people’s day and made Juneteenth a holiday
“The contributions that Indigenous peoples have made throughout history — in public service, entrepreneurship, scholarship, the arts, and countless other fields — are integral to our Nation, our culture, and our society,” Biden wrote in the proclamation Friday. “Today, we acknowledge the significant sacrifices made by Native peoples to this country — and recognize their many ongoing contributions to our Nation.”
President Biden ordered a sweeping review on Thursday of American intelligence about Russia’s role in a highly sophisticated hacking of government and corporate computer networks, along with what his spokeswoman called Moscow’s “reckless and adversarial actions” globally and against dissidents inside the country.
Mr. Biden also instructed Ms. Haines on Thursday to provide him with an assessment of the Kremlin’s effort to use a chemical weapon against Russia’s leading opposition politician, Aleksei A. Navalny. Mr. Navalny, who survived the attack, was arrested this week when he returned to Russia.
Ms. Haines was also asked to review intelligence that produced evidence that Russia put a “bounty” on the lives of American troops in Afghanistan.
The U.S. is preparing to respond to Russia’s poisoning and jailing of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and is expected to coordinate a sanctions rollout with European allies in the coming weeks, according to people familiar with the matter.
The response would mark a break with the previous administration, which prepared a sanctions package following Navalny’s poisoning but never implemented it, the people said. It would also constitute the new administration’s first major step in holding Russia accountable for human rights abuses, which Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have listed as a key pillar of their foreign policy agenda.
The Biden administration has officially blamed and sanctioned Russia for its role in the massive SolarWinds hack that compromised computer systems in multiple government agencies as well as private companies.
In an executive order issued April 15, President Biden levied a variety of economic sanctions against several Russian financial institutions, technology companies, and individuals designated as having participated in “harmful foreign activities,” including but not limited to the hack.
Putin offered a few compliments to President Biden — some that were intentional (e.g., that Biden is experienced in diplomacy), and others that were not (e.g., that Biden’s views on human rights are different than Biden’s predecessor). He also provided a glimpse into his gloomy worldview: “There is no happiness in life. There’s only a mirage on the horizon.”
The contrast between Putin and Biden was on clear display during their individual news conferences. Even the settings of those events were remarkably distinct: Putin held his inside; Biden’s was outside, with bright sunshine and a picturesque background.
Biden emphasized his defense of human rights and democracy. “I pointed out to [Putin], that’s why we are going to raise our concerns about cases, like Alexei Navalny. I made it clear to President Putin, and will continue to raise issues of fundamental human rights, because that’s what we are. That’s who we are,” he recounted. “No president of the United States could keep faith with the American people if they did not speak out to defend our democratic values. . . . Human rights is going to always be on the table, I told him.” The president also warned that if Navalny died, the consequences for Russia would be devastating. When asked about Putin’s false equivalency between his jailing of a dissident and Jan. 6, Biden declared it a “ridiculous comparison.”
What a difference a presidential election makes. Here was a sober, serious U.S. president defending democracy and standing firm against a thuggish dictator.
At Helsinki in July 2018, then-President Trump simpered and cowered. In a low point of a presidency with more low points than Death Valley, Trump accepted at face value Putin’s “extremely strong and powerful” denials of complicity in the 2016 election attack. Putin emerged from that meeting smirking like the cat that swallowed the canary.
As the historian Michael Beschloss noted, there was no such grin on Putin’s lips when he did his solo press conference after meeting with Biden on Wednesday. While Putin engaged in his usual dishonesty and whataboutism — he compared his jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny with the prosecution of the Capitol rioters — his manner was subdued and far from triumphant. He attacked the United States but was careful not to insult Biden personally. He even compared the current president favorably to his predecessor: “President Biden is an experienced statesman. He is very different from President Trump.” (Ouch. That’s got to sting for Putin’s biggest fanboy in the United States.)
The Biden administration is preparing to convert its immigrant family detention centers in South Texas into Ellis Island-style rapid-processing hubs that will screen migrant parents and children with a goal of releasing them into the United States within 72 hours, according to Department of Homeland Security draft plans obtained by The Washington Post.
“We welcome the change, because the detention of families — we never thought that was a good system or a good policy at all,” said Edna Yang, co-executive director of American Gateways, an immigration legal aid organization in Texas. “They shouldn’t be detained, and they should be given the opportunity to go before the immigration judge and be released in the community and not held like prisoners.”
Transforming family detention amounts to a wholesale repudiation of not only Donald Trump’s policies but also Barack Obama’s and presents a significantly different vision of how to handle the fast-changing character of mass migration at the southern border.
The number of unaccompanied migrant children held in jail-like conditions by US Customs and Border Protection dropped nearly 84% in the span of a month, according to a White House official, underscoring the significant progress made by the administration after reaching record high custody figure
The Biden administration will grant a form of provisional residency known as temporary protected status to tens of thousands of Haitian migrants living in the United States without legal status, the Department of Homeland Security announced Saturday, citing worsening conditions in the Caribbean nation.
The Biden administration said Tuesday that it will expand the number of Central American children eligible to apply for asylum in the U.S. while still in their home countries.
The program, known as the Central American Minors Program, began in 2014, during the Obama administration, to allow children whose parents were legally in the U.S. to apply for admission, but the Trump administration stopped it. The Biden administration had been accepting applications only from children with cases that were pending when the program closed.
Now, the program will go beyond the Obama administration’s eligibility limits to consider children whose parents have asylum cases pending in the U.S., a State Department spokesperson said in a statement.
The statement said the new eligibility requirements will “greatly expand” the program.
President Biden on Thursday announced a series of executive actions to curb gun violence, and he pledged to push for sweeping change to the country’s firearms laws — his first substantive response to a pair of mass shootings last month that left 18 dead.
The president unveiled new rules on “ghost guns” — firearms that are assembled at home, which lack serial numbers and are harder to track — among other moves designed to make it harder for unqualified people to obtain dangerous weapons.
Biden said his moves Thursday do not relieve Congress of the responsibility to act. He urged lawmakers to take up gun-control legislation, including measures already passed by the House that would require more gun buyers to undergo background checks.
“They’ve offered plenty of thoughts and prayers, members of Congress, but they’ve passed not a single new federal law to reduce gun violence,” Biden said. “Enough prayers. Time for some action.”
35. Reduced the number of hungry Americans
Protect the 99%? ✅ This is an area where A TON has been done and it is all amazing.
Food stamp recipients will see their monthly payments go up in October thanks to a major update to the program, even though a special pandemic boost has now expired.
Benefits will jump 27% above pre-pandemic levels, on average — the largest increase in its history. The change stems from a revision of the Thrifty Food Plan, which determines the benefit amounts of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the formal name for food stamps.
With more than one in 10 households reporting that they lack enough to eat, the Biden administration is accelerating a vast campaign of hunger relief that will temporarily increase assistance by tens of billions of dollars and set the stage for what officials envision as lasting expansions of aid.
The effort to rush more food assistance to more people is notable both for the scale of its ambition and the variety of its legislative and administrative actions. The campaign has increased food stamps by more than $1 billion a month, provided needy children a dollar a day for snacks, expanded a produce allowance for pregnant women and children, and authorized the largest children’s summer feeding program in history.
“We haven’t seen an expansion of food assistance of this magnitude since the founding of the modern food stamp program in 1977,” said James P. Ziliak, an economist at the University of Kentucky who studies nutrition programs. “It’s a profound change.”
Biden is asking the Department of Agriculture to allow states to increase Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits — commonly known as food stamps — and to increase by 15 percent benefits awarded through a school meals program for low-income studentsstarted during the pandemic, according to Biden administration officials. That could give a family of three children more than $100 in extra benefits every two months, officials said.
Brian Deese, director of the White House National Economic Council, told reporters on a call Thursday night that the measures are meant as only partial solutions, as the administration kicks off negotiations with Congress on its $1.9 trillion relief economic proposal.
Biden’s order attempts in several ways to address the surge in hunger in America during the pandemic, with approximately 50 million people, including 17 million children, considered food insecure.
Perhaps the most significant change in this executive order is a reassessment of the USDA’s Thrifty Food Plan, the basis for determining SNAP benefits. Lisa Davis, senior vice president of Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign, said the metrics are out of date with the economic realities most struggling households face. The president will ask the USDA to consider beginning the process of revising the Thrifty Food Plan to better reflect the modern cost of a healthy basic diet.
The Biden administration is quietly laying the groundwork for a long-term increase in food aid for tens of millions of Americans, without going through the ordeal of a fight with congressional Republicans.
The instrument is an obscure U.S. Department of Agriculture shopping list used to determine food stamp benefits, known as the market basket.
A review of the so-called Thrifty Food Plan, ordered by Biden two days after he took office, could trigger an automatic increase in benefits as soon as Oct. 1, a day after expiration of a temporary 15% boost in food stamp payments that Biden included in his $1.9 trillion Covid-relief package.
36. Strengthened the economy
Given the circumstances, it is amazing how well the economy is doing. Another thing the press is ignoring.
The number of Americans filing initial unemployment claims fell below 300,000 for the first time since the pandemic began, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
The 36,000 drop brought the weekly count to 293,000, strikingly close to the pre-pandemic mark of 256,000. The four-week moving average fell by 10,500 to 334,250, its lowest level since March 2020.
The percentage of American families with kids who report not having enough to eat fell dramatically after the first child tax credit payments were distributed last month, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The government’s finding shows that the monthly payments are having a major and immediate impact on millions of households, potentially bolstering President Joe Biden’s push to extend the tax credit past the end of this year, when it is set to expire.
The city’s effort to remove lead pipes shows what’s possible with funding and political will.
Now, this once-poisoned city is on the brink of a milestone. A lead water pipe removal program, established under a 2017 court order issued as part of a massive lawsuit on behalf of Flint residents, is inching toward a close. Block by block, house by house, the city and its contractors have excavated and checked more than 27,000 pipes to determine what hidden risks remain under the ground.
The effort has led the city to replace more than 10,000 lead pipes so far, officials say.
The Biden administration has revoked a Trump-era rule that had become a flash point in the abortion wars, saying Monday it would no longer bar clinics that receive federal family planning aid from advising people about ending their pregnancies.
The new rule for the half-century-old family planning program known as Title X will allow health centers to receive the federal funds even if they refer patients for abortions. It takes effect Nov. 8.
President Biden announced Wednesday that the United States will double the number of Pfizer coronavirus vaccine doses it is donating to other countries, a step toward the goal of immunizing 70 percent of the world’s 8 billion people within the next year.
41. Nominated leaders who will be tough on big banking
President Biden will nominate Saule Omarova, a Cornell University law professor, to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, selecting an outspoken critic of the banking and crypto sectors to oversee the biggest U.S. banks.
The White House announced the pick Thursday, noting that if confirmed, Omarova would be the first woman and the first person of color to lead the 158-year-old agency.
Liberal senators cheered the decision. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) pointed to Omarova’s background as an academic, Treasury Department official and corporate lawyer, saying her experience “will allow her to work with stakeholders across our financial system to ensure the economy works for everyone, and to protect our economic recovery from the risky activities of Wall Street and other bad actors.”
42. Quietly and carefully addressing unchecked Chinese military power
Biden and Harris are pulling off a shift in our foreign policy orientation that has been talked about for more than a decade — a “pivot” or “tilt” away from our traditional focus on Europe and the Middle East toward the region now called the Indo-Pacific, with an eye toward the rise of China as a competing superpower.
Biden secretly negotiated a new defense pact with Australia and Britain that will give the Australians nuclear-powered submarine technology as a check on China’s growing naval power. He hosted the first in-person summit of the Quad strategic alliance — the United States, Japan, Australia and India — in another initiative aimed at containing China’s regional ambitions. He sent Harris to Southeast Asia to shore up U.S. ties with Singapore and Vietnam.
The Obama administration talked for years about ending the war in Afghanistan and withdrawing American forces, but ended up agreeing to a troop surge instead. The Trump administration signed a bad deal, incompetently negotiated, to bring U.S. troops home but got booted out of office before being able to follow through. Biden could have tried to get out of the bargain. Instead, he went ahead and fulfilled it. This nation’s longest war is over — any way you look at it, that’s a historic milestone, and one Biden has used to reshape U.S. goals abroad.
The Biden administration Monday morning took steps to save the Obama-era DACA program that shields hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children from deportation.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program has been the subject of ongoing litigation since it was established in 2012. President Donald Trump tried to terminate the program, an effort blocked by the Supreme Court.
For years, Congress has tried and failed to pass legislation to provide a pathway to citizenship or otherwise address the immigration system. In the absence of legislation, the Obama administration and now, the Biden administration has relied on DACA to ensure the group known as “Dreamers” — many of whom are now adults — can stay and work in the US.
President Joe Biden on Tuesday nominated a slate of nine people to serve as U.S. attorneys, including several who, if confirmed, would become the first Black women to serve as the top federal prosecutors in their districts.
Biden has in total nominated 25 people to run some of the 93 U.S. attorneys’ offices nationally. His latest picks would lead federal prosecutors’ offices in Colorado, Hawaii, Rhode Island, North Carolina, Ohio, Vermont and the U.S. Virgin Islands
Media coverage of the Trump administration often posited that he had transformed the judiciary by appointing 234 federal judges. While it is true his appointees to the Supreme Court have turned that body into an instrument of right-wing policy, the right-wing grip on lower courts is weaker than one might imagine, thanks to the number of Obama appointees (334) and the furious pace of nominees under the current president.
The White House on Thursday announced its eighth slate of nominees to federal courts, raising that total to 53. Of these, 14 have been confirmed. For comparison’s sake, by Sept. 1 of his first year, President Donald Trump had a grand total of six confirmed judges. By the end of the year, he had appointed just 19. Eventually, he was able to appoint 234 federal judges.
The vast majority of cases never reach the Supreme Court, so the composition of lower courts, especially appellate courts that set precedent for lower courts throughout their circuits, is critical in determining the legal landscape.
The Biden administration will provide government-funded legal representation to certain unaccompanied immigrant children in deportation proceedings in eight US cities as part of an effort to boost legal access in the immigration court system, according to agency officials.
The new effort, labeled the Counsel for Children Initiative, comes months after the Biden White House dealt with an increase in children arriving at the southern border, leading to overcrowded detention facilities and a scramble to find appropriate locations to hold them. Immigrants in deportation proceedings are generally not provided an attorney by the government if they cannot afford one.
Note: this is WAY better than the Obama administration did on this issue (I don’t even need to get into TFG’s record here, right?!)
48: Biden protected people from eviction
49. Biden and the Democrats made the largest investment ever made by the US govt in indigenous communities
President Biden has overseen the distribution of covid-19 vaccines faster than anyone could have anticipated, won approval of a massive $1.9 trillion pandemic relief program and rejoined the battle against the existential threat of climate change. But his biggest accomplishment has less to do with policy than psychology: After the insanity of the Donald Trump era, he has made almost everything less crazy.
For four long years, we were forced to live in a constant state of anxiety that rarely dipped below the where’s-my-Xanax level. We went through multiple news cycles every day, as the morning’s outrageous presidential tweet was followed by the afternoon’s off-the-wall presidential claim — and then overtaken by the evening’s presidential recap of whatever he’d just seen on Fox News.
It was brutalizing, and Biden ended the stream of lunacy pouring from the White House. There are days now when the administration is so radically normal that it’s actually kind of boring. Thank you, Mr. President, from a grateful nation
Is that enough? Heck no! But we have at least 3+ more years to get more done! Let’s keep pushing.
Does this mean our democracy is safe and good? Ummm, nope. But guess what? We can fix that too.
Donate to the AMAZING Florida Rights Restoration! They are taking buses around Florida to empower returning citizens, remove financial barriers to voting, and increase public safety. They are really amazing
Make phone calls FROM YOUR OWN HOME to protect voter rights. There are phone banks on Wednesdays and on Saturdays.
The League of Women Voterswork year-round to combat voter suppression through advocacy, grassroots organizing, legal action and public education. You can get involved with them at this link
Volunteer with Black Votes Matterat this link. They have on the ground work in 10 states and people from other states can write postcards, phone bank, fundraise, and text.
Most important: DON’T LOSE HOPE. This is a giant and important fight for us but, win or lose, we keep fighting and voting and organizing and spreading truth and light. We never give up.
That is it for today.
I am so lucky and so proud to be in this with you
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on 50 Amazing Things Democrats Have Done Since Biden Took Office: Saturday’s GNR
I’ve gotten lots of great news links sent to me about so many different subjects, but then the leaked IPCC report put all but the environment and climate change on the back burner.
When the ground temperature in the Arctic Circle on the summer solstice last week was 118 degrees, the report says
“Life on Earth can recover from a drastic climate shift by evolving into new species and creating new ecosystems … humans cannot.”
“Tipping points are triggered when temperatures reach a certain level, whereby one impact rapidly leads to a series of cascading events with vast repercussions. For instance, as rising temperatures lead to the melting of Arctic permafrost, the unfreezing soilreleases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that in turn causes more heating.”
We’re reaching those tipping points faster than imagined, and the fear is that we may have already started a cascade we cannot stop. We are about to enter a mini-heat wave on Long Island (high 80’s). Nothing compared to the other side of the US:
“[T]his heat will be historic, dangerous, prolonged and unprecedented. ” “We can’t stress enough how impactful this heat will be to nearly every person and community in the Pacific and Inland Northwest region.” – Spokane Weather Service –
All Politics Is Local. All climate change is local too and we won’t meet the Paris Climate Accords (which are already too little too late), without local politics helping national politics helping global politics.
This is the 50th anniversary of Joni Mitchell’s Blue album. But her Big Yellow Taxi best describes what we have done:
With a pink hotel, a boutique and swinging hot spot
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone
They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot.
Took all the trees and put them in tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar and half to see them
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone…
The final conclusion of the IPCC report:
Climate change will fundamentally reshape life on Earth in the coming decades, even if humans can tame planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. Species extinction, more widespread disease, unliveable heat, ecosystem collapse, cities menaced by rising seas — these and other devastating climate impacts are accelerating and bound to become painfully obvious before a child born today turns 3
While it has been dire reading, this, by Prof Waleed Abdalati of the U of Colorado, Boulder, may say it best:
“The science does clearly point to a challenging future, one in which climate change places significant stresses on every aspect of our lives. Science, by its nature, avoids hyperbole and those who have spoken out most aggressively about the climate crisis have been derogatorily labeled as alarmists. But sometimes, when the outcomes and risks are so severe, alarm is warranted.
Alarm, however, should not necessarily equate to hopelessness. On the contrary, alarm can and should be a motivator for action, action that brings out — and takes advantage of — the best in our scientific, technological, policy, industrial and humanitarian capabilities to rise to the climate challenge and successfully overcome it.
The content of the upcoming IPCC Assessment Report will, like those before it, present us with an opportunity to take an honest and sober look at the future we may be in for and help us determine the trajectory of humanity in the face of that future. Just as science shines a light on the challenges, science can light the path to success.”
Will the world be willing to meet the challenge? Today’s article in the NY Times, “What If American Democracy Fails the Climate Crisis?”, has lots of intriguing ideas but doesn’t make it sound promising. Take this comment about the the original infrastructure jobs bill, not all of which dealt with climate:
In particular, the scale is simply too small; $900 billion on climate is not enough to catalyze the pace of decarbonization we will need in order to cut emissions by 50 percent by 2030, while providing millions of good jobs. That’s more like $10 trillion over 10 years.
The new bipartisan bill is only $1.2 trillion and most not for climate change. One project, linked below, hoping to get some of that federal funding, is for protecting the Houston coastline from rising sea levels. It has a projected cost of $26 million. That is only one city. Which cities do we save, which ones move inland, which ones die? That is a global question, not just an American one.
And it’s not just cities. What parts of Long Island do we save? Can we save?
Lots of reading, lots of thinking. Will you meet the challenge? Please try to read it during this moderate heat spell by challenging yourself and doing it without turning on the AC!
On March 18th Chris Paparo, the manager of Stony Brook University’s Marine Sciences Center reported a sighting of a mother right whale with her calf just 300 yards off an East Hampton ocean beach! #3720, as she is called, had travelled from waters near Wassaw Island, Georgia, where she and her calf were last seen on Jan. 19th 2021, their final destination perhaps Cape Cod bay, or as far north as the gulf of St. Lawrence.
We all know that the right whale is a critically endangered species with less than 400 individuals still alive and perhaps less than 100 reproducing females. Spotting calves with their mothers represents a glimmer of hope.
With plans to build an offshore South Fork Wind Farm 35 miles east of Montauk point and run a submarine cable coming ashore on a Wainscott beach, I could not help wonder how the developer (Ørsted) plans to safeguard these magnificent marine mammals.
Here is my lay person report.
Ørsted takes this very seriously. I spoke with Sophie Hartfield Lewis, Ørsted Head of U.S. Permitting. Safeguarding whales are clearly deer to her heart. Together with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution they are tackling issues like the correct distance between a source of submarine noise, such as pile driving, and a whale straying into the area. At what distance is there assured harm to the whale’s hearing (permanent or temporary)? At what distance do all drilling operations need to be halted? Currently that stands at 1 km depending on what marine species is involved and the type of noise emitted, including the noise frequency. F.ex. frequencies above 200 mHz are deemed safe because whales don’t hear them or because they don’t have adverse reactions to them.
I also learned about techniques used to dampen noise. (a) There is something called a ‘Big bubble curtain’ (BBC): it consists of a flexible tube fitted with special nozzle openings and installed on the seabed around the pile. Compressed air is forced through the nozzles producing a curtain of rising, expanding bubbles. These bubbles effectively attenuate noise by scattering sound on the air bubbles, absorbing sound, or reflecting sound off the air bubbles! (b) There is the Hydro-Sound Damper (HSD): it consists of a fisher net with different sized elements, laid out at various distances from each other, and encapsulating the pile. HSD elements can be foam plastic or gas-filled balloons. Noise is reduced as it crosses the HSD due to reflection and absorption. (c) There is the AdBm, Helmholz resonator: it consists of large arrays of Helmholtz resonators, or air filled containers with an opening on one side that can be set to vibrate at specific frequencies to absorb noise, deployed as a “fence” around pile driving activities. Sophie told me that if operations were to start tomorrow, they would use BBC.
I spoke with Catherine Bowes of the National Wildlife Foundation. Key recommendations include: seasonal & temporal restrictions on pile driving; real-time monitoring of science-based exclusion zones; underwater noise limits; vessel speed restrictions; and commitments to pre, during & post-construction monitoring to ensure we learn as we go, in launching this new clean energy industry. This last point is essential for informing impact mitigation strategies along the coast.
Sophie Hartfield Lewis directed me to an online pdf. Pages 100-166 directly concern mitigation strategies for the SFWF. It is titled “Protected Species Mitigation and Monitoring Plan South Fork Wind, LLC.“ I warn the reader: it gets pretty involved.
The world has seen an increasing and alarming number of extinctions in recent years. And that’s only the ones we know about. Ultimately, protecting threatened species protects us, the human species, because loss of biodiversity has health impacts among many other ill effects. Just google ’loss of biodiversity.’ Simultaneously, we are existentially threatened by climate change. Thus, we have no choice. We need to save species like the right whale and we need offshore wind energy.
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This is the story of how our inability to confront our racist history is fueling a right-wing misinformation campaign against our schools, resulting in contentious, partisan school board elections in district after district around the country.
School board elections tend to be low turnout, non-partisan events. But for many districts, this year is different. On Long Island where I live, one of those races is taking place in the Smithtown Central School District. Three challengers are trying to unseat the incumbents who are up for reelection on May 18th in a campaign unlike any school board election Smithtown has ever seen.
As in other districts, the opposition to the Smithtown school board began last year because of COVID. In some districts, parent protests were sparked by opposition to mask mandates. In Smithtown, it was opposition to a hybrid COVID modification plan of part in-classroom and part remote learning for the 2020-21 school year that set off protests. Under the slogan, “5 Days to Thrive”, meaning that all children needed to be back in school five days a week to thrive, a group of parents protested against the hybrid model. https://longisland.news12.com/smithtown-parents-continue-to-demand-their-kids-be-allowed-to-return-to-school-5-days-a-week-42529542
This was before vaccines and when the CDC was still recommending six feet between desks. The only way to achieve that was to have half the usual number of children in the classroom at any given time. The schools had moved from all remote learning at the beginning of the lockdown to the hybrid model last fall, just like the vast majority of schools in Suffolk County, but these protesting parents claimed that the board wasn’t trying hard enough to bring their children back full time. They did not view the decision as being in good faith. They claimed it was a conspiracy between the board and the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) to favor teachers over students.
This past spring, all students came back full time, with almost all teachers and staff being vaccinated and new CDC guidelines. But that did not quiet the protests or the spread of misinformation. They evolved from COVID to the right’s newest boogeyman, critical race theory (CRT). If you are not a consumer of Fox News and other right-wing media, where it has been a major focus for years, you probably never heard of CRT until recently. I know I had not.
Last month, Newsweek focused on states, such as Idaho, passing laws banning CRT from their schools. Below is an excerpt from that article:
Kendall Thomas, a law professor at Columbia University and co-editor of Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement, told Newsweek: “CRT maps the nature and workings of ‘institutional racism.’ CRT challenges us to see that racial injustice in America is not, and has never been, just a problem of isolated instances of individual bias and private prejudice which we can solve by enacting ‘color-blind’ laws and policies.”
He added, “The right-wing weaponization of CRT aims to shut down a difficult but necessary conversation about race, racism and the future of democracy in America. The architects of these anti-CRT laws want Americans to stop talking about institutional racism, even if it means trafficking in the reckless politics of racial division they say they oppose.”
The Washington Post published a lengthy article this week about the CRT controversy under the headline, “As schools expand racial equity work, conservatives see a new threat in critical race theory.” It opens with the following sentence: “The nation’s reckoning over race has reached thousands of U.S. schools, and so, too, has a conservative backlash.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/05/03/critical-race-theory-backlash/
Michelle Goldberg, in a May 3rd column in The New York Times, entitled, “Why the Right Loves Public School Culture Wars,” wrote, “The Christian Coalition took off during Bill Clinton’s presidency, when the religious right engaged locally because it felt shut out of national power. Clearly some conservatives think that opposition to critical race theory could be the seed of something similar. Telling parents that liberals want to make their kids hate their country and feel guilty for being white might be absurd and cynical. It also looks like it might be effective.” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/opinion/public-school-culture-wars.html
I read all the articles. I understood what the right hoped to gain from weaponizing the fears of their base. But I still did not understand why CRT, in and of itself, was controversial. The country was founded on protecting slavery, a Civil War was fought over it and Jim Crow was a Supreme Court sanctioned system of apartheid. Of course, we have systemic racism. Is it better than it was? No one is claiming it isn’t. But to deny that systemic racism still exists in our institutions seems, to me, to require a willful blindness.
As Charles Blow, columnist for The New York Times explained in a column this week, entitled,” Is America Racist?”, “Some will concede the historical point and insist on the progress point, arguing that was then and this is now, that racism simply doesn’t exist now as it did then. I would agree. American racism has evolved and become less blunt, but it has not become less effective. The knife has simply been sharpened. Now systems do the work that once required the overt actions of masses of individual racists.” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/02/opinion/america-racism.html
One sign of just how charged this issue has become was my inability to convince anyone I spoke to about the Smithtown school board race to go on the record. People supporting the incumbent school board members only felt comfortable speaking to me on background. They were too afraid of being targeted if their names were used. People aligned with the challengers refused to speak to me at all.
When was the moment that the Smithtown parent protests morphed from focusing on COVID to the school board race and CRT? The earliest sign I found was a website called Save Our Schools that went online the end of last year. You might remember the Save Our Schools phrase from a movement a few years ago that supported higher pay for teachers and more equity in public education. This new SOS website had nothing to do with that movement, other than appropriating the name. It was filled with inflammatory rhetoric and accusations that sounded a lot like McCarthy-era fearmongering:
Critical Race Theory was polished in the 1950s and by the time the counterculture phenomena exploded in the 1960s with postmodernism’s entrance into the world’s philosophical framework in the 1970s, it had become a guiding manifesto for action by radical elements like the terrorists at the Black Panther Movement. Today, its contemporary offspring, Black Lives Matter (BLM) along with its symbiotic associate, Antifa, continue the “war of liberation”. https://saveourschools.me/knowledge-is-power/
It was in the downloadable newsletter on the website that I first saw this issue tied to the police. The newsletter is organized under the following section titles: “HOW DO WE SHIELD STUDENTS AGAINST CRT? PROTECTING THE BLUE SO THEY CAN PROTECT YOU. HOW BOE RACES TURNED INTO DO OR DIE ELECTIONS.” https://saveourschools.me/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Save-Our-Schools-April_2021_v2.pdf
I came across an earlier newsletter that was circulating on social media, but was no longer on the website. This one specifically tied the three school board challengers to the SOS website. One of the challengers, Stacy Murphy, is the parent who spoke during the 5 Days to Thrive protests. Below are screenshots of that three-page earlier newsletter.
The website and the newsletter were not the only sources online. Partisan groups started posting about it on social media, all of them spreading the same misinformation about CRT and the school district. They included: Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin, who represents Smithtown, and has announced he is running for governor of New York next year; a fringe group of the Smithtown Republican Party; and the Suffolk Police Benevolent Association (PBA), the police union.
It was highly unusual for any organization, other than NYSUT, to endorse school board candidates. It was particularly upsetting for some residents to see the police union get involved. One Suffolk PBA post went so far as to name a Smithtown teacher and labeled him anti-police because he had signed an online Black Lives Matter petition against having armed policemen, as opposed to security guards, in the school. The PBA used this one teacher as their example of the school’s war on police, which could be stopped only by voting for the three challengers.
I called up the Suffolk PBA and asked for the press office. I stated that I am a journalist with an online blog and I was working on an article about the Smithtown School Board election. I had two questions. Why was the police union getting involved and could you please take down the post that named the teacher? Given the climate, it felt dangerous to me. I was told that the teacher’s social media post was public and therefore fair game. He then said he had no comment for my article and hung up the phone.
I reached out to the three challengers’ campaign through their Facebook page and asked them for an interview. I posed the same question, asking why was the police union getting involved? They did not respond.
The Smithtown BOE tried to remain positive and stick with an upbeat campaign for the three incumbents running for reelection. I shared their virtual postcard on Facebook. The postcard features the incumbents’ accomplishments and the text that accompanied it reminded residents to vote on May 18th for a board that had shown their support for public education.
But by this time, the anti-CRT messages were going viral on social media. In public and private Facebook groups, heated discussions were taking place for and against CRT, even though there was no evidence that critical race theory was even taught in the Smithtown schools. At the recent school board meetings, the challengers’ supporters were loud and confrontative. It seemed to take the board, which had only just come back to in-person meetings, by surprise. Recordings of the meetings are on the BOE website. http://www.smithtown.k12.ny.us/boardofeducation/board_meeting_audio.
It became clear that the board needed to address the misinformation powering the challengers’ campaign head on. They released the following letter to all Smithtown residents, in both an email and on the district’s public Facebook page.
How astonishing that a school board needed to publicly explain what they were not doing. Will the letter be enough? There is one more school board meeting, on May 11th, for them to make their case to the public and for parents to ask more questions. The more people understand what is driving this challenge, the more they can make an informed decision. While Smithtown is a conservative-leaning community, a Republican stronghold, I highly doubt they want school board members influenced by misinformation and conspiracies making decisions about the welfare of the teachers and students in their school system.
And for the rest of us, we need to keep a close eye on this new right-wing dog whistle and how it is being employed. In 2009, the Tea Party ran a racially charged misinformation campaign against the first African American president and the passing of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Then, their dog whistles were “birtherism” “death panels” and “socialism.” They successfully rode that campaign back to power, taking back the House in the 2010, the Senate in 2014 and the White House in 2016. I have no doubt that is the intent here.
