Critics variously argue that it anoints stablecoins as the equivalent of “programmable” central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), that it lacks strong consumer protections, and that government centralization destroys the independence of the cryptocurrency market. Proponents say the rapidly expanding stablecoin market not only provides a faster and cheaper payments system but can serve as a major funding source to help alleviate the federal debt crisis, which is poised to destroy the economy if not checked, and that the stablecoin market has gotten so large that without regulation, we may have to bail it out when it becomes a multitrillion dollar industry that is “too big to fail.”

For most people, however, the whole subject of stablecoins is a mystery, so this article will attempt to throw some light on it. It will also explore some historical use cases demonstrating how the government might incorporate stablecoins into a broader program for escaping the debt crisis altogether.

Stablecoin Mania

The cryptocurrency craze began with Bitcoin in 2008. Conceived as a decentralized alternative to government-issued currency, Bitcoin uses blockchain technology — a transparent, tamper-resistant ledger that all users can view and verify — to facilitate peer-to-peer transactions without relying on banks or payment intermediaries. But to be widely accepted, a currency must have a stable value, and Bitcoin’s value has vacillated wildly. Stablecoins were devised to solve that problem. They are cryptocurrencies that are backed by safe assets (e.g., short-term U.S. Treasuries). Supposedly, holders of stablecoins can redeem the coins at par and at will for cash, just like demand deposits and money market funds.

Stablecoin use has exploded in recent years. As of March 2025, their total market capitalization reached $232 billion, a 45-fold increase since December 2019. Projections suggest this figure could hit $400 billion by year-end and as much as $2.8 trillion by 2028. Stablecoins Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC) dominate the market, holding 86% of it. In 2024, stablecoins processed $27.6 trillion in transfer volume (the total value of stablecoin transactions recorded on blockchains), surpassing the combined volume of Visa and Mastercard. Daily volumes could hit $300 billion in 2025.

Stablecoins are said to be transforming cross-border payments, remittances and DeFi (decentralized finance). They offer faster, cheaper transactions and are used in 71% of cross-border payments in Latin America. In crypto markets, stablecoins account for 60–80% of trading volume on major exchanges. Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa lead retail and professional-sized stablecoin transfers, with over 40% year-over-year growth. Major banks and fintechs are also integrating stablecoins or have started stablecoin initiatives, including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Stripe, JPMorgan, PayPal and Société Générale.

Despite their name, however, stablecoins are not entirely stable. They have faced liquidity crises and transparency issues and are vulnerable to runs. Hence the need for regulation. The GENIUS Act of 2025, signed July 18, 2025, requires stablecoin issuers to be banks or approved nonbanks, to maintain 1:1 reserves in safe assets (e.g., U.S. Treasuries, cash) that are audited monthly, and to comply with KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) rules.

The “Backdoor CBDC” Issue

Was the intent of the Act to create a “backdoor CBDC”? The concern of critical commentators is with privacy and “programmability” — the ability of the issuer to program a digital currency in order to control or block its use.

Skeptics of the backdoor CBDCs theory note that President Trump signed an executive order banning CBDCs in January, citing privacy and economic stability concerns, and that stablecoins are not centrally issued but have many private issuers globally. Any digital currency is “programmable” unless specifically protected against it, and most of our currency is already digital, created on the ledgers of banks when they make loans.

It has been argued that programming the use of deposits could actually be done more easily with our existing network of banks than with globally scattered stablecoin issuers, just by sending the banks orders in automated messages by API. (An API, or “application programming interface,” is “a set of rules or protocols that enables software applications to communicate with each other to exchange data, features and functionality.”) In a July 22 Substack post titled “Has Brazil Invented the Future of Money?”, former New York Times columnist Paul Krugman writes:

[T]he government can access private bank records under certain circumstances and certainly has the technological ability to watch every financial move you make. The only thing that keeps it from doing so is the law, specifically the Right to Financial Privacy Act. If we ever do create a CBDC, it will surely involve comparable privacy protection.

Krugman suggests that it is really the banks that are afraid of CBDCs, because people will withdraw their funds from their private bank accounts in favor of their central bank accounts, cutting out the banker middlemen and their much higher fees. He points to Brazil, which has a CBDC-like system called Pix – a sort of publicly-run Zelle in which transactions settle in three seconds on average, versus two days for debit cards and 28 days for credit cards; and the Brazilian authorities have set a requirement that Pix be free for individuals. It is used by 93% of Brazilian adults, compared to a mere 2% of Americans using cryptocurrencies for trade.

Financial commentator Mark Goodwin contended in a recent interview on the Corbett Report that a programmable currency issued by a private stablecoin company could actually be more dangerous than a CBDC. Some of these companies aren’t even domiciled in the United States, and they are not subject to Federal Reserve control. In a July 26 podcast, macroeconomic historian Miles Harris explained that risk like this:

In the GENIUS era, private stablecoin issuers function as offshore central banks. Liquidity creation occurs outside the Fed’s control, but the underlying collateral—U.S. debt—remains on public books. This creates a governance gap: liquidity is generated by private actors driven by profit, not monetary stability, yet systemic risk returns to the public sector if things unravel. During the Bretton Woods era, confidence in the dollar was theoretically anchored to gold. Today, no such backstop exists. The Anti-CBDC Act prohibits the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC), leaving no public digital dollar to counterbalance private stablecoins.

To explain all that might take another article, but in any case the GENIUS Act has passed and is a done deal. Whether or not we approve, we now need to consider its ramifications. Its main purpose seems to be to salvage the federal bond market, which is in perilous straits.

Propping Up the Bond Market and the Dollar 

The rapidly expanding stablecoin market is projected to be able to fill the void left by disenchanted governments that are dumping Treasuries and “dedollarizing” in response to Western sanctions and U.S. tariffs. According to Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), who sponsored the GENIUS Act, it could lead to stablecoin issuers becoming the “world’s largest holders of U.S. Treasuries by 2030.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says stablecoins are a strategic tool to “lock in dollar supremacy.” As financial commentator Lyn Alden observes, when residents of countries with unstable currencies (such as Argentina) purchase U.S. stablecoins to protect their savings from runaway inflation, the stablecoin issuer uses the local currency of the purchaser to buy U.S. Treasuries. In effect, the local currency has been converted to U.S. currency. That is also true for other institutional uses of stablecoins.

The problem with privately-issued money, however, is that untrustworthy issuers are subject to destabilizing bank runs; and that has been true for centuries. Gaining the confidence of users requires regulation to establish the stability and liquidity of the stablecoins, and hence the need for the GENIUS Act.

How Lincoln Solved His Debt Crisis

In a 2023 research paper titled “Taming Wildcat Stablecoins,” Professors Gary B. Gorton and Jeffery Y. Zhang compared stablecoin issuers to the private “wildcat banks” that issued their own paper currencies as banknotes during the Free Banking Era before the Civil War. Private state-chartered banks issued their own paper banknotes, which were thinly capitalized and of uncertain reliability and exchangeability. Bank runs were common. The problem was solved through the National Bank Acts of 1863 and 1864.

The Acts sought to stabilize a very chaotic system of private currencies by encouraging banks to acquire national bank charters that would allow them to issue a uniform national bank currency. To ensure its uniformity and stability, the banks were required to back their National Bank Notes 1 to 1 with federal bonds or precious metal coins deposited with the U.S. Treasury. This pool of liquidity — the forerunner of today’s central bank “reserves” — not only stabilized the currency against runs but helped fund the war effort and created a market for federal debt.

It helped, but the bonds purchased by the banks were not sufficient to fund the government’s needs. British-backed bankers were demanding 24–36% interest on loans — usurious terms that risked “recolonizing” the U.S. through debt. President Lincoln avoided that crippling debt by reverting to the funding mechanism of the American colonists – government-issued paper money. Under the Legal Tender Act of 1862, the Treasury issued $450 million in U.S. Notes or Greenbacks — fiat currency spent directly into the economy for soldiers, supplies and contracts.

These innovations allowed Lincoln’s government to bypass foreign lenders, fund the Civil War, and preserve the country from colonization by debt. A similar approach could arguably solve the government’s debt crisis today.

Fast Forward to 2025

The United States now grapples with a $36.72 trillion federal debt and an interest burden projected to be $952 billion for 2025, consuming 18.4% of federal revenues. The debt to GDP ratio is an unsustainable 124%. Neither raising taxes nor slashing the federal budget will solve what is essentially a math problem: the debt-at-interest is growing faster than the economy itself.

The GENIUS Act, requiring stablecoins to be backed by U.S. Treasuries, follows the same funding model as the National Bank Acts, and it has the same limitations as a funding model. Stablecoins can bolster the market for U.S. debt, but they won’t tame the voracious interest monster that is consuming the federal budget. President Lincoln largely met his funding crisis with currency issued directly by the Treasury, and President Trump could do the same.

This would have to be done, however, through the Treasury, not the Federal Reserve. The Fed can only issue “bank reserves” and is not allowed to fund the federal debt by buying Treasuries directly from the government. It must buy them on the open market, with reserves injected into the reserve accounts of the banks of the sellers. The banks then credit the sellers’ deposit accounts with dollars, but the dollars go to the sellers, not to the Treasury; and the interest on the bonds goes to the banks, due to the Fed’s controversial policy of paying interest on the banks’ reserves.

Today, this interest paid to the banks is actually greater than the interest the Fed earns on the bonds it buys from them, resulting in a negative balance in its portfolio. In a recent interview on Fox News Business, Treasury Secretary Bessent said the Fed was “losing $1 billion a year because of a mismatch in the bond portfolio from the short-term rates.” In 2023, this loss amounted to $114 billion; and it actually accrues to the Treasury, since the Fed is required to rebate its profits to the Treasury after deducting its costs. The Fed has now amassed a negative balance that will take years to pay off.

Thus Federal Reserve purchases of federal securities through “quantitative easing” won’t solve the debt problem. Treasury-issued currency, on the other hand, is legal and constitutional, as established by Lincoln’s Greenbacks and the subsequent legal tender cases of the Supreme Court; and it could actually solve the debt crisis.

Dealing with the Inflation Question

Printing the whole $37 trillion needed to pay off the federal debt would no doubt be inflationary, and Congress would consider it a bridge too far in any case. But the Treasury could print enough to cover the interest on the debt, or to buy the debt as it comes due, or to cover the budget deficit.

The risk, of course, is that an out-of-control Congress will run the presses as a “magic money tree” to fund all of its pet projects; but limits could be put on these expenditures. They could be required to be “productive,” adding to GDP, lowering the debt to GDP ratio to manageable levels. The German government did this in the 1930s with Mefo bills, avoiding speculative exploitation of the funds by issuing them as payment for specific industrial output.

The People’s Bank of China has hugely increased the money supply of that country without creating price inflation. Prices have been kept stable by increasing supply (GDP) along with demand (money). (For details, see my earlier article here.) Increasing the country’s GDP has been facilitated by China Development Bank, the world’s largest development bank, which has funded massive infrastructure and development across the country.

HR 4052, The National Infrastructure Bank Act of 2023, is currently before Congress and has 48 co-sponsors. Like the Reconstruction Finance Corporation that pulled the U.S. economy out of the Great Depression, the bank is designed to be a source of off-budget financing, without adding new costs to the federal budget. It follows the model of the First U.S. Bank established by Alexander Hamilton. Capitalization is to be with debt-for-equity swaps: Treasuries held by the public will be traded for shares in the bank, paying 2% over the interest earned on the Treasuries. For more information, see the Coalition for a National Infrastructure Bank’s website.

At the local level, state-owned banks could do something similar. Currently our only state-owned bank is the Bank of North Dakota, but it is a very successful model that not only funds state infrastructure and development but generates income for the state and acts as a “mini-Fed” for local banks. For more information, see the Public Banking Institute website.

The GENIUS Act can stabilize the bond market, but it is only a stopgap measure, buying time in the battle against an ever-growing debt. To escape altogether, as Lincoln’s government did, Congress needs to issue some of its own “sovereign” money. If issued for productive purposes in a sustainable way, this money could arguably fuel the economy without reliance on federal debt markets at all.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ellen Brown.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by K.J. Noh.

Ponsonby’s post office is shutting shop next month despite push back from the local community.

A sign on the storefront, which is at the College Hill end of Ponsonby Road, said the closure would take place on 4 July but the post boxes would be “staying put”.

Ponsonby local and author John Harris said New Zealand Post’s decision to close the store was “ill-considered” and it should “try harder” to cater for the people who use the shop’s services.

• READ MORE: Ponsonby community up in arms over impending post office closure
• New Zealand Post to close 79 shops: ‘I do have concerns’ – PM

“They’ve got to be mindful of the vital role that post shops like this one play in glueing the community together,” Harris said.

“If you go down to the post shop you’ll see it’s buzzing with activity; people popping in to post parcels or to get forms filled out and so forth . . .  they’ve got to think about the effect on small communities and this is like gutting the Ponsonby community.”

Viv Rosenberg, a spokesperson for the Ponsonby Business Association, said the group is saddened by the decision to close the shop.

”Our local post office has been part of the fabric of our community in Three Lamps for several years and we regard the team there as part of our Ponsonby family. We are working alongside others to try and keep it open.”

Plan but no timeframe
In 2018, NZ Post announced its plan to close its remaining 79 standalone post offices but did not give a timeframe on when the final store would be shut.

NZ Post general manager consumer Sarah Sandoval said customer data and service patterns were analysed to determine where NZ Post services were best placed.

“The Ponsonby area is well serviced by existing postal outlets, and to remove duplications of services, we’ve decided to make this change.”

She also said that there were nearby options available, including on Hardinge Street 1.4km away, and NZ Post Herne Bay, 1km away.

The NZ Post website said “store closures are given very careful consideration”.

“[Reasons for closure] can include a decline in customer numbers or services which significantly affect the economic viability of the store,” NZ Post said.

Harris emailed NZ Post CEO David Walsh expressing his disapproval of the decision to close the shop and requesting it be reconsidered.

He said a response by the NZ Post general manager consumer stated the closure followed a close look at customer data and that there were other stores serving the Ponsonby community, which was an unsustainable way for the business to operate.

“Herne Bay, Hardinge Street and Wellesley Street are either a challenging walk or you hop in the car and add to the grid,” Harris said.

“They’re only thinking about the sustainability of the New Zealand Post itself not the community.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Ponsonby’s post office is shutting shop next month despite push back from the local community.

A sign on the storefront, which is at the College Hill end of Ponsonby Road, said the closure would take place on 4 July but the post boxes would be “staying put”.

Ponsonby local and author John Harris said New Zealand Post’s decision to close the store was “ill-considered” and it should “try harder” to cater for the people who use the shop’s services.

• READ MORE: Ponsonby community up in arms over impending post office closure
• New Zealand Post to close 79 shops: ‘I do have concerns’ – PM

“They’ve got to be mindful of the vital role that post shops like this one play in glueing the community together,” Harris said.

“If you go down to the post shop you’ll see it’s buzzing with activity; people popping in to post parcels or to get forms filled out and so forth . . .  they’ve got to think about the effect on small communities and this is like gutting the Ponsonby community.”

Viv Rosenberg, a spokesperson for the Ponsonby Business Association, said the group is saddened by the decision to close the shop.

”Our local post office has been part of the fabric of our community in Three Lamps for several years and we regard the team there as part of our Ponsonby family. We are working alongside others to try and keep it open.”

Plan but no timeframe
In 2018, NZ Post announced its plan to close its remaining 79 standalone post offices but did not give a timeframe on when the final store would be shut.

NZ Post general manager consumer Sarah Sandoval said customer data and service patterns were analysed to determine where NZ Post services were best placed.

“The Ponsonby area is well serviced by existing postal outlets, and to remove duplications of services, we’ve decided to make this change.”

She also said that there were nearby options available, including on Hardinge Street 1.4km away, and NZ Post Herne Bay, 1km away.

The NZ Post website said “store closures are given very careful consideration”.

“[Reasons for closure] can include a decline in customer numbers or services which significantly affect the economic viability of the store,” NZ Post said.

Harris emailed NZ Post CEO David Walsh expressing his disapproval of the decision to close the shop and requesting it be reconsidered.

He said a response by the NZ Post general manager consumer stated the closure followed a close look at customer data and that there were other stores serving the Ponsonby community, which was an unsustainable way for the business to operate.

“Herne Bay, Hardinge Street and Wellesley Street are either a challenging walk or you hop in the car and add to the grid,” Harris said.

“They’re only thinking about the sustainability of the New Zealand Post itself not the community.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Donald Trump went off the rails again early in the morning of Monday, May 19, calling for a “major investigation” of Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé and other celebrities who endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, accusing them of taking illegal payments from Harris’ campaign for their endorsement.

“Monday’s post was different in that it actually calls for retribution in the form of an investigation against Springsteen and Beyoncé, as well as Oprah Winfrey and U2 singer Bono,” the Arizona Republic’s Bill Goodykoontz reported. “I am going to call for a major investigation into this matter. Candidates aren’t allowed to pay for ENDORSEMENTS, which is what Kamala did, under the guise of paying for entertainment. In addition, this was a very expensive and desperate effort to artificially build up her sparse crowds. IT’S NOT LEGAL!”

How will Attorney General Pam Bondi respond?

It wasn’t long after Bruce Springsteen lashed out at what the singer/songwriter called the “treasonous” Trump in Manchester, England, on the first stop of his “Land of Hope and Dreams” tour, Trump responded on his social media platform, calling Springsteen “just a pushy, obnoxious JERK, who fervently supported Crooked Joe Biden, a mentally incompetent FOOL, and our WORST EVER President, who came close to destroying our Country“.

Trump added: “Springsteen is ‘dumb as a rock,’ and couldn’t see what was going on, or could he (which is even worse!)? This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just ‘standard fare.’ Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!”

Trump and Springsteen represent two very different faces of American culture, one forged in the boardrooms, gold-plated towers of Manhattan, and realty television, while Springsteen made his bones in dive bars of New Jersey. Trump, with his bombast and branding, rose to political power by channeling discontent, anti-immigrant rhetoric, and racism into a populist wave. With Springsteen, “The Boss,” who also spent decades giving voice to that same discontent through gritty lyrics and blue-collar anthems, there is always a sense of positivity; that America can live up to its lofty ideals.

The contrast is more than stylistic, it’s visceral and philosophical. Trump, a wannabe emperor, has often spoken of winning, power, loyalty from his acolytes, and spectacle. Springsteen sings about struggle, working-class dignity, and the quiet resilience of ordinary people. During Trump’s presidency, Springsteen became an outspoken critic, saying the country had lost its soul. Trump, meanwhile, has dismissed artists like Springsteen as out of touch elites.

While Trump was mainly focusing on Springsteen’s remarks, for some inexplicable reason, he renewed his attack on Taylor Swift. Minutes before his Springsteen rant, he wrote: “Has anyone noticed that, since I said ‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,’ she’s no longer ‘HOT?’” MSNBC noted that “Swift, the top-selling global artist of 2024, has stepped away from the spotlight in recent months after wrapping her record-breaking international ‘Eras Tour’ in December. Trump lashed out at her during the 2024 election cycle after she endorsed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

“The American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada will not remain silent as two of our members − Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift − are singled out and personally attacked by the President of the United States,” the group said. “Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift are not just brilliant musicians, they are role models and inspirations to millions of people in the United States and across the world. … Musicians have the right to freedom of expression, and we stand in solidarity with all our members.”

At a performance after Trump’s rant, The Boss repeated his remarks about Trump at the E Street Band’s May 17 show at the Co-op Live in Manchester, England. Springsteen also repeated his statement on free speech before “My City of Ruins”: “There’s some very weird, strange, and dangerous (expletive) going on out there right now. In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now.”

The Arizona Republic’s Goodykoontz pointed out that “according to Verify, as long as candidates disclose payment [it is legal]. The Harris campaign paid Winfrey’s production company $1 million for helping produce a campaign rally in 2024. The Harris campaign also paid Beyoncé’s production company $165,000 after the singer appeared at a campaign event (Beyoncé didn’t perform).

“The campaign has denied that it made personal payments to any artist or performer, with a spokesperson telling Deadline, ‘We do not pay. We have never paid any artist and performer.’ Payments to production companies and crews are routine.”

In 2003, at a concert in London, The Dixie Chicks (now known as The Chicks) spoke out against George W. Bush and the Iraq War, triggering a backlash that had an enormous effect on the group’s career. The Dixie Chicks were at the time one of the country’s most popular acts. The statement triggered a backlash from American country listeners, and the group was blacklisted by many country radio stations, received death threats and was criticized by other country musicians.

Was Trump threatening Springsteen by telling him that “we’ll all see how it goes for him!” when he returns to this country?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bill Berkowitz.

The climate crisis is not just a climate crisis—it is a planetary crisis threatening the very continuation of life and civilization as we know it. If humanity continues to lolligag its way to an apocalyptic future without drastically addressing this planetary crisis, “We are ensuring at best abominable lives for ourselves and our children,” Malcolm Harris writes in his new book What’s Left. But, Harris continues, “I refuse to believe that we have no alternative to the universal human project’s erosion into parochial barbarism and petty domination. That is an unacceptable outcome, and its giant advancing outline visible through the mist of the near future compels immediate radical action.” In this podcast, recorded at Red Emma’s Cooperative Bookstore and Cafe in Baltimore on April 29, 2025, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Harris about his new book and about three practical paths humanity can take to save itself from apocalypse.

Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

John Duda:

Tonight we are here to talk with Malcolm Harris about what’s left three paths through the planetary crisis. I was thinking about how to introduce this book and I made the mistake of starting to read some of the reviews that had appeared of it. There’s one by Adam Twos in the New York Times, and I like Adam twos. He’s okay. He does good stuff, sends nice emails, nice charts, big books on economic crisis. But I thought his review was really fundamentally wrongheaded because he is basically saying, oh, this is a beautiful, lovely book about the beautiful dream world we could have been in had Trump not won. But now that Trump has won, we have to scale back all our radical ambitions and focus on, I think he says rebuilding the institutions of civil society or something like that. And I thought that was fundamentally just totally wrongheaded based on the book and based on what I know about how radical ideas function in times when they’re not immediately able to be put into place, it’s not for nothing, right?

For instance, just on a policy level, right? It’s not for nothing that the Heritage Foundation wrote Project 2025 before Trump was elected the second time, right? They didn’t wait around until they had permission to do it and then lay out a plan for their evil shit fuckery that they’re doing. They went ahead and they created a plan for what they wanted to see in the world when they were out of power so that the minute they were in power, guess what? We’re fucked. Likewise, you don’t retrench your radical visions in the middle of crisis. You don’t step away from your desire to remake the world or your desire to deal with the Onrushing planetary crisis that’s coming our way just because you have a setback. In fact, I think those are the times when you redouble it. So I’m really excited to have Malcolm here tonight because this book is a really, really great roadmap to the strategic and tactical possibilities and imperatives that we are facing as a movement or as a movement of movements. And I’m really thrilled to have ’em here in person to talk through it. I’m especially thrilled to have Maximilian Alvarez here. Max has been doing some fantastic work if you haven’t seen it. And I’m tracing the connections between capitalists, hyper extractivism exploitation, and the effects on basically sacrifice communities in the United States. And I think it’s a really dramatic way of illustrating some of the conjunctions and hinge points that Malcolm’s book talks about in a larger sense. So please join me in welcoming both of them to Red Emmas.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright, thank you so much, John, thank you to everyone here at Red Emma’s Cooperative Bookstore, cafe and gathering space. Thank you all for making the trip out tonight. Just wanted to encourage y’all to please continue to support Red Emma’s however you can. We need spaces like this now more than ever, and I couldn’t be more grateful to be back here with Brother Malcolm and to talk about his really important challenging and thought provoking new book, what’s Left Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis. And Malcolm, first of all, I just wanted to congratulate you on publishing another book right after you just published one that it would take me two lifetimes to write. So congrats asshole.

Malcolm Harris:

They don’t pay you if you don’t keep writing. I have realized. So when people say another book, I say like, wow, you went to work again this week, didn’t you go last week? So stay tuned. There’ll be more of them.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And I mean, you feel that in reading your works, right? I mean that these are words that even if you could turn the faucet off, well you couldn’t turn the faucet off, right? I mean, that’s the sense that I get that you’re a natural born writer and you need to write and think, and it’s such a pleasure to behold that as a reader and to be in conversation with you about it. And I wanted to sort of start by way of getting us into the discussion, and I’ll give everyone the same disclaimer I give when I do these events that there’s no possible way that we could condense this entire book into a 35 minute discussion and q and a afterwards. So our goal here is to really give you an overview and hopefully encourage you to go buy the book, read it, talk to us and Malcolm about it, talk to your friends about it, strategize with it.

That’s our goal here today. So we are going to talk about it for about the next half hour, then we will open it up to q and a. And I wanted to just by way of getting us started from Malcolm’s introduction where he writes and gives a pretty succinct, I think kind of picture of where we’re at right now. So Malcolm writes, clearly the humans of the 21st century have a problem with the way we handle our collective problems. We seem to be acting out the fable about the frog. The pot on the stove who only perceiving small increases in temperature eventually boils to death. But since we’re humans, we get the added benefit of being able to have a conversation about the fact that we’re slowly boiling to death while we slowly boil to death.

In so far as that is what we should reasonably expect as the outcome of our present social direction. We are ensuring at best abominable lives for ourselves and our children. I refuse Malcolm Wrights to believe that we have no alternative to the universal human project’s erosion into parochial barbarism and petty domination. That is an unacceptable outcome and its giant advancing outline visible through the midst of the near future compels immediate radical action. So Malcolm, before we really dig into the three paths out of the current planetary crisis, I wanted to just meditate a bit on the problem that you write about in the introduction, not just the crisis itself, but what’s keeping us stuck in this pressure cooker of mutually assured destruction.

Malcolm Harris:

Yeah. Well thanks Max, first of all for that wonderful intro and John as well, and everyone at Red Emmas for having me back again and all of you for joining me this evening. So I started this book, or the premise for this book comes from an experience I had in 2019 when I was consulting for the oil company Shell. And you might wonder why on earth would the oil company, shell ask Malcolm to go consult for them? And the answer is that my first book was called Kids These Days and it’s an analysis of the millennial generation. And I didn’t know at the time that all generational analysis is advertising copy. It’s just a promo for corporate consulting services. So every person that you’ve ever seen write a generational book, the way they actually make their money is by telling companies how to sell stuff to that generation, which I did not know at the time I wrote this book.

I thought it was important only to find out that that’s what the whole game was. And so Shell Oil, which has been conducting these future scenario exercises for decades where they try to imagine what’s going to happen deep into the future and try to adjust their business according to it, wanted me to come to London and work on one of these exercises with them. And these corporate consulting deals are such a good deal for writers compared to actually writing that they don’t think anyone’s going to screw it up. And so they don’t even make you sign nondisclosure agreements. And I am stupid enough to screw that up. And so I emailed my editor at New York Magazine and said, look, I’ve got a great story. And then I told she I’m going to be happy to go. I can’t wait to talk to C level executives about how they think about climate change.

And I did write that article, Michelle was not happy about that article. They refused to cooperate in any way with it, but didn’t deny anything that I wrote, which is great. But what really stuck with me was a conversation I had with this one shell analyst who had started working at a green company and his company got bought by Shell. And so he wasn’t even happy to be working there, but he was trying to figure out what his job was going to be. I was asking him what happens to oil wells when shell decarbonize them? And he said, oh, we sell them. I said, okay, who do you sell them to? And he says, well, we sell them to shady operators who are going to operate them with worse environmental conditions and worse labor conditions, and they’re going to start flaring the gas from these wells and we know that’s what’s going to happen.

And I was like, well, that doesn’t sound like a very good decarbonization plan for society, even though if that’s what accounts for Shell. And he looked at me and he said, well, we don’t plan to lose money. And that was a sense that really stuck with me for years, even after the article came out, because we need someone to plan to lose money. We need someone to strand some of those oil assets, not to end up burning them somehow or some way, but to actually leave them in the ground. And that requires somebody to plan to lose money. And there isn’t much of a volunteer pool for that, especially with companies like Shell who cannot plan to lose money and this analyst couldn’t plan to lose money and his boss couldn’t plan to lose money or they would both be fired and replaced by somebody who would.

And that’s not really how we think about the climate crisis. Usually we think about it as personal greed of people who are powerful and rich or shortsightedness of policy makers or whatever. But this is a deep structural problem that goes to the core of how our society arranges itself in the first place, not something that we can solve with a personnel change or even a change to our leadership. And so that was the premise attacking this book is that climate change isn’t the problem we think it is so far and not the way that people have written about it so far.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and John mentioned in the introduction that for the past couple of years I’ve been interviewing working class folks around the US living in so-called sacrifice zones, starting with the community in and around East Palestinian, Ohio where a Norfolk southern bomb train derailed and exploded unnecessarily three days later exposing all these residents to toxic pollutants that are accumulating in their bodies as we speak right now. And that was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg as I connected with residents in South Baltimore who were being poisoned just 20 minutes away from where we’re sitting, cancer alley, Louisiana, red Hill in Hawaii, so on and so forth. And it’s a really critical, and I think eyeopening test case for what you’re talking about because what I’ve learned going to and talking to folks living in these different communities is that if we’re talking about the jobs that are needed in today’s society and the vast scope of work that could be done, like New deal style, putting people to work, it’s remediation, it’s climate remediation, it’s cleaning up all the damage that we’ve done to our communities, to our land, to our planet over the past few centuries, but there’s no profit motive there.

And so it’s not, even though everything else tells you that this is what society needs, the imposition of the profit motive makes it just not even something worth considering. And I feel like that trap that’s keeping us in the boiling water that you’re talking about,

Malcolm Harris:

Absolutely. And people will, because we’re compelled to, we all have to find ways to make livings for ourselves individually. And so people will fight for those jobs destroying their own ecological communities. They’ll fight for oil jobs, they’ll fight for construction jobs for gas fired powered Bitcoin. Mines like the worst possible environmental and social planning. And we have union workers fighting for these jobs and it’s because we are constantly required to make ourselves valuable. So that’s the other side of this oil well, right? The oil well that shell is decarbonizing and this has been verified through reporting that they actually do this. They’ll sell off these oil wells to inscrutable new owners, owners you can’t even find the corporate name for, who will operate it with little to no oversight, with disregard for the law as their plan in ways that are hazardous not just to the environment as a whole, but to the actual workers who are working there approximately.

And yet people will fight for these jobs in every one of those flaring oil wells. People will feel compelled to sell their labor at those places of work. And it’s not because mostly someone’s put a gun to their head and said, you have to go work at this oil well tomorrow or I’m going to kill you and your family. And it’s not mostly because people think, oh, if I go work at this oil well, I’m going to get rich and I’m going to be able to do something completely different with their life. It’s the same reason people go to work all around the world. They know on some level if they can’t make themselves valuable to the system, that the things that they need in order to live will be taken from them, their access to shelter will be taken from them, their access to medicine will be taken from them, their ability to care for the they love will be taken from them. And in the face of that which is an individual task, the question of a clean atmosphere or decarbonized atmosphere or clean water or clean air, even though we know we need all of those things collectively, those questions go out the window because everyone individually has this responsibility to make themselves valuable. And fossil fuels are valuable, right? Fossil fuels can do a lot of work and they will find places where people can put them to work and can sell them.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And I mean, I can tell you guys there is an openness, at least from the hundreds of workers that I’ve interviewed in industries like this, there is at least an openness to the possibility of transition. I remember when coal miners in deep red Alabama were on strike for two years at Warrior Met Coal.

We reported on this struggle. We talked to folks there and they themselves understood that coal is a dying industry and a dying product. But when they were basically saying what Malcolm is saying, it’s like, what are you going to do for me and my family? And as long as we get more than empty promises of some solution down the road, if you have a tangible concrete plan for us to maintain our livelihoods, we’ll leave this damn coal mine. But until you present that, those are the options that we have. And so I think that for all of us need to think about that and how to break that kind of hold, the existential hold that this system has on us that keeps us in this death cycle. And I want to talk Malcolm a little bit about the kind of three paths that you write about in this book that you see as presenting potential ways out of this crisis. But by way of getting there, I guess to cite like Bernie Sanders would say, our good friend Adam Ts, what path would you say we are on now with the current Trump administration, this drill, baby drill, let’s take Greenland. Where are we headed right now with this administration

Malcolm Harris:

For a Chinese century? And I say that jokingly, but a little bit not. I think it’s important to displace America as the central actor. From our analysis objectively of the world, which the world is in the process of doing right now, we’ve taken for granted that whatever was going to be happening this century or over the relevant time period for climate change was going to be happening in an American led order, if not an American dominated unipolar order, which has sort of been the assumption for a while. I don’t think that’s a good assumption going forward. And certainly if we’re looking for answers, it’s not starting now. We’re not showing climate leadership or Donald Trump has undermined America’s position as the world’s climate policy leader or whatever. That’s just not true. We haven’t, by no metric are we leading the world in climate policy. And so when people say like, oh, don’t we need a policy to build or something, we just need a abundance construction policy or whatever, I say, well, even if that was the answer, even if that were the answer, even if that’s what I was talking about, you wouldn’t look to America for it.

We’re not doing that by any standard. And other countries are way ahead of us, specifically the People’s Republic of China. So for me, I find it a relief not to be stuck in a perspective that assumes America’s going to be leading the world. And I think if we really dig our nails into that position, we’re going to get confused. We’re going to find ourselves advocating for positions that make no sense, not just the tariffs, but even the Biden era subsidies on American electric vehicles. Were just more an attempt to fight the Chinese electric vehicle market than they were an attempt to actually do climate policy paying people the $7,500 cost difference between an American electric vehicle and an Chinese electric vehicle so that they buy the American one is not actually climate policy, not any more than shell selling off an oil well is right.

You’ve got the same stuff happening in these scenarios. And I think we really do need world scale policy at this point. We need a global perspective on what really is a planetary crisis. And I don’t say the climate crisis, that’s not the title of the book. It really is a planetary crisis that exceeds just the numeric analysis of temperature increase. It goes to our social metabolic order, is what I call it. And really at the planetary level that these dynamics that we’re talking about are happening in every community, in every country in the world, whether that country is a socialist country committed to a ecological future or America, they still face these same problems. And we see socialist countries, it’s not like the socialist countries of the world have decided, oh, we’re not going to use fossil fuels anymore. Those people would, if that’s what the leadership of Venezuela decided, they would be removed and the people would install different leaders because the people of the country depend on those fossil fuel assets in order to make livings for themselves in this global economy, right? States have been unable to insulate their populations from those injunctions sufficient to be able to take a leadership stance. No state has been able to take that kind of leadership stance, and it’s not a coincidence.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And like I said, there’s no way that we’re going to be able to encapsulate the totality of all three of the kind of key paths out of this planetary crisis that you write about in this book. But I want to maybe give folks a bit of an overview of the three paths that you write about. And also could you say a little bit quickly about how you sheared away the options that you weren’t going to consider? I think you have a very effective way in this book of saying, yeah, there are many proposed solutions or paths out of this, but here are all the ones that I’m not even going to entertain because

Malcolm Harris:

Yeah. So originally I was going to use the whole book as an argument for why the climate crisis means everyone has to be a communist and they have to use value form theory to understand the climate crisis. And only by severing the connection between value and life at the planetary level, can we even find an analytically viable solution to the climate crisis. And then I thought about that for a little while and decided it was maybe not the most advisable argument to make one, because it turns out it’s not true. There are other analytically viable solutions to the climate crisis, which I’ll discuss. But two, and maybe more importantly, I don’t think it gives me a lot of rhetorical credibility. And I don’t think in the time period that we’re talking about, which is years, maybe some decades, not centuries, I don’t think any one position is going to be able to convince everyone, every progressive actor on the world stage to give up what they believe and follow one strategy.

So any claim that we’re going to collapse behind some specific strategy I think is unrealistic. And I wanted to write a realistic book. I think there are enough unrealistic solutions to the climate crisis out there, enough unrealistic books about the climate crisis. I wanted to do a realistic one, and that meant being realistic about the political field that I was operating in as well. But at the same time, I won’t anyone write about progressive solutions to the climate crisis. And so I had to draw a line between what I was willing to consider and what I wasn’t willing to consider. And where I put that line for me is that you have to agree that it is society’s prerogative to plan society, that the planning prerogative within society does not belong to a fraction of the capitalist class that is able to control investment under the current status quo.

It belongs to the entirety of a planetary society on our collective behalf. And that any solution that assumes that either that the market is some ancient God that we have to appease or a fundamental part of human nature or whatever, that we have to accommodate the market rather than perhaps using it as a tool ourselves. I wasn’t going to consider, it’s just like that’s not the purpose of this book. And I made the same decision about parochial strategies. If your strategy is build a bigger border wall around your country or build a wall around your city or pay more border guards and put people on gun boats, which again may be the dominant strategy right now as far as dealing with the climate crisis, but it’s not one I was willing to consider at the beginning. Max quoted me, I still believe in a solution by the planet for the planet, and I believe we’re going to be able to do this together and that we really will win. And that’s the position with which I wrote this book, and the question is how. And so the three strategies that I talked about, I tried to use really non triggering names for the strategies ones that anyone would be able to hear it and still work through the strategy on its own terms, rather than being like, oh, I’m not a liberal. I don’t want to hear about the liberal strategy, or I’m only going to read this chapter to see why they’re wrong or whatever. And so I named the strategies market craft, public power and communism.

I didn’t quite make it with the third one, and I’ll explain why, but first I’ll go through the first two. So market craft is, you could call it the liberal solutions. And it’s the idea that, and I take this term from the political scientist, Stephen Vogel, that markets are a tool that societies of people use to accomplish what they need and that we can use the tools of market crafting to create the market for the decarbonization goods that we need and the decarbonization outcomes that we need. And we don’t have to submit ourselves to the market, rather, we need to structure the rules and the ground in which they play. I use a metaphor that from the market craft perspective, complaining about the market outcomes of decarbonization is complaining about the quality of the cucumber sandwiches at your imaginary tea party with your stuffed animals, right?

It’s like it’s your tea party. You got to take responsibility for the quality, the outcomes. And so it means we’re not crafting the market very well. And in that strategy, I point to the People’s Republic of China as even though this is a capitalist strategy, but as people who are pursuing a much more successful market craft strategy than the United States. Second strategy is public power, which refers both to the power of the public and specifically organized to take control of what happens within society directly and decide what happens and make it happen rather than depending on unreliable market actors. But it also refers to public power as in publicly owned and operated utilities like literal public power. And the best example of the combination of both in the United States context is probably the Tennessee Valley Authority, which I talk about a lot in this section where under FDR, they decided, look, if capital doesn’t want to electrify the south, if it’s not worth it for them to develop this area of the country, then we’re going to just go in and do it ourselves. We’re going to set up a government agency and we’re going to backstop it with the federal government and their balance of payments, and we’re going to build the things we’re going to need, we’re going to build the dams we’re going to build. I talk about pump storage, hydro power a lot in this section, which is how 95% globally of grid scale energy is stored, which people may not know because the battery companies don’t want you to know.

And then communism, which I swear I tried different words. I was like, I’ll call it commenting or community or something that would let people experience the argument without getting reactive. And I ultimately decided that that was a violation of my implicit agreement with the reader to use always the best words that I could find because I think readers can tell when you’re being dishonest. Readers can tell when you’re trying to manipulate or play them or not, say what you really mean and just say something so that they believe it. And I trust my readers a lot. I trust them enough to use that word communism to describe this section, even if I don’t trust the reviewers of the New York Times to not freak out about it. I trust my readers more importantly to be able to read the book. And I’ve got a footnote in that section where I sort of explain this and I say to the reader, please trust me to communicate what I mean by this, which is that society should be organized from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs with the idea that something we all need collectively right now is to decarbonize our atmosphere urgently.

And only by breaking this question of our needs from the question of value, can we even approach them in the first place? So one way I talk about this is that the question, how many shoes does the people in this room need under capitalism and other value-based systems? It’s not a question about feet, it’s a question about how much each of our labor commands on the labor market and what kind of priority we place on buying shoes and what the shoe production system is and what wages are in the shoe system where shoes are produced. All these other questions that don’t have to do with the fact that we all have two feet and that we’re people who need shoes for our two feet, and we have a need for decarbonization that is much more like our two feet than our needs for shoes under the current system. And in fact, if we treat our need for decarbonization like shoes under the current system, we’ll never get it because you can’t buy decarbonization individually. You can only buy shelter from the consequences of an increasingly carbonized world. And so the communist strategy says we really have to seize control the basis for the arrangement of society as a whole if we’re going to solve a question of needs like that. So those are the three strategies.

Maximillian Alvarez:

So we got about five minutes here before we open it up to q and a. And I wanted to kind of quickly follow up there and ask, how would you evaluate the Biden years? I don’t think we should call Biden just an extension of neoliberalism. What you write about in this book, like the industrial policy of the Chips Act, the infrastructure or the Inflation Reduction Act, and that sort of market craft represented something, a breakage if it were from the neoliberal consensus. So would you put the Biden policy under the market craft form of addressing this crisis?

Malcolm Harris:

Yeah, not a particularly strong example when we think globally, and I think we have to think globally, and that was a problem with some of the left reception of the inflation reduction Act, was that it was based on the standards of what we thought we could achieve in the American political system, by which standards it was a victory. And I say so and even a surprising victory, but by the standards of the problem, by what we actually need to accomplish, it was relatively weak. And I think one of the problems with the Biden market craft approach is that they didn’t rely enough on public power to be able to say, look, some of these problems we just need to deal with directly, like the electrical grid is currently badly set up. We need to think about how we actually reform the electrical grid from the ground up.

If we were to approach this right now, how would we do it not struggle through the deregulation legacy of the nineties or whatever, which is currently what they’re doing. And so without that recourse to public power, without the recourse to saying, we’ll, just do it ourselves, if you don’t want to do it, we’ll just do it. You get stuck. And the way I talk about the three strategies is not like we’re looking for the key to the lock. I don’t think any of the strategies is the key to the lock. Instead, I talk about them as puzzle pieces. And the thing about puzzle pieces is that they have to be uneven. They have to have these inlets and protrusions. They can’t have all the answers. They can’t be solid, they can’t be square shaped or circles or whatever. Then they can’t lock together. And so the fact that all of these strategies have these problems, and I try to be very fair about how I present all of them.

I give five subsections about why they’re good strategies and three subsections for each of them about what problems there are, maybe those little inlets. But those problems and those advantages are what allow them to link together. And that’s what allows us, I hope, to be able to look back from a victorious future where we’ve won, which I really do believe we’re going to do. I do not think that there will be a thousand year Trump rike. It’s not going to happen. We’ll see if they get to six months, they’re not there yet, maybe four years, I don’t believe it. They’re not going to win. And so the question is how we are going to win and to think backwards. And if you look at every turning point historically of major progressive action, whether that’s the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the American Civil War, there’s always this composition of social forces where you look back and you say, well, those groups did not all agree together, right?

Abe Lincoln did not agree with John Brown about a lot of stuff, and yet we can look back and see the abolitionist movement take shape across these differences. And that’s the same thing in the French Revolution. The same thing in the Russian Revolution. Any sort of history, historical conflicts in the modern era has a composition, a progressive composition that looks a lot like this one, the one that I described in this book that goes from liberal all the way to radical, right? Karl Marx actually calls it the Party of anarchy, which is not the slogan for the book, also not maybe rhetorically the way to present the climate answers. But at Red, Emma, as I can call it, this is the party of anarchy. And I do think that that’s how the system will perceive it once we get a little more coherence on the left, that it will show itself to be a threat to the system, and the system will regard it as such.

And then it’s about holding together in that moment. And so a lot of the end of the book is about how we find this coherence across these lines of difference, even when we disagree, even when people stab each other in the back, even when people break promises and make mistakes, that we have to be able to find this coherence and pull this left wing coherence out so that we will able to look back and say, that was the climate movement, that was the alignment to progressive social forces that got us from where we are now to really where I believe that we’re going to be, and more importantly where we have to be. I don’t think we have an option than to fight for a planetary solution to our planetary problem. And so I look forward to doing it with all of you, and I hope this gives us some models about how we might cohere that framework and cohere into the movement that we need to be. So thank you all, and I’d love to hear your question.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Let’s give it up for Malcolm Harris

John Duda:

So I can come around with the mic for q and a. I do want to mention that we do have a big stack of Malcolm’s book in the bookstore. So if you do have to leave, you can exit through the book shop and you can pick one up, and if you can stick around, you can get it signed after the QA. Alright, so who’s got some questions?

Audience Member 1:

So what’s an example that’s come out, I don’t know, since the book went to press that’s made you really go, wow, I wish I I could have put that in the book. That’s such a targeted example of exactly what I was talking about in this section.

Malcolm Harris:

I dunno. I mean, I try to write books non actively. And so even for my last one, Palo Alto, which was very in the news cycle, whatever, people were like, oh, don’t you wish you’d added a section about crypto at the end? And I was like, no. The point is that it’s a longer term analysis that’s taking larger cycles into consideration. And so my fear about being responsive or reactive to the things that happen right in front of our face is that it can kind of throw our perspective off and we assign unusual importance to the things that are happening in front of us because they’re happening in front of us and they’re happening to us now, which is an understandable survival mechanism. You have to deal with the things that are in front of you right now, but hopefully one of the things I have to offer as an author is a sort of step back perspective to say, what’s really going on here and on what kind of cycle is it happening?

And I didn’t write this book assuming good things were going to happen in the near term. And I don’t think I’ve written any of my books assuming that good things were going to happen in the near term. And I’ve been right every time so far, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not committed to progress over time. And every book that I’ve written also contains the possibility that struggles will erupt. And in the 10 plus years that I’ve been writing now, those struggles have intensified, right? It’s true that things have gotten worse. It’s also true that the progressive forces within society have stepped things up, have changed so much just since I’ve been writing. I mean, I graduated high school in 2007, and so the way things were politically in 2007, which was only less than 20 years ago or whatever, completely different from what we began.

There was no organized left of any sort in the United States. It felt like at the time there was the anti-war movement and that was it. And that has changed so much. We’ve seen some of the largest movements in this country’s history since then, some of the largest uprisings in this country’s history since then. And I placed my hope in those conflicts. And so I definitely would’ve talked about what’s happening now, whatever. But it’s an example of what I write in the book and I write about the rise of fascist right wing, petro capitalist regimes throughout the world. And if you were sitting there a couple years ago thinking the United States could not be an example of a country where we had a right wing fascist, petro capitalist regime come to power, then I don’t think you’re paying very good attention, right? This guy got reelected, so you getting like, I can’t believe Trump got elected president, right? It’s like, so yeah, I insist on my ability to have written the book I wrote and have it still be absolutely relevant in this moment.

Osita Nwanevu:

First of all, congratulations,

Malcolm Harris:

Good to see you again.

Osita Nwanevu:

Thanks. I see you. I was wondering if you could say more about how you think that these three approaches could be knitted together organizationally and institutionally and politically. It is one thing to say conceptually that none of these approaches works on its own and we have to knit them together. But what does it actually look like as far as organizing? How do the communists organize with the market craft people? What do those spaces look like? What do those political forms look like?

Malcolm Harris:

Well, we’re going to have a talk about Stop Cop City pretty soon, right? What’s the date on the Stop Cop city talk? John May 21st. May 21st. So that’s one of the examples that I use in the text, absolutely that it’s a really good example of how, because also you had people on the boards of companies or whatever and people lobbying the boards of companies to pull out of Cop City to say, this isn’t worth it for you as a market actor because we’re going to put grassroots pressure on you in that way. It’s not just that we’re going to burn the construction equipment, which they did burn the construction equipment, but they also worked within the financial system to say, think about this board members of this construction contractor. You don’t want this. It’s not worth it for you. And I think that’s a negative example because you’re trying to stop cop city, but it’s a good one. It’s one of the examples I put in the middle of the Venn diagram where you had people in all three, you had people working for the state who were trying to stop it. You had people voting in a referendum, you had people making economic cases to the market actors, and then you also had communists halting construction enough to have these debates to be able to theoretically have the democracy weigh in the first place. And to do that, they had to burn construction equipment.

How we can think more productively, I think that’s not enough, right? It’s not enough to try to stop cop city and maybe to stop cop cities more in the future. We also have to build stuff and build power. And I advance in the final pages of the book speculative structure I call disaster councils that could include people working in all three strategies at the same time to plan in advance to think about what are the disasters likely to befall our communities and how can we all three as progressive elements within society plan for that eventuality? And one specific example I think is after the floods in Asheville and North Carolina, one of the most resonant images was police out lined up outside a grocery store with long guns and angry parents saying, please, I need to get inside to buy baby formula. And they weren’t trying to loop baby formula, they were just trying to buy baby formula, but the state’s reaction was to just clamp things down.

But the progressive forces within society could plan for such an eventuality, and so we could plan in advance with grocery store workers, with target workers, which vises that sell baby formula, that when these disasters come down, we know there’s going to be a flood in the next five years. We know this is what it’s going to look like when it happens. We’re going to move baby formula, we’re going to take the pallets out of the store and we’re going to move them to these five checkpoints and we’re going to have quarter sheets to let people know that that’s where they can come get free baby formula for their kids in an emergency situation. And that’s doable without raising a billion dollars. That’s doable without taking over the Democratic party. And that’s doable hopefully without getting shot. That’s something that we can plan in advance, and I think we can exercise leverage at that point because it’s not just about charity in that eventuality. It’s not even just about mutual aid that’s about building power and taking power to say that this is how we’re going to distribute things and this is how our society’s going to work in this moment. And because there is such a vacuum around those disasters and because we know they’re going to happen, I think that’s a place where if we’re being thoughtful and exercising foresight that the left in the United States can start exercising leverage right now

Maximillian Alvarez:

I also want to just quickly throw in, because OCE a’s question really got my brain churning about some of the nascent examples that exist already, where granted this symbiosis between the three paths out of our planetary crisis have not come together in a full unison, but there’s crossover there. I mentioned for example, I’ll use the labor movement as an example within the labor movement you can see traces of these three paths, right? Absolutely. And sometimes they’re directly at odds with each other within the same union. But I mentioned the Warrior Met coal strike in Alabama. A strike on its own is already a form of market craft or a strategy of market craft, as it were, where workers are using their collective labor power to discipline the company and use that force to hurt its bottom line and change its behavior because of it. So just from the nature of the strike itself, there was a market craft strategy there, but then when you also considered that this was happening in the coal industry that had added importance. But then when you add in the fact that the local DSA were some of the folks who kept showing up, even though those coal miners were not socialists, but after a while they were like, Hey, the socialists are the guys who keep showing up. And so you

Malcolm Harris:

Start or the anarchists

Maximillian Alvarez:

Or the anarchists, you start seeing those social bonds and the ideas and the relationships start to change people a little bit. But I would also point to, and Kim Kelly, the great Kim Kelly did some great reporting for us on this, how after a while when the strike itself wasn’t working, the union made the decision to fly a bunch of those coal miners up to New York and go protest outside of BlackRock, who was the number one like investor in Warrior Met Coal. And so that’s perhaps one example where you can see these paths sort of coming together. The last one I’ll mention just quickly is I also mentioned East Palestinian, Ohio, where I’ve been interviewing residents who’ve been poisoned by that train derailment. Prior to that, I was interviewing railroad workers who were working for companies like Norfolk Southern and who were prepared to go on a national strike about it before Biden and both parties in Congress conspired to crush that strike.

That was another form of market craft, right? The Railway Labor Act is it’s a codex of market craft preventing workers on the railroad from taking those sorts of actions. But anyway, I digress. The point is that we at the Real News put railroad workers in touch with East Palestine residents saying, why aren’t you guys talking to each other? You’re fighting the same company. And so out of those discussions, coalitions form and people start to realize the common bonds that they have and how they can work together to address these big monstrous corporate opponents that are hurting all of us. And out of this railroad labor, the more radical side of the rail labor movement, you have a national proposal for nationalizing the rails and electrifying them and turning them into a green rail system. So there are nascent, I think, examples of this, but I can tell you right now, no one has figured it out and they need a lot of pushing. And the old guard of the labor movement is not going to get us there. They need new thinking. They need new actors from community side, from the communist side, from all different sides

Malcolm Harris:

Who have played important roles in a lot of these actors, whether it’s UAW Wildcat strikes among the grad student workers or a trans anarchist contingent that blocked that coal train until the workers got paid. And they were ones who were holding down that encampment who said, if you guys need to go home to your families, go home to your families, we’ll hold it down even though we don’t have jobs here because we recognize that this is an important social struggle and what I call that communist ve, it can be very important, even just buying enough time to start up the public power struggle. I do in the closing sections, I really do talk about all the little overlaps and I give examples of, okay, what does it look like to do market craft and communism at the same time? What does it look like to do market craft and public power?

And what are examples of all of these? So I do talk about the specific overlaps, and it’s not only not impossible, but not even particularly hard to find examples. There’s a lot of constant crossing of lines in terms of our actual practical strategies. And one of the goals of the book was to get people out of a sort of identity reactive frame about their politics, which I think people on the left can certainly fall into where they’re looking for buzzwords, they’re looking for keywords so that they can figure out, okay, where’s this book positioned and where am I positioned in relation to it so that I know the politically correct positioning? And that’s more important than the logic that’s more important than the argument. And actually thinking through what it says. And I tried to give people as few of those as possible few places where they can just orient themselves cleanly in terms of their political identity. And so my hope is that that will result in people being more open to the arguments and more open to the overlap strategically and come out of it thinking of a lot of things they could do as opposed to things they don’t want to do or people they don’t want to work with.

Audience Member 2:

So I appreciate the fact that you’re talking a lot about things being together in the same timeframe in terms of these strategies overlapping and interacting. I’m curious if you also play with time in the book and escalation and building in these strategies and how one form might move into another form with time.

Malcolm Harris:

So I didn’t actually think about them as stages, which I’ve gotten a lot of questions about. Like, oh, is it one market craft, then public power, then communism, which is not how I thought about it because I think, like I said, the relevant period that we’re talking about is years and maybe a couple of decades. And in that period of time, I don’t think we’re going to see that full progression from one strategy to the other. I think there are going to be people working diligently, honestly and progressively within each of those strategies in the whole relevant time period that we’re talking about. Even if at the last minute people have to abandon one for the other or one of them wins or something in a particular moment, which historically happens, like the Bolsheviks win this power struggle, the liberals win the French Revolution power struggle.

It doesn’t become a proletarian movement in the same way. And I imagine that that will happen in this situation, and I think it’s too soon to tell in what way or in what direction. And so I talk about how we have to walk down all paths at the same time. So I lied. I do talk about it temporarily, but unfortunately it’s in terms of quantum mechanics in which the regular rules of time are suspended. And my argument is that in the big scale of things, what we’re talking about in the time period we’re talking about and the place we’re talking about is so tiny that that could happen, that the regular rules for time and space don’t have to apply, that we could walk down all three paths at the same time and find ourselves at the end of one that works. And that’s what I think we have to do. I also compare it to a football play at one point. There were a bunch of fun metaphors at the end, and I hope that one of them works for people, right? It’s like all of the metaphors don’t have to work as long as you find one that you can hold onto. But yeah, the time is a little complicated. I think thinking about it temporarily is tough. And that doesn’t mean we can escape from that. It means we have to go through it.

John Duda:

Got time for one more question.

Audience Member 3:

Hi, I enjoyed your talk. I guess I was wondering because a big issue I had with Biden personally was that I kind of saw him as being very hawkish on the international stage.

Audience Member 1:

Absolutely.

Audience Member 3:

And I think a lot of his green policy was tied to that. I think there was an interesting jet here article about how kind of biden’s his whole idea of the new deal. It was intertwined with kind of Scoop Jackson hawkish Cold War liberalism, which to me, the most depressing thing recently in terms of the democratic qualities politics has been the influx of neocons and the insistence of us pursuing primacy on the international stage in terms of confronting Russia, which I don’t really approve of Russia’s actions, but some of the stuff like the fact that they went from piping in natural gas through pipelines to liquified natural gas that goes through Spain or selling all their oil directly to Europe to selling all their oil, unrefined oil to India, that then gets rerouted to Europe through tankers in a much more costly fashion. It’s clear that you can’t have this type of drive for US primacy overall and also get to carbon neutrality. How do you go about addressing both domestic problems where the Democrats have become the hawkish party as well as kind of, I don’t know. I mean, I think Trump to some degree is doing it right. He’s kind destroying the US empire.

Malcolm Harris:

That’s true.

Audience Member 3:

And if there is a silver lining, right, there’s that. But yeah, I don’t know. What do you think emerges in 2028 maybe with another democratic presidency? I have trouble, I mean, I talked to somebody at a coffee shop after that election and she was just talking about how it’s good that Liz Cheney was invited into the Democratic party. And I just want to scream when I hear people talk about that, but sorry, I’m kind of all over the place.

Malcolm Harris:

No, no, I follow exactly. And that’s a big issue in the book. That’s one of the drawback sections for market craft. That market craft is traditionally organized nationally. And then you have, you find yourself paying $7,500 for everyone who buys a US electric vehicle just to stick it to China. And that’s your whole climate crisis or whole climate policy. But I think at a deeper level, this goes back to the coherence question because, and the Biden question, because we did under the Biden administration, saw a surprising amount of left-wing coherence and you saw pretty radical some of these market craft thinkers making headway into the administration and saying with some pretty relatively radical economic ideas that if we want to build something, we can build it. And if we want to do something, we can do it. And that led to the Biden administration spending a lot more money and pushing for bigger bills than it would have otherwise.

And it did feel for a moment like we were all part of the same conversation. And then the Biden administration broke that and they broke that with the slaughter of Gaza and they refused to take any responsibility for breaking that moment of coherence. And it’s entirely their fault. And we need to keep that blame where it belongs on those elements within the Democratic party that we can’t work with. Because there is a place where you can step past a line and make it so that people can’t work with you. And I was a big believer in the uncommitted movement, which gave them so many chances to cross back over and said, we understand everything about the situation, but we need you to show some kind of movement. We need you to reach your hand in some way back towards this part of the line and they wouldn’t do it.

And we are every day dealing with the direct consequences of that choice. That’s what we are currently experiencing. And so this is an important lesson about what happens if you fail to rally around those points of coherence. And I think one of those points of coherence needs to be internationalism. And we need to say we’re not afraid of the people of China, that they have the same problems we do and they’re looking for the same solutions we are. And we don’t hear that much in the Democratic party. We haven’t heard that much from our liberal representatives, but I think it’s a very popular position among Americans themselves. I don’t think Americans necessarily want war with the rest of the world, and I certainly think we can be talked out of it. And so the question is, are we going to see some leadership from the internationalist parts within the Democratic party to come out and say, this is fearmongering, all this tariff stuff is fearmongering, all the military stuff is fearmongering.

We need to reduce the military industrial complex and we need to spend that money instead of building bombs that are purely destructive. We need to build things that we can use and that solve our problems. And I think that means for those of us in the radical left, we need a direct front against the military industrial complex. I think as Americans, that’s one of the few things that we can offer very directly to the rest of the world, right, is to contest that planning element within society that says we plan for more bombs and more bombs and more bombs. It’s on us to stop them. And I think that’s the most internationalist thing we can do is stop the weapons industry. And that’s would show real leadership, not just nationally, but globally, and that we understand the planetary crisis and maybe we can drag parts of the Democratic party with us. I think that is ultimately a popular message. I think people understand that bombs are destructive, and I think people, liberals, the abundance liberals or whatever, who aren’t willing to say, we should build fewer bombs, our cowards, they’re cowards or they’re bigots one of the two, and neither puts them in an appropriate position to lead. And we should say. So.

John Duda:

Alright. Well thank you Malcolm. Thank you Max. Thank you everybody for coming. As I mentioned, the book is for sale in the bookshop. We’ll be open for a while. Grab a drink if you want one. Hang out, get your book signed. And thank you both. Thank you.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

Image by Getty and Unsplash+.

Malcolm Harris’ latest book, What’s Left, presents a stark assessment of the climate crisis and a serious consideration of what political options have the potential to meaningfully reduce carbon emissions. While the Harris’ focused proposals—marketcraft, public ownership of utilities, and communism— are not options American leaders currently take seriously, Harris makes the case these alternatives will become all the more vital as climate catastrophes intensify. What’s Left reimagines what climate discourse could be if by identifying steps must be taken to decarbonize and working backwards to see how these solutions may come about. In face of serious climate proposals continuing to be discarded. salvaging What’s Left of our environment is the guiding force trying to motivate action along whatever method will achieve these aims.

In the months after it’s been written, What’s Left has already seemed prescient in foreseeing the failure of mainstream climate politics. The Biden administration’s paradox of increasing and oil production alongside green investments and ESG disclosures has been quickly undone by the Trump administration as if the Democratic Party has been in any way restrictive to fossil fuels. California, despite facing more frequent wildfires, has responded by reducing environmental building standards in the disaster zones too dangerous even for insurers. Against these contradictions and failures, a realpolitik approach to achieving sustainability goals is refreshing.

To make any meaningful progress, climate proposals need to start with confronting what Harris terms the “Oil-Value Life chain”—the system of production that maximizes profit at the expense of any other social goal. This is something Harris, who has spoken at Shell’s corporate retreat in the past, has more experience with than most. No matter how green consumption may be, dirty productive systems will continue to wreak damage unabated. Big change—big enough to dislodge our dependence on oil for our economic systems—will needed to address this. For Harris, the three options with the power to do replace the oil-value-life chain are 1) marketcraft — government regulating a green market into existence, 2) public power — collective ownership of the energy sector, and 3) Communism — where people seize the means of production. While the stated intent is to review what each option may look like, these economic questions naturally raise questions about what we owe to society and how we should relate to each other.

In his analysis of these movements, marketcraft draws the most contemporaneous practical examples—as well as downfalls. Because markets are social projects to achieve societal goals, these markets can often be the most expedient methods to deliver reform through green incentives, taxing polluters, and investing in long-term projects. While the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act was the US’ most serious effort at green incentives, this also showed the incoherence of applying incentives to stimulate green production without reducing pollution to reduce emissions. For what good marketcraft looks like, we are still left looking at other countries such as China’s ability to continue investing in renewable energy generation and transmission.

Public power offers a second alternative where public ownership of power generation could invest in forms of energy generation to serve the public good. Instead of the current system where municipalities grant utility monopolies to extract rent for delivering power, communities could invest directly in power generation—both cutting out the middleman and empowering communities to make utility decisions aligned to their goals. When the US has invested in public utilities, such as the Tennessee Valley, the social advancement has been phenomenal despite the US refusing to back similar New Deal-style investments for several decades. Freed from the need to finance sustainable power profitably, China has been able to make significant increases in the last decades.

Lastly, communism is the final and most transformative option—to address not just the contradictions of the an economy undermining global livability but also addressing the core assumptions of capitalist resource distribution. Community-based uprisings against capitalism from the Zapatistas or other indigenous resistance movements have been some of the most effective ways to advance social planning that embeds their participants in their local environment. In a world where we can expect systems to continue to failing, this bulwark is something groups need to be prepared for.

Given the urgency of these challenges, no strategy alone can be expected to address these needs. Harris takes each vein of thought seriously, but thankfully not on its own terms. What’s Left presents a practical exploration of how these movements can work together to advance climate goals. This topical overview covers a wide range of productive methods to decarbonize industrial manufacturing and reduce carbon’s impact on the atmosphere. These tactics as well as their social ramifications, both successful and not, that have been attempted with the potential to leverage wider-scale change. While at this moment, as the any semblance of environmental consciousness is razed from federal government, lax environmental regulations are gutted, and milquetoast incentives are rolled back any of these options appear far fetched. However, this does not change the facts that these are the actions necessary to mitigate the worst effects of the climate crisis. The climate fight will live on and we will win, because we must.

The post Climate Realpolitik: Review of “What’s Left” by Malcolm Harris appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Mitchell Best.

Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).

New York Times (1/29/25)

This week on CounterSpin: A number of federal agencies rushed to make clear they would be scrubbing activities and events that “celebrate cultural awareness” in an effort to stay on the good side of the weird new White House. Trump and his abettors’ anti-anti-discrimination agenda is as subtle as a sledgehammer. “DEI hire,” for instance, is super-complicated code for the idea that if a person who isn’t white, cis and male got a job, that can only mean a better qualified white cis man was unfairly denied it. That’s just, Trump says, “common sense.”

The irony is not lost that history itself is seen as being manipulated for political purpose when it comes to Black History Month—because we know that history is constantly invoked, if implicitly, as a way of justifying present-day unfairness. White supremacy can be presented as natural if  white people invented everything, discovered everything, created all the wealth, and defined civilization. That lies back of many public and media conversations…so just saying Charles Drew invented blood banks is disruptive! What if Black people aren’t subhuman?

What people try to silence tells us what they fear. So what is so scary about everyone, not just Black people, acknowledging the particular circumstances and responses to those circumstances of Black people in these United States—our experience, challenges, accomplishments? Is it that history—real history, and not comforting tall tales—connects the past with the present in ways that are powerful, grounding and inspiring?

In March 2021, a hitherto no-name right-wing activist openly declared an intention to mislead around racism and to vilify any questioning of enduring racial inequities: “The goal,” wrote Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo,  “is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’” He bragged that he had “successfully frozen” the “brand” of critical race theory, and was “steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category.”

A self-respecting press corps would have taken that as a shot across the bow. The corporate news media we have dutifully signed on to present a campaign openly defined as uninterested in truth or humanity and concerned only with rolling back the clock on racial equity as a totally valid, “grassroots” perspective, deserving respectful inclusion in national conversation.

That was a jumping-off point for our conversation with law professor Luke Charles Harris, co-founder with Kimberle Crenshaw of the African American Policy Forum. We’ll hear that important conversation again this week.

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at recent press coverage of Venezuela, Elon Musk and ICE.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by CounterSpin.

Despite the severity of these actions, which posed significant threats to the integrity of future elections, federal authorities—specifically the DOJ and FBI—failed to act. Even after being alerted about these breaches for years, both agencies took no meaningful steps to investigate or halt the illicit activity. This inaction mirrors their failure to prevent the events of January 6, 2021, raising serious concerns about their commitment to protecting the electoral process and our very democracy. 

Election security experts, including Susan Greenhalgh from Free Speech for People, have been sounding the alarm for years, urging the government to take action. They argue that this breach, coupled with the failure of federal authorities to intervene, poses a real threat to the future of U.S. democracy. Without accountability and a thorough investigation into the stolen software, it’s impossible to ensure the integrity of upcoming elections. The lack of response from federal agencies raises questions about their willingness to protect election systems from both internal and external threats. 

This breach should not be ignored. It’s time for a full investigation and immediate action to safeguard our elections. Greenhalgh joins Gaslit Nation in this urgent interview, before a live-audience of listeners, to discuss a skeptic's guide to why Vice President Kamala Harris must call for a recount in key states in the 2024 election, before it's too late. 

To amplify this urgent call-to-action: 

1. SHARE THIS SOCIAL MEDIA POST: Listen to @gaslitnation’s urgent interview w/Susan Greenhalgh of Free Speech for People. They warned Congress, FBI, DOJ for years about election system breaches by MAGA as part of the Big Lie. Join their call for Harris to demand a recount https://gaslitnation.libsyn.com/election-security-experts-harris-must-call-for-recounts

2. CONTACT YOUR REPS IN CONGRESS AND ALSO AOC, BECAUSE SHE IS A FIGHTER: Listen to @gaslitnation’s urgent interview with Susan Greenhalgh of Free Speech for People. They warned members of Congress, the FBI, and the DOJ for years about election system breaches by MAGA as part of their Big Lie efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Given the confirmed facts, many documented in court cases, that they stole and distributed election data used to count our votes, our elections are vulnerable and may easily be compromised by threats foreign and domestic. Join their call for Harris to demand a recount and publicly call for investigations by the FBI and DOJ: https://gaslitnation.libsyn.com/election-security-experts-harris-must-call-for-recounts

3. SHARE THIS INTERVIEW ON SOCIAL MEDIA WITH JOURNALISTS YOU TRUST: Listen to @gaslitnation’s urgent interview w/Susan Greenhalgh of Free Speech for People. They warned Congress, FBI, DOJ for years about election system breaches by MAGA as part of the Big Lie. Join their call for Harris to demand a recount https://gaslitnation.libsyn.com/election-security-experts-harris-must-call-for-recounts

Show Notes:

The Georgia Voting Machine Theft Poses a Direct Threat to the 2024 Election https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/10/georgia-trump-vote-theft-2024-election.html

Computer Scientists: Breaches of Voting System Software Warrant Recounts to Ensure Election Verification https://freespeechforpeople.org/computer-scientists-breaches-of-voting-system-software-warrant-recounts-to-ensure-election-verification/

Merrick Garland Lets MAGA Steal the Election https://sites.libsyn.com/124622/merrick-garland-lets-maga-steal-the-election-teaser

MAGA Openly Tries to Steal Georgia https://gaslitnation.libsyn.com/brian-kemp-is-a-klansman

Want to enjoy Gaslit Nation ad-free? Join our community of listeners for bonus shows, ad-free episodes, exclusive Q&A sessions, our group chat, invites to live events, and more! Sign up at Patreon.com/Gaslit!

This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.

Following the election, online platforms in China saw a surge of activity, with some users targeting Trump and Harris with a wave of rumors and misinformation.

Here is what AFCL found.

Did Trump say the Taiwan issue is ‘China’s internal affair’ after winning the election?

A video emerged in Chinese-language social media posts alongside a claim that it shows Trump after his election win saying that the Taiwan issue is China’s internal affair.

A 21-second video posted on X on Nov. 10 features Chinese subtitles showing a purported conversation between a reporter and Trump.

The subtitles read: “Reporter: How will you handle the Taiwan issue?”

“Trump : Why would I care… Are you teaching me how to handle things? That’s a domestic matter for China.”

But the claim is false.

Keyword searches found the original clip published by the American broadcaster CNN in January 2019.

A review of the original clip shows then-President Trump signing a bill related to protection for human trafficking victims and discussing a federal government shutdown crisis with reporters – topics unrelated to Taiwan.

Trump made no mention of the Taiwan issue.

China considers Taiwan a breakaway province and its sovereign territory, even though the island has been governed independently since 1949.

Taiwan, however, operates as a self-governing democracy with its own institutions and society, where many identify independently of the mainland.

The United States takes a nuanced stance, officially recognizing the “One China” policy, which is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three U.S.-China Joint Communiques, and the Six Assurances, while supporting Taiwan’s right to self-defense through arms sales and unofficial diplomatic relations.

Separately, images of Trump also circulated in Chinese-language social media posts claiming to show Trump saying the Taiwan issue is China’s internal affairs.

The superimposed texts in Chinese, attributed to Trump, on the images read: “Independence or unification is their internal matter! Taiwan affairs do not need U.S. interference!”

Keyword searches found the images were taken from Trump’s pre-election appearance on the podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience” where he discussed Taiwan’s semiconductor business and protection fees.

A review of the segment found that Trump made no mention of Taiwan’s independence or unification.

Separate keyword searches found no recent interviews in which Trump made statements about Taiwan independence.

Did Trump say he would ban Black Lives Matter and Pride flags from American classrooms?

A screenshot of what appears to be Trump’s X account circulated in Chinese-language social media that claim to show the president-elect saying he would ban Black Lives Matter and LGBT flags from American classrooms.

The Black Lives Matter, commonly known as the BLM movement, began in 2013 to address systemic racism and police violence against Black people.

Pride is a global celebration and advocacy movement for LGBTQ+ rights and equality, honoring the 1969 Stonewall Riots.

But the claim about Trump’s statement is false.

The X account seen in the Chinese social media posts is a parody account and doesn’t belong to the former president.

The parody account’s handle is @DonaldTNews, while that of Trump’s official X account is @readlDonaldTrump.

Keyword searches found no credible reports of Trump mentioning banning BLM and Pride flags from American classrooms.

Does a video show Harris losing her temper after election loss?

A video of Harris emerged in Chinese-language social media posts claiming to show Harris losing her composure after the election loss.

The caption of the video shared on X on Nov. 7 reads: “After losing, Harris can no longer smile, angrily lashing out in frustration.”

But the claim is false.

Keyword searches found the original video posted on Oct. 25, 2024, by the American public broadcaster PBS, days before the U.S. presidential election.

The video shows a Harris rally in Houston, Texas, on Oct. 25. At the 3-hour and 57-minute mark of the video, Harris and her supporters can be heard chanting “We’re not going back” three times.

At the rally, Harris discussed women’s reproductive rights in the U.S., urging supporters to vote promptly, as only 11 days remained until the election, and early voting had already begun in Texas.

Does a video show Biden and Obama discussing Harris after the election?

A video of U.S. President Joe Biden and the former president Barack Obama circulated on Chinese-language social media posts that claim it shows Biden and Obama discussing post-election strategy and Harris.

“How’s Harris doing?” subtitles in Chinese read attributed to Biden.

“She’s done. I think they found out she’s mentally challenged. Now we’re basically screwed, Trump crushed us in the election,” read subtitles attributed to Obama.

But the claim is false.

Keyword searches found the original video published on Oct. 16 by the American broadcaster C-SPAN, days before the election.

The video shows Biden and Obama participating at the private funeral of Ethel Kennedy, the widow of the late Robert F. Kennedy, on Oct. 16, 2024.

Edited by Taejun Kang.

Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Zhuang Jing and Alan Lu for Asia Fact Check Lab.

“In October, billionaire Mark Cuban bragged about his role in exiling a Harris surrogate and former Elizabeth Warren staffer for the sin of supporting a wealth tax during a television appearance. This claim was bolstered this month by reporting in The Atlantic that suggests that Uber General Counsel (and VP Harris’ brother-in-law) Tony West convinced Vice President Harris to ratchet down her populist messaging lest it upset the Silicon Valley and Wall Street elites he was courting on her behalf.

On November 5th, Harris ran far stronger in the states that she saturated with television ads than the ones she did not. Those tv ads were, as Semafor’s David Weigel observed, “grinding on this economic message (anti-price gouging, Medicare covering home care, etc).”

It’s impossible to know whether the additional 2 points or less needed by Harris in the pivotal states would have been secured by basing her public “earned media” and social media messaging on the same populist economic platform which informed her television ads. However, it is clear that the more successful paid media message was more populist and less informed by plutocrats like Cuban and West. Further, it seems exceedingly likely that downballot Democrats outside the swing states would have benefitted from an ecosystem featuring the type of messaging we heard at the Democratic Convention.

In a populist moment in which the candidates were battling for the mantle of change, the sitting Vice President had to be identified as clearly against some powerful institutions. Her campaign showed early signs of an aggressive message, arguing that her record as California Attorney General included taking on crooked big banks and shady student loan servicers. While VP Harris stuck to a comparably anti-plutocratic message in her television ads, she did not in her interviews and public appearances. This divergence appears to have been based on the advice of plutocrats.

Hopefully future candidates will learn from this, and oppose plutocrats consistently.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

From the start, the Democrats had tied themselves in knots by convincing President Joe Biden that he could not only last the tenure of his office but run against Trump. Doing so, and deriding those wishing to see a change in the guard, created a needless handicap. Throughout late 2023 and early 2024, it became clear that the party worthies were doing their best to shield Biden’s cognitive decline.  The sham was cruelly exposed in the June 27 debate with Trump.

Panic struck the ranks. With little time to regroup, Vice President Harris was close at hand, selected by Biden as the appropriate choice. But Harris landed with a punctured parachute weighed down by the crown of presumptive nomination.  There were to be no opponents (the 2016 challenge of Bernie Sanders against Hillary Clinton which annoyed the party mandarins would not be repeated), no primaries, no effective airing of any challenge. It was easy to forget – at least for many Democrats – that Harris’s 2019 bid for the nomination had been spectacularly poor and costly. An ailing president would also keep his occupancy in the White House, rather than resigning and giving Harris some seat warming preparation.

While the change caused the inevitable rush of optimism, it soon became clear that the ghost of Hillary’s past had been working its demonic magic.  The Harris campaign was unadventurous and safe. All too often, the vice president hoped that messages would reach the outer reaches of the electorate from cocooned comfort, helped by a war chest of fundraising that broke records ($1 billion in less than three months), and a battalion of cheerleading celebrities that suggested electoral estrangement rather than connection.

Then there was the problem as to what those messages were. These, in the end, did not veer much beyond attacking Trump as a threat to democracy, women’s rights and reproductive freedoms. They tended to remain unclear on the issue of economics. From foreign to domestic policy, Harris failed to distinguish herself as one able to depart from the Biden program in her own right. Instead, it was hoped that some organic coalition of anti-Trump Republicans, independents, Black voters, women and American youth would somehow materialise at the ballot box.

In a September 16 meeting with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, longtime allies of the Democratic Party, Harris failed to convince its leaders that she would protect the livelihood and jobs of workers better than Trump. Within a matter of days, the union publicly revealed that it would not be endorsing Harris as Democratic presidential candidate, the first since 1996.

Her interviews were minimal, her exposure to the outside treated with utmost delicacy. The Republicans, on the other hand, were willing to get their hands dirty with an extensive ground campaign that yielded electoral rewards in such battleground states as Pennsylvania. The Early Vote Action effort of conservative activist Scott Presler proved impressive in encouraging voter registration and increasing absentee and early vote counts. His efforts in securing votes for Trump from Pennsylvania’s Amish community were strikingly successful.

Trump, in sharp contrast to his opponent, was so exposed to the point of being a potential assassination target on two occasions.  He showed the electorate he was worth the tag. He personalised with moronic panache. He babbled and raged, and made sure he, as he always does, dominated the narrative. Alternative media outlets were courted. Most of all, he focused on the breadbasket issues: the cost of groceries, housing and fuel; the perceived terrors of having a lax border policy. He also appealed to voters content with reining in the war making instincts so natural to Harris and neoconservatives on both sides of the aisle.

Fundamentally, the Democrats fell for the old trick of attacking Trump’s demagogy rather than teasing out their own policies. The Fascist cometh. The inner Nazi rises. Misogyny rampant. Racism throbbing. This came with the inevitable belittling of voters. You cast your ballot for him, you are either an idiot, a fascist, or both. Oh, and he was just weird, said the unknown and already forgotten ear-scratching Democrat vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, whatever that means in a land where weird is so frequent as to make it its most endearing quality.

It is remarkable that Trump, a convicted felon, twice impeached in office, a person so detached from the empirical, the logical, and the half-decent, would be electable in the first place. Even more remarkable is that such a figure has won both the Electoral College and the popular vote. The glorious Republic likes its show and treats elections like marketing exercises.  Its defenders often pretend that those reaching its highest office are not mirrors but transcendent figures to emulate.  Trump – in all his cocksure hustling and slipshod approach to regulation and convention – shows many in the electorate that the defect and the defective can go far.

A few final lessons. The Democrats would do best to listen to those who would otherwise vote for them.  Focus on the economy. Talk about the price of eggs and milk. Ditch the lexicon on ill-defined terms of supposedly useful criticism such as fascism, a word the users almost always misunderstand. And always be careful about pundits and pollsters who predict razor small margins in elections.  Polls, and people, lie.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

“This is a collapse of the Democratic Party.” Consumer advocate, corporate critic and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader comments on the reelection of Donald Trump and the failures of the Democratic challenge against him. Despite attempts by left-wing segments of the Democratic base to shift the party’s messaging toward populist, anti-corporate and progressive policies, says Nader, Democrats “didn’t listen.” Under Trump, continues Nader, “We’re in for huge turmoil.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Voting in the U.S. presidential election between Democrat Kamala Harris, the vice president, and Republican Donald Trump, the former president, ends on Nov. 5. A winner has been projected in some U.S. elections within hours; others have taken days or weeks to reach a result.

The map below is provided by Voice of America. VOA’s editors will update the map when the Associated Press and a second source project Harris or Trump as having won a state.

The bar at the top of the map shows each candidate’s overall vote totals. You can click on the years at the top of the map to see results from previous U.S. presidential elections.

The map will update automatically; you do not need to refresh the page.

Voice of America is a U.S. government news network that has editorial independence and serves a global audience.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA English.

THULASENDRAPURAM, Tamil Nadu, India—As millions vote in the U.S. presidential elections Tuesday, a tiny village located on the other side of the world in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu is offering prayers at the local Hindu temple, hoping for victory for one of their own, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Harris, 60, was born in California to an Indian mother and Jamaican father, both of whom immigrated to the United States for higher education.

In the village of Thulasendrapuram – where Harris’s maternal grandfather Painganadu Venkataraman “P.V.” Gopalan was born – residents have been gathering each day at the village temple to offer special prayers to the Hindu deity Ayyanar – worshipped in rural parts of Tamil Nadu as a guardian or protector – to watch over Harris.

The residents refer to Harris as the “daughter of the land,” and say they feel a deep connection with her because of her ancestral ties to the village.

The village is decked out with signs featuring Harris‘s portrait and banners wishing her good luck in the election, which will determine whether or not she will become America’s first female president and first president of Indian descent.

“We in this village offer daily prayers for Kamala Harris to win the election,” Aruna Murli Sudhagar, the leader of the village, told Radio Free Asia.

Sudhagar said that there was an atmosphere of great hope and excitement over the prospect of a Harris victory.

“We have performed special prayers to our wish-fulfilling deity and the ritual of bathing the deity, as well as offerings and prayers to all our gods,” she said.

Issues with India

In America’s polarized political environment, the U.S. relationship with India is an issue that both Democrats and Republicans can agree upon.

Harris’ rival in the 2024 election, former President Donald Trump, forged a strong relationship with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his administration, and has in the past actively campaigned for the support of Hindus in the United States.

During her campaign, Harris has not made much mention of her Indian roots, but her heritage has helped draw India’s attention to the election, especially in Thulasendrapuram, where her grandfather was born and raised.

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But these days the U.S. presidential hopeful has no relatives living in the village. Gopalan moved away and became a high-ranking Indian government official.

“Although her family does not currently live here, her family members like her aunt frequently visit the area, especially to make offerings at this temple,” Anbarsu, a retired oil company worker from Thulasendrapuram, told RFA.

In her name

He said her aunt Sarala made a 5,000 rupee (US$60) donation in Harris' name for temple repairs.

“Thus, there is a close connection between this village and Kamala Harris’ family, leading the people of this village to have high hopes that Kamala Harris will win the election,” he said.

Gopinath, a young professional now working in Singapore but originally from the village, said he and others who grew up in Thulasendrapuram were eagerly awaiting a Harris victory.

“If she wins, we’ll be very proud because she represents someone from a small village rising to lead one of the world’s superpowers,” he said.

In 2020, the village also held celebrations when she became the vice president, lighting firecrackers and distributing sweets to residents.

On Tuesday, at the village temple where the special prayers were offered, three international tourists wearing black T-shirts that read “Kamala Freakin Harris” also said they had come to her ancestral village especially to show their support for Harris’s presidential bid.

“We came to her ancestral village,” one of them from Las Vegas said, “to show our support by praying at this Hindu temple because we believe she must become president.”

Additional reporting by Dickey Kundol. Translated by Dolma Lhamo. Edited by Tenzin Pema, Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Pema Ngodup for RFA Tibetan.

We are all by now inured to liberals’ adaptability to the most alarming evils of the US polity: wars of aggression abroad, mushrooming homelessness, tens of millions with little or no healthcare coverage, failing schools, social/cultural dysfunction and despair—all just part of a day’s work in the standard, narrow lane of establishment conservative/liberal discourse, but shocking and disorienting to anyone outside that Beltway of complacency and business as usual. As ghastly as those injustices are, none of them comes close to the staggering evil of this genocide recorded in real time, in the gruesome literality of daily and ever more sickening social media videos.

Yet … the liberal class of this country has now surpassed itself in depravity and callousness by fielding a candidate for president who has funded and presided over this horror: Kamala Harris, mass murderer of children. Seemingly sane if smug urban hipsters and academics urge us, with their customarily curled lips of condescension, to vote to ratify this monstrosity by casting a ballot for this unspeakable genocidaire. People who could not imagine campaigning for school shooter for mayor are unruffled in their flacking for a child murderer to the hundredth power of that—and for the presidency of the United States.

Even the habitual liberal tolerance for everyday injustice and suffering has reached its limit with the maimed, starved, and blasted children of Gaza. Even if the chronic hypocrites and double talkers of the liberal class can cross that red line, the rest of us must stand up, once and for all, and say as one: not for us—not one step further into the greatest of human evils: the mass slaughter of the innocents.

Every other issue and pseudo-issue that arises in this campaign recedes into insignificance before this unimaginable horror. Although tens of millions of Americans will cross that red line today, if we as a species are to preserve even the frailest hope of redemption, the slenderest reed of conscience or decency, at least some of us cannot follow. We must draw and re-draw that line, brightly and firmly, and challenge others to follow us in declining to cross over it—to cross over irrevocably into complicity in that “wasteland of garbage, rubble, and human remains” (Francesca Albanese, UN Rapporteur for Palestine) that final graveyard of the human spirit, of any last hope of speaking of humanity and civilization in the same breath.

We must then, follow the brave lead of Kshama Sawant (long-time socialist Seattle City Council member) and the Michigan Abandon Harris founder Hassan Abdel Salam in declaring: Here we stand—we refuse to cross that line—we can do no other. Kamala Harris and the Democrats must be punished at the polls on Tuesday—they cannot, must not, be rewarded for their genocidal assault on the desperate, destitute refugees of Gaza. The slogans of the human among us must be: Defeat Harris! Vote No on Genocide!

That no vote could take any form: leaving the presidential ballot blank, voting for or writing in the name of Jill Stein or Cornel West, or any vote except a vote for Harris.

The cries of the children of Gaza should be ringing around the world as a caution and a call—a call to return from the brink of irreversible savagery, a call to salvage a last best hope for “one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos.” (E. M. Forster). Today you can answer that call by voting against Kamala Harris and never looking back. 

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by William Kaufman.

The editorial board of The New York Times has demolished Donald Trump in a single paragraph calling on readers to vote for Vice-President Kamala Harris in today’s US elections.

The editorial, published on Saturday, was only the Times’ latest attack on the former president in the run-up to the election, but the searing indictment was all the more brutal for its brevity.

• READ MORE: US elections: Editorial writers at LA Times, Washington Post resign after billionaire owners block Kamala Harris endorsements
• Other US presidential elections reports

The 10-line editorial simply said:

“You already know Donald Trump. He is unfit to lead. Watch him. Listen to those who know him best. He tried to subvert an election and remains a threat to democracy. He helped overturn Roe, with terrible consequences. Mr. Trump’s corruption and lawlessness go beyond elections: It’s his whole ethos. He lies without limit. If he’s re-elected, the G.O.P. won’t restrain him. Mr. Trump will use the government to go after opponents. He will pursue a cruel policy of mass deportations. He will wreak havoc on the poor, the middle class and employers. Another Trump term will damage the climate, shatter alliances and strengthen autocrats. Americans should demand better. Vote.”

The dismissal of Trump by The Times was in contrast to two other major US newspapers, both owned by billionaires — The Washington Post and the LA Times — which last month controversially refused to make an editorial call.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

She made it clear in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in August, again at her televised debate with Donald Trump a few weeks later, and in all her interviews since.

Vice-President Kamala Harris, if or when elected the 47th United States president, will continue the centre-right policies of her recent predecessors, especially her current boss, President Joe Biden.

This likely means that efforts to address income equality and poverty, to abandon policies that beget violence overseas, and to confront the latticework of discrimination that affects Americans of colour and Black women especially, will be limited at best.

• READ MORE: Donald Trump ‘unfit to lead’ – vote for Harris, warns New York Times
• Other US presidential elections reports

If Harris wins today’s election, her being a Black and South Asian woman in the most powerful office in the world will not mean much to marginalised people anywhere, because she will wield that power in the same racist, sexist and Islamophobic ways as previous presidents.

“I’m not the president of Black America. I’m the president of the United States of America,” President Barack Obama had said on several occasions during his presidency when asked about doing more for Black Americans while in office. As a presidential candidate, Kamala Harris is essentially doing the same.

And as it was the case with Obama’s presidency, this is not good news for Black Americans, or any other marginalised community.

Take the issue of housing.

Blanket housing grant
Harris’s proposed $25,000 grant to help Americans buy homes for the first time is a blanket grant, one that in a housing market historically tilted towards white Americans, will invariably discriminate against Black folks and other people of colour.

Harris’s campaign promise does not even discern between “first-time buyers” whose parents and siblings already own homes, and true “first-generation” buyers who are more likely not white, and do not have any generational wealth.

It seems Harris wants to appear committed to helping “all Americans”, even if it means her policies would primarily help (mostly white) Americans already living middle-class lives. Any real chance for those among the working class and the working poor to have access to the three million homes Harris has promised is between slim and none.

Harris’s pledges about reproductive rights are equally non-specific and thus less than reassuring to those who already face discrimination and erasure.

She says, if elected president, she would “codify Roe v Wade”. Every Democratic president since Jimmy Carter has made such a promise and yet failed to keep it.

Even if Congress were to pass such a law, the far right would challenge this law in court. Even if the federal courts decided to upload such a law, the Supreme Court decisions that followed between 1973 and 2022 gave states the right to restrict abortion based on fetus viability, meaning that most restrictions already in place in many states would remain.

And with half the states in the US either banning abortion entirely or severely restricting it, codification of Roe — if it ever actually materialises — would at best reset the US to the precarity around reproductive rights that has existed since 1973.

Less acccess to resources
Even if Harris miraculously manages to keep her promise, American women of colour, and women living in poverty, will still have less access to contraceptives, to abortions, and to prenatal and neonatal care, because all Roe ever did was to make such care “legal”.

The law never made it affordable, and certainly never made it so that all women had equal access to services in every state in the union.

Given that she is poised to become America’s first woman/woman of colour/Black woman president, Harris’s vague and wide-net promises on reproductive rights, which would do little to help any women, but especially marginalised women, are damning.

Sure, it is good that Harris talks about Black girls and women like the late Amber Nicole Thurman who have been denied reproductive rights in states like Georgia, with deadly results. But her words mean nothing without a clear action plan.

Where Harris failed the most of all, however, is tackling violence — overwhelmingly targeting marginalised, sidelined, silenced and criminalised folks — in the US and overseas.

During a live and televised interview with billionaire Oprah Winfrey in September, Harris expanded on the revelation she made during her earlier debate with Trump that she is a gun owner.

“If somebody breaks into my house they’re getting shot,” Harris said with a smile. “I probably should not have said that,” she swiftly added. “My staff will deal with that later.”

Grabbing attention of gun-owners
The vice-president seemed confident that her remark would eventually be seen by pro-gun control democrats as a necessary attempt at grabbing the attention of gun-owning, centre-right voters, who could still be dissuaded from voting for Trump.

Nonetheless, her casual statement about the use of lethal force revealed much more than her desire to secure the votes of “sensible”, old-school right wingers. It illuminated the blitheness with which Harris takes the issue of the US as a violent nation and culture.

It is hard to believe Harris as president would be an advocate for “common sense” measures seeking “assault weapons bans, universal background checks, red flag laws” when she talks so casually about shooting people.

Her decision to treat gun violence as yet another issue for calculated politicking is alarming, especially when Black folk — including Black women — face death by guns at disproportionate rates, particularly at the hands of police officers and white vigilantes.

Despite Trump’s disgusting claims, Harris is a Black woman. Many Americans assume she would do more to protect them than other presidents. However, her dismissive attitude towards gun violence shows that President Harris — regardless of her racial background — would not offer any more security and safety to marginalised communities, including Black women, than her predecessors.

The assumption that as a part-Black, part-South Asian president, Harris would curtail American violence that maims and kills Black, brown and Asian bodies all over the world also appears to be baseless.

In repeatedly saying that she “will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world”, Harris has made clear that she has every intention to continue with the lethal, racist, imperialistic policies of her Democratic and Republican predecessors, without reflection, recalibration or an ounce of remorse.

Carnage in Gaza
Just look at the carnage in Gaza she has overseen as vice-president.

Despite saying multiple times that she and Biden “have been working around the clock” for a ceasefire in Gaza, the truth is that Biden and Harris have not secured a ceasefire simply because they do not want one.

Harris as president will be just as fine with Black, brown, and Asian lives not mattering in the calculations of her future administration’s foreign policy, as she has been as vice-president and US senator.

Anybody voting for Harris in this election — including yours truly — should be honest about why. Sure, there is excitement around having a woman — a biracial, Black and South Asian woman at that — as American president for the first time in history. This excitement, combined with her promise of “we’re not going back” in reference to Trump’s presidency, and many pledges to protect what’s left of US democracy,  provide many Americans with enough reason to support the Harris-Walz ticket.

Yet, some seem to be supporting Kamala Harris under the impression that as a Black and South Asian woman, she would value the lives of people who look like her, and once elected, support marginalised people much better than her predecessors.

This is a delusion.

Just like Obama once did, Harris wants to be president of the United States of America. She has no intention of being the President of “Black America” or the marginalised. She made this clear, over and again, throughout her campaign, and through her work as vice-president to Joe Biden.

There is a long list of reasons to vote for Harris in this election, but the assumption that her presidency would be supportive of the rights and struggles of the marginalised, simply because of her identity, should not be on that list.

Donald Earl Collins, professorial lecturer at the American University in Washington, DC, is the author of Fear of a “Black” America: Multiculturalism and the African American Experience (2004). This article was first published by Al Jazeera.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

All eyes are on Michigan as Donald Trump and Kamala Harris battle over undecided voters in the crucial swing state, including many of the state’s 200,000 Arab American and Muslim voters who reject both the Republican and Democratic parties’ stance on Israel and Palestine. We speak to Dearborn, Michigan’s Lebanese American Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, who is the first Arab and Muslim mayor of the city, about many of his constituents’ loss of support for the Democratic Party and how the Arab American vote could impact the presidential election. Hammoud, like many Dearborn residents, has lost extended family to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, and describes the climate in the city as “a blanket of grief.” Having called for a ceasefire and arms embargo on Israel, he refused to meet with Trump last week, but has also declined to endorse Harris. Hammoud calls on voters to not sit out the election entirely, but to “vote their moral conscience, and says the citizens of Dearborn are “willing to put people over party, first and foremost.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

“There can be no middle ground, not in this moment.” As the U.S. presidential race draws to a close, Bishop William Barber, the national co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, founding director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School and co-author of White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy, explains why he is endorsing Kamala Harris for president in his personal capacity. In contrast to Donald Trump’s divisive rhetoric and policies that will benefit the rich, Barber says “we see clearly Harris trying to unify.” He makes a theological argument for opposing Trump and also discusses voting rights and access in his home state of North Carolina.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Democracy Now!

This is Democracy Now!, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I am Amy Goodman, with Juan González:

The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post newspapers are facing mounting backlash after the papers’ publishers announced no presidential endorsements would be made this year. The LA Times is owned by billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, and The Washington Post is owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.

National Public Radio (NPR) is reporting more than 200,000 people have cancelled their Washington Post subscriptions, and counting.

• READ MORE: Two of the US’s biggest newspapers have refused to endorse a presidential candidate. This is how democracy dies
• Other US presidential elections reports

A number of journalists have also resigned, including the editorials editor at the Los Angeles Times, Mariel Garza, who wrote, “How could we spend eight years railing against Trump and the danger his leadership poses to the country and then fail to endorse the perfectly decent Democrat challenger — who we previously endorsed for the U.S. Senate?”

Veteran journalists Robert Greene and Karin Klein have also resigned from the L.A. Times editorial board.

At The Washington Post, David Hoffman and Molly Roberts both resigned on Monday from the Post editorial board. Michele Norris also resigned as a Washington Post columnist, and Robert Kagan resigned as editor-at-large.

David Hoffman, who just won a Pulitzer Prize for his series “Annals of Autocracy,” wrote, “I believe we face a very real threat of autocracy in the candidacy of Donald Trump. I find it untenable and unconscionable that we have lost our voice at this perilous moment.”

David Hoffman joins us now, along with former Los Angeles Times editorials editor Mariel Garza.

David Hoffman, let’s begin with you. Explain why you left The Washington Post editorial board. Oh, and at the same time, congratulations on your Pulitzer Prize.

DAVID HOFFMAN: Thank you very much.

I worked for 12 years writing editorials in which I said over and over again, “We cannot be silent in the face of dictatorship, not anywhere.” And I wrote about dissidents who were imprisoned for speaking out.

And I felt that I couldn’t write another editorial decrying silence if we were going to be silent in the face of Trump’s autocracy. And I feel very, very strongly that the campaign has exposed his intention to be an autocrat.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, David Hoffman, is there any precedent for the publisher of The Washington Post overruling their own editorial board?

DAVID HOFFMAN: Yeah, there’s lots of precedent. It’s entirely within the right of the publisher and the owner to do this. Previous owners have often told the editorial board what to say, because we are the voice of the institution and its owner. So, there’s nothing wrong with that.

What’s wrong here is the timing. If they had made this decision early in the year and announced, as a principle, they don’t want to issue endorsements, nobody would have even blinked. A lot of papers don’t. People have rightly questioned whether they actually have any impact.

What matters here was, we are right on the doorstep of the most consequential election in our lifetimes. To pull the plug on the endorsement, to go silent against Trump days before the election, that to me was just unconscionable.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Mariel Garza, could you talk about the situation at the LA Times and your reaction when you heard of the owner’s decision?

MARIEL GARZA: Certainly. It was a long conversation over the course of many weeks. We presented our proposal to endorse Kamala Harris. And, of course, there was — to us, there was no question that we would endorse her. We spent nine years talking about the dangers of Trump, called him unfit in 5 million ways, and Kamala Harris is somebody that we know. She’s a California elected official.

We’ve had a lot of conversations with her. We’ve seen her career evolved. We were going to — we were going to endorse her. And there was no indication that we were going to suddenly shift to a neutral position, certainly not within a few weeks or months of the election.

At first, we didn’t get a clear answer — sounds like it’s the same situation that happened at The Washington Post — until we pressed for one. We presented an outline with — these are the points we’re going to make — and an argument for why not only was it important for us, an editorial board whose mission is to speak truth to power, to stand up to tyranny — our readers expect it.

We’re a very liberal paper. There is no — there is no question what the editorial board believes, that Donald Trump should not be president ever.

AMY GOODMAN: Mariel, I wanted to —

MARIEL GARZA: So, it was perplexing. It was mystifying. It was — go ahead.

AMY GOODMAN: Mariel, I wanted to get your response to the daughter of the LA Times owner. On Saturday, Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong’s daughter Nika Soon-Shiong posted a message online suggesting that her father’s decision was linked to Kamala Harris’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.

Nika wrote, “Our family made the joint decision not to endorse a presidential candidate. This was the first and only time I have been involved in the process.

“As a citizen of a country openly financing genocide, and as a family that experienced South African Apartheid, the endorsement was an opportunity to repudiate justifications for the widespread targeting of journalists and ongoing war on children,” she wrote.

Her father, Patrick Soon-Shiong, later disputed her claim, saying that she has no role at the Los Angeles Times. Mariel Garza, your response?

MARIEL GARZA: Look, I really don’t know what to say, because I have — that was — if that was the case, it was never communicated to us. I do not know what goes on in the conversation in the Soon-Shiong household. I know that she is not — she does not participate in deliberations of the editorial board, as far as I know. I’ve never spoken to her.

We all know how she feels about Gaza, because she’s a prolific tweeter. So, I really can’t say. And this is part of the bigger problem, is we were never given a reason for why we were being silent.

If there was a reason — say it was Israel — we could have explained that to readers. Instead, we remain silent. And that’s — I mean, this is not a time in American history where anybody can remain silent or neutral.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, David Hoffman, this whole issue has been raised by some critics of Jeff Bezos that his company has a lot of business with the US government, and whether that had any impact on Bezos’s decision. I’m wondering your thoughts.

DAVID HOFFMAN: I can’t be inside his mind. His company does have big business, and he’s acknowledged it’s a complicating factor in his ownership. But I can’t really understand why he made this decision, and I don’t think it’s been very well explained. His explanation published today was that he wants sort of more civic quiet, and he thought an endorsement would add to the sense of anxiety and the poisonous atmosphere.

But I disagree with that. I think, like in the LA Times, I think readers have come to expect us to be a voice of reason, and they’ve looked to endorsements at least for some clarity. So, frankly, I also feel that we’re still lacking an explanation.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, you have subtitle, the slogan of The Washington Post, of course, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” It’s being mocked all over social media. One person wrote, “Hello Darkness My Old Friend.”

David Hoffman, your response to that? But also, you won the Pulitzer Prize for your series “Annals of Autocracy,” and you talk about digital billionaires, as well, and what this means. How does this fit into your investigations?

DAVID HOFFMAN: You know, I would hope everybody would understand and acknowledge that we’ve done a lot of good for democracy and human rights. You know, I’ve had governments react sharply to a single editorial. When we call them out for imprisoning dissidents, it matters that we are very widely read.

And that’s another reason why I feel this was a big mistake, because we actually were on a path, for decades, of championing democracy and human rights as an institution.

And, you know, I have to tell you, I wrote a book in Russia about oligarchs. I understand how difficult it is when you have a lively and independent group of journalists. And ownership really matters. And, you know, we’re not just another widget company.

This is actually a group of very, very deep-thinking and oftentimes very aggressive people that have a desire to change the world. That’s the kind of journalism that The Washington Post has sponsored and engaged in.

In 2023, we published a series of editorials that took a look deep inside how China, Russia, Burma, you know, other places — how these autocracies function. One of the findings was that many of these dictatorships are using technology to clamp down on dissent, even things as tiny as a single tweet.

Young people, young college students are being thrown in prison in Cuba, in Belarus, in Vietnam. And I documented these to show how this technology actually isn’t becoming a force for freedom, but it’s being turned on its head by dictatorship.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there, David Hoffman, Washington Post reporter, stepped down from the Post editorial board when they refused to endorse a presidential candidate; Mariel Garza, LA Times editorials editor who just resigned.

I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

This programme is republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post announced that they would not be endorsing anyone in the U.S. presidential election this year, breaking decades of precedent and overriding planned endorsements of Kamala Harris. The decisions were ordered by the outlets’ multibillionaire owners, Patrick Soon-Shiong and Jeff Bezos. We speak with the Los Angeles Times editorials editor Mariel Garza, who quit when the paper killed the endorsement of Harris, and veteran Washington Post reporter David Hoffman, who stepped down from the paper’s editorial board in response. “We are right on the doorstep of the most consequential election in our lifetimes. To pull the plug on the endorsement, to go silent against Trump days before the election, that to me was just unconscionable,” says Hoffman. “This is not a time in American history when anyone can remain silent or neutral,” adds Garza.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

“Last week, I went to Puerto Rico to attend the reopening of San Juan’s Social Security office. It was the fastest reopening in agency history and a direct response to a March forum we participated in hosted by Puerto Rico Senator at Large William Villafañe.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

We speak with Dr. Ahmed Ghanim, a prominent Muslim leader and former Democratic candidate for Congress, after the Kamala Harris campaign apologized for kicking him out of a Detroit election event Monday to which he was invited. Harris’s staunch support for Israel as it continues its brutal war on Gaza has infuriated many Muslim and Arab voters in Michigan, and while Ghanim says it’s a very important issue to him, he was not there to protest. He was also not given a reason for his removal, even after the campaign called him to apologize. “Apology without accountability is not an apology,” he says, adding that the incident has left him questioning whether Democrats still believe in diversity and inclusion or if “Muslims and Arabs don’t have room anymore in this party.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

With less than a month until Election Day, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, sat down for an interview with Bill Whitaker on CBS‘s 60 Minutes (10/7/24). (Donald Trump backed out of a similar interview.)

Aside from one televised debate (ABC, 9/10/24), both Harris and Trump have given corporate news outlets remarkably few opportunities to press them on important issues. While Whitaker didn’t offer Harris many softball questions—and included some sharp interrogation on the Middle East—his focus frequently started from right-wing talking points and assumptions, particularly over immigration and economic policy.

FAIR counted 29 questions, with 24 of them going to Harris. Those questions began with foreign policy, which also accounted for the most policy-related questions (7). Whitaker also asked her five questions about the economy, four about immigration, and one more generally about her changed positions on immigration, fracking and healthcare. Seven of Whitaker’s questions to Harris were unrelated to policies or governing; of the five questions to Walz, the only vaguely policy-oriented one asked him to respond to the charge that he was “dangerously liberal.”

‘How are you going to pay?’

A Pew survey (9/9/24) shows little correlation between what voters care about and what 60 Minutes (10/7/24) asked Kamala Harris about.

Economic issues are a top priority for many voters. But rather than ask Harris about whether and how her plan might help people economically, or formulate questions to help voters understand the differences between Harris’s and Trump’s plans, Whitaker focused on two long-standing media obsessions: the deficit and bipartisanship (or lack thereof).

Whitaker first asked Harris: “Groceries are 25% higher, and people are blaming you and Joe Biden for that. Are they wrong?” It’s not clear that people primarily blame the administration for inflation, actually; a Financial Times/Michigan Ross poll in March found that 63% of respondents blamed higher prices on “large corporations taking advantage of inflation,” while 38% blamed Democratic policies (CNBC, 3/12/24).

Whitaker went on to list some of Harris’s more progressive economic proposals: “expand the child tax credit…give tax breaks to first-time homebuyers…and people starting small businesses.”

These are all generally politically popular, but Whitaker framed his question about them not in terms of the impact on voters, but the impact on the federal deficit, citing a deficit hawk think tank:

But it is estimated by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget that your economic plan would add $3 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade. How are you going to pay for that?

There is a very popular assumption in corporate media that federal deficits are of critical importance—that is, when Democrats are proposing to provide aid and public services to people. When Republicans propose massive tax breaks for the wealthy and for corporations, the same media tend to forget their deficit obsession (FAIR.org, 1/25/21).

It is worth noting—since Whitaker did not—that the CRFB found that Trump’s plan, which follows that Republican playbook, would increase the debt by $7.5 trillion. One might also bear in mind that US GDP is projected to be more than $380 trillion over the next decade.

Dissatisfied with Harris’s rather oblique answer, Whitaker insisted: “But pardon me, Madam Vice President, the question was how are you going to pay for it?” When Harris responded that she intended to “make sure that the richest among us who can afford it pay their fair share of taxes,” Whitaker scoffed: “We’re dealing with the real world here. How are you going to get this through Congress?”

After Harris argued that congressmembers “know exactly what I’m talking about, ’cause their constituents know exactly what I’m talking about,” Whitaker shot back, “And Congress has shown no inclination to move in your direction.”

Sure, journalists shouldn’t let politicians make pie-in-the-sky promises, but it’s true that Harris’s proposals are supported by majorities of the public. Whitaker did viewers—and democracy—no favors by focusing his skepticism not on a corrupt system that benefits the wealthy, but on Harris’s critique of that system.

‘A historic flood’

Serious efforts to count the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States show little sign of the “flood” touted by 60 Minutes (Pew, 7/22/24).

Whitaker’s framing was even more right-wing on immigration. His first question,  framed by a voiceover noting that “Republicans are convinced immigration is the vice president’s Achilles’ heel”:

You recently visited the southern border and embraced President Biden’s recent crackdown on asylum seekers, and that crackdown produced an almost immediate and dramatic decrease in the number of border crossings. If that’s the right answer now, why didn’t your administration take those steps in 2021?

Whitaker is referring to Biden’s tightening restrictions so that refugees cannot be granted asylum when US officials deem that the southern border is overwhelmed. It’s certainly valid to question the new policies; the ACLU (6/12/24) has argued they are unconstitutional, for instance.

But Whitaker clearly wasn’t interested in constitutionality or human rights. His questioning started from the presumption that immigration is a problem, and used the dehumanizing language that is all too common in corporate media reporting on immigrants (FAIR.org, 8/23/23):

Whitaker: But there was an historic flood of undocumented immigrants coming across the border the first three years of your administration. As a matter of fact, arrivals quadrupled from the last year of President Trump. Was it a mistake to loosen the immigration policies as much as you did?

Harris: It’s a longstanding problem. And solutions are at hand. And from day one, literally, we have been offering solutions.

Whitaker: What I was asking was, was it a mistake to kind of allow that flood to happen in the first place?

Harris: I think—the policies that we have been proposing are about fixing a problem, not promoting a problem, OK? But the—

Whitaker: But the numbers did quadruple under your watch.

As others have pointed out, using flood metaphors paints immigrants as “natural disasters who should be dealt with in an inhumane fashion” (Critical Discourse Studies, 1/31/17).

But Whitaker is also using a right-wing talking point that’s entirely misleading. Border “encounters” increased sharply under Biden, but these encounters, as we have explained before (FAIR.org, 3/29/24),

are not a tally of how many people were able to enter the country without authorization; it’s a count of how many times people were stopped at the border by CBP agents. Many of these people had every right to seek entry, and a great number were turned away. Some of them were stopped more than once, and therefore were counted multiple times.

In fact, only roughly a third were actually released into the country (Factcheck.org, 2/27/24).

Whitaker used these misleading figures to paint undocumented immigration as a crisis, which has been a media theme since the beginning of the Biden administration (FAIR.org, 5/24/21). In fact, the percentage of the US population that is unauthorized has risen only slightly—from 3.2% in 2019 to 3.3% in 2022, the latest year available—which is down from a peak of 4.0% in 2007 (Pew, 7/22/24).

‘Does the US have no sway?’

Internal controversy over Tony Dokoupil’s  confrontational interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates (CBS Mornings, 9/30/24) may have given Bill Whitaker an opening to challenge Harris on whether she was too supportive of Israel.

Whitaker’s first questions to Harris, about the Middle East, represented a shift in tone from ABC‘s questioning at the September debate—where moderator David Muir asked Harris to respond to Trump’s charge that “you hate Israel.” Whitaker started his interview by pressing Harris about the United States’ continued support of Israel despite its recent escalations:

The events of the past few weeks have pushed us into the brink, if not into, an all-out regional war into the Middle East. What can Hthe US do at this point to prevent this from spinning out of control?

Harris repeated the Biden administration (and, frequently, media) line that Israel has a right to defend itself, while noting that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed” and that “this war has to end.” Whitaker pushed back, pointing out that the United States is an active supporter of Israel’s military and, thus, military actions:

But we supply Israel with billions of dollars of military aid, and yet Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu seems to be charting his own course. The Biden/Harris administration has pressed him to agree to a ceasefire, he has resisted. You urged him not to go into Lebanon, he went in anyway. Does the US have no sway over Prime Minister Netanyahu?

Whitaker continued with two more brief questions about the relationship with Netanyahu. It’s possible that his line of questioning was influenced by the controversy  within his network over CBS Mornings host Tony Dokoupil’s interview (9/30/24) with author Ta-Nehisi Coates, which pushed a pro-Israel line hard enough to prompt charges of unprofessionalism (FAIR.org, 10/4/24; Zeteo, 10/9/24).

The three other foreign policy questions concerned US support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion. Two of the three asked about ending the war: “What does success look like in ending the war in Ukraine?” and “Would you meet with President Vladimir Putin to negotiate a solution to the war in Ukraine?” The third asked whether Harris would “support the effort to expand NATO to include Ukraine.”

In contrast to the Middle East line of questioning, Whitaker did not push back against any of Harris’s answers, which expressed support for “Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against Russia’s unprovoked aggression,” and to “have a say” in determining the end of the war.

Crucial missing questions

The aftermath of two hurricanes supercharged by climate change didn’t prompt 60 Minutes to ask any questions about climate (CBS, 9/30/24).

Though Whitaker took time to ask Harris what kind of gun she owns and Walz whether he can be “trusted to tell the truth,” he didn’t ask a single question about abortion, other healthcare issues, the climate crisis or gun control. These are all remarkable omissions.

A Pew Research survey (9/9/24) found abortion was a “very important” issue to more than half of all voters, and to two-thirds of Harris supporters. But Whitaker asked no questions about what Harris and Walz would do to protect or restore reproductive rights across the US.

The healthcare system was another glaring omission by 60 Minutes, though it is voters’ second-most important issue, according to the same Pew Research survey; 65% of all voters, and 76% of Harris supporters, said that healthcare was “very important” to their vote.

Healthcare only came up as part of an accusation that “you have changed your position on so many things”: Along with shifts on immigration and fracking, Whittaker noted that “you were for Medicare for all, now you’re not,” with the result that “people don’t truly know what you believe or what you stand for.” Like a very similar question asked of Harris during the debate (FAIR.org, 9/13/24), it seemed crafted to press Harris on whether her conversion from left-liberal to centrist was genuine, rather than to elicit real solutions for a population with the highest healthcare costs and the lowest life expectancy of any wealthy nation.

At a moment when Hurricane Helene had just wreaked massive destruction across the Southeast and Hurricane Milton was already promising to deliver Florida its second devastating storm in two weeks, the lack of climate questions was striking. While voters tend to rank climate policy as a lower priority than issues like the economy or immigration, large majorities are concerned about it—and it’s an urgent issue with consequences that can’t be understated. Yet the only time climate was alluded to was in the flip-flop question, which included the preface, “You were against fracking, now you’re for it.”

Similarly, a mass shooting in Birmingham, Alabama, killed four people just over three weeks ago; as of this writing (10/15/24), the Gun Violence Archive reported that gun violence, excluding suicide, has killed 13,424 Americans this year. In 2019, the American Psychological Association reported that one-third of Americans said that fear of mass shootings stops them from going to certain places and events. In a Pew Research survey (4/11/24), 59% of public K-12 teachers said they are at least somewhat worried about the possibility of a shooting at their school, and 23% have experienced a lockdown.

Yet the two questions Whitaker asked about guns had nothing to do with these realities or fears, or what a Harris/Walz administration would do about them. Instead, he asked Harris, “What kind of gun do you own, and when and why did you get it?” (Harris answered, “I have a Glock, and I have had it for quite some time.”) Whitaker followed up by asking Harris if she had ever fired it. (She said she had, at a shooting range.)

‘Out of step’

Walz was mostly asked non-policy questions, things like “Whether you can be trusted to tell the truth,” and why his calling Republicans “weird” has become a “rallying cry for Democrats.”

In keeping with the media’s preoccupation with pushing Democratic candidates to the right, the governor was asked to respond to charges that he was “dangerously liberal” and part of the “radical left“: “What do you say to that criticism, that rather than leading the way, you and Minnesota are actually out of step with the rest of the country?”

The right-wing framing of many of the questions asked, and the important issues ignored, might make CBS think about how in step it is with the country and its needs.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Elsie Carson-Holt.

With just 19 days until the presidential election, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are ramping up efforts to appeal to a major voting bloc in battleground states: Latinx voters. This comes as both major candidates are boasting hard-line immigration policies that impose harsh conditions on those entering the United States. “It will not be a solution for Vice President Harris to mimic Donald Trump’s policies on immigration. In fact, she has to contrast,” says Marisa Franco, director and co-founder of Mijente, who says Latinx voters are not moving to the right. “What Latinos are doing is declaring their political independence from partisan politics. … Latinos are looking to see who is going to deliver.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Later on, after a warm-up speech from running mate Tim Walz, Vice President Harris took the stage, saying she would “always honor tribal sovereignty and respect tribal self-determination,” (The 22 federally recognized tribes in Arizona make an Indigenous voting block that proved essential to President Joe Biden’s win in the swing state in 2020.) On her campaign website, she maintains that she will work to secure America’s industrial future by investing in clean energy — but clean-energy development often negatively impacts sites on federal lands that are sacred to Indigenous peoples. 

The Biden-Harris administration has been one of the most supportive of Native peoples, investing millions of dollars of federal funding for climate resilience and green energy initiatives. Still, the Indigenous vote for Harris in 2024 is far from assured. While the U.S. has big goals on its path to a clean-energy future, those plans have to compete against the preservation of tribal lands — an issue Harris has stumbled over in her political career, dating back to her time as California’s attorney general. 

Almost 80 miles east of the Arizona rally, a sacred site is in danger. Oak Flat, a swath of national forest land in the high desert, has been an important spiritual site for tribes like the San Carlos Apache for centuries, and is used for ceremonies and gathering medicines like sage, bear root, and greasewood. Yet the area is under threat — Rio Tinto, an international mining company, has been fighting to put a copper mine there for more than a decade. Oak Flat is home to one of the planet’s largest undeveloped copper reserves, and the metal is critical to making the electric batteries necessary for the shift to cleaner energy sources. 

Oak Flat and other sacred sites have not been given enough federal protections, activists say, despite intense advocacy from the tribal nations affected. Much of the U.S. has already been built and powered at the expense of tribal lands and peoples. To reach its goal of 80 percent renewable energy generation by 2030, and carbon-free electricity five years after that, the U.S. needs big investments and robust policy support. While Harris says she is the candidate in the best position to achieve those goals, there is a concern among Indigenous communities that doing so will continue to exploit tribal homelands — most of the minerals needed for the energy transition are located within 35 miles of away from tribal communities, on lands originally stolen from them. 

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“They definitely are hard to do at the same time. That’s the conflict,” said Dov Kroff-Korn, an attorney at Lakota People’s Law and Sacred Defense Fund, of the balance between extracting the minerals critical to the energy transition and protecting tribal lands where many such minerals are located. He mentioned that Harris has few environmental policies of her own to critique, and that, policy-wise, the broader Biden-Harris administration has been a mixed bag. “There’s been a lot of positive signs that should be recognized and applauded. But it’s also been a continuation of a lot of the same old extractive policies that have powered America for pretty much its entire history.”

In a bid to protect some places from industry, President Biden flexed his ability to make national monuments out of sacred sites, such as the Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument — or Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni — as well as to fully restore the boundaries of the Bears Ears monument in Utah from a Trump-era rollback. Biden also appointed the first-ever Native American to his Cabinet — Deb Haaland, Pueblo of Laguna — as the head of the Department of Interior. In her role, Haaland has instructed federal agencies to incorporate traditional knowledge in order to better protect Indigenous sacred sites on public land.

During her tenure as vice president, Harris has been party to the administration’s push to produce more oil and gas than ever, despite promises to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Last year, the Biden administration also gave the green light to the Willow project, an $8 billion dollar drilling operation on Alaska’s North Slope that some, but not all, tribes were against. Throughout her presidential campaign, and in a reversal of her previous stance, Harris has showed support for fracking, a controversial drilling method that extracts oil and natural gas from deep within the ground. 

Crystal Cavalier-Keck, a member of the Occoneechee Band of the Saponi Nation in South Carolina, is the cofounder of 7 Directions of Service, an Indigenous-led environmental justice organization. She’s concerned that the Mountain Valley Pipeline, currently a 303-mile system that runs through West Virginia and Virginia, will permanently damage the sacred Haw River where she has many memories with her family. Over the years, the beleaguered river has been polluted by chemicals and is now threatened by the pipeline, which began operations in June. 

In 2020, Cavalier-Keck campaigned for Biden in South Carolina but didn’t see movement on the environmental protections she wanted after he got elected. She said she will still vote for Harris in November but feels like her concerns are not being talked about. “There’s not much at all on her environmental policies,” she said. “They’re saying the right buzzwords, like ‘clean, renewable, forward.’ But where’s the meat of it?” 

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She lives about a two-hour drive from where Hurricane Helene has claimed more than 100 lives in North Carolina, and she worries that the next big climate disaster will reach her community. Cavalier-Keck said that her tribe has had issues accessing the roughly $120 million in federal funding to help tribes build climate resilience. 

During Harris’ time as attorney general of California, she argued against tribes putting land into trust, a process that can protect land as well as allow economic development like casinos where gambling might be banned, claiming the situation only applies if a tribe was “under federal jurisdiction” when the Indian Reorganization Act was passed in the 1930s. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Harris and the state, but had she won the case, about 100 tribes in California would not have been allowed to benefit from trust lands. 

Still, Lael Echo Hawk, who is Pawnee and an expert in tribal law, says Harris’ decisions as attorney general aren’t reflective of what she might be capable of as president. She pointed out that as attorney general, Harris helped pass a red flag law in California to take away firearms from people deemed dangerous. Plus, she called on the U.S. Congress to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act — an issue important in Native communities, where women go missing and are the survivors of violence at a rate higher than the national average. Echo Hawk also knows of tribes concerned with border issues and immigration that are endorsing Harris. “These are important issues that I think better demonstrate her commitment to advancing and protecting tribal sovereignty,” Echo Hawk said. 

But for Nick Estes, a member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and a professor at the University of Minnesota, Harris might just be a continuation of the Biden administration, which he maintains has taken advantage of tribal lands. As it stands today, 1.6 million surface and subsurface acres of land within 83 reservations have non-Natives benefiting from oil, gas, and mining operations, among other extractive industries.

“You can’t just have a vibes-based environmental policy. It actually needs to be concrete,” said Estes. “What we’ve seen is just service to industry at the expense of Native lands and livelihoods.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Indigenous voters worry a Harris presidency means endangering sacred lands on Oct 7, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Taylar Dawn Stagner.

As Cheney put it after a speech at Duke University: “Those of us who believe in the defense of our democracy and the defense of our Constitution and the survival of our Republic have a duty in this election cycle to come together and to put those things above politics.”

But even more mind-blowing to us (and Democratic leaders) was that father Dick Cheney , president George W. Bush’s powerful, two-term vice president, supported her decision and also endorsed Harris. Trump, he said: “can never be trusted with power again.”

Moreover, the Cheneys’ endorsements say something far, far deeper about human relations in this fractious election crisis. It might lead to millions of men changing their minds about voting for a woman president—or any woman seeking public office. Smart and strong women have existed elsewhere in the world for centuries from Cleopatra and Golda Meir to former House speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Or most men believing a vice presidency doesn’t qualify Harris for the White House, despite predecessors like Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson. They, like Harris, were U.S. Senators and experienced on how the White House operates in handling foreign and domestic affairs great and small.

At the heart of male prejudice about strong and smart women’s competence for any political office seems to be the ancient cultural fear of being stripped of power by those perceived as inferiors.

Perhaps the only two times fear of such women dissipates and true equality begins is either at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings or between proud fathers and those strong, smart daughters. For example, King Henry VIII and daughter Queen Elizabeth I and Pelosi’s father, Baltimore Mayor and House member Tommy D’Alesandro Jr., in wielding public power.  A true kinship of respect, political training, and love—and tough  decision-making—is the reality. It should overcome bias against women seeking public office.

Interestingly, Author Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of America’s greatest authors (1804-1864) focused largely on this subject of foolish fears about strong and smart women.

Brought up in penury with two sisters by a young widowed mother, he knew economic and social chauvinism and trivialization of women firsthand, doled out by men of every class. He married an intellectual and emotional peer, and fathered two outspoken daughters. In college, he also appears to have studied the revolutionary ideas by Jean-Jacques Rousseau about equality at all levels.

Moreover, as the descendant of a harsh judge in the Salem witchcraft trials  of 1692-93, he probably would have agreed with author Virginia Woolf. She believed such women were hanged or set ablaze not for religious error, but because they threatened men’s desperate need to control other men, but, most of all, powerful and defiant women. Then, by labeling them witches. Today, it’s “bitches”.

To Hawthorne, such women were equal companions, not threats to men. He never viewed them as unimportant or as threatening Delilahs, but, rather, as men’s vital emotional, intellectual, and spiritual partners. As a writer, his mission seemed to be overcoming most men’s deep-rooted fears of the strong and smart. Yet to carry such a message in the literature of his day was a monumental undertaking.

He laid the fundamental cause at ending men’s monopoly on control and power. His novels and short stories were the first in this country to focus on the rigid second-class roles assigned women for life. Initially, he disguised this view in allegorical short stories. He finally threw that cloak aside with his 1844 masterpiece “Rappaccini’s Daughter” about the usual tragic result of male fears. The allegory was poison.

Rappaccini is a brilliant and famed botanist with an experimental garden of toxic plants tended by daughter Beatrice, now immune to their poisons and up for a university post in that field. She is spotted by Giovanni, an older student, from his boarding house balcony who is struck by her beauty as she feeds and waters the deadly garden. It becomes love at first sight for both. He enters the garden despite her warnings. Soon, however, he becomes frightened of losing domination expected of men over all women, powerful and brilliant though they be. Made immune to all the poisons, he accuses her of killing him. There may be no finer breakup line than Beatrice’s heartbroken:  “Was there not, from the first, more poison in thy nature than in mine?”

That allegoric lesson applies to most biased and fearful men when it comes to women and seeking public office. Put the case another way:

If they had daughters running for any position in the upcoming elections, wouldn’t they proudly tout them to friends, neighbors, work cohorts, and the cashier and line-mates at the supermarket? Maybe help finance their campaigns? Or put up yard or window signs and paste bumper stickers on their cars? Do phone banking? Canvass the neighborhood? And with any action, wouldn’t they insist their daughters were as capable for office as male opponents?

In other words, if fathers—and mothers,too—don’t fear powerful daughters, why fear smart, strong women candidates on November 5? They’re somebody’s daughters, too, and just as worthy of fair consideration as any male on the ballot.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Barbara G. Ellis.

• Israel said it carried out an airstrike that killed a senior Hezbollah military official in a densely populated southern neighborhood of the Lebanese capital.
• Kamala Harris delivered speech in Georgia defending abortion rights and attacking Trump on abortion record.
• In-person voting for the 2024 U.S. presidential election began in three states today: Virginia, South Dakota, and Minnesota.
• Georgia election officials are requiring poll workers to tally ballots by hand after the state election board voted 3-2 today to approve the new rule, going against the advice of the state attorney general’s office, the secretary of state’s office, and an association of county election officials.
• An Alameda County court judge reached no decision today on dismissing the case against three Alameda city police officers charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death of Oakland resident Mario Gonzalez, who died in police custody three years ago.

The post Kamala Harris delivers speech in Georgia defending abortion rights and attacking Trump on abortion record – September 20, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

The U.S. presidential election is just 45 days away, and for antiwar voters, the policy differences between the two leading candidates are vanishingly thin. As the Biden-Harris administration continues to supply billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, the Uncommitted National Movement, which for months has attempted to steer the Democratic Party toward a more critical stance on Israel, has announced it is not endorsing Kamala Harris. Neither does the organization recommend casting a third-party vote, citing the risk of splitting the two-party vote and ushering in a second term for Donald Trump. “We were not met in good faith with our policy demands,” says the Uncommitted National Movement’s co-founder Lexis Zeidan about its attempts to parley with the Harris campaign. Zeidan says the organization will continue to pressure Democrats from within and outside of the party. “What we’re asking is not outrageous.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

But the claim is false. A photo comparison between earrings worn by Harris during the debate and Nova H1 shows they differ in shape. 

The claim was shared on Russian state-run media Sputnik’s Chinese-language Weibo on Sept. 11, 2024.  

“Harris wore the Nova H1 Audio earrings during last night’s debate with Trump,” the claim reads in part. Sputnik cited “American musician Jonnie King” to back its claim.

The Nova H1 has wireless earphones embedded in earrings.

“This is why she was seen continuously taking notes with her pen during the debate, when it was explicitly agreed upon before that there would be NO notes,” the claim reads further.

The claim began to circulate after Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump met for their first debate of the 2024 election campaign on Sept. 10.

The debate took place in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center,  hosted by the American broadcaster ABC News.

But the claim about Harris’ earrings is false. 

According to a website set up by fashion blogger Susan Kelley, which documents  Harris’ wardrobe during her campaign, the earrings she frequently wears are products of Tiffany & Co. 

A photo comparison between the earrings worn by Harris during the debate and the Nova H1 shows they differ in shape. In particular, the metal portions of both earrings show a major difference. 

The claim about Harris’ earrings has also been debunked by other fact-checking organizations, including USA Today, FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.

Taking notes 

Under the debate rules issued by ABC it is forbidden to use props or pre-written notes.

However, ABC did provide pen and paper for each candidate’s use during the debate. 

These items were shown on each candidate’s podium as the hosts of the program explained the rules of the debate before the candidates took their positions. 

After the candidates entered the room, Harris can be seen picking up the pen at her podium. 

Translated by Shen Ke. Edited by Shen Ke and Taejun Kang.

Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Zhuang Jing for Asia Fact Check Lab.

Photograph Source: Nathaniel St. Clair

The vast majority of Americans believe that the United States economy is unfairly rigged to benefit the rich. In the past few weeks, the Democratic nominee for president, Kamala Harris, has proven that this is an accurate assessment. She initially backed her own administration’s initiative to increase top earners’ total tax rate including on capital gains to nearly 45 percent. This was included in President Joe Biden’s 2025 budget proposal. But soon after billionaire donors made it clear they preferred not to part with any fraction of their wealth, she pivoted, announcing in September that she backed a significantly lower capital gains tax rate of 33 percent.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who has made accusations of a “rigged economy” his signature phrase, explained Harris’s pivot: “I think she’s trying to be pragmatic and doing what she thinks is right in order to win the election.”

Think about how hard it has been for climate justice activists to get Harris to stick to her original idea in 2019 to oppose fracking. In the recent debate with Donald Trump, days after scientists declared summer 2024 the hottest on record, she promised, “I will not ban fracking”—ostensibly to win over Pennsylvania’s undecided voters.

It’s been even harder for anti-genocide activists to win a commitment from Harris for an arms embargo against Israel in the face of mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza.

Whether it is the long-term fate of our species or the short-term existence of a people, Harris—at least while campaigning for President—will apparently not budge. But on taxing billionaires? They say “hell, no,” and she asks, “How low?”

Capital gains taxes, which are taxes on the increased value of sold stocks, are currently capped at 20 percent. But what about the value of unsold stocks and other assets? Biden’s proposal is to tax billionaires on all their wealth, including “unrealized capital gains” at the rate of 25 percent. And on that matter, thankfully, Harris has backed Biden’s idea—for now.

The group Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) estimates that “America’s billionaires and centi-millionaires (those with at least $100 million of wealth) collectively held at least $8.5 trillion of ‘unrealized capital gains’ in 2022.” These ultrarich people have lives that are completely foreign to the rest of us. ATF points out, “While most Americans predominantly live off the income they earn from a job—income that is taxed all year, every year—the very richest households live lavishly off capital gains that may never be taxed.”

Predictably, rightwing ideologues have piled on Harris, with one opinionatorcalling the 25 percent wealth tax rate, “so dumb it’s truly historic.”

New York Times pundit Peter Coy was less gauche, and in his September 6, 2024 column he began by calling unrealized capital gains “paper wealth,” and “gains that exist only on paper.” He revived the tired adage that higher taxes on the ultrarich could have a “potential negative effect on entrepreneurship,” and “could strongly discourage investors from putting money into startups.”

But the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities dispels the myth that it’s not real money, explaining that “wealthy households can use [unrealized gains] to finance their (often lavish) lifestyles… They can do so by borrowing large sums against their unrealized capital gains, without generating taxable income.” By borrowing money off this so-called paper wealth, they don’t owe traditional income taxes because it’s not seen as traditional income.

For years, the wealthiest Americans have held on to money that should have been extracted from them in the form of taxes. What could these taxes have paid for? Senator Ron Wyden, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee explained during a Budget committee hearing that, “The ultra-wealthy are avoiding nearly $2 trillion in taxes every 10 years.” That, he said, “is enough to keep Social Security whole till the end of this century.”

Political pundits and economists repeatedly perpetuate a fantasy that taxing billionaires stifles innovation. The real link is that taxing billionaires funds government programs that we collectively benefit from. Conversely, allowing them to remain rich, stifles our wellbeing.

And, it could even help Harris win the election. Economic inequality is, unsurprisingly, top of mind for voters. Data for Progress has found that more than 70 percent of voters are in favor of increased taxes on the wealthy. This includes a majority of Republicans. Nearly two-thirds of those polled support Biden’s and Harris’s 25 percent tax rate on all wealth held by billionaires—including unrealized capital gains.

Harris is facing the grim reality that voters are tired of their hard-earned dollars not going far enough. Four years of inflation, of seeing prices of food, rent, and other basic necessities rise faster than wages is enough to drive the fantasy that someone else—in particular Donald Trump—might do better.

Trump has embraced the billionaire agenda, promising that he would “make life good” for Musk and other wealthy people. He has promised oil executiveshe would do their bidding in exchange for campaign contributions. More billionaires are backing Trump than Harris. And yet, financially insecurepeople are more likely to support Trump than Harris.

So why isn’t Harris going all in on higher taxes overall? Even when accounting for the electoral college, which forces presidential candidates to tack toward the center to win slivers of undecided voters in a handful of “swing states,” Harris could win by leaning into higher taxes for billionaires. Data for Progress found that expanding the federally funded program of Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing, would help Harris the most in swing states. The second most important position backed by voters was raising taxes on the wealthy. What better way to expand Medicare than to tax the rich to pay for it?

It’s going to take a lot on Harris’s part to beat the faux populism that Trump exudes. Within such a context, it’s not a good look that Harris is giving in to any pressure from billionaire donors—in spite of Senator Sanders’s claim that it’s an election ploy. Money is the best tool that billionaires have to protect their wealth, so it ought not to surprise us that they are harnessing it in their defense. It doesn’t mean Harris should give in—not if she wants to win.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

The post Harris Can’t Embrace Billionaires if She Wants to Win appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sonali Kolhatkar.

The questions ABC News‘ moderators asked in the September 10 presidential debate they hosted between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump could be faulted for not doing much to illuminate many of the issues important to voters. They did, however, ask some surprisingly pointed questions about perhaps the most important issue in this election—the preservation of democratic elections themselves.

And in sharp contrast to CNN, which hosted the debate between Trump and President Joe Biden in June, ABC‘s David Muir and Linsey Davis made at least some effort to offer real-time factchecking during the debate.

Economy & healthcare

Asked by ABC’s Linsey Davis if he had a healthcare plan, Donald Trump replied, “I have concepts of a plan. I’m not president right now.”

On the economy—which was identified, along with “the cost of living in this country,” as “the issue voters repeatedly say is their number one issue”—ABC‘s Muir asked only a handful of specific questions. He started out by asking Harris a question that he said Trump often asks his supporters, and which was famously asked by Ronald Reagan during a 1980 presidential debate: “When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?”

Aside from that rather open-ended query, the only specific questions ABC asked about the economy concerned tariffs, a favorite topic of Trump’s. Muir asked the former president whether “Americans can afford higher prices because of tariffs,” while he asked Harris to explain why “the Biden administration did keep a number of the Trump tariffs in place.” (The skepticism of both questions reflected corporate media’s traditional commitment to the ideology of “free trade.”)

The healthcare questions both candidates got from Davis were superficially similar—”Do you have a plan and can you tell us what it is?” to Trump, and “What is your plan today?” for Harris. But Trump’s question was set up by noting that “this is now your third time running for president,” and that last month, when asked if he now had a plan, he said, “We’re working on it.”

Davis prefaced her query to Harris by noting that “in 2017, you supported Bernie Sanders’ proposal to do away with private insurance and create a government-run healthcare system”—following the insurance industry-promoted terminology of “government-run” vs. “private,” rather than “public” vs. “corporate” (FAIR.org, 7/1/19).

Another question had the same theme of citing earlier, more progressive positions Harris had taken when running for president in 2019—on fracking, guns and immigration—and seemingly asking for reassurance that she had indeed changed her mind on these issues: “I know you say that your values have not changed. So then why have so many of your policy positions changed?” The line of question reflects corporate media’s preoccupation with making sure that Democrats in general and Harris in particular move to the right (FAIR.org, 7/26/24).

Abortion

Trump tells Kamala Harris that her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, supports “execution after birth.”

Addressing abortion, a motivating issue for many voters, Davis laid out Trump’s changing positions on abortion rights and an abortion ban, then posed the question:

Vice President Harris says that women shouldn’t trust you on the issue of abortion because you’ve changed your position so many times. Therefore, why should they trust you?

While both candidates frequently avoided giving concrete answers, Davis pressed Trump on his position, asking whether he would “veto a national abortion ban,” and again asking, “But if I could just get a yes or no”—helping to make his refusal to answer clear to viewers.

Perhaps in response to Trump’s claim that Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, supports “execution after birth,” Davis then asked Harris if she would “support any restrictions on a woman’s right to an abortion.” It’s a bit of a trick question without context, though. Many people say they oppose abortions later in pregnancy; media have long bought into the right-wing notion that “late-term” abortions are beyond the pale (Extra!, 7–8/07). But in practice, abortions later than 15 weeks are exceedingly rare and largely occur because of medical necessity or barriers to care (KFF, 2/21/24)—a nuanced reality that Davis’s question left little space for.

Immigration & race

Harris looks on as Trump claims, “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats…. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

Despite Trump’s repeated invocation of a border crisis and vilification of immigrants, ABC only asked him two immigration questions. One asked how he would achieve his plan to “deport 11 million undocumented immigrants”; the other followed up on Harris’s charge that Trump killed a border bill that, as Muir stated, “would have put thousands of additional agents and officers on the border.” Neither of the questions challenged Trump’s narrative of the “crisis” or the idea that further militarizing the border is necessary. (See FAIR.org, 6/2/23.) (ABC did counter Trump’s outrageous claim that immigrants were eating people’s pets.)

In his sole immigration question to Harris, Muir offered a right-wing framing:

We know that illegal border crossings reached a record high in the Biden administration. This past June, President Biden imposed tough new asylum restrictions. We know the numbers since then have dropped significantly. But my question to you tonight is why did the administration wait until six months before the election to act and would you have done anything differently from President Biden on this?

The media, like Trump, regularly neglect to put immigration numbers in context. Border crossings have increased markedly under Biden, but so have deportations and expulsions, as Biden kept in place most of Trump’s draconian border policies (FAIR.org, 3/29/24).

And the suggestion that Biden “waited…to act” further paints a false picture of the Biden administration as not having “tough restrictions”—immigrant rights advocates called them “inhumane”—prior to 2024.

The one question introduced as being about “race and politics” addressed Trump’s race-baiting of Harris: “Why do you believe it’s appropriate to weigh in on the racial identity of your opponent?”

Democracy

Recalling the January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill insurrection, ABC‘s David Muir asks Donald Trump, “Is there anything you regret about what you did on that day?”

On the crucial issue of democratic rule, ABC did not pull many punches. To introduce his first question on the theme, Muir addressed Trump:

For three-and-a-half years after you lost the 2020 election, you repeatedly falsely claimed that you won, many times saying you won in a landslide. In the past couple of weeks, leading up to this debate, you have said, quote, you lost by a whisker, that you, quote, didn’t quite make it, that you came up a little bit short. Are you now acknowledging that you lost in 2020?

When Trump claimed he said those things sarcastically, and argued that there was “so much proof” that he had actually won in 2020, Muir challenged his claims directly, first noting, “I didn’t detect the sarcasm,” then continuing:

We should just point out as clarification, and you know this, you and your allies, 60 cases, in front of many judges….and [they] said there was no widespread fraud.

(Trump interrupted this factcheck with another lie, falsely declaring that “no judge looked at it.”)

Muir continued his pushback against Trump in his subsequent question to Harris:

You heard the president there tonight. He said he didn’t say that he lost by a whisker. So he still believes he did not lose the election that was won by President Biden and yourself.

Muir’s question to Harris highlighted Trump’s recent social media post declaring that those who allegedly “cheated” him out of victory would be “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, which will include long-term prison sentences.”

Harris was also asked to respond to Trump’s charge that his numerous prosecutions reflect a “weaponization of the Justice Department.”

International policy

Harris tells Trump that “the American people have a right to rely on a president who understands the significance of America’s role.”

ABC devoted the widest variety of specific questions to the topic of international policy—often with the implicitly hawkish perspective debate moderators tend to take (FAIR.org, 12/14/15, 2/11/20, 12/26/23). Muir set up his questions on Ukraine with a prelude that left little doubt what the right answers would be:

It has been the position of the Biden administration that we must defend Ukraine from Russia, from Vladimir Putin, to defend their sovereignty, their democracy, that it’s in America’s best interest to do so, arguing that if Putin wins he may be emboldened to move even further into other countries.

Muir then asked Trump, “Do you want Ukraine to win this war?”—evoking an aspiration for a military victory in the conflict that has seemed improbable at least since the failure of Kiev’s counteroffensive in the spring of 2023 (FAIR.org, 9/15/23). Failing to get the response he wanted, Muir reframed the issue as a matter of making America great: “Do you believe it’s in the US best interests for Ukraine to win this war? Yes or no?”

For her part, Harris was asked, “As commander in chief, if elected, how would you deal with Vladimir Putin, and would it be any different from what we’re seeing from President Biden?”—and also, in response to a false Trump claim, “Have you ever met Vladimir Putin?”

Muir asked about the end of the US’s 19-year occupation of Afghanistan—presented as a shameful moment, as he invoked “the soldiers who died in the chaotic withdrawal.” His questions to both Harris and Trump implicitly criticized their connection to the war’s end: “Do you believe you bear any responsibility in the way that withdrawal played out?,” Harris was asked, while Trump was asked to respond to Harris’s accusation that “you began the negotiations with the Taliban.”

ABC‘s moderators asked three questions about the Gaza crisis, which was framed as “the Israel/Hamas war and the hostages who are still being held, Americans among them,” though Muir went on to note that “an estimated 40,000 Palestinians are dead.”

Harris was asked how she would “break through the stalemate”—and also to respond to Trump’s charge that “you hate Israel.” Muir asked Trump how he would “negotiate with Netanyahu and also Hamas in order to get the hostages out and prevent the killing of more innocent civilians in Gaza.”

ABC asked one climate crisis question, addressed to both candidates. It took climate change as a fact and asked what the candidates would do to “fight” it. While not a particularly probing question—and disconnected from the debate’s discussions of fracking—it’s a slight improvement over previous presidential debates that have ignored the vital topic altogether (FAIR.org, 10/19/16, 9/22/20).

Factchecking

Muir points out to Trump that “the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country.”

The presidential debate between Trump and then-candidate Biden was hosted in June by CNN, which made the remarkable decision to not attempt any factchecking during the live event (FAIR.org, 6/26/24). Post-debate factchecks turned up countless fabrications by Trump (and several by Biden), but that was entirely overwhelmed in the news coverage by pundits’ focus on Biden’s obvious stumbles.

ABC took a different tack, choosing to counter a few of Trump’s more noteworthy lies. Post-debate analysis counted at least 30 falsehoods from Trump and only a few from Harris; Muir and Davis called out Trump four times and Harris none.

Muir and Davis intervened on some of Trump’s most outlandish fictions. For instance, when Trump claimed that immigrants were “eating the pets of the people that live” in the communities they moved to, Muir noted that “there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”

In addition to Muir’s pushback against Trump’s election fraud lies, Davis countered Trump’s insistence that Democrats support “executing” babies, drily noting that “there is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.”

ABC also challenged a Trump falsehood that many prominent media outlets continued to propagate long after it was no longer even remotely true (FAIR.org, 11/10/22, 7/25/24): that violent crime is “through the roof.” (As Muir pointed out, “The FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country.”)

Of course, the vast majority of Trump’s lies went unchecked, demonstrating the inherent failure of the debate format when one participant exhibits a flagrant disregard for honesty (FAIR.org, 10/9/20).

ABC did not explicitly correct any of Harris’s claims, in part because there was less misinformation in her rhetoric. Some of Harris’s more dubious statements were of the sort that are often found  in corporate media, such as her allusion to the claim that Covid originated from a Chinese lab, when she blamed President Xi Jinping for “not giving us transparency about the origins of Covid.” There is no more evidence for this than there is for immigrants eating pets in Ohio—but as it’s a media-approved conspiracy theory (FAIR.org, 10/6/20, 6/28/21, 7/3/24), one would not expect debate moderators to call her out on it.

Research assistance: Elsie Carson-Holt

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Julie Hollar.

A new study suggests Harris might be onto something if she’s trying to convince voters torn between her and former President Donald Trump. Researchers at New York University found that framing climate action as patriotic and as necessary to preserve the American “way of life” can increase support for climate action among people across the political spectrum in the United States.

“It’s encouraging to see politicians adopting this type of language,” said Katherine Mason, a co-author of the study and a psychology researcher at New York University. Based on the study’s results, she said that this rhetoric “may bridge political divides about climate change.”

Some 70 percent of Americans already support the government taking action to address climate change, including most younger Republicans, according to a poll from CBS News earlier this year. Experts have long suggested that appealing to Americans’ sense of patriotism could activate them.

The framing has taken shape under President Joe Biden’s administration, which has pushed for policies to manufacture electric vehicles and chargers domestically “so that the great American road trip can be electrified.” Harris underscored this approach to climate and energy in Tuesday’s presidential debate with Trump, emphasizing efforts to craft “American-made” EVs and turning a question about fracking into a call for less reliance on “foreign oil.”

Mason’s new study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the largest to date on the effects of patriotic language around climate change, with almost 60,000 participants across 63 countries. Americans read a message declaring that being pro-environment would help “keep the United States as it should be,” arguing that it was “patriotic to conserve the country’s natural resources.” 

The text was illustrated by photos of the American flag blowing in the wind, picturesque national parks, and climate-related impacts, such as a flooded Houston after Hurricane Harvey and a Golden Gate Bridge shrouded in an orange haze of wildfire smoke. Reading it increased people’s level of belief in climate change, their willingness to share information about climate change on social media, and their support for policies to protect the environment, such as raising carbon taxes and expanding public transit.

The researchers wanted to test a psychological theory that people often defend the status quo, even if it’s flawed, because they want stability, not uncertainty and conflict. “This mindset presents a major barrier when it comes to tackling big problems like climate change, as it leads people to downplay the problem and resist necessary changes to protect the environment,” Mason said.

For decades, environmental advocates have called on people to make sacrifices for the greater good — to bike instead of drive, eat more vegetables instead of meat, and turn down the thermostat in the winter. Asking people to give up things can lead to backlash, said Emma Frances Bloomfield, a communication professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The framing in the study flips that on its head, she said. “It’s not asking people to sacrifice or make radical changes, but in fact, doing things for the environment will prevent the radical change of the environmental catastrophe.”

Bloomfield, who has studied how to find common ground with conservatives on climate change, wasn’t surprised the study found that appealing to patriotism worked in the United States. In other countries, however, the results were less clear — the patriotic language saw some positive effects in Brazil, France, and Israel, but backfired in other countries, including Germany, Belgium, and Russia.

Bloomfield urged caution in deploying this strategy in the real world, since it could come across as trying to manipulate conservatives by pandering to them. “Patriotism or any kind of framing message, I think, can definitely backfire if it’s not seen as an authentic connection on values,” she said.

Talking about a global environmental problem in an overly patriotic, competitive way could be another pitfall. Earlier this year, a study in the journal Environmental Communication found that a “green nationalist” framing — which pits countries against one another in terms of environmental progress — reduced people’s support for policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Natalia Bogado, the author of that study and a psychology researcher in Germany, said that the new study in PNAS makes “no reference to the key characteristics of nationalism, but only briefly mentions a patriotic duty,” which might partly explain the different results.

If executed smartly, though, appealing to regional loyalty can lead to support for environmental causes. Take the “Don’t Mess With Texas” campaign, started in the late 1980s to reduce litter along the state’s highways. Its target was the young men casually chucking beer cans out their truck windows, believing littering was a “God-given right.” Instead of challenging their identity, the campaign channeled their Texas pride, with stunning results: Litter on the roads plunged 72 percent in just four years. Today, the phrase has become synonymous with Texas swagger — so much so that many have forgotten it was initially an anti-litter message.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Kamala Harris is making climate action patriotic. It just might work. on Sep 12, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Kate Yoder.

“Tonight, Kamala Harris reaffirmed her commitment to protecting and strengthening Social Security and Medicare by making the ultra-wealthy pay their fair share. She also reminded the audience that the Biden-Harris administration finally gave Medicare the power to negotiate lower drug prices. As President, Harris plans to expand that power to cover more medications, bringing down prices for seniors.

Donald Trump didn’t mention Social Security or Medicare at all tonight. That’s because he doesn’t want to admit the truth: He is plotting to slash Social Security so his billionaire donors never have to pay their fair share. And as laid out in Trump’s Project 2025 agenda, he plans to repeal Medicare’s power to negotiate lower drug prices — enriching Big Pharma at seniors’ expense. And completely privatize Medicare by turning it over to giant corporate insurance companies.

For seniors, and for everyone who cares about the future of Social Security and Medicare, there’s only one choice this November: Kamala Harris.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Tuesday night’s presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump focused heavily on abortion rights and the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Trump repeated his false claim that Democrats support infanticide, and claimed that allowing individual states to set their own laws on abortion was an improvement. Harris highlighted the risk to pregnant people now navigating a patchwork of laws and restrictions in the U.S. and promised to restore protections for reproductive rights as president. “Kamala Harris was finally out there channeling the outrage and the profound sense of violation that many people across this country feel in the wake of the Dobbs decision,” says Amy Littlefield, the abortion access correspondent for The Nation.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

We speak with consumer advocate Ralph Nader and Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz about Tuesday’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. Stiglitz says Trump’s policies, including a plan for major new tariffs, would result in “more inflation and slower growth” and wreak havoc on the U.S. economy. Nader says that while “it’s easy to look good against Trump,” Harris is not fundamentally challenging corporate greed, the military-industrial complex, environmental destruction and more.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Tuesday night’s debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris focused heavily on immigration, with the Republican nominee attacking the current administration for not closing the border, and spreading xenophobic and racist conspiracy theories about asylum seekers. “Donald Trump resorted to the same deranged and despicable rhetoric that is meant to divide people. From his very first answer, he was demonizing immigrants,” says journalist Jean Guerrero, who has written extensively about immigration, including the book Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda. Guerrero says that while Harris “was able to project strength on the border” and undermine Trump on his “signature issue,” she did not do enough to challenge the narrative about immigrants bringing crime and disorder to the country. “I wish that she had countered him on immigration in a more sustained way.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Kamala Harris won the debate. People being bombed in Gaza did not.

The banner headline across the top of the New York Times home page — “Harris Puts Trump on Defensive in Fierce Debate” — was accurate enough. But despite the good news for people understandably eager for Trump to be defeated, the Harris debate performance was a moral and political tragedy.

In Gaza “now an estimated 40,000 Palestinians are dead,” an ABC News moderator said. “Nearly 100 hostages remain. . . . President Biden has not been able to break through the stalemate. How would you do it?”

Vice President Harris replied with her standard wording: “Israel has a right to defend itself. We would. And how it does so matters. Because it is also true far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Children, mothers. What we know is that this war must end. It must when, end immediately, and the way it will end is we need a ceasefire deal and we need the hostages out.”

“End immediately”? Anyone who isn’t in fantasyland knows that the only way to soon end the slaughter of Palestinian civilians would be for the U.S. government — the overwhelmingly biggest supplier of Israel’s armaments — to stop sending weapons to Israel.

Meanwhile, a pivot to advocating for a cutoff of weapons to Israel would help Harris win the presidency. After the debate, the Institute for Middle East Understanding pointed out that the need to halt the weapons is not only moral and legal — it’s also smart politics. Polls are clear that most Americans want to stop arming Israel. In swing states, polling has found that a large number of voters say they’d be more likely to cast a ballot for Harris if she would support a halt.

What Kamala Harris and Donald Trump said about Israel and Gaza in their debate was predictable. Even more certain was what they absolutely would not say — with silences speaking loudest of all. “Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth,” Aldous Huxley wrote, describing “the greatest triumphs of propaganda.”

By coincidence, the debate happened on the same date as publication of a new afterword about the Gaza war in the paperback edition of my book War Made Invisible. To fill in for the debate’s abysmal silences, here are a few quotes from the afterword about the ongoing carnage:

+ “After the atrocities that Hamas committed on Oct. 7, the U.S. government quickly stepped up military aid to Israel as it implemented atrocities on a much larger scale. In truth, as time went on, the entire Israeli war in Gaza amounted to one gigantic atrocity with uncountable aspects.”

+ As with the steady massacres with bombs and bullets in Gaza since early October, “the Israeli-U.S. alliance treated the increasing onset of starvation, dehydration, and fatal disease as a public-relations problem.”

+ “In the war zone, eyewitness reporting and photojournalism were severely hindered if not thwarted by the Israeli military, which has a long record of killing journalists.”

+ “Although the credibility of Israel’s government tumbled as the Gaza war dragged on, the brawny arms of the Israel lobby — and the overall atmospheric pressure of media and politics — pushed legislators to approve new military aid. . . . Official pronouncements — and the policies they tried to justify — were deeply anchored in the unspoken premise that some lives really matter and some really don’t.”

+ The United States persisted in “violating not only the U.S. Conventional Arms Transfer Policy but also numerous other legal requirements including the Foreign Assistance Act, the Arms Export Control Act, the U.S. War Crimes Act, the Leahy Law, the Genocide Convention Implementation Act, and several treaties. For U.S. power politics, the inconvenient precepts in those measures were as insignificant and invisible as the Palestinian people being slaughtered.”

+ “What was sinister about proclaiming ‘Israel’s 9/11’ was what happened after America’s 9/11. Wearing the cloak of victim, the United States proceeded to use the horrible tragedy that occurred inside its borders as an open-ended reason to kill in the name of retaliation, self- protection, and, of course, the ‘war on terror.’ It was a playbook that the Israeli government adapted and implemented with vengeance.”

Israel’s war on 2.2 million people in Gaza has been “a supercharged escalation of what Israel had been doing for 75 years, treating human beings as suitable for removal and even destruction.” As Israel’s war on Gaza has persisted, “the explanations often echoed the post-9/11 rationales for the ‘war on terror’ from the U.S. government: authorizing future crimes against humanity as necessary in the light of certain prior events.”

That and so much more — left unsaid from the debate stage, dodged in U.S. mass media and evaded from the podiums of power in Washington — indict not only the Israeli government but also the U.S. government as an accomplice to mass murder that has escalated into genocide.

Silence is a blanket that smothers genuine democratic discourse and the outcries of moral voices. Making those voices inaudible is a key goal for the functioning of the warfare state.

The post Undebatable: What Harris and Trump Could Not Say About Israel and Gaza appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Norman Solomon.

Democratic presidential nominee Harris and Republican nominee Trump clashed for 90 minutes in a debate in Philadelphia that was largely focused on domestic issues but touched on foreign affairs, in particular the Middle East, the war in Ukraine, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and China.

The debate began with probably the biggest concern of U.S. voters, the state of the American economy. 

A moderator, referring to a Trump plan to impose tariffs of as much as 20% on all imports, asked if Americans could afford the higher prices that the policy would bring. Trump dismissed that suggestion.

“They’re not going to have higher prices. What’s going to happen, who’s going to have higher prices is China and all of the countries that have been ripping us off for years,” Trump said, pointing out that some tariffs he introduced had been retained by the Joe Biden administration over the past three-and-a-half years.

“China was paying us hundreds of billions of dollars and so were other countries,” he said.

“We’re going to take in billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars,” Trump added, referring to his hoped-for second term.

Harris has backed the Biden administration’s targeted tariffs on only certain Chinese imports – such as a 100% rate on electric cars and a 50% rate on solar panels – arguing it will bolster domestic manufacturing without causing wider economic damage.

Trump has proposed an across-the-board rate of “more than” 60% on Chinese imports, and a rate of 10% – or even 20% – on all other imports, in order to revive the U.S. manufacturing sector and reduce reliance on foreign trade.

Harris said Trump as president had “invited trade wars” and resulted in a trade deficit.

“If you want to talk about his deal with China, what he ended up doing is, under Donald Trump’s presidency, he ended up selling American chips to China to help them improve and modernize their military, basically sold us out,” she said.

“A policy about China should be in making sure the United States of America wins the competition for the 21st century, which means focusing on the details of what that requires,” Harris said.

“Focusing on relationships with our allies, focusing on investing in American-based technology so we win the race on AI, on quantum computing, focusing on what we need to do to support America’s workforce so that we don’t end up on the short end of the stick in terms of workers’ rights.”

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The debate, hosted by American broadcaster ABC News, was the first time the two have faced each other since Harris entered the race. 

President Joe Biden, 81, dropped out of the race in late July after stumbling through a debate with Trump, 78, raising concerns among Democrat politicians and donors that voters would not back him in the November presidential poll.

Harris, 59, won the Democratic nomination last month. She is the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president.

Trading barbs

Harris took Trump to task for a response to China’s President Xi Jinping over the COVID-19 pandemic, which emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.

“With COVID he actually thanked President Xi for what he did during COVID,” Harris said, referring to a Trump post on Twitter at the time.

“Look at his Tweet – ‘Thank you President Xi’, exclamation point – when we know that Xi was responsible for lacking and not giving us transparency about the origins of COVID.”

China faced criticism in the early stage of the pandemic for what some health experts said was a bid to cover up the disease and its origin. Beijing rejects that.

Trump criticized the Biden administration’s overall record in international affairs, saying: “The leaders of other countries think that they’re weak and incompetent and they are.”

Harris repeated assertions she made during her nomination speech on Aug. 22 that Trump liked to “cozy-up” to dictators.

“It is well-known that he exchanged ‘love letters’ with Kim Jong Un,” said Harris, referring to unprecedented communication between a U.S. president and a North Korean leader that led to three meetings between Trump and Kim, but no breakthrough on efforts to press North Korea to give up its nuclear and missile programs.

Trump highlighted his relationship with authoritarian Hungarian leader Victor Orban, citing Orban as saying: “You need Trump back as president.”

Referring to himself in the third person, Trump spoke of his standing on the world stage. “China was afraid of him, North Korea was afraid of him … Russia was afraid of him,” he said.

Harris said Trump adored strongmen instead of caring about democracy and the American people.

“These dictators and autocrats are rooting for you to be president again because it is so clear they can manipulate you with flattery and favors,” Harris said. She also cited unidentified U.S. military leaders referring to Trump as “a disgrace.”

Trump attacked the Democrats’ record on immigration and American industry, accusing the Biden administration of “losing” 10,000 manufacturing jobs in August.

“They’re building big auto plants in Mexico, in many cases owned by China. What they have given to China is unbelievable. We will put tariffs on those cars so they won’t come into our country,” said Trump.

Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.

Aug. 21, 2024, day three of the DNC, thousands of protesters from Chicago’s “Little Palestine” marched in support of Gaza and called on Kamala Harris to endorse an arms embargo on Israel and a permanent ceasefire. Sheri Maali, center, with friends, said “Holding out our votes” could force Harris to agree to the movement’s demands. Credit: Arun Gupta

It’s not that the Democrats did not show any concern about Palestinians at the Democratic National Convention. They showed extraordinary concern given the lengths they went to erase them from Kamala’s coronation.

Afterwards the Democrats seemed ecstatic that a little genocide didn’t disrupt their joy. But there were still plenty of protests and signs of divisions that could pose problems with Harris’s path to election especially as student protesters look to reinvigorate the movement.

One high-profile protest took place inside the convention center on the first night as Joe Biden spoke. Delegates unfurled a banner reading, “Stop Arming Israel.” Nadia Ahmad, a Florida delegate for Harris, held up the banner along with a Jewish superdelegate. Ahmad says other delegates hit her “We Love Joe” signs. It revealed how liberals are more enraged at those opposing genocide than those committing genocide.

During the DNC there were countless press conferences, vigils, street theater, and small protests in support of Gaza. There were plenty of cranks, conspiracists, and insurrectionists too. One wiry middle-aged Californian who drove a van across country outfitted with lightboards sat next to the park where protests were held and screamed “Nazis,” “Zionists,” and crude sexual slurs against Harris over his sound system. In 30 seconds of conversation he claimed “Jews control the government” and in another 15 seconds he veered into JFK conspiracy theories.

The second night, “Behind Enemy Lines” organized a Judean People’s Front Suicide Squad-style mob to bring the fight to the Israeli consulate under the slogan “Make it great like 1968.” They were swept aside by cops outnumbering them ten to one.

On three separate days, lively pro-Palestine marches drawing up to 3,000 people stepped off from Union Park, a half mile from the DNC. They called for an arms embargo on Israel and a permanent ceasefire. While protesters were defiant, the marches should have attracted ten times as many people given the popular outrage and gravity of the situation.

At one exit from the convention center, protesters read names and ages of children murdered by Israel. One reporter said delegates chanted “USA!” at them. In a video, DNC attendees can be seen covering their ears as protesters read the names of children. One attendee shrieked in mockery, “18-years-old!”

No Palestinians Allowed

On the third day, two dozen delegates and supporters of a ceasefire staged a sit-in outside the VIP gate and inside the convention fencing. Protesters demanded that the DNC allow a Palestinian to take the stage to speak on Gaza. The Democrats refused.

The Washington Post claimed the DNC made concessions to Palestinians. Ha’aretz said, “The DNC slams the door on Gaza advocates.” (The Israeli press is typically more unbiased about the U.S. relationship with Palestine and Israel.)

The Democrats are mad that Palestinians dare protest their extermination. A supporter with the Uncommitted National Movement told me a long list of Palestinian speakers was presented to the DNC. All of them were rejected.

One rejected speaker was Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib. He is with the Atlantic Council, a pro-Zionist think tank. Alkhatib says he is “anti-Hamas.” He said:

“There were several attempts to get me on the DNC stage to speak and share a message of healing and unity – all were unsuccessful. I even offered to bring a hostage family and talk together about ending the war in Gaza, releasing the hostages, and confronting hate and extremism.”

Sit with that for a minute. A pro-Zionist, anti-Hamas Palestinian who offered to take the stage with a hostage family wasn’t good enough for the DNC.

Consider a second rejected speaker, Georgia State Rep. Ruwa Romman. Mother Jones called her “a safe last resort.” Romman said, “If an elected official in a swing state who is Palestinian cannot make it on that stage nobody else can.” She added that her speech was “frankly, very sanitized.”

Watch her speech. It is very short and mild. It is Midwestern grandma at Taco Bell mild.

What does it say that Palestinians who are deferential to Israel, a state and society seething with genocide, are still not good enough to speak at the DNC?

Harris is simply bowing to the diktats of the Democrats’ true constituency: billionaires and national-security interests. They tend to unconditionally back Israel, the most important U.S. client state. (For a primer on how Israel has been central to American global power, read Chomsky.)

The Power Broker

Take Haim Saban, one of the most prominent Democratic megadonors. He has said, “I’m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.” Saban drops staggering sums on politics. He gave $16 million to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, $7 million for a new DNC building, more to liberal think tanks, organizes fundraisers that raise millions, and “as much as $30 million to the Clinton Foundation when Hillary was secretary of State,” according to Mondoweiss.

Unsurprisingly, Saban throws his weight around and is an extremist on his one issue. When Biden paused a shipment of 3,500 U.S. bombs in April slated to kill Palestinian civilians, Saban harangued senior White House officials, “Bad, Bad, Bad, decision, on all levels, Pls reconsider.”

Saban also told the White House, “Let’s not forget that there are more Jewish voters, who care about Israel, than Muslim voters that care about Hamas.”

Let that sink in. Israel claims it is fighting Hamas. However, Israel equates all Palestinians with Hamas, meaning they are all targets. That logic animates Israel’s genocide of Gaza, which “is quite explicit, open, and unashamed,” as Jewish Currents states.

Saban is doing the same thing. He is equating millions of Americans with Hamas. To Saban and his cohort, all Arabs equal Muslims, all Muslims equal Hamas, therefore any Palestinian who speaks at the DNC is Hamas.

Why else would Kamala — the party’s decider — reject Ruwa Romman’s milquetoast speech or one by a pro-Zionist, anti-Hamas Palestinian?

From an electoral standpoint it makes no sense. Having a Palestinian speak would have placated the Uncommitted movement, the bulk of voters willing to withhold votes until Harris endorses an arms embargo and permanent ceasefire. The issue is wildly popular among Democrats, more popular overall than abortion rights. Eighty-three percent support a permanent ceasefire and only 9 percent oppose it.

Instead, Harris is risking losing hundreds of thousands of votes in a must-win state like Michigan as she sees that as less important than losing support from Saban.

Saban’s influence outweighs millions of voters. In a 2010 profile in The New Yorker, Saban comes across as a dishonest manipulative power broker who is courted by U.S. presidents and Israeli prime ministers. Last September, Mondoweiss wrote, “Biden’s policy is now being scripted by Haim Saban, whose money he needs for the 2024 campaign.”

While that probably gives Saban too much power, he is part of a group of oligarchs working feverishly to crush any opposition to unconditional U.S. support for Israel.

Biden’s “Victory Fund” tilted toward Jewish megadonors from Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Wall Street, as Ha’aretz put it. Of the fund’s top 25 donors, nine who gave nearly a million dollars or more (some accompanied by matching donations from spouses) were pro-Zionist. Now that Harris is having her moment in the sun, pro-Israel megadonors have flocked to her blossoming campaign.

Dollars for Genocide

It must be emphasized that Biden and U.S. officials protect Israel not because of money but because it is vital to maintaining American Empire regionally and globally. Benjamin Netanyahu is unabashed about Israel’s role, calling it a “mighty aircraft carrier” for the United States.

Neither are the many pro-Israel billionaires successful in shaping U.S. policy because they are Jewish. They are successful because Israel serves U.S. power.

But we should not ignore the reality that moguls like Saban also support Jewish supremacism and the genocide. Days after Oct. 7, real-estate mogul Barry Sternlicht hit up Jewish billionaires for million-dollar donations for a media campaign. He wrote, “Palestinian suffering will surely erode [Israel’s] current empathy in the world community … We must get ahead of the narrative,” according to Semafor.

Sternlicht claimed scenes of “civilian Palestinian suffering” may have been “fabricated by Hamas,” Semafor said. He aimed to raise $50 million and a matching donation from “a large Jewish charity” for a media blitz to “define Hamas” as “not just the enemy of Israel but of the United States.”

Sternlicht enlisted media moguls Michael Bloomberg, David Geffen, CNN owner David Zaslav, and talent agent Ari Emanuel, investors Bill Ackman, Marc Rowan, Michael Milken and Nelson Peltz, and tech leaders Eric Schmidt and Michael Dell — who combined have half-a-trillion dollars in wealth.

Their wealth, however, could not sway a world horrified by Israel’s atrocities in Gaza that’s been livestreamed for nearly a year. But the super-rich have other levers of power other than money, and they put it to work against student protesters.

Pro-Israel billionaires scheme like cartoon villains in the Legion of Doom. During student protests this spring against the genocide, “billionaires and business titans [were] working to shape U.S. public opinion of the war in Gaza,” The Washington Post reported. The newspaper obtained thousands of verified messages from a WhatsApp chat group where the billionaires coordinated actions.

They lent their cash-engorged muscle to the “Israeli government, the U.S. business world and elite universities” to “help win the war” of public opinion, said the Post.

Plutocrats were particularly incensed by the peaceful student protests at Columbia University. They bullied university administrators and trustees to let NYC Mayor Eric Adams send in a notoriously violent police unit so students could be “dragged off campus,” and they bragged of funding private snoops to work with NYPD intel to disrupt student protests.

The masters of the universe were not above getting in the trenches to slug it out. They amplified Zionist social media provocateurs, promoted propaganda films, organized “anti-Hamas” social media campaigns, coordinated with the Israeli government to influence media, and shopped around for Black celebrities to enlist in their crusade like “Jay-Z, LeBron James or Alicia Keys.”

Zionist influence-seeking has become more brazen with the genocide. AIPAC unleashed a $100 million war chest that torpedoed two members of “The Squad,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman and Rep. Cori Bush. In June, some Democrats voted for a bill that amounts to genocide revisionism out of fear that groups like AIPAC would “Jamaal” them. (The bill prevents the State Department from using casualty figures from Gaza’s Health Ministry. The statistics are widely considered accurate but they now may be a vast undercount with Israel’s destruction of the health infrastructure.)

We Have the Power

Given the power of pro-Israel forces, liberals claim Harris is doing what she needs to get elected. This is lazy thinking. Neither AIPAC or Israel is invincible. AIPAC did not make a serious attempt to dislodge the two House members most outspoken about the genocide, Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib. It dropped a $4.5 million bomb in a California primary to defeat State Sen. Dave Min, who is running to succeed progressive champion Rep. Katie Porter, but that turned out to be a dud as Min won.

As far as Israel goes, it is “already becoming an international pariah,” says Ha’aretz, and its economy has tanked. Nearly 10 percent of the population is out of action with 120,000 Israelis displaced internally, and up to 470,000 others who have bailed since Oct. 7 or never returned from summer vacation overseas because of the war.

Israel is on the ropes, and Democrats are in denial. Its platform reads like AIPAC wrote it. In her DNC speech, Harris spoke of “dignity, security, freedom and self-determination” for Palestinians but couldn’t say ceasefire, occupation, or settlements. Harris, however, felt no qualms about dog whistling for genocide — endorsing “Israel’s right to defend itself” — and promoting the Oct. 7 rape hoax.

“I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself, because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on Oct. 7, including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival.”

Compare what Harris said to what George W. Bush said in 2002. His words were far bolder, if as meaningless as Harris’s.

“Permanent occupation threatens Israel’s identity and democracy. A stable, peaceful Palestinian state is necessary to achieve the security that Israel longs for. So I challenge Israel to take concrete steps to support the emergence of a viable, credible Palestinian state. … Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories must stop.”

Harris is an extremist not just on Gaza. She has vowed, “I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world. She says she will be tougher on the border than Trump, meaning more violent and racist, she wants to keep building Trump’s border wall, and she supports fracking.

Migration, imperialism, genocide, and climate change are the top issues facing humanity. On each issue, Harris will be as bad if not worse than Trump. (Trump may want to “Drill, Baby, Drill!” but one pro-Trump oil billionaire says the oil and gas industry is already “producing everything we can” under Biden and Harris.)

The decision by Harris and her campaign to erase Palestinians is a choice. They are choosing to stand with the plutocrats and against the people. Harris could choose to run a Bernie Sanders-style campaign and call for an arms embargo. He showed that a campaign based on peace and prosperity could do as well or better than one based on guns and crumbs.

Harris, however, is a product of a system ruled by Wall Street and the war machine. She is another cynical opportunist, albeit with better memes and branding.

Harris is explicit that Israel’s genocide of Gaza will continue under her. But for now we have power over her: The power to withhold our votes. That’s what she fears, and we need to make our threat credible that her only path to election is by ending the genocide.

We need to proclaim loudly, “No arms embargo, no vote.” The more of us who refuse to vote for Killer Kamala, the more likely it is that Harris will realize sticking with the ruling class is a losing proposition.

The post Why is Kamala Harris Erasing Palestinians? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Arun Gupta.

We end our Labor Day special with Shawn Fein, the president of the United Auto Workers. In August, he addressed the Democratic National Convention. Midway through his speech, Fain took off his jacket to show that he was wearing a T-shirt that read “Trump is a scab.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

In her first major interview since replacing Joe Biden on the ballot, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris was questioned about her shifting statements on fracking, which has been linked to a surge in methane gas emissions over the past decade. Harris, who has previously made comments opposing fracking, vowed not to ban it if elected. The vice president went on to highlight the Biden-Harris administration’s environmental record, which activists have criticized for vastly expanding oil production rather than drawing down the country’s reliance on fossil fuels. “The data is telling us that what Kamala Harris said about fracking — that we can do it without dealing with reducing the supply of fossil fuels — it’s just not borne out by the numbers,” explains The Lever’s David Sirota, who adds, “Ultimately, consequences for that will be on the United States, for the entire world.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Vice President Kamala Harris gave her first major interview Thursday since becoming the Democratic nominee, laying out her plans for “an opportunity economy” if she becomes president. Sociologist Nikhil Goyal, author of Live to See the Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty, says Harris’s support for policies like an expanded child tax credit shows a clear contrast between herself and Republican nominee Donald Trump. “He fights for the billionaire class,” while Harris is “on the side of working people,” says Goyal.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

We turn to Kamala Harris’s position on Israel’s war on Gaza, which many are calling a genocide. After she was asked about calls to condition U.S. arms shipments to Israel by CNN reporter Dana Bash, Harris refused to consider halting the flow of weapons and instead affirmed her support of Israel. This position violates both federal and international law, argues Palestinian American political analyst Yousef Munayyer, and, coupled with her campaign’s denial of a requested Palestinian American speaking spot from “uncommitted” voters at the DNC, he warns that “Harris could be worse than Biden” when it comes to U.S. support for Israel.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

In her first major interview since ascending to the top of the Democratic ticket, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris was questioned by CNN’s Dana Bash about her policy positions and campaign platform. We begin with a look at Harris’s increasingly rightward stance on immigration and border policy with immigration activist Erika Andiola. As she touted her support for hard-line border security and asylum policies, Harris positioned herself as tougher on immigration than Trump. “Republican talking points … now truly have become Democrat talking points,” says Andiola.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Hours after Kamala Harris gave her acceptance speech at the Democratic convention, the president of the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” organization J Street took a victory lap in an effusive e-mail to supporters. “Wow,” Jeremy Ben-Ami wrote. “What a week! As J Streeters leave the Democratic National Convention fired up and ready to go, it’s clear we’re having a greater impact than ever.” He added that “the vice president’s remarks on Israel-Palestine were perhaps the clearest articulation of J Street’s values from a presidential nominee.”

But what are those “values” and how do they apply to what’s happening in Gaza?

Discussing Gaza, Harris’ DNC acceptance speech began with the anodyne evocation of “working on a cease-fire” of Gaza’s pounding that America is funding: “President Biden and I are working around the clock, because now is the time to get a hostage deal and a cease-fire deal done.”

Then came the “ironclad” pledge of eternal support for Israel, justified in this case by the October 7 Hamas raid: “And let me be clear. And let me be clear. I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself…”

Key to Harris’ brief discussion of Gaza in her acceptance speech was the customary refusal in American political discourse to attribute the slaughter to the U.S. or its Israeli partner. Instead, there was a reference to “what has happened” – evoking victims without victimizers – in this way: “What has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost. Desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking.”

After pledging unconditional support for Israel’s military, Harris expressed sorrow – as if the horrors are being inflicted by a force of nature, not a military force that the U.S. government supplies with fundamental and essential support.

Style aside, what Harris articulated about Israel-Palestine in her speech was no different than what President Biden has been saying and doing since last fall while enabling the slaughter of Palestinian civilians. The vehement enthusiasm from J Street, perhaps the USA’s leading liberal Zionist organization, is illuminating.

Harris carefully omitted any mention of the only way that the U.S. government could actually put an end to the suffering in Gaza that she called “heartbreaking” – an arms embargo to stop the huge shipments from the United States that provide the Israeli military with the weapons and ammunition it’s using to continue to massacre Palestinian people of all ages.

The Harris speech was consistent with the national party’s new platform – which “J Street helped shape,” Ben-Ami proudly wrote. But full affirmation of Biden’s policies toward the Gaza carnage should not have been any cause for celebration.

“As a Palestinian American who is an elected Democrat to the Colorado State House, it has been disheartening to witness Biden facilitate and abet Israel’s brutal war on Gaza with billions of dollars in U.S. weapons,” Iman Jodeh wrote during the convention. Harris “has said that an arms embargo – which human rights organizations have been calling for – is off the table, but that she supports a ceasefire.” However, “to truly reach a ceasefire and prevent a regional conflict, the U.S. must halt the arms shipments that fuel the conflict.”

The British medical journal The Lancet estimates that well over 100,000 residents of Gaza will die because of the Israeli bombardment and siege since Oct. 7, as hunger and disease are endemic, and housing and infrastructure have been systematically destroyed. Polio is appearing in the devastated population of more than 2 million. Israel’s assault on the enclave, populated substantially by refugees from the 1948 creation of the Israeli state, remains unchecked – and is literally made possible by the continuous arms pipeline from the United States.

For J Street’s leadership, the current U.S. policy hits the spot. “Could not be prouder of VP Harris for her remarks on Israel/Palestine – and of Democrats’ reaction,” Ben-Ami tweeted after the convention adjourned. “This is what it means in 2024 to be pro-Israel, pro-peace and pro-democracy.”

At the convention, the parents of a hostage held by Hamas since Oct. 7 spoke. But no Palestinian American was allowed to say anything. In effect, the convention’s podium was a place of apartheid, mirroring the reality of Israel’s apartheid system. (In his email, Ben-Ami wistfully noted the missed opportunity: “Hosting the first ever Palestinian speaker at a national convention would have been a powerful way to underscore the shared goal of an immediate ceasefire and hostage deal, and the compassion the party feels for Palestinians and Israelis alike.”)

J Street is determined to help ensure that liberal Zionism does not question the “ironclad” U.S. commitment to Jewish nationalist control in Palestine, as discussed in articles I co-wrote that were published 10 years ago and last spring. The organization is eager to define the limits of acceptable criticism of Israeli government policies from the Democratic Party establishment – setting aside human rights considerations as secondary to the mantra of Israel’s “right to exist.” (Whether apartheid South Africa had a “right to exist” is not a topic open for discussion.)

J Street represents untenable liberal American Zionism that clings to the fantasy of a democratic and humane “Jewish state.” Washington office-holders pledge continued weapons resupply for that fantasy Jewish state — with no connection to the actual Israel that is now engaged in remorseless genocide.

The post Why are Liberal Zionists Cheering as Harris Echoes Biden on Gaza? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Abba A. Solomon.

Ger van Elk, Symmetry of Diplomacy, 1975, Groninger Museum

“Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”

– President John F. Kennedy, Inauguration Speech, January 20, 1961.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech last week was a tour de force.   It was presidential; it was compelling; it demonstrated presence and power.  But it provided no indication that she will address the weakest aspects of President Joe Biden’s national security policy, the failure to restore diplomacy as the central tool of foreign policy and to reestablish the primacy of arms control and disarmament.

Harris has a compelling personal story; she used the story effectively to introduce herself to the American public.  Harris’s confidence and charisma allowed her to connect to her audience, and perhaps to impress independents and even some Republicans to take a second look at a political figure who was caricatured unfairly by the mainstream media from the outset of the Biden administration.  She was so effective that it is difficult to imagine an incoherent and rambling Donald Trump sharing a stage with her at their debate that is scheduled for September 17th.

It is unreasonable to expect any vice president to deviate from the president’s foreign policy imperatives, but an opportunity was missed to at least introduce new aspects of foreign policy that were not addressed during Biden’s presidency.  One possible indicator of a more pragmatic approach is the fact that Harris’s foreign policy advisor is Philip Gordon, whose writings suggest an awareness of the limits of American power and a willingness to negotiate with autocratic regimes.

As an official in the Department of State during the Obama administration and a White House advisor to Obama on the Middle East, Gordon worked on the Iran nuclear accord, the effort to reset relations with Russia after its invasion of Georgia, and advised against supporting regime change in Syria.  The so-called reset with Russia contributed to the successful effort to remove chemical weapons from Syria. (Obama has been unfairly criticized for the failure to use force against the Assad regime in Syria, and the success of bilateral diplomacy with Russia has not been acknowledged.)  According to the Financial Times, Gordon has been responsible for crafting Harris’s more sympathetic tone for the plight of the Palestinians.

Although Biden put great stock into personal diplomacy, his team demonstrated no willingness to open areas of dialogue with key adversaries.  We have obvious differences with Russia’s Putin, China’s Xi, and Iran’s Ayatollah.  But over the past several months, these leaders have demonstrated an interest in pursuing substantive discussions with the United States.  It was encouraging that Harris did not personally mention these leaders and only singled out North Korea’s Kim Jong Un for criticism, although Kim’s interest in dealing with the United States is also apparent.

There is no sign of Harris’s positions on Biden’s policy choices that would suggest strong differences or alternative approaches to change the direction of U.S. policy.  Harris at this point cannot deviate from President Biden’s key positions on sensitive issues, although Vice President Hubert Humphrey probably lost the election in 1968 to Richard Nixon because of a belated critique on U.S. policy in Vietnam.  Biden’s unwavering support for Israel could ultimately hurt Harris in key states such as Michigan.

Harris acknowledged that she was the “last person in the room” on the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, and it was well known that she wanted to protect the Afghan women and children who would be most affected by the Taliban’s return to power.  But Harris, like Biden, was “eager” to find a political solution that would allow the withdrawal of American forces, which was the correct position after two decades of military and political failure in Afghanistan.

Ironically, when Joe Biden was vice president, he took strong exception to President Barack Obama’s decision to increase the U.S. force presence in Afghanistan and even warned the president to avoid getting “boxed in” by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff that were pressing for a large increase in military forces.  Biden took the unusual step of sending a classified message to Obama to prevent any increase in the U.S. presence, and wrote a personal note for the record that he was “thinking I should resign in protest over what will bring his administration down.”

According to the Washington Post, Biden privately stated that protecting Afghan women was not a cause worthy of continued U.S. military intervention.  (My personal view is that Biden has been unfairly pilloried for ending the “forever war” in Afghanistan, which cost the United States more than $2 trillion.  It was one of Biden’s greatest achievements, refusing to prolong a war that made no sense and was never worth the cost after the initial success in 2001.)

Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing how Harris will handle two of Biden’s greatest failures: his continuation of Donald Trump’s failed policy toward China and his intense support for the illiberal and militaristic policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  The pursuit of containment against China is a losing hand that must yield to more nimble strategies and tactics.  Israel’s dangerous escalation in Gaza prevents any possibility of serious negotiations in the region, let alone a compromise for peace.  The “alliance” with Israel is a shackle that chains U.S. policy to Israel’s dangerous illusions and aspirations.  It must be addressed.

Harris’s speech ended with the usual tropes associated with presidential national security policy.  She stressed that she would “ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” and that she would “take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists.”  Her emphasis on “standing up for Israel’s right to defend itself” obfuscates the fact that Israeli genocidal actions in Gaza and the West Bank have nothing to do with defense.

Our policy of globalism has been overly dependent on support for military lethality, which led us into losing wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan; our stress on terrorism led us into the “Global War on Terror,” which led to a wrongful expansion of U.S. power into the Middle East and even Africa.  Our reliance on strategic superiority, which will require continued modernization of strategic forces, will be a costly liability in times such as these that require more stable and subtle policies.  There is much work to be done and, at this point, no clarity on the shape and substance of future foreign policy.

The post Harris and the Need for Diplomacy appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Melvin Goodman.

Ger van Elk, Symmetry of Diplomacy, 1975, Groninger Museum

“Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”

– President John F. Kennedy, Inauguration Speech, January 20, 1961.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech last week was a tour de force.   It was presidential; it was compelling; it demonstrated presence and power.  But it provided no indication that she will address the weakest aspects of President Joe Biden’s national security policy, the failure to restore diplomacy as the central tool of foreign policy and to reestablish the primacy of arms control and disarmament.

Harris has a compelling personal story; she used the story effectively to introduce herself to the American public.  Harris’s confidence and charisma allowed her to connect to her audience, and perhaps to impress independents and even some Republicans to take a second look at a political figure who was caricatured unfairly by the mainstream media from the outset of the Biden administration.  She was so effective that it is difficult to imagine an incoherent and rambling Donald Trump sharing a stage with her at their debate that is scheduled for September 17th.

It is unreasonable to expect any vice president to deviate from the president’s foreign policy imperatives, but an opportunity was missed to at least introduce new aspects of foreign policy that were not addressed during Biden’s presidency.  One possible indicator of a more pragmatic approach is the fact that Harris’s foreign policy advisor is Philip Gordon, whose writings suggest an awareness of the limits of American power and a willingness to negotiate with autocratic regimes.

As an official in the Department of State during the Obama administration and a White House advisor to Obama on the Middle East, Gordon worked on the Iran nuclear accord, the effort to reset relations with Russia after its invasion of Georgia, and advised against supporting regime change in Syria.  The so-called reset with Russia contributed to the successful effort to remove chemical weapons from Syria. (Obama has been unfairly criticized for the failure to use force against the Assad regime in Syria, and the success of bilateral diplomacy with Russia has not been acknowledged.)  According to the Financial Times, Gordon has been responsible for crafting Harris’s more sympathetic tone for the plight of the Palestinians.

Although Biden put great stock into personal diplomacy, his team demonstrated no willingness to open areas of dialogue with key adversaries.  We have obvious differences with Russia’s Putin, China’s Xi, and Iran’s Ayatollah.  But over the past several months, these leaders have demonstrated an interest in pursuing substantive discussions with the United States.  It was encouraging that Harris did not personally mention these leaders and only singled out North Korea’s Kim Jong Un for criticism, although Kim’s interest in dealing with the United States is also apparent.

There is no sign of Harris’s positions on Biden’s policy choices that would suggest strong differences or alternative approaches to change the direction of U.S. policy.  Harris at this point cannot deviate from President Biden’s key positions on sensitive issues, although Vice President Hubert Humphrey probably lost the election in 1968 to Richard Nixon because of a belated critique on U.S. policy in Vietnam.  Biden’s unwavering support for Israel could ultimately hurt Harris in key states such as Michigan.

Harris acknowledged that she was the “last person in the room” on the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, and it was well known that she wanted to protect the Afghan women and children who would be most affected by the Taliban’s return to power.  But Harris, like Biden, was “eager” to find a political solution that would allow the withdrawal of American forces, which was the correct position after two decades of military and political failure in Afghanistan.

Ironically, when Joe Biden was vice president, he took strong exception to President Barack Obama’s decision to increase the U.S. force presence in Afghanistan and even warned the president to avoid getting “boxed in” by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff that were pressing for a large increase in military forces.  Biden took the unusual step of sending a classified message to Obama to prevent any increase in the U.S. presence, and wrote a personal note for the record that he was “thinking I should resign in protest over what will bring his administration down.”

According to the Washington Post, Biden privately stated that protecting Afghan women was not a cause worthy of continued U.S. military intervention.  (My personal view is that Biden has been unfairly pilloried for ending the “forever war” in Afghanistan, which cost the United States more than $2 trillion.  It was one of Biden’s greatest achievements, refusing to prolong a war that made no sense and was never worth the cost after the initial success in 2001.)

Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing how Harris will handle two of Biden’s greatest failures: his continuation of Donald Trump’s failed policy toward China and his intense support for the illiberal and militaristic policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  The pursuit of containment against China is a losing hand that must yield to more nimble strategies and tactics.  Israel’s dangerous escalation in Gaza prevents any possibility of serious negotiations in the region, let alone a compromise for peace.  The “alliance” with Israel is a shackle that chains U.S. policy to Israel’s dangerous illusions and aspirations.  It must be addressed.

Harris’s speech ended with the usual tropes associated with presidential national security policy.  She stressed that she would “ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” and that she would “take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists.”  Her emphasis on “standing up for Israel’s right to defend itself” obfuscates the fact that Israeli genocidal actions in Gaza and the West Bank have nothing to do with defense.

Our policy of globalism has been overly dependent on support for military lethality, which led us into losing wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan; our stress on terrorism led us into the “Global War on Terror,” which led to a wrongful expansion of U.S. power into the Middle East and even Africa.  Our reliance on strategic superiority, which will require continued modernization of strategic forces, will be a costly liability in times such as these that require more stable and subtle policies.  There is much work to be done and, at this point, no clarity on the shape and substance of future foreign policy.

The post Harris and the Need for Diplomacy appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Melvin Goodman.

• The presidential campaigns of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are bickering over debate details, with their first showdown scheduled for Sept. 10 on ABC now in question.
• UN halts aid in Gaza as security deteriorates as polio re-emerges in territory.
• Canada’s government says it is imposing a 100% tariff on imports of Chinese-made electric vehicles, matching U.S. tariffs and following similar plans announced by the European Commission.
• Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle were in Butler County, Pennsylvania, today, assessing the Butler Farm Show grounds where former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt last month.
• A federal court hearing began today in Oregon, putting in question a proposed merger between grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons, which would be the largest supermarket merger in U.S. history.

The post Harris, Trump campaigns clash over debate details, September 10 ABC showdown in doubt – August 26, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

Vice President Kamala Harris made history Thursday as the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to be nominated to lead a major party’s presidential ticket. There are now just two-and-a-half months left before the November 5 election, when she will face Republican nominee Donald Trump at the polls. For more, we speak with two political organizers — Maurice Mitchell, national director for the Working Families Party, and Mohammed Khader, manager of policy and advocacy campaigns at the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights — and with historian and activist Barbara Ransby.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Vice President Kamala Harris made history Thursday as the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent in the United States to be nominated to lead a major party’s presidential ticket. We speak with historian Barbara Ransby about two Black women pioneers who helped pave the way for her historic nomination: former Congressmember Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress who sought the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1972, and civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, who led the fight to desegregate the party’s Southern delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Thousands of protesters marched on the DNC on Thursday night calling for an end to U.S. aid to Israel. Protesters rallied into the night as Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic presidential nomination on the DNC stage. Demonstrators had planned to march toward the convention site but were blocked by hundreds of police in riot gear who forced the march to disperse. We hear from some of the protesters who took to the streets.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

In her nomination acceptance speech in Chicago on Thursday, Vice President Harris targeted Trump, who has long boasted about his personal ties with Kim, saying North Korea knows that the former U.S president is “easy to manipulate”. 

“I will not cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong Un who are rooting for Trump,” Harris said on the fourth and final day of the Democratic National Convention.

“They know he is easy to manipulate with flattery and favors. They know Trump won’t hold autocrats accountable because he wants to be an autocrat himself.”

Trump spearheaded an unprecedented diplomatic push on North Korea when he was president in an effort to get it to abandon its nuclear and missile programs. He met Kim three times but the effort brought no tangible progress and North Korea has been relentlessly building up its nuclear arsenal and developing the missiles with which to carry the bombs.

Trump has recently referred to his efforts on North Korea, implying he could make progress if he returned to the White House. 

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Harris, clarifying her foreign policy vision, affirmed her commitment to reinforcing U.S. global leadership and standing strong with NATO.

“I will make sure that we lead the world into the future, that America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century, and that we strengthen, not abdicate, our global leadership,” she said. 

“Trump, on the other hand, threatened to abandon NATO. He encouraged Putin to invade our allies, said Russia do whatever the hell they want,” she added.

She was referring to Trump’s remarks during a campaign rally, where he said that if reelected, he would “encourage” Russia to do whatever it wants to “delinquent” NATO members that fail to meet their defense spending commitments.

She also highlighted her determination to safeguard American values.

“As president, I will never waver in defense of America’s security and ideals because, in the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny, I know where I stand, and I know where the United States belongs,” Harris said.

During the convention, Harris was officially nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate for the Nov. 5 general election.

Her nomination came after a tumultuous period marked by an assassination attempt against Trump last month and Biden’s unprecedented withdrawal from the presidential race just days later, while China, Russia and North Korea are growing closer and strengthening their ties.

Edited by Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Taejun Kang for RFA.

We play highlights from the second night of the Democratic National Convention, which ended with keynote speeches by Michelle and Barack Obama. The former first lady and president promoted Vice President Kamala Harris as a transformative leader while criticizing Donald Trump. “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those 'Black jobs'?” Michelle Obama said.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Immigration has become one of the central issues of the 2024 race, with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump vowing to expand the draconian policies of his first term and deport 10 million immigrants from the country amid what he calls an “invasion.” Democrats, meanwhile, are touting their own border crackdown at the Democratic National Convention this week in Chicago. President Joe Biden celebrated his executive action to block many asylum seekers at the southern U.S. border, and Vice President Kamala Harris promises to hire thousands more border agents if she is elected. We host a roundtable discussion in Chicago with Oscar Chacón, executive director of Alianza Americas, an immigrant rights group; Maria Hinojosa, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, founder of Futuro Media and host of the Latino USA podcast; and Marisa Franco, director and co-founder of Mijente, a national digital organizing hub for Latinx and Chicanx communities.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

To dig deeper, we’re joined by expert white man Ross Morales-Rocketto, the lead organizer of White Dudes for Harris. Through one Zoom call, Ross and his team raised $4.5 million for the Harris-Walz Campaign, engaging 200,000 participants across all 50 states. But this isn’t just a fleeting moment; it’s a movement. Ross is on a mission to challenge the toxic masculinity perpetuated by figures like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate, promoting a new masculinity defined by empathy and community. He's also the co-founder and co-executive director of Run for Something, which helped elect over 1,000 young people, ushering in a new generation of progressive leaders.

We’ll also hear from Terrell Starr of the Black Diplomats Podcast and Substack, who will provide crucial insights on dismantling toxic masculinity from a Black queer perspective.

For our Patreon subscribers at the Truth-teller level ($5/month) and above, our bonus show, available on August 24th—Ukraine’s Independence Day—celebrates the role of art in Ukraine’s resistance to Russian fascism and explores how we can address both personal and collective trauma. Subscribe at Patreon.com/Gaslit to join our community, enjoy bonus shows and ad-free episodes, get invites to exclusive events, and more!

Join us at a Gaslit Nation event! 

• September 16 at 7:00 PM ET: In-person live taping with Andrea and Terrel Starr at the Ukrainian Institute of America in NYC. Celebrate the release of In the Shadow of Stalin, the graphic novel adaptation of Andrea’s film Mr. Jones, directed by Agnieszka Holland. Gaslit Nation Patreon supporters get in free – so message us on Patreon to be added to the guest list. Everyone else can RSVP here: https://ukrainianinstitute.org/event/books-at-the-institute-chalupa/

• September 17 at 12:00 PM ET: Virtual live taping with investigative journalist Stephanie Baker, author of Punishing Putin: Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia. Her book has been highly praised by Bill Browder, the advocate behind the Magnitsky Act to combat Russian corruption. 

• September 18 at 4:00 PM ET: Virtual live taping with the one and only Politics Girl, Leigh McGowan, author of A Return to Common Sense: How to Fix America Before We Really Blow It.

• September 24 at 12:00 PM ET: Virtual live taping with David Pepper, author of Saving Democracy. Join us as David discusses his new art project based on Project 2025.

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Show Notes

Opening Clip: Raphael Warnock at the Democratic National Convention: https://x.com/OmarJimenez/status/1825733269989560692

Inciting rioters in Britain was a test run for Elon Musk. Just see what he plans for America, by Carole Cadwalladr https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/18/inciting-rioters-in-britain-was-a-test-run-for-elon-musk-just-see-what-he-plans-for-america

Harris leads Trump in new Nebraska 2nd District poll Most recent local Biden-Trump polling had shown Trump narrowly leading or slightly behind https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2024/08/20/harris-leads-trump-in-new-nebraska-2nd-district-poll/

According to polling, Vice President Kamala Harris is gaining momentum with White voters without a college education in key swing states ahead of the 2024 election. CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten breaks down the numbers. https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/13/politics/video/swing-state-poll-data-white-voters-college-harris-trump-enten-digvid

This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.

Labor rights were in the spotlight during the first night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, as union leaders, including UAW President Shawn Fain, took to the stage. We play part of Fain’s address, in which he called Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump “a scab” and praised Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’s labor record.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

But the claim is false. A review of live footage of the rally shows that there were at least two American flags flying at the event. 

The claim was shared on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Aug. 7, 2024.

“These two extreme left-wing communists didn’t even have an American flag at the rally,” reads the claim.

It was shared alongside a photo that shows Harris and Walz standing in front of a crowd. 

The claim began to circulate online after Walz was announced on Aug. 6 as Democratic nominee Harris’ running mate for the 2024 U.S. presidential election. 

But the claim is false. A reverse image search shows that the photo was taken at the duo’s initial campaign event in Pennsylvania on Aug. 6. 

A separate search found a video clip that recorded the event published on YouTube by Fox News.  

A review of the video shows that there are at least two American flags hoisted at the event. 

Airport claim

Two photos of Harris and Walz getting off a plane were shared by Chinese-speaking users on Weibo alongside a claim that they were digitally altered to add to the crowd, but in fact no one showed up to greet the duo. 

But the claim is false. A google reverse image search found the photos were taken at the duo’s rally in Detroit on Aug. 7.

A separate search found the footage of the event published on YouTube by PBS, Detroit Free Press and FOX News.

A review of those videos shows that the crowd were genuine. 

Similar claims were debunked by other fact-checking organizations including Reuters. 

Translated by Shen Ke. Edited by Shen Ke and Taejun Kang.

Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Zhuang Jing for Asia Fact Check Lab.

Arab American voters could significantly impact the 2024 presidential election, particularly in Michigan, home to the largest Arab community in the United States. Many of these voters, incensed at U.S. support for the Israeli war on Gaza, have mobilized over the past year to pressure the Biden administration to change policy, including by casting hundreds of thousands of ballots for “uncommitted” in Democratic primary elections to signal their demand for policy changes. We speak with Osama Siblani, founder and publisher of The Arab American News, who has had several meetings with senior figures from the White House and the Democratic presidential campaign. Despite all those meetings, “nothing has happened” except “more killing,” Siblani says. “Something has to be done to stop Benjamin Netanyahu’s appetite for killing.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Arab American voters could significantly impact the 2024 presidential election, particularly in Michigan, home to the largest Arab community in the United States. Many of these voters, incensed at U.S. support for the Israeli war on Gaza, have mobilized over the past year to pressure the Biden administration to change policy, including by casting hundreds of thousands of ballots for “uncommitted” in Democratic primary elections to signal their demand for policy changes. We speak with Osama Siblani, founder and publisher of The Arab American News, who has had several meetings with senior figures from the White House and the Democratic presidential campaign. Despite all those meetings, “nothing has happened” except “more killing,” Siblani says. “Something has to be done to stop Benjamin Netanyahu’s appetite for killing.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

• A U.S. official says mediators are preparing for a possible cease-fire and hostage-release deal in Gaza, in a sign that mediators believe an agreement to end the 10-month Israel-Hamas war might be imminent.
• In her first policy speech today, Vice President Kamala Harris focused on the economy, calling for proposals to combat high prices for food, housing, and prescription drugs, while also proposing child tax credits and pledging to work with states to cancel medical debt.
• This week, the United Nations highlighted several international health concerns, including a panel discussion on the newly declared global emergency of mpox and a warning from the organization’s chief administrative officer about a potential polio epidemic in Gaza.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday that his country’s troops had taken full control of Sudzha, the largest Russian town to fall to Ukraine’s forces since their cross-border incursion more than a week ago.
• California Governor Gavin Newsom signed new legislation into law today, which he says will help to stop retail crime in the state.

The post Harris unveils economic plan in first policy speech, proposes measures to tackle high prices and medical debt – August 16, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

• Harris Walz campaign comes to Arizona as part of whirlwind battleground state tour.
• Brazilian plane crashes near São Paulo all 61 people on board perish.
• Tropical Storm Debby heads north through Atlantic Coast bringing heavy winds, rain and flooding.
• Report shows routine childhood vaccinations saved a million lives over last 30 years.
• Austrian officials arrest third suspect in Taylor Swift concert terror plot.
• UNICEF spokesman reports on collapsing humanitarian situation for Gazan children.
• Hepatitis cases increase in war torn Gaza Strip.
• South Bay activists call for restoration of full cardiac services at San Jose’s Regional Medical Center.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – August 9, 2024 Harris Walz campaign comes to Arizona as part of whirlwind battleground state tour. appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

We speak with the co-chair of the Uncommitted National Movement, who briefly met with Vice President Kamala Harris this week as the Democratic presidential candidate is under pressure to define her platform on Palestine. Layla Elabed spoke with Harris before her rally in Michigan to press her on a ceasefire in Gaza and an arms embargo on Israel. “I was very emotional in that brief exchange. I did feel like her sympathy and empathy towards me was very genuine, but Palestinian children cannot eat words,” says Elabed. “We need action.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

• Trump holds press conference in effort to wrest back national spotlight from Harris campaign.
• Tropical Storm Debby brings heavy rain, high winds and tornadoes to mid-Atlantic region.
• Austrian officials make two arrests in Taylor Swift concert terrorist threat that canceled three planned shows.
• Delta pursues legal claims against Crowdstrike over losses incurred during worldwide software glitch.
• Coast Guard whistleblowers testify to Senate panel about sexual abuse in the service.
• Bay Area non-profit employees seek union recognition at International Rescue Committee.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – August 8, 2024 Trump holds press conference in effort to wrest back national spotlight from Harris campaign.  appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

“We want a meeting with Vice President Harris so we can talk to her to get a commitment for an arms embargo and a ceasefire.” That’s the demand of “uncommitted” delegates to the upcoming Democratic National Convention, who have pledged to withhold support for the Democratic presidential nominee over the Biden administration’s backing of Israel’s ongoing attack on the Gaza Strip. We’re joined by Asma Mohammed, a DNC-bound uncommitted delegate with Uncommitted Minnesota. She shares how pro-Palestine activism has shaped the 2024 presidential race, including Kamala Harris’s decision to tap Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate over Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, who recently likened pro-Palestine protesters to the KKK. Walz has also been “pretty clear in his support for Israel” but, unlike Shapiro and other politicians, has additionally demonstrated a “willingness to learn and to move,” says Mohammed, a Minnesota resident. Overall, she says, the choice of Walz has renewed hope for many in the uncommitted movement as “a reminder that Kamala Harris is different” than President Biden and may be more receptive to restraining Israel if elected.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Before his cable news commentary went viral and Harris ushered him into the national spotlight, the former soldier, football coach, and high school teacher was in the midst of an unexpectedly ambitious and productive second term as the chief executive of the North Star State. A progressive with a rural background and a penchant for coalition building, Walz was able to wield a precarious Democratic trifecta to achieve a slew of progressive priorities. The biggest of these took place just a few months after the 2022 midterm elections, when Walz signed a law that requires the state’s utilities to get 100 percent of their electricity from clean sources by 2040. The legislation quickly catapulted Minnesota, a blue state with purple inclinations, to the top of the state-level climate action leaderboard. 

“It’s not about banking political capital for the next election,” Walz said last year. “It’s about burning political capital to improve lives.” Yet Walz appears to have political capital to spare — as of February, he has a 55 percent approval rating in his home state. 

As governor, Walz also signed bipartisan legislation to reform Minnesota’s permitting process for clean energy projects, funded a clean energy jobs training program for minority and low-income Minnesotans, approved new clean transportation standards, and enacted a law directing $240 million toward replacing the state’s lead water pipes. In other states, Republicans (and even some centrist Democrats) have sought to cast politicians overseeing ambitious climate agendas as hellbent on raising energy prices and as generally being out of touch with the general public. But Walz’s reputation as an everyman and his skill as a communicator may have shielded him from the typical anti-climate attacks. 

“I think he has a really well-rounded climate record,” said Paul Austin, the head of the Conservation Minnesota, a state environmental nonprofit. “He’s a person who tries to bring people together across communities and geographies to find solutions that work for everybody. That’s been part of his hallmark.” 

Walz’s experience in Minnesota could be a boon to Harris as she crafts an on-the-fly legislative agenda that builds on progress made by the Biden administration. Biden’s crowning policy achievement, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, is sending billions of dollars to states and tribes for clean energy projects and deployment. It’s unlikely that Congress will pass another law like it in the short term. That’s particularly true if Trump is reelected, but it’s a safe bet even with Harris in the White House — polls suggest that whichever party controls the Senate, House, or both, will likely have a razor-thin majority. Much of the climate action we’ll see in the next few years will likely come from states. 

Many states already led the way on climate change when Trump was in office, before the Inflation Reduction Act was passed. But many more states are poised to spend money on renewables and climate projects now that federal clean energy incentives are flowing across the country. “It’s great to have the help of someone who has served as governor and has seen how the federal government works and delivers from the other side,” Austin said. “He’s going to bring a lot of experience about how states and the federal government work together and how that can be smoothed out and improved.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The climate vice president? What Tim Walz brings to the Harris ticket. on Aug 6, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Zoya Teirstein.

“Tim Walz personifies what public service is all about: Doing for others and never leaving anyone behind. He learned these values while serving in the National Guard, and he lived them as a teacher and football coach in Mankato, Minnesota. He has always been the first to lend a helping hand in his community, and today, this is how he governs – empowering worker voices and defending those who have made public service a career.

“As governor, he took on billion-dollar corporations to ban private prisons in Minnesota, keeping profit motives out of the justice system while protecting the jobs of AFSCME corrections officers. He went on to pass legislation guaranteeing free breakfast and lunch for young students statewide, giving AFSCME school employees the tools they need to keep kids energized and ready to learn. Walz did all this for Minnesota’s communities while getting state workers a historic contract with across-the-board raises.

“Gov. Walz shows what our communities can look like when we lead with empathy. He is a labor champion who will take pro-worker values with him to the White House. Together with Kamala Harris, they will defend our freedoms — to care for our families, to have a voice on the job, to thrive. We look forward to mobilizing the full strength of our union to ensure that this dynamic ticket wins on Nov. 5.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

• Harris picks Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, they appear together at Philadelphia rally.
• Federal judge sides with Justice Department in Google anti-trust case.
• Tropical Storm Debby cuts through the Southeast with extreme winds, rain and flooding.
• Hamas chooses Yahya Sinwar as militant group’s new leader after assassination of Ismael Haniyeh.
• Bay Area anti-nuclear activists mark Hiroshima anniversary with calls to ban nuclear weapons.
• Mayor London Breed and San Francisco officials tout success of surveillance drone program.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – August 6, 2024 Harris picks Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, they appear together at Philadelphia rally. appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

Vice President Kamala Harris has selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a favorite of many progressives in the Democratic Party, to be her running mate in the 2024 presidential race. They are set to hold their first joint campaign rally this evening. We get analysis from John Nichols, The Nation’s national affairs correspondent.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Her tenure as Vice President has been far from glorious, a point she is not entirely blameworthy for given the generally titular nature of the role, “not worth,” as John Nance Garner famously opined, “a bucket of warm piss.”  While muddled and vapid musings at the high end of US politics is nothing new – George W. Bush demonstrated that becoming president is not contingent on lexical accuracy let alone rhetorical fluency – Harris has proffered a fair share of awful, and repetitive musings.  “We have the ability to see what can be, unburdened by what has been, and then to make the possible actually happen.”  And the platoons of the banal cheered.

Harris is certainly the donor’s newly minted candidate, which does much to suggest how anti-democratic the whole process has been.  Not that the process of selecting the Democratic nominee for the White House is particularly democratic, given that voters in the primaries do not directly select the candidate so much as delegates who will cast their votes for the figure at the National Convention.  Having switched their favours from the ageing and increasingly frail Joe Biden, the monetary approval of the donor base was well signalled by the speedy addition of US$81 million in less than 24 hours.  (Last month, the Harris campaign raised a total of US$310 million.)

The idea of a valid contest within the party has well withered on the vine, adding even more succour to the authoritarian varnish Harris’ critics identify as critical.  The sycophantic celebration of her presumptive nominee status, offering nothing by way of sustained critique of this pseudo-coronation process, adds even more of a gloss in that regard.  The National Review’s Dan McLaughlin is unsparing on this point.  As California Attorney General, Harris “was a dangerous authoritarian with an unlimited appetite for power who displayed contempt for the Constitution and no regard for the rights, dignity, faith or reputations of anyone in her way.”

In her failed attempt to secure the 2020 Democratic nomination, she threatened a range of executive orders that would most likely have been felled by the justices of the Supreme Court.  However appealing it would have been to the gun control lobby in terms of logic and sense, a ban on assault weapons was top of the list.  She also proposed removing Congressional scrutiny of immigration through a generous use of executive orders, hardly in keeping with the spirit of the elected chamber.  For someone keen to mark out the illiberal tendencies of Donald Trump and his imperial inclinations, her resume in this regard is conspicuously streaky.

Such a patchy record, notably during her Vice Presidential stint, would certainly explain the initial reluctance – and reticence – of former President Barack Obama in purchasing tickets for the Harris love train.  While any unattributed sources run in The New York Post should be treated with silver tongs, aired suspicions can still be useful.  Obama, according to The Post’s source, was “very upset” by Biden’s immediate endorsement of Harris “because he knows she can’t win.”  He knew “she’s just incompetent – the border czar who never visited the border, saying that all migrants should have health insurance.  She cannot navigate the landmines that are ahead of her.”

This “source” certainly sounds conveniently primed and rehearsed on various talking points that will chime with the MAGA crowd.  Obama, thus ventriloquised, is supposed to have said that Harris “can’t debate.  She’s going to put her foot in her mouth about Israel, Palestine, Ukraine.  She’s going to say something really stupid.”

Even if half-true, the comments would point to the need to have some form of contest, one possible were the Democratic Convention to be an open one.  In such circumstances, the challenging candidate would require the signatures of 300 delegates to get their name included in a roll-call vote.  The majority winning the votes of all available delegates would thereby secure the nomination.  As things have turned out, Harris has already reached the 2,350 delegate threshold of the 4,000 available via a virtual roll call.

Without delving too much into inscrutable tealeaves, this might have appeared on Obama’s political radar as a possibility, opening the prospects for any number of candidates who are now shaping up to become a running mate for Harris.  An open nomination process is also reported to have interested former House speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

The New York Times, that reliable organ of establishment politics and anti-Trump mania, has also aired the view that the Democratic Party, in not endorsing a competitive process, had adopted “the playbook of ruling parties in authoritarian states.”  From the top, the choice has been dictated; the rank and file had to accordingly “fall in line and clap enthusiastically.”  The “manifest weaknesses” of Harris – her unpopularity, her poor campaigning, her abysmal management and tendency towards favouritism, her “penchant for excruciating banality,” and her Bay Area standing – were to be religiously ignored.

Whatever his reservations, the Democratic Party machine eventually proved powerful enough to sway Obama, and his wife, Michelle.  In an emetic video posted on July 26, Harris is shown accepting a joint phone call from the former first couple at a suitably choreographed point as she walks backstage at an event.  “We called to say Michelle and I couldn’t be prouder to endorse you and do everything we can to get you through this election and into the Oval Office.”  The Harris papier-mâché coronation to the Democratic National Convention starting on August 19 gathers pace.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

• Kamala Harris secures enough online delegate votes to win Democratic Presidential nomination.
• Three American former prisoners freed in international prisoner exchange with Russia arrive in the US.
• Disappointing US jobs report sparks fears of a possible recession.
• Justice Department sues social media platform Tiktok over alleged violation of child privacy rules.
• Secret Service Chief acknowledges agency failures on day of Trump rally assassination attempt.
• Firefighters battling Park Fire prepare for rough weather and terrain challenges this weekend.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – August 2, 2024 Kamala Harris secures enough online delegate votes to win Democratic Presidential nomination. appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is reportedly at the top of the list of potential running mates for Vice President Kamala Harris in her bid for the White House. But many progressives have raised alarm about Shapiro’s record, including his support for corporate tax breaks and school vouchers, his relationship with oil and gas companies, and his demonization of pro-Palestinian protesters. “He’s been actively and vocally supportive of Israel’s war on Gaza since October 7 and prior,” says journalist Marc Lamont Hill in Philadelphia. “In every conceivable way, Josh Shapiro is not a progressive candidate.” He adds that while Shapiro’s choice as running mate would be “very frustrating,” it would also clarify the choices in the election and prevent people from projecting false hope onto Harris as many did with Barack Obama. “She very clearly is a liberal, but certainly not a progressive or a radical.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

We play excerpts from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s interview Wednesday with a panel of Black women journalists from the National Association of Black Journalists. In response to his interviewers’ questions about his record with Black Americans, Trump cast doubts on Kamala Harris’s racial identity, repeated his claims that immigrants are threatening “Black jobs,” and declared that he was the best president for the Black community since Abraham Lincoln. NABJ’s decision to host the Trump interview during its annual convention had sparked controversy within its ranks.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

It’s the conventional wisdom – even a trope – to suggest that female and minority presidential candidates need to “balance” their tickets by naming male running mates that would be “acceptable” to mainstream – namely White – voters.   Fear of a backlash to Barack Obama’s candidacy led to discussion among Democrats about which establishment “graybeard” might ease White voter concerns.  Much the same discussion is occurring now that Kamala Harris appears destined to become the Democratic standard-bearer this fall.  The only issue seems to be which White voters are most in need of appeasement – those in the Sunbelt or the Rust Belt – and which VP choice –  for example Arizona’s Mark Kelly or Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro respectively – could best get the job done.

But what if the conventional wisdom is wrong?

A number of commentators – including Chuck Todd at NBC News and former California assembly speaker and Harris mentor Willie Brown – have raised the possibility that Harris might defy conventional wisdom and choose a female running mate – not a male one.  They weren’t just throwing the idea out on a lark.  As Brown pointedly noted, an all-female ticket “would be the most fascinating challenge ever” and would offer a “stark contrast to Trump, the most anti-female candidate ever.  If you want to beat Trump you’ve got to become the lead in all the news stories from now until November 5th.  Ordinary old White guys – good young White guys – will not get that kind of attention.  Two women will.”

And many Democrats agree.  A poll conducted on the eve of Harris’ ascension asked voters about what kind of Democratic ticket might actually beat Trump.  Respondents voiced various options but the most popular ticket turned out to be one that matched Harris with Hillary Clinton.  Voters favored that ticket by 3 points over the GOP ticket led by Trump.  Other options for the ticket, one led by a male Democratic governor, fared more poorly.  It was a shocking result in part because Clinton has been deemed radioactive by much of the electorate after her failed 2016 bid against Trump.  But when Clinton ran she went the same route as Obama and Biden – choosing a moderate male running mate Virginia senator Tim Kaine on the assumption his presence would lend added credibility and heft to her candidacy.  In fact Kaine, who lacked even a scintilla of Clinton’s charisma or policy smarts, seemed to detract from her appeal.

Harris herself – defying conventional wisdom – has named at least two women as possible running mates – Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and former Rhode Island governor and current secretary of commerce Gina Raimundo.  Whitmer has gained considerable acclaim in recent years for having vanquished a Trump-based opponent – another woman – en route to her 10-point reelection victory in 2022.  She is also out-polling Trump in head-to-head surveys among Michigan voters.  She recently served as a Co-chair of Biden’s re-election campaign after declining to run for president herself.  It’s been widely thought that she has no interest in serving as Harris’ VP – and has already begged out of the selection process – but she did receive vetting materials from the candidate and is still in the running – at least formally.

Raimondo is a virtual unknown.  Her tenure in Rhode Island received little national notice and Commerce secretary is among the most token cabinet appointments imaginable (only HUD is considered a weaker post).  Its decision-making authority is vastly overshadowed by the Treasury secretary and the chairman of the Council on Economic Advisors.  Even on trade matters the US Trade Representative exercises more power and influence.  Like HUD it’s been a post typically assigned to minorities supportive of a president’s campaign.  (Obama for example named billionaire heiress Penny Pritzer wife of current Illinois governor J.B. Prtizer. to the post in 2013).

Raimondo, who clearly wants to serve with Harris, has recently spoken out on the viability of an all-woman ticket.  “I’ve run a business. I’ve run a state for two terms. I now run a huge agency. I’m an executive.  Any executive knows, if you want to get the job done, you hire the right people in the right spots at the right time to get it done” she told CBS News.  “And the American people are looking for action.  They’re yearning for leadership to solve their problems, and I think they’ll get behind whomever they can trust [regardless of gender] to fight for them and to put their interests first and get the job done.”

Whitmer, despite publicly declining an offer to run with Harris, agrees wholeheartedly.  “I think two women on the ticket would be extremely exciting, ” she told CBS earlier this week. “In Michigan my two top elected officials, my attorney general and my secretary of state are two women.  Every one of us was told we can’t have too many women on the ticket.  We ignored that.  We were bold and we moved forward and we’ve given one another a platform and the space to own the offices which we were elected to. There are a lot of great women in the country ready to lead right now.”

No doubt the current statistically deadlocked presidential race will come down to one key factor:  turnout.  Trump chose J.D. Vance as his running mate – over the objection of many of his donors who favored the more suburban-friendly Marco Rubio or Doug Burnum – because he recognized that getting the GOP base – and the many voters who haven’t cast ballots since his unexpected triumph in 2016 – to the polls will make or break his bid.  Turnout depends on dramatizing the stakes and generating a high level of enthusiasm for his re-election. Polls show that the number of truly undecided voters in 2024  has shrunk to an historic low – 4% to 6% at most – from 10%-15% only a month ago.  In other words there may not be many swing voters – or “persuadables” –  left.  Still months of anticipating a rematch between Trump and Biden has left many previously committed voters demoralized – and disaffected and many have told pollsters they would likely stay home.  That’s why generating a high turnout has become especially critical for both parties.

Could an all-female ticket make the difference in November?  Harris’ candidacy has already energized youth and minority women and her once abysmal approval rating has surged of late.  But so has Trump’s, in fact.  Echoing the conventional wisdom, many Democratic strategists are counseling Harris to play it safe – and go the conventional route.  The race will be close and every wavering vote counts  they say.  Don’t alienate them.  The comforting presence of a more moderate male who can reassure voters that change will come slowly and that Harris will tack closer to the political “center” than previously – on crime immigration – is what’s needed most.

But what if voters are ready for more change than the establishment – including the Democratic establishment – realizes? Trump and Vance in their arrogance, snarl and outright chauvinism seem to have highlighted the downside of male governance at its extreme – a childishness and immaturity that verges on reckless on irresponsible.  It reminds voters how competent female leaders typically bring a different more comforting and collegial – and yes feminine – style to exercising their authority one that may be more in keeping with the intractability of the problems the nation faces – and the desire of the electorate for less vitriol and more kindness and compassion from its leaders.

Harris, according to the latest news reports, seems to be embracing the conventional wisdom. She’s narrowed her VP search down to just 3 male candidates – Kelly, Shapiro and Minnesota governor Tim Walz.  Will it work?  It did for Obama in 2008, but not for Clinton in 2016  She found out the hard way that it wasn’t moderate voters she needed most– it was the base.  In several of the key swing states especially in the Rust Belt they failed to show up for her while Trump voters turned out at historic levels.  The enthusiasm gap – and the turnout gap – pushed Trump over the top

Harris is assuming that having a popular – and relatively moderate – governor at her side will tilt the scales in her favor, mainly with the small share of persuadables left.  She’s also assuming that her chosen swing state running mate can help her carry his state – which has rarely been the case even when the ticket is all-male  JFK’s selection of LBJ in 1960 is the most commonly cited exception.  There are plenty of other examples – for example Democrat Michael Dukakis,  who chose Sen. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas to oppose George H. W. Bush’s election in 1988 – that failed to pan out.  Having same-party governors in place certainly helps – for example Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker may have helped Trump win his state narrowly in 2016 by overseeing his campaign there  – but he wasn’t on Trump’s ticket – he didn’t need to be.

As exciting as Harris seems to be for many base voters, Democrats still face a persistent enthusiasm gap this November – and it might well grow as the giddy mood surrounding Harris’ initial ascendance begins to subside.  (Just compare the size of Harris’ rallies with Trump’s).  A more conservative male running mate won’t energize the base – if anything it might stall her surge.  It could be that America has matured to the point where race and gender concerns really don’t matter as much as they once did or seemed – even as recently as 2008 when Obama faced a relentless barrage of attacks.  Maybe a male running mate at Harris’ side can help shield her from Trump’s soon-to-be unveiled assault on her record and character. And it might help her with men who currently tilt sharply toward Trump by a 17-point margin compared to a 14-point margin for Harris among women according to the latest New York Times poll.  That’s the theory at least.

But why play defense?  Giving America something even higher to shoot for might be just what so many disaffected voters – including a healthy 20% share of Democrats still skeptical of Harris – need to stay mobilized.  And there’s another critical reason:  An all-female ticket actively campaigning for a new vision of America clearly places a woman – not a man – in line as Harris’ heir apparent in 2032.  It could be the clearest sign yet – as Harris herself says – that “we’re not going backward” from this point forward.  But seizing the moment – and defining the emerging zeitgeist so expansively – will require Democrats to demonstrate extraordinary courage and faith.  It means abandoning the fear and complacency that has left the country hostage to Trump and Trumpism.

The post Could Harris Choose a Female Running Mate? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Stewart Lawrence.

We speak with legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw about the historic presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, who is facing a slew of racist and misogynist attacks from Donald Trump and others as she runs to be the first woman and the first woman of color to occupy the White House. Crenshaw, who coined the term “intersectionality,” says Harris’s candidacy is leading to backlash from those who fear the emergence of a more diverse country. “The challenge is, quite clearly, that those who support Kamala Harris and those who support our democracy have to take back the ground that they have ceded in the war on woke,” says Crenshaw, executive director of the African American Policy Forum, which is hosting its annual Critical Race Theory Summer School in Nashville this week.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

That’s according to Jason Miller, a senior adviser to former president Donald Trump’s reelection campaign. On the day that President Joe Biden dropped his bid for reelection and endorsed Harris, Miller told NBC that Harris’ comments on plastic were part of the “radical record” she developed as a prosecutor and attorney general in California. The far-right Fox News commentator Sean Hannity weighed in on Harris’ record separately, telling viewers: “I love my plastic straw; I hate those paper straws.”

It’s unsurprising rhetoric, given the contemporary conservative movement’s tendency to conflate environmental pollution and personal freedom. But the plastic pollution crisis is no joke — every year, more than 460 million metric tons of plastic are produced globally, and just about 9 percent of it is recycled. The rest festers in landfills, emits toxic chemicals into the air when incinerated, and strangles aquatic life when it escapes into the world’s rivers, lakes, and coastal waters.

Meanwhile, recent polls show that Americans overwhelmingly want government action to address the problem. According to a recent survey from the nonprofit Oceana, three-fourths of registered voters support national policies that reduce single-use plastics; other surveys show even stronger support for reducing plastic production overall.

So what would a Harris presidency mean for plastics?

Harris’ track record on the subject is sparse, but experts say her background as California’s attorney general, combined with her record in the Senate and comments she made as a 2020 presidential candidate, augur well. If nothing else, Harris could build on progress achieved under the Biden administration, like a recently announced strategy to eliminate single-use plastics from federal operations. 

“There are not a lot of data points,” said Sam Pearse, plastics campaign manager for The Story of Stuff Project, a nonprofit that advocates against plastic pollution. “But she has both the know-how and credentials to challenge plastic pollution as president, and hold polluters to a higher standard.”

Here’s what we do know about Harris’ views on plastics. She did say, in a 2019 interview with CNN, that the U.S. should ban single-use plastic straws. (She joked about the need for “innovation” to make better alternatives than paper-based straws that tend to wilt when wet.) But that wasn’t exactly a groundbreaking policy position; in 2019, support for plastic straw bans functioned mainly as a culture wars flashpoint for presidential candidates. Plastic straws make up just 0.25 percent of the estimated 8 million metric tons of plastic that end up in the world’s oceans each year.

More significant was her co-sponsorship, along with four other Democratic senators, of the federal Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2020. This far-reaching Democratic bill would have phased out a whole host of unnecessary single-use plastic products — yes, including straws — as well as created incentives for recycling beverage containers, held companies financially responsible for the plastic trash they generate, and placed a temporary pause on new or expanded plastic manufacturing facilities pending a comprehensive environmental review. That bill, as well as subsequent versions introduced in 2021 and 2023, never got a floor vote in the House or Senate, but environmental groups think it helped drum up awareness among the public and legislators about the kinds of systemic interventions needed to address the plastic pollution problem.

“To have her support as a sponsor is a huge signal that she believes in addressing this problem from a life cycle perspective,” said Julie Teel Simmonds, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, a group that advocates for political candidates who will prioritize environmental issues. The term “life cycle” refers to all stages of plastic production, use, and disposal, in contrast to a perspective favored by industry groups that focuses mostly on reducing plastic litter.

Other environmental advocates said Harris’ track record as California’s attorney general could indicate a willingness to take on big plastic polluters. In 2011, Harris sued water bottle companies for claiming that their plastic bottles were “100 percent compostable and recyclable.” She also sued BP, ConocoPhillips, and Phillips 66 — companies whose fossil fuels are used to make plastic — for environmental violations, and oversaw an investigation into Exxon Mobil’s alleged efforts to lie to the public about the risks it faced from climate change. 

None of this means that plastics (and the petrochemicals used to make them) will be a top priority for a potential Harris administration. Historically, action on plastics has tended to fall low on Democrats’ political agenda, even compared to other environmental problems. But the plastic pollution crisis has become much more visible over the past few years, in part due to United Nations negotiations over a treaty to “end plastic pollution.” Those negotiations are set to conclude by the end of the year, though further discussions around implementation could continue long after then.

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The Biden-Harris administration has also ramped up the U.S.’s efforts to address the plastic pollution crisis, including most recently by announcing a target to phase out government procurement of single-use plastics from all federal operations by 2035. An interagency plastics policy committee set up by the Biden-Harris administration has also begun to acknowledge and address environmental justice issues caused by plastic production facilities, which tend to be sited near poor communities of color. A former White House staffer told Grist that Harris’ office has expressed interest in continuing this work.

The same can’t be said for a second Trump administration, according to several experts Grist spoke with.

“The extent to which a Trump administration would be willing to acknowledge the scope and the breadth of plastics and the effect that the oil and gas industry has on plastic is like, zero to negative a million,” said Rachel Karasik, a plastics research scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Water Research, which focuses on a range of water-related issues, including plastic pollution. 

Back in 2019, in the aftermath of Harris’ 2019 straws comment, Trump’s then-campaign manager Brad Parscale swiftly launched a line of 9-inch, Trump-emblazoned plastic straws that raised nearly half a million dollars in just one week. They were apparently so popular that the first batch sold out within hours.

Although the last Trump administration didn’t totally ignore plastics — it released an interagency strategy to clean up “marine debris,” including plastics, in October 2020 — experts told Grist that a second time around would probably see the reversal of Biden-Harris plastics policies and the loosening of environmental restrictions on production facilities. They also said Trump would likely pull out of negotiations over the U.N. plastics treaty, much as he withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement in 2020. 

This is in contrast to hopes that the Harris administration will join a “high-ambition coalition” of countries supporting a strong agreement, and effectively implement the treaty’s provisions domestically. “Harris is at least competent and a true public servant, and she believes in international diplomacy and tackling global problems,” Teel Simmonds said. “I can’t say the same for Trump.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What would a Harris presidency mean for the plastics crisis? on Jul 31, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

Let’s see how the Republicans found themselves in this predicament.

Vice President Kamala Harris bolted out of the gate.

A Trump campaign operative told The Bulwark at the Republican National Convention, “It’s just too good right now. We’re measuring the drapes.” Another journalist described the convention as a preview of a celebration of Donald Trump overwhelmingly beating President Joe Biden in November.

That was before Biden dropped out of the race and Vice President Kamala Harris secured two-thirds of the convention delegates needed to be nominated as the Democratic Presidential candidate. That’s more delegates than Biden had pledged to him before his debate.

Worse yet for the Republicans, within 24 hours of announcing her candidacy, her campaign received one hundred million dollars, more than Biden or Donald Trump had collected in a similar time frame. And, by the end of the first week, that amount doubled.

Most importantly, it represented an energetic base of support, attracting over 1.4 million grassroots donors and 100,000 signing up to volunteer within three days of declaring her candidacy. It grew to 170,000 within seven days.

Trump’s campaign was caught off guard.

In defense of Trump’s campaign overconfidence, many Democrats also were surprised by the groundswell of support for Harris.

Nevertheless, the Republican party now faces a new challenge—a surge in enthusiasm for a Democratic candidate that did not exist with Biden. The first Republican casualty was sidelining their more ambitious plan to saddle the Democrats with Biden.

For instance, the Trump super PAC, MAGA Inc., bashed the idea that Biden could be replaced on the ticket because of campaign finance laws’ restrictions. After Harris became the candidate, they now intend to spend roughly $12 million per week through Labor Day on TV ads attacking her in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona.

Previously, House Speaker Mike Johnson warned that Republicans could challenge Kamala in states where the legal process does not allow replacing Biden with another candidate who did not win that party’s primary election. It was a non-starter since Biden ran with Harris as the V.P. candidate, and the Democrats voted for both.

Texas Rep. Chip Roy even filed a resolution last month calling on Biden Cabinet members to use the 25th Amendment to remove the president.  To avoid Harris from filling the presidency if Biden was removed, Roy implied that she could be impeached if she knew about Biden’s declining health.
These Republican tactics appear as desperate moves to avoid forsaking their year-long expensive campaign against Biden.

Republicans claim the Democratic Party is not democratic.

They accuse Democratic Party elites of staging a coup. “They have subverted democracy [using the legal system] and are coronating the VP without a single vote,” said Republican pollster Robert Blizzard. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas said Mr. Biden had “succumbed to a coup” from party elites and donors, ignoring millions of Democratic primary votes. Trump argued Democrats pressuring Biden to suspend his re-election bid was “an undemocratic move.”

Biden opened the door to that charge by repeatedly citing the 14 million votes cast for him in state primaries as a reason to stay in the race before he withdrew. In a July 8 letter, he wrote, “The voters—and the voters alone—decide the nominee of the Democratic Party.”

However, Susan Stokes, who directs the Chicago Center on Democracy, said the rush “to support Ms. Harris reflects the determination of Democrats not to be consumed by a divisive internal fight with less than four months to go.” The most recent poll showed that 90% of Democrats felt that Biden made the right decision to not remain as their presidential candidate.

Nevertheless, JD Vance, Trump’s selected Vice President candidate, said Harris was part of the “elite Democrats” meeting in “smoke-filled rooms” to throw Biden out of the race. Ironically, he also claimed she “lied” about President Joe Biden’s poor health, which would work to keep him in office. Vance will have difficulty arguing that Harris supported these contradictory objectives on the campaign trail.

Democrats must clearly articulate how party rules for selecting delegates and voting to nominate someone were followed, not broken. Every delegate was free to vote for whom they wished; they were not legally bound to any candidate. The delegates at the convention were the same; they were voted to attend the convention as enfranchised delegates from each state. No new candidates were added, and no existing ones were replaced.

Stokes said the Democrats’ adjusted procedure was “a rather minor point compared to a political party that will not accept a lost election.” She could have also added that a party defending those who attacked Congress while in session on January 6 is not an example of defending democracy.

Can Trump and his allies refrain from denigrating Harris as a woman or a Black citizen?

At his first rally after the attempted assassination on him, the rally crowd cheered when Trump conceded he was “not going to be nice” about Harris. He proceeded to call her “Lying Kamala Harris, the most incompetent and far-left vice president in American history.” He avoided racial or gender traits.

Nevertheless, Republican politicians have denigrated Harris in a manner that could alienate Black and women voters. Joe Perticone, a national political reporter at The Bulwark, reported that in a closed-door meeting, House Republican leaders requested their colleagues: When attacking Kamala Harris, please focus on policy, not race or gender.

Right-wing social media didn’t get that memo. According to the data firm PeakMetrics, within hours of Biden’s announcement, more than 11 percent of related mentions of Harris on X involved attacks related to her race or gender.

Harris, as the DEI vice president

Criticizing DEI policies has become a Republican mantra. The acronym DEI stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion and refers to initiatives addressing discrimination against historically marginalized groups. Liberals are blamed for government and higher education for focusing too much on the issues of race, gender, and sexuality.

Speaker Mike Johnson cautioned Republican congressmen at their caucus meeting from attacking Harris based on her race or gender, such as calling her “a DEI vice president.” On leaving the meeting, he added, “This has nothing to do with race. It has to do with the competence of the person running for president.”

He didn’t mention previous public statements by Rep. Glenn Grothman and Rep. Tim Burchett. Grothman questioned if Democrats are sticking by her “because of her ethnic background.” Burchett also said that Harris was a “DEI vice president.” He claimed on CNN that Biden said he would hire a Black female for vice president.

Burchett needed to be more informed. In a 2020 debate, Biden stated he would “pick a woman to be vice president” without specifying her race. In a later interview with ABC News, Biden said he “didn’t feel pressure to select a Black woman.”

In another 2020 interview, Biden mentioned that four Black women were among his potential running mates. Biden told MSNBC’s Joy Reid, “I am not committed to naming any (of the potential candidates), but the people I’ve named, and among them there are four Black women.”

By Trump supporters tagging Harris as a DEI candidate, the Trump campaign is opening itself up to being called racist, which doesn’t help the campaign’s strategy of appealing to Black voters.

Trump calling Harris a “radical left lunatic” politician will highlight Harris’s accomplishments.

Harris can ask her audiences, “Is providing laws that benefit needy students and homeowners the actions of a “radical left lunatic” politician? As the state attorney general, she won a $1 billion judgment against for-profit colleges that targeted low-income students. She also leveraged California’s economic influence to win $18 billion in debt relief for California homeowners from banks accused of improper mortgage foreclosures.

Trump will have to reconsider accusing Harris of lacking qualifications to be president, given his nonexistent government experience and checkered business record, including multiple felony convictions for falsifying business records.

Republicans also ignore Harris’s having beaten Republicans who were expected to win.

In 2010, she beat Republican Steve Cooley, a three-term Los Angeles County district attorney, to become California’s Attorney General. This victory ran counter to the Republican wave that year, which saw many Democrats defeated. She won despite a national political action committee spending $1 million attacking Harris’ record on fighting crime.

Trump will strike Harris on the crime issue because she refused to pursue the death penalty against a man who killed a police officer. However, she defended California’s death penalty system in court. And while she implemented training programs to address police officers’ racial biases, she also resisted getting her office to investigate certain police shootings.

Harris ran to the right of her opponent to become the San Francisco district attorney, so she knows how to appeal to crime-weary voters. Enough so that the San Francisco Chronicle endorsed her under the headline “Harris, for Law and Order.” Trump is not going to have an easy time framing Harris as being soft on crime.

Both candidates have to hone their messaging on the significant issues of immigration, inflation, and abortion.

Even though all polls show Harris is doing better against Trump than Biden, their margin of error leads one to conclude that this race is a statistical tie.

Democrats take solace that the race has tightened despite polls coming after the assassination attempt on Trump, the festive Republican convention, and his MAGA-oriented VP pick.

Trump campaign staff explain the surge in Harris support as the usual increased enthusiasm after a new candidate is selected—there’s nothing unique to fear from Harris.

Immigration, inflation, and abortion have been and appear to remain voters’ top concerns. Trump and Harris are still refining their thrust and parry on these issues. Future debates will test their verbal skills in explaining why their positions are superior.

If Trump relies on his usual style of steamrolling out unsubstantiated claims, Harris has the skill, sharpened in courtrooms, to decimate them. The question is, can she communicate her positions without sounding condescending to non-Democratic voters?

The post Republicans Probing-attacks on Kamala Harris appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Nick Licata.

With Joe Biden’s historic decision to step aside as Democratic nominee for president and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor, the 2024 presidential race has suddenly transformed from an uninspiring duel between two old white men to something altogether different. Powered by coconut memes and refreshing cognitive competence, Harris has surged in popularity. Young voters, in particular, have shown a burst of enthusiasm.

The Washington Post, however, is concerned. An energetic alliance between progressives and liberals behind a woman who ran to the left of Biden during the 2020 primary could signal a leftward shift of the Democratic Party, which has generally been dominated by centrists over the last several decades. That’s not something the Jeff Bezos–owned Post has much interest in.

Kamala Harris is gaining ground against Donald Trump with most sub-groups of voters (Financial Times, 7/26/24).

‘What Harris needs to do’

The Washington Post (7/22/24) urges Kamala Harris to ” resist activist demands that would push her to the left and ignore the social media micro-rebellion that will follow.”

So the editorial board decided it was time to weigh in. A day after Biden’s announcement that he was withdrawing, it published the editorial “What Harris Needs to Do, Now, to Win” (7/22/24).

In the piece, the board implores Harris to abandon progressive policy priorities such as “widespread student debt cancellation” and “nationwide rent stabilization” that Biden has backed during his term as president. Instead of promoting these policies, according to the board, Harris should mercilessly turn her back on the progressive wing of the party:

Ms. Harris should both resist activist demands that would push her to the left and ignore the social media micro-rebellion that will follow. Ms. Harris’s pick of running mate could be a revealing early indicator, too. Tapping a politician likely to appeal to the median voter would serve her—and the country—best.

This, we are to think, is not simply about the more conservative policy preferences of the members of the Post’s board. It is cold, calculated and smart electoral strategy. After all, everyone knows that America is a center-right country, and general election voters would never get behind a progressive platform. (Never mind that Biden adopted a slate of progressive policy positions in a desperate attempt to resuscitate his ailing campaign, precisely because these policies are so popular with the general electorate.)

Misty memories of 2020

Not only that, but remember what happened in 2020? In the Post’s telling, during that presidential primary, Harris

tried to play down her record as a tough-on-crime California prosecutor and embrace the progressive left of the Democratic Party, backing policies that lacked broad appeal, such as Medicare-for-all. She did not make it out of 2019 before folding her campaign.

The implication here seems to be that support for progressive policies hampered Harris’s campaign. A strange hypothesis, given that progressives such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren did exceptionally well in that primary, and only lost after moderates consolidated around Biden in a last-minute tactical alliance.

Medicare-for-all, meanwhile, posted majority support from the American public throughout the 2020 primary season, and had garnered majority support for years before that, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. To be fair to the Post, the polling on this issue was incredibly sensitive to the framing of the question, so you could easily point to some poor results for the policy as well, often found in Fox’s (unsurprisingly biased) polling. But, unlike with many of the polls that returned unfavorable results, the wording used by Kaiser was eminently even-handed.

Polling by Kaiser (10/16/20) finds that Medicare for All has remained broadly popular for years.

In any case, what matters for the Post’s suggestion about Harris’s fate in the 2020 primary is not views among the general population, but views among Democrats. With that group, polls consistently found overwhelming support for Medicare-for-all. At best, then, we might call the Post’s claims here misleading, an attempt to pawn off opposition to a policy on the general public when, in fact, it’s really the paper that takes issue with it.

Ignoring full employment

Biden’s stimulus bill succeeded in keeping unemployment low for a span unprecedented in the past half century (Slate, 7/24/24)—but the Washington Post doesn’t want to talk about that.

The policies that the Post prefers Democrats to push are of a different sort, the Very Serious and bipartisan sort. Because only when Republicans also sign off on legislation is it any good. As the Post calls for a rightward turn from Harris, it celebrates the scarce moments of bipartisanship (sort of) over the last few years:

In the White House, Mr. Biden’s approach helped get substantial bipartisan bills over the finish line, investing in national infrastructure and critical semiconductor manufacturing. He also signed a bill that should have been bipartisan: the nation’s most ambitious climate change policy to date.

Conspicuously absent from the editorial is any mention of the American Rescue Plan, the stimulus bill passed in the spring of 2021 that spurred the most rapid and egalitarian economic recovery in recent American history. As the progressive journalist Zach Carter noted in a recent article titled “Full Employment Is Joe Biden’s True Legacy” (Slate, 7/24/24):

Across the 50 years preceding Biden’s tenure in office, the US economy enjoyed only 25 total months with an unemployment rate below 4%. Biden did it for 27 consecutive months—a streak broken only in May of this year, as an expanding labor force pushed the rate over 4% even as the economy actually added more jobs.

Given that the stimulus bill can claim much of the credit for this outcome, it stands as arguably the most significant legislative accomplishment of the Biden administration. For the Post, though, that’s apparently not worth highlighting.

Politically toxic

It’s “surprisingly doable” to cut the national debt, says the Washington Post (7/23/24)–especially if you don’t mind imposing cuts that are overwhelmingly unpopular.

Also conspicuously missing from the Post editorial is any discussion of the potential electoral damage that could result from continuing Biden’s support for the ongoing genocide in Gaza. In May of this year, the American Arab Institute estimated, based on their polling, that Biden could lose as many as 177,000 Arab American votes compared to his performance in 2020 across four swing states. It would be worth discussing this policy failure, and the ways in which Harris should break from Biden on Gaza, if the Post were really interested in helping Harris win. But that would distract the paper from advocating incredibly unpopular centrist policies.

Take its editorial (7/23/24) published a day after it admonished Harris for supporting Medicare-for-all, due to that policy’s supposed unpopularity. This piece finds the editorial board once again calling for cuts to Social Security, specifically through raising the retirement age. Benefit cuts are opposed by 79% of Americans, and raising the retirement age polls almost equally badly, with 78% of Americans opposing an increase in the retirement age from 67 to 70. Yet the Post evidently finds it critical to advocate this politically toxic policy just as Harris gets her campaign off the ground and starts shaping her platform.

As of now, it looks like Harris could break either way in the coming months. Her choice to tap Eric Holder, a corporate Democrat hailing from the Obama administration, to vet candidates for vice president, suggests a possible rightward shift. As do her team’s overtures to the crypto world. On the other hand, her relatively cold reception of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his recent visit could signal a leftward turn.

In short, Harris seems to remain persuadable on the direction of her campaign and the content of her platform. Unfortunately, while the Washington Post is doing its best to convince Harris to move right, there exists no comparable outlet representing the interests of the progressive wing of the party that can fight back.

ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the Washington Post at letters@washpost.com.

Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread here.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Conor Smyth.

• Harris campaigns in Georgia as part of a concentrated effort to win the state in November.
• Israel launches targeted strike on Hezbollah commander in Beirut believed responsible for weekend rocket attack that killed 12 children.
• Senate approves bill that would hold tech companies responsible for online content harmful to children.
• Firefighters gain some ground on the Park Fire as suspected arsonist enters not guilty plea.
• San Francisco activists mark 59th anniversary of the passage of Medicare and Medicaid.
• Anti-war activists protest jet fuel shipment headed to Israel.
• Sierra fires continue to burn mostly uncontained.
• Anti-war activists protest jet fuel shipment headed to Israel.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – July 30, 2024 Harris campaigns in Georgia as part of focused effort to win the state in November. appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

The rally comes just an hour after Sunrise volunteers confronted JD Vance over his flip-flop on climate change following donations from oil and gas lobbyists and CEOs. The activists at the DNC urged Harris to put forward a vision that could confront the false-populism of Vance and the far-right.

“I’m from Oregon, where every summer now, wildfires fill our air with smoke and burn down peoples’ homes. Every year I see it getting worse. I want a future in the place I love and call home.” said Adah Crandall, 18. “I’m here because young people need politicians to boldly confront the climate crisis. If Kamala Harris wants to be taken seriously by Gen Z, she needs to show us she’s serious about protecting our futures. That means campaigning on investing in green schools and housing, protecting our air and water from polluters, and rapidly building an affordable and renewable energy system.”

The past few days have seen promising youth polling for Harris, suggesting she could turn the page on Biden’s struggles with young voters. In an Axios poll, Harris turned Biden’s 6 point lead with voters under 34 to a 20 point lead.

“VP Harris has the opportunity to put forward a bold climate plan that mobilizes young voters and faces the scale of the climate crisis,” said Sunrise Movement Communications Director Stevie O’Hanlon. “Polls show that climate is where voters trust Harris most over Trump. Making climate core to her campaign is not only the right thing to do for the planet, but it's a good political strategy.”

The protest comes after Sunrise released a memo on Thursday outlining the kind of plan they say young people want to see from Harris to tackle climate change and cost of living. Sunrise has pledged to run a large youth voter engagement program aimed at driving record youth turnout in this election.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

In this special episode, Gaslit Nation examines Kamala Harris’s foreign policy experience over the years to see what kind of Commander-in-Chief she would be. What’s clear is that she’s a heavyweight, the most experienced in global affairs running for office since Hillary Clinton and George H. W. Bush, who used to run the C.I.A. What will her foreign policy be on Ukraine, Gaza, and who will be her national security advisor to replace the feckless Jake Sullivan?

To our subscribers at the Democracy Defender ($10/month) level and higher, be sure to get your questions in by this coming Tuesday July 29 for our next Q&A bonus show! We always love hearing from you! This episode is exclusive to our supporters at the Truth-teller ($5/month) and higher. Thank you to everyone who supports the show – we could not make Gaslit Nation without you!

Save the date! Book launch party and live Gaslit Nation taping September 16 at the Ukrainian Institute of America for In the Shadow of Stalin: The Story of Mr. Jones, the graphic novel adaptation of the shooting script for the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones. Wine reception to follow. Patreon supporters subscribed at the Truth-teller level or higher get in for free! Make sure you’re subscribed to be added to the guest list: Patreon.com/Gaslit

Every third Thursday of the month through the election we’re phonebanking for Senate races in Republican-hostage states to leave no voter behind! RSVP here to join us: https://www.mobilize.us/indivisible/event/628701/

We’re phonebanking every Wednesday in October for state races in the must-win battlegrounds of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia! RSVP here to join us: https://www.mobilize.us/sisterdistrict/event/642096/?utm_source=2024-natlpb-gn

Show Notes:

Kamala Harris would bring greater foreign policy experience than most new US presidents Were she elected president in November, the vice president would likely oversee significant continuity with Biden’s foreign policy – except, perhaps, on Gaza.

https://www.chathamhouse.org/2024/07/kamala-harris-would-bring-greater-foreign-policy-experience-most-new-us-presidents

I worked to elect Kamala Harris. She must break with Biden on Israel and Palestine Lily Greenberg Call https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/23/kamala-harris-israel-palestine-policy-election

National Security Action on Kamala Harris’s Foreign Policy Compared to Trump’s https://nationalsecurityaction.org/kamala-harris-is-the-strong-experienced-foreign-policy-leader-america-needs

The Department of the Navy Hosts Climate Tabletop Exercise with Caribbean Partners https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/Press-Releases/display-pressreleases/Article/3816482/the-department-of-the-navy-hosts-climate-tabletop-exercise-with-caribbean-partn/

Third Anniversary of the U.S. Strategy for Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America https://www.state.gov/third-anniversary-of-the-u-s-strategy-for-addressing-the-root-causes-of-migration-in-central-america/

Maya Harris on Twitter: “Yes!!! Jake Sullivan is one of the sweetest, smartest people I know. We shared an office for almost 2 yrs as Hillary’s senior policy advisors for the 2016 campaign. Quite the whirlwind of emotion running into each other backstage in DE the night we finally declared victory…” https://x.com/mayaharris_/status/1330923543987695616

Third Anniversary of the U.S. Strategy for Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America https://www.state.gov/third-anniversary-of-the-u-s-strategy-for-addressing-the-root-causes-of-migration-in-central-america/

Losing the Long Game The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East https://www.cfr.org/book/losing-long-game

An Open World How America Can Win the Contest for Twenty-First-Century Order https://www.cfr.org/book/open-world

Kamala Harris would bring greater foreign policy experience than most new US presidents Were she elected president in November, the vice president would likely oversee significant continuity with Biden’s foreign policy – except, perhaps, on Gaza. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2024/07/kamala-harris-would-bring-greater-foreign-policy-experience-most-new-us-presidents

Here are the world leaders Harris has on speed dial Vice President Kamala Harris would enter the White House with working ties with some allied heads of state — others she’d have to build. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/23/kamala-harris-world-leaders-00170676

Harris Candidacy Gives Democrats a Chance to Pivot on Gaza What she can do to right U.S. foreign policy and bring back voters. https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/07/24/kamala-harris-gaza-israel-democrats-united-states-presidential-race/

VP Harris' Flight Delayed After Possible 'Havana Syndrome' Incident In Hanoi https://www.npr.org/2021/08/24/1030663913/kamala-harris-havana-syndrome-vietnam-delay-embassy

Who is Ella Emhoff? How Kamala Harris’ stepdaughter could affect her run for president https://forward.com/fast-forward/636240/ella-emhoff-kamala-harris-stepdaughter-gaza-palestine/

Clip: Kamala Harris speaks at the Summit for Peace in Ukraine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcShf-Pe8UE&t=967s

Clip: USA Today on the history of the migrant crisis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jswmlDUhGuk

Clip: Kamala Harris met with war criminal Netanyahu and he's reportedly fuming after she called for a permanent ceasefire and end to the war https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIitFvZjeBw

This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.

As the Democratic Party began to coalesce behind Kamala Harris, the New York Times‘ popular Morning newsletter (7/23/24) quickly put forward the knee-jerk corporate media prescription for Democratic candidates: urging Harris to the right.

Under the subhead, “Why moderation works,” David Leonhardt explained that “the average American considers the Democratic Party to be further from the political mainstream than the Republican Party.”

As evidence, he pointed to two polls. The first was a recent Gallup poll that found Trump leading Biden on the question of who voters agreed with more “on the issues that matter most to you.” The second was a 2021 Winston poll asking people to rate themselves on an ideological scale in comparison to Democratic and Republican politicians; people on average placed themselves closer to Republicans than to Democrats.

Of course, these polls, which ask only about labels and perceptions, tell you much more about the fuzziness—perhaps even meaninglessness—of those labels than about how well either party’s policy positions align with voters’ interests, and what positions candidates ought to take in order to best represent those voters’ interests. Responsible pollsters would ask about actual, concrete policies in the context of information about their impact; otherwise, as former Gallup editor David Moore has pointed out (FAIR.org, 2/11/22), they merely offer the illusion of public opinion.

‘Radical’ Democrats

For the New York Times‘ David Leonhardt (7/23/24), the first question about Kamala Harris is “whether she will signal that she’s more mainstream than other Democrats.”

And where do people get the idea that the Democratic Party is, as Leonhardt says, “radical,” and misaligned with them on important issues?

Of course, the right-wing media and right-wing politicians offer a steady drumbeat of such criticism, painting even die-hard centrists like Joe Biden as radical leftists. But centrist media play a starring role here, too, having long portrayed progressive Democratic candidates and officials as extreme and out of step with voters.

For instance, the Times joined the drumbeat of centrist media attacks on Sen. Bernie Sanders for supposedly being too far out of the mainstream to be a serious 2016 presidential candidate (FAIR.org, 1/30/20). Forecasting the 2016 Democratic primary race, the Times’ Trip Gabriel and Patrick Healy (5/31/15) predicted that

some of Mr. Sanders’ policy prescriptions—including far higher taxes on the wealthy and deep military spending cuts—may eventually persuade Democrats that he is unelectable in a general election.

As FAIR (6/2/15) noted at the time, most of Sanders’ key progressive positions—including raising taxes on the wealthy—were actually quite popular with voters. Cutting military spending is not quite as popular as taxing the rich, but it often outpolls giving more money to the Pentagon—a political position that the Times would never claim made a candidate “unelectable.”

Voters’ leading concern this election year (as in many election years) is the economy, and in particular, inflation and jobs. As most corporate media outlets have reported recently (e.g., Vox, 4/24/24; CNN, 6/26/24), economists are warning that Trump’s proposed policies—massive tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, as well as increased tariffs—will increase inflation. So, too, would deporting tens of millions of immigrants, as Trump claims he will do, as this would cause a major labor shortage in an already tight job market.

(It’s also worth noting here that, even without being given more context, a majority of respondents oppose Trump’s deportation plan—Gallup, 7/12/24.)

Representative democracy needs informed citizens who understand how well candidates will reflect their interests. Reporting like Leonhardt’s, using context-free polling and blithely ignoring the disconnect between what people concretely want and what candidates’ policies will do, only strengthens that disconnect and undermines democracy further.

‘Promising to crack down’

As the New York Times (7/24/24) has elsewhere noted, crime rates are currently lower than they have been in more than a generation.

Believing he has established that Democrats in general are “radical” (or else believing it’s more his job to pretend they are than to dispel the notion), Leonhardt in the next section asks, how can Harris “signal that she’s more mainstream than other Democrats”?

He offers “five Democratic vulnerabilities,” the first of which he says is crime—”the most natural way for Harris to show moderation,” since she is “a former prosecutor who won elections partly by promising to crack down on crime. Today, many Americans are worried about crime.”

Again, Leonhardt takes a misperception among voters—that crime rates are elevated—and rather than attempting to debunk it based on data, which show that violent and property crime rates are lower than they’ve been in more than a generation (FAIR.org, 7/25/24), he allows the unchallenged misperception to buttress his move-to-the-center strategy recommendation.

Next is immigration, where Leonhardt wrote that, since

most Americans are deeply dissatisfied that Biden initially loosened immigration rules…I’ll be fascinated to see whether Harris—Biden’s point person on immigration—tries to persuade voters that she’ll be tougher than he was.

The truth is, it’s hard to get much tougher on immigration than Biden without going the route of mass deportation and caging children, as he kept in place many of Trump’s harsh refugee policies, much to the dismay of immigrant rights advocates. But few in the public recognize that, given media coverage that dehumanizes immigrants and fearmongers about the border (FAIR.org, 6/2/23, 8/31/23).

‘Outside the mainstream’

In the face of racist and misogynist attacks on Kamala Harris from the Republican Party (Atlantic, 7/25/24), Leonhardt demanded that Harris prove she’s not “quick to judge people with opposing ideas as ignorant or hateful.”

Leonhardt called inflation another “problem for Harris,” again, without pointing out the reality that a Trump presidency would almost certainly be worse for inflation. And he closed with the problems of “gender issues” and “free speech,” which both fall under the “woke” umbrella that the Times frequently wields as a weapon against the left (FAIR.org, 3/25/22, 12/16/22).

He argues that liberals are “outside the mainstream” in supporting “gender transition hormone treatment for many children,” which he claims “doctors in Europe…believe the scientific evidence doesn’t support.” Leonhardt is cherry-picking here: While some doctors in some European countries believe that—most notably doctors in Britain who are not experts in transgender healthcare—it’s not the consensus view among medical experts in either Europe or the United States (FAIR.org, 6/22/23, 7/19/24).

“If Harris took a moderate position, she could undermine Republican claims that she is an elite cultural liberal,” Leonhardt wrote. By a “moderate position,” Leonhardt seems to mean banning access to hormone therapy for trans youth—a decidedly right-wing political position that, through misinformed and misleading media coverage, particularly from the New York Times (FAIR.org, 5/11/23), has become more politically acceptable.

Finally, on “free speech,” Leonhardt wrote that “many Americans view liberals as intolerant,” noting that “Obama combated this problem by talking about his respect for conservative ideas, while Biden described Republicans as his friends.”

It’s a topsy-turvy world in which the Black female candidate, who has received so many racist and sexist attacks in the past week that even Republican Party leaders have asked fellow members to tone it down (Atlantic, 7/25/24), is the one being admonished to be tolerant and respectful.

ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your communication in the comments thread.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Julie Hollar.

• Former President and former First Lady Michelle Obama endorse Vice President Harris’ Democratic presidential nomination bid.
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets Trump at Mar-A-Lago.
• Paris holds its Olympic opening ceremony, attacks on the city’s high speed rail service strands thousands of travelers.
• California’s Park Fires scorches more than 178,000 acres and forces thousands from their homes.
• The UN Security Council discusses the Middle East War.
• Gazans struggle to find clean water amid war conditions.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – July 26, 2024 Former President and former First Lady Michelle Obama endorse Vice President Harris’ Democratic presidential nomination bid.  appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

We speak to two doctors who are part of a group of 45 U.S. doctors, surgeons and nurses who have volunteered in Gaza since October 7 and wrote an open letter to President Biden and Vice President Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, demanding an immediate ceasefire and an international arms embargo of Israel. The group includes evidence of a much higher death toll than is usually cited: more than 92,000 people, which represents over 4% of Gaza’s population. The doctors write, “With only marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both. Israel’s continued, repeated displacement of the malnourished and sick population of Gaza, half of whom are children, to areas with no running water or even toilets available is absolutely shocking.” The conditions in Gaza are “unacceptable,” and “people know this is wrong but no one is speaking up,” says Dr. Thalia Pachiyannakis, an obstetrician and gynecologist who volunteered at the Nasser Medical Complex. “We all saw evidence of a death toll that is certainly much higher than what is reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health,” adds Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon who volunteered at the European Hospital.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

As Democratic support coalesces behind Vice President Kamala Harris in her run for the White House, we speak with Lily Greenberg Call, who worked on Harris’s presidential campaign in 2019 and went on to join the Biden administration before resigning from her position in the Interior Department to protest U.S. support for Israel’s war on Gaza. She was the first Jewish political appointee to publicly quit because of the administration’s Middle East policy, part of a wave of resignations over the war. She says Harris must seize the opportunity to “chart a new path” on Gaza and overall Israel-Palestine policy. “People are watching, through social media, a genocide being live-streamed, and they’re realizing that it’s their tax dollars and American weapons being used to kill children — and they’re not OK with it,” says Greenberg Call.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Vice President Kamala Harris has the backing of enough Democratic delegates to secure the party’s presidential nomination, with Democrats planning to hold a virtual roll call in the coming days to formalize her place atop the ticket ahead of the Democratic National Convention in August. The Democratic Party has quickly coalesced around Harris following President Joe Biden’s stunning decision Sunday to drop his reelection bid, but questions remain about whether she will significantly alter Middle East policy. The “uncommitted” movement of voters seeking to pressure Democrats to stop U.S. support for Israel’s war on Gaza “breathed a sigh of relief” when Biden dropped out, says Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid, an adviser to the movement, and activists are hopeful for Harris to take a new approach. Shahid adds that the Democratic Party cannot cast itself as a champion of democracy standing against far-right authoritarianism while continuing to arm the extremist Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, saying it “makes a mockery of our party’s claim to be fighting on the right side of history.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

“From being a staunch abortion advocate as vice president to holding the Trump administration accountable as a U.S. senator to combating corruption as the California attorney general, Kamala Harris has proven she is a champion for working people and our democracy. That’s why MoveOn members have overwhelmingly and enthusiastically endorsed Vice President Harris for president and are more fired up than ever to defeat Donald Trump this fall once and for all.

“The Biden-Harris administration has delivered real wins for our communities, including passing life-changing investments to protect our climate, making health care more affordable, and taking down wealthy special interests. Under the Harris administration, we know all of this historic progress will continue and we can trust our rights, freedoms, and democracy will remain protected under her people-first agenda.

“In 2020, we defeated Donald Trump and MAGA extremists at the ballot box, and now it’s time for us to come together once again to stop Trump and his Project 2025 takeover from throwing America back into four more years of chaos.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

He endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, to take his place. “Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year,” he said in another statement. Not long after, Harris announced via the Biden campaign that she intends to run for president. “I am honored to have the president’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination,” she said.

During his term, President Biden managed to shepherd a surprising number of major policies into law with a razor-thin Democratic majority in the Senate. His crowning achievement is signing the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA — the biggest climate spending law in U.S. history, with the potential to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions up to 42 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. In announcing his withdrawal, Biden called it “the most significant climate legislation in the history of the world.”

Despite his legislative successes, the 81-year-old Democrat couldn’t weather widespread blowback following a debate performance in June in which he appeared frail and struck many in his party as ill-equipped to lead the country for another four years. He will leave office with a portion of his proposed climate agenda unpassed and the U.S. still projected to miss his administration’s goal of reducing emissions at least 50 percent by 2030. 

Former president Donald Trump has vowed to undo many of the policies Biden accomplished if he becomes president, including parts of the IRA. And scores of his key advisors and former members of his presidential administration contributed to a blueprint that advocates for scrapping the vast majority of the nation’s climate and environmental protections. Whichever Democrat runs against Trump has a weighty mandate: protect America’s already-tenuous climate and environmental legacy from Republican attacks.

Read Next

What Project 2025 would do to climate policy in the US

Zoya Teirstein

With Biden’s endorsement, Vice President Harris, a former U.S. senator from California, is the favored Democratic nominee, but that doesn’t mean she will automatically get the nomination. There are fewer than 30 days until the Democratic National Convention on August 19. The thousands of Democratic delegates who already cast their votes for Biden will either decide on a nominee before the convention, or hold an open convention to find their new candidate — something that hasn’t been done since 1968. 

As vice president, Harris argued for the allocation of $20 billion for the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, aimed at aiding disadvantaged communities facing climate impacts, and frequently promoted the IRA at events, touting the bill’s investments in clean energy jobs, including installation of energy-efficient lighting, and replacing gas furnaces with electric heat pumps. She was also the highest-ranking U.S. official to attend the international climate talks at COP28 in Dubai last year, where she announced a U.S. commitment to double energy efficiency and triple renewable energy capacity by 2030. At that same conference, Harris announced a $3 billion commitment to the Green Climate Fund to help developing nations adapt to climate challenges, although Politico reported that the sum was “subject to the availability of funds,” according to the Treasury Department. 

“Vice President Harris has been integral to the Biden administration’s most important climate accomplishments and has a long track record as an impactful climate champion,” Evergreen Action, the climate-oriented political group, said in a statement. 

Harris caught some flak for using a potentially overstated “$1 trillion over 10 years” figure to describe the Biden administration’s climate investments. She got that sum from adding up all of the administration’s major investments over the past four years, some of which are only vaguely connected to climate change. 

As a presidential candidate in 2019, Harris proposed a $10 trillion climate plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045 on the campaign trail, including 100-percent carbon-neutral electricity by 2030. Under the plan, 50 percent of new vehicles sold would be zero-emission by 2030; and 100 percent of cars by 2035. But that proposal, like similarly ambitious climate change proposals released by other Democrats during that election cycle, was nothing more than a campaign wishlist. A better indicator of what her plans for climate change as president would look like — better, even, than her record as vice president, as much of her agenda was set by the Biden administration — could be buried in her record as San Francisco’s district attorney from 2004 to 2011 and as California attorney general from 2011 to 2017. 

As district attorney, Harris created an environmental justice unit to address environmental crimes affecting San Francisco’s poorest residents and prosecuted several companies including U-Haul for violation of hazardous waste laws. Harris later touted her environmental justice unit as the first such unit in the country. An investigation found the unit only filed a handful of lawsuits, though, and none of them were against the city’s major industrial polluters. 

As attorney general, Harris secured an $86 million settlement from Volkswagen for rigging its vehicles with emissions-cheating software and investigated ExxonMobil over its climate change disclosures. She also filed a civil lawsuit against Phillips 66 and ConocoPhillips for environmental violations at gas stations, which eventually resulted in a $11.5 million settlement. And she conducted a criminal investigation of an oil company over a 2015 spill in Santa Barbara. The company was found guilty and convicted on nine criminal charges.

“We must do more,” Harris said late last year at the climate summit in Dubai. “Our action collectively, or worse, our inaction will impact billions of people for decades to come.”

Clayton Aldern contributed writing and reporting to this article.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What would a Harris presidency mean for the climate? on Jul 21, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Zoya Teirstein.

Kamala’s negatives are even worse than Biden’s. That said, now that he has endorsed her – the party will have to accept her as their nominee.

It is going to be a landslide for Trump.

He will easily hit and surpass the 270 electoral votes needed to become the next President of the United States of America.

Only 58% of Democrats think Harris would make a good president.

Only 30% of the general public think she would make a good president

12% of Republicans think she would make a good president.

Polling, which was conducted by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, determined that a majority of Democrats believe the country would be in good hands if Harris took over.

Approximately 58 percent of Democrats think Harris would make a good president – while 22 percent think she would not and 20 percent ‘do not know enough to say’.

This is compared to the 30 percent of the general public that think Harris would make a good President and a staggering 87 percent of Republicans who said she would NOT make a good president.

She can’t recover from these numbers this late in the race!

Kamala’s nomination could bolster Kennedy’s influence, a crucial development as his voice is essential on the national stage. His continued presence in the race, and potential engagement by President Trump, could significantly impact the future political landscape.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Robert Malone.

• Harris marks second anniversary of Dobbs abortion decision at Maryland campaign event.
• Ship that collapsed Baltimore bridge in deadly March accident, finally towed away from city.
• EU regulators accuse Apple of monopolistic practices on its App store.
• Netanyahu says temporary ceasefire possible, but no permanent end to war just yet.
• Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao makes first post raid public appearance, rejects stepping down.
• San Jose health care workers and advocates rally to save Valley Medical Center Trauma Center.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – June 24, 2024. Harris marks second anniversary of Dobbs abortion decision at Maryland campaign event.  appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.