Em 1996, minha mãe começou a vender joias e semijoias. Ela comprava da minha tia e as revendia em Curitiba. Éramos muito pobres, não tínhamos carro e vivíamos em um conjunto da Cohab na periferia sul da cidade. Minha mãe fazia as entregas a pé ou de ônibus.
Então, minha mãe achou que a melhor maneira de se proteger de possíveis assaltos — algo que até então não havia acontecido com ela — seria comprando uma arma.
Mas minha mãe tinha problemas psicológicos seríssimos, dos quais só me dei conta muitos anos depois, já bem adulto e devidamente informado sobre essas condições. Mas, na infância e adolescência, eu a via apenas como uma pessoa muito nervosa, que trabalhava muito, ganhava pouco e fazia, muito bem aliás, o papel de pai e mãe de seus dois filhos.
Hoje, eu sei que minha não era muito nervosa. Ela era depressiva e bipolar. E isso começou ainda em sua infância. Quinta filha de uma família de seis irmãs e dois irmãos, todos criados em sítio, muito pobres e disciplinados com rigores físicos que deixaram marcas que não se limitaram ao corpo.
Aos 19, ela perdeu a mãe, minha avó, para um câncer. Aos 20, se casou com meu pai, um homem a quem nunca amou, apenas porque lhe havia beijado na boca. “Eu era muito burra. Meu pai dizia que mulher que beijava na boca e não casava ficava mal falada”, me disse várias vezes, lamentando-se pelo casamento.
Eu nasci quando ela tinha 22 anos. Fui idealizado, tratado com os luxos possíveis para o filho de uma empregada doméstica educada até a sexta série. Ela se divorciou aos 26, voltou para a casa do meu avô em Maringá, dessa vez comigo nos braços, arrumou emprego e resolveu ser a adolescente que nunca havia sido antes do casamento. Nesta brincadeira acabou abusando da bebida e dos tranquilizantes.
Minha família, que menos ainda conhecia sintomas de depressão — no início dos anos 1980 depressão era “doença de rico” — a mandou para um sanatório, onde, entre outros abusos, foi amarrada e tomou eletrochoques na cabeça. Quando saiu do sanatório, ela nem me reconhecia, se urinava toda em pé e levou meses para voltar à normalidade.
Nesta época, fui mandado de volta para Curitiba, onde morei com meu pai, minha madrasta e minha recém-nascida irmã Janaína. Minha mãe resolveu também voltar para lá, onde conheceu o meu padrasto. Ele mentiu ser desquitado, mas minha mãe já grávida do meu irmão descobriu que ele era não apenas casado, mas pai de cinco filhos. A relação deles durou 13 anos, até que minha mãe descobriu que ele tinha, além dela e de sua esposa, uma terceira mulher.
Voltei pro quarto e senti um cheiro de sangue queimado. Ela com a arma na mão.Este drama foi a segunda camada do bolo de decepções da vida da minha mãe. A primeira havia sido a revelação de que eu era homossexual. Algo que ela nunca aceitou e que considerou um fracasso seu em relação à minha criação.
Não importava o fato de eu ser o melhor aluno das melhores escolas públicas da cidade. Não importava que eu trabalhasse com ela vendendo sanduíches, como a personagem da Regina Duarte em “Vale tudo”. Não importavam os elogios de terceiros sobre minha dedicação ao trabalho e aos estudos. Minha sexualidade era constante motivo de ofensas, humilhações públicas e bofetadas na cara.
Eu fiquei exausto a ponto de sair de casa duas vezes, sem a menor estrutura. Quando voltei a segunda vez, resolvemos que iríamos viver em harmonia. Vendemos a casa da Cohab e compramos um apartamento em outro conjunto habitacional. E ali começamos a montar o lar que sempre sonháramos, com sofá, mesa de jantar, TV a cabo, meu próprio quarto.
Mas a harmonia não durou muito porque a doença da minha mãe era cheia de altos e baixos. E tudo piorou depois que meu avô, o pai dela, aos 82 anos, resolveu tirar a própria vida, enforcou-se na varanda da casa onde morava com minha tia mais velha enquanto ela passava as férias na minha residência, em Curitiba.
Depois daquilo, o suicídio virou um assunto constante. Especialmente em tom de ameaça contra nós, para que nos sentíssemos culpados. É por isso que, quando ela comprou aquela arma, fiquei extremamente preocupado e temeroso de que algo acontecesse de mal. Eu temia pela minha vida.
A nossa rotina era de agressões verbais e físicas — dela em relação a mim. Era uma mulher extremamente autoritária a quem eu e meu irmão devíamos uma obediência canina. Por isso, nunca ergui a mão para me defender dos tapas, das ofensas, das humilhações. E também por isso não tive forças para tomar uma atitude e dar um sumiço naquela arma. Morria de medo do que ela pudesse fazer contra mim.
Na noite de 14 de setembro de 1997, um domingo, apenas duas semanas após a morte da princesa Diana, minha mãe resolveu ir a um baile de tradições gauchescas na Sociedade Água Verde, em Curitiba.
Tudo o que eu consegui pensar era que aquilo não podia ser verdade.Ela andava gastando mais dinheiro do que tinha, comprando roupas, perfumes importados, um celular e me fez “emprestar” o dinheiro da mensalidade do meu cursinho para ela. Saiu de casa com R$ 500 no bolso. Eu e meu irmão tínhamos passado a tarde vendo filmes na HBO. Era a primeira vez que tínhamos TV a cabo em casa. Vimos naquele domingo “As pontes de Madison”.
Por volta de 10 da noite, logo após o final do filme, eu me lembro de ter sentido um aperto no peito e uma angústia fora do comum. Liguei para minha amiga Karime. Ela tentou me acalmar e mandou eu ligar para minha mãe.
Ligava e nada de ela atender. Quando ela finalmente atendeu, percebi que estava tão bêbada que mal conseguia falar. Tentei convencê-la a pegar um táxi, e, uns 40 minutos depois, ela chegou em casa. Ela havia sido roubada e não tinha nem dinheiro para o táxi. Mal conseguia andar, tive que buscá-la no carro e trazê-la no colo para o nosso apartamento no segundo andar.
A partir daí foi tudo muito rápido. Eu me lembro que procurei sua arma em todos os locais onde eu sabia que ela escondia porque estava intuindo que algo ruim podia acontecer. Não achei.
Coloquei ela na cama. Tirei suas botas de couro e falei para ela que ela me envergonhava. Ela chorou e disse que estava muito triste. Eu estava cansado daquilo tudo, com raiva e disse que ia descer para pagar o táxi. Eu mal cheguei à porta e ouvi o tiro. Meu irmão tinha 13 anos. Eu tinha 21. Ele gritava e pulava de desespero. Eu congelei.
Voltei pro quarto e senti um cheiro de sangue queimado. Ela com a arma na mão. Sangue jorrava de sua cabeça. Ainda tive a frieza para sentir seu pulso. Nada. Ela morreu na hora. Chamei a polícia, liguei para minha família. A polícia chegou, a examinou, e o policial me falou: “Sua mãe entrou em óbito.” Foi só aí que o choro transbordou.
Tudo o que eu consegui pensar era que aquilo não podia ser verdade. Apenas 40 minutos atrás ela estava viva. De repente, com apenas um estampido, tudo acabou, tudo mudou. Minha família, que já não era harmônica, havia se despedaçado. Eu e meu irmão nunca mais dividiríamos o mesmo teto. Nunca mais veríamos filme deitados no colchão no chão da sala. E não havia qualquer possibilidade de que aquele cenário fosse revertido porque a arma, diferente do veneno, da faca, da corda no pescoço, é inexorável. É a solução final, definitiva e fácil. A arma é um convite à tragédia.
Com a arma, a morte é a regraQuando postei fragmentos desta história no Twitter já estava preparado para a chuva de ataques, questionamentos e julgamentos. A primeira e mais esperada contestação era que ela, assim como meu avô, poderia ter usado outra coisa para se matar. De fato, com seu estado psicológico, ela poderia. Mas talvez ela tivesse sobrevivido a uma tentativa de suicídio. A arma não deu essa chance. Foi imediato. Em cinco segundos, eu e meu irmão estávamos órfãos.
Já na década de 1990, antes da minha mãe se matar, estudos comprovavam a ligação direta entre números de suicídios e fácil acesso a armas de fogo. O New England Journal of Medicine, por exemplo, publicou um artigo em 1992 que diz que, até então, anualmente, 29 mil americanos se suicidavam nos Estados Unidos. O estudo analisou todos os casos de suicídio ocorridos em uma região de população predominante branca e de classe média alta em Seattle e uma região de população predominantemente negra e de classe média baixa em Memphis entre os meses de agosto de 1987 e abril de 1990.
A narrativa de que a maioria das pessoas quer uma arma de fogo para se defender de crimes também não se baseia em fatos.Durante o período, ocorreram 555 suicídios em Seattle (69% dos casos aconteceram na casa da vítima). Em Memphis foram, no mesmo período, 248 suicídios (73% na casa das vítimas). Metade dos suicídios de Seattle e e 73% dos suicídios em Memphis foram cometidos com armas de fogo.
Segundo o CDC, principal órgão americano de saúde pública, pelo menos 47 mil pessoas cometeram suicídio nos EUA em 2017. As armas de fogo continuam sendo o meio mais utilizado.
A narrativa de que a maioria das pessoas quer uma arma de fogo para se defender de crimes também não se baseia em fatos. Um estudo da Universidade de Harvard, que pesquisou 14 mil incidentes por armas de fogo no período entre 2007 e 2011, constatou que apenas 0,9% da vítimas foram mortas em ações de legítima defesa.
O Harvard Injury Control Research Center também concluiu com diversos estudos que armas de fogo são usadas muito mais para intimidação do que para autodefesa e as que são mantidas em casa são mais frequentemente usadas para intimidar familiares e amigos que para combater o crime. Mas talvez o dado mais interessante seja o de que a maioria das armas alegadamente usadas em legítima defesa são ilegais e usadas após discussões acaloradas.
E aqui chegamos talvez ao ponto mais importante dessa discussão: como uma mulher como minha mãe, com histórico de depressão, que já havia passado por um hospício, com histórico de suicídio na família, conseguiu comprar uma arma de fogo?
O mito do laudo psicológicoEste foi o argumento usado por alguns armamentistas que apareceram em meu thread para me ofender ou desqualificar a história do suicídio de minha mãe. Segundo eles, o erro todo está no fato de a arma não ter registro. Porque, afinal, se tudo tivesse sido feito na legalidade, nada disso teria acontecido, pelo menos não com uma arma de fogo.
É preciso esclarecer uma coisa: minha mãe não comprou a arma dela em uma boca de fumo. Minha mãe não era envolvida com criminosos e nem saberia como chegar a esses locais. Era um mulher doente, mas simples, trabalhadora e, como todo mundo, apenas queria viver bem e ser feliz. E, como todo “cidadão de bem”, ela foi comprar sua arma na melhor loja do ramo, no centro de Curitiba. Uma loja de caça e pesca, que sempre colocou anúncios nos jornais e canais de televisão locais.
Ao chegar lá, ela deveria ter apresentado uma licença para porte de armas, que poderia ser obtida fazendo um curso de tiro – a compra ocorreu em 1996, vale lembrar, antes do Estatuto do Desarmamento. Ela não tinha nada disso. Mas tinha algo irresistível: dinheiro vivo. Levou o revólver calibre 38 e dois cartuchos com seis balas com a promessa de fazer o curso e registrar a arma posteriormente, algo que nunca fez. Tem uma coisa que é bom deixar claro: quem vende arma é igual a um traficante de drogas. Eles não estão interessados em saber se você vai morrer. Querem é saber do seu dinheiro.
Depois de sua morte, a arma foi confiscada pela polícia e não se sabe onde foi parar. Tampouco recebi qualquer retorno sobre uma possível responsabilização do estabelecimento comercial que vendeu a arma. Quando dei meu depoimento sobre o caso, entreguei inclusive o recibo de venda.
Enquanto houver corrupção e policiais trabalhando para o tráfico, não vai ter bandido que respeite a lei.E é aí que eu me pergunto: podemos confiar que os vendedores de armas irão vender esses artefatos seguindo todas as exigências legais com a posse de arma afrouxada, como decidiu o presidente Jair Bolsonaro? Segundo: quem vai fiscalizar? Vamos onerar o estado mais ainda para fiscalizar uma ação comercial em vez de usar esse dinheiro para fazer algo muito mais efetivo que seria investir nas forças policiais e obrigá-las a tirar as armas das mãos dos bandidos?
E, falando em armas nas mãos dos bandidos, já se perguntaram como as armas que causam mais de 60 mil homicídios por ano no Brasil vão parar nas mãos deles? Quem fornece? Quem facilita a entrada dessas armas através de nossas fronteiras? Como armas de uso militar vão para nas mãos de traficantes?
Há algum plano deste governo para moralizar as Forças Armadas e as forças policiais e acabar com o tráfico de armas e a corrupção dentro dessas corporações? Porque, enquanto houver corrupção e policiais trabalhando para o tráfico, não vai ter bandido que respeite a lei.
Outra questão: como um laudo psicológico poderá dar conta de revelar tantas questões como as apresentadas aqui (e mais inúmeras outras que renderiam um livro) quando sabemos que tratamentos psicológicos e psiquiátricos levam anos até chegar a alguma conclusão?
Mais do que ser contra armas por causa do que houve com a minha mãe, mais do que ser contra armas por não confiar no que uma pessoa dita “de bem” pode fazer com elas em momentos de tensão e de desequilíbrio psicológico, eu sou contra as armas nas mãos dos cidadãos porque acho que temos que exigir que o estado cumpra o seu papel de nos manter seguros, em vez de difundir a barbárie como solução paliativa para um problema complexo, porém solucionável, como é o da criminalidade no Brasil.
A liberação do porte e da posse de armas tem todos os elementos para dar errado. Mas vai ser uma fatura a ser paga sem direito a reembolso – as vidas perdidas jamais serão repostas.
* O jornalista optou por não receber cachê por este trabalho.
The post ‘Uma arma sem registro dentro de casa resultou na maior tragédia da minha vida’ appeared first on The Intercept.
As relações da família Bolsonaro com a Suprema Corte nunca foram amistosas. Para nomear o maior número de juízes dóceis, o presidente da República prometeu em campanha aumentar o número de ministros do STF: de 11 (previstos constitucionalmente) para 21. Indignado com a Segunda Turma – Lewandowski, Celso de Mello, Gilmar Mendes, Cármen Lúcia e Edson Fachin –, que soltara condenados como José Dirceu, o então presidenciável disparou: “São decisões que lamentavelmente têm envergonhado a todos”. Para Bolsonaro, o Supremo nunca passou de uma massa de manobra de interesses que não os seus.
Mas transformar juízes em marionetes de um fascistoide, se cai bem aos ouvidos dos deslumbrados, não é tão simples e exige a mudança formal da Constituição. Para aumentar o número de ministros do STF é necessária uma Emenda Constitucional. Sua aprovação, que não pode acontecer durante intervenção federal, estado de defesa ou estado de sítio, por exemplo, é páreo-duro: exige discussão em cada casa do Congresso, em dois turnos, e só é aprovada se alcançar, em ambos, três quintos dos votos dos seus membros.
Existe um caminho mais fácil para aumentar o número de ministros amigos no STF: arrancar os que hoje estão por lá via impeachment. É essa a ideia tacanha que está tomando corpo e pode ser concretizada pelo plácido caminho da “legalidade” com a vitória do desconhecido Davi Alcolumbre, o protegido de Onyx Lorenzoni que desbancou Renan Calheiros da Presidência do Senado. Sim, a lama da cassação politiqueira também pode alcançar as togas do Supremo Tribunal Federal. Se praticarem crimes de responsabilidade, os ministros respondem da mesma forma que o presidente da República, e recebem as mesmas penas. Quem é peça fundamental no andamento dos processos? Ele, Davi Alcolumbre. A guerra fria entre Senado e STF começou.
Até agora, pedidos de impeachment nunca tiraram o sono dos ministros do STF. Mas a tumultuada eleição de Alcolumbre, do Democratas do Amapá, pode mudar esse paradigma. A Câmara também começa a se movimentar para ajudar Bolsonaro a controlar o Supremo. Aliados do governo pretendem aprovar, já no início da legislatura, uma PEC tornando a fixar em 70 anos a idade para aposentadoria de ministros de tribunais superiores, revogando a PEC da bengala. Com a medida, Bolsonaro ampliaria sua influência no STF, conseguindo nomear quatro dos 11 membros da corte, e não apenas dois, como previsto.
Presidente do Supremo Tribunal Federal, Dias Toffoli, foi o pivô da crise entre Senado e a corte.
Foto: Evarista Sa/AFP/Getty Images
O atual presidente do Senado já está acostumado ao descumprimento de decisões judiciais e ao enfrentamento do STF. Investigado em dois inquéritos no Supremo, ele fez parte do conluio para impedir que, em 2017, Aécio Neves fosse afastado por ordem do STF.
Pelo jeito, as armas já estão escolhidas e municiadas. O parlamento já não mede as palavras. O senador Alessandro Vieira quer a instalação de uma CPI para investigar manobras políticas em processos judiciais. “Se isso acabar mostrando erros e eventuais crimes, paciência”, disse. O Movimento Brasil Livre, o Movimento Vem pra Rua e o advogado e professor aposentado da Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de São Paulo Modesto Carvalhosa já anunciaram que, nesta sexta-feira, vão dar entrada no impeachment de Dias Toffoli. O argumento é de que, ao determinar votação secreta para a presidência do Senado, o presidente do Supremo invadiu o espaço de atuação do Legislativo.
Toffoli, presidente do STF, no dia 9 de janeiro, derrubou decisão do ministro Marco Aurélio e determinou que, como prevê o Regimento Interno do Senado, a votação para a presidência da casa fosse secreta.
Alcolumbre manobrou e conduziu uma tumultuada e até ridícula sessão no Senado – na qual ele era um dos candidatos – que, por 50 votos a 2, deliberou que a eleição para presidente do Senado seria aberta. Na madrugada de sábado, dia 2, o presidente do STF, atendendo a pedido do Solidariedade e do MDB, anulou a deliberação do Senado e reafirmou sua decisão: a votação deveria ser secreta. Afrontou Alcolumbre. Depois de uma primeira votação anulada porque na urna havia 82 votos de 81 senadores, e da desistência de Renan, Alcolumbre foi eleito com 42 votos.
Caça aos ministrosMinistros do STF podem ser cassados, por exemplo, 1) se alterarem, por qualquer forma, exceto por via de recurso, a decisão ou voto já proferido em sessão do Tribunal; 2) se proferirem julgamento sendo suspeitos na causa; 3) se exercerem atividades político-partidárias; 4) se forem desleixados no cumprimento dos seus deveres de juiz; 5) se agirem de modo incompatível com a honra, a dignidade e o decoro de suas funções. Está tudo lá, na arcaica Lei nº 1.079/50. A lei, como se vê, é bastante subjetiva (decoro das funções?) e comporta pedidos de qualquer natureza. Mas será que todo esse aparato legal funciona na prática? Até hoje, nenhum juiz da Suprema Corte foi cassado.
Em 30 de dezembro de 2018, a Folha de S. Paulo apurou que o Supremo contava com 28 pedidos de impeachment de seus ministros. Do total, 23 deles, ou seja, em torno de 82%, haviam sido protocolados de 2015 em diante. Até o final de 2018, havia apenas sete requerimentos em tramitação.
O saco de pancadas é Gilmar Mendes, com nove pedidos movidos contra si. Depois estão Dias Toffoli e Luís Roberto Barroso (quatro cada um), e Ricardo Lewandowski e Luiz Fux (três representações cada um). A maioria dos pedidos é baseada em decisões polêmicas da Corte – que não são poucas, convenhamos, porque a sociedade brasileira é um manancial profundo de conflitos – e acaba engavetada por um canetaço do presidente da Câmara dos Deputados, onde o processo deve ter início.
Na teoria, se passar por essa primeira triagem, o pedido é analisado pelos deputados e só tem prosseguimento se aprovado por dois terços da Câmara. Depois o processo é remetido ao Senado, que afasta o presidente e deve julgar em 180 dias. O presidente do STF conduz o processo. Para cassação é necessário o voto de dois terços dos Senadores. Além de perder o cargo, ele fica inabilitado para exercer funções públicas por oito anos.
As rusgas entre Judiciário e os outros poderes fazem parte do sistema de freios e contrapesos. O STF, inclusive, fechou os olhos para evitar choques com a ditadura nos anos de chumbo, a ponto de o ministro Nelson Hungria ter afirmado em voto que os tanques e as baionetas “estão acima das leis, da Constituição e, portanto, do Supremo Tribunal Federal”. Uma espécie de covardia reconhecida.
Em seu discurso, ao assumir o comando do Senado, Alcolumbre disse que não vai se curvar “à intromissão amesquinhada do Judiciário”. A declaração é estratégica para firmar terreno em uma disputa de forças colossais. Mas também é muito perigosa, porque a toga não gosta de ser posta à prova. O embate verbal parece ser uma trombeta do que vem pela frente.
The post Bolsonaro não precisa aumentar o número de ministros do STF, basta trocá-los via impeachment appeared first on The Intercept.
At Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, President Donald Trump hailed a booming economy (which is booming at roughly the same rate, and with an even bigger tilt toward the wealthy, as it did in the Obama administration) and warned that the only barriers standing in the way of this “economic miracle” were “foolish wars, politics, or ridiculous partisan investigations.”
But there’s one other possibility: folks getting socked with unexpectedly high tax bills.
As Americans head into the first tax season under the Trump tax cuts, there is broad uncertainty about how much the Internal Revenue Service will return in refunds, which are a surprisingly important component of consumer spending. And the amount of your refund is directly tied to how much was withheld from your paycheck over the year.
If workers had too little money withheld from their paychecks throughout the year to cover their tax liability — say, perhaps, because the administration was hoping to win converts to its tax cut by goosing paychecks — that would translate into a smaller refund this spring. If the opposite occurred, the refunds would be bigger. If it’s off by too much, a taxpayer would actually owe the government money.
There’s no consensus on what truly happened with paychecks, and the final outcome won’t be known for weeks, as people send in their tax returns. But critics of the Trump administration have long suggested that the administration sought to lowball the withholding tables to get more money into taxpayers’ hands on the front end. Politico reported last January that the IRS was “under pressure to take as little as possible so people will see big increases in their take-home pay ahead of this year’s midterm elections.” Major political figures, like the Senate Finance Committee’s ranking Democrat, Ron Wyden of Oregon, questioned the IRS on manipulating withholding tables.
As we know, economic growth did not translate into large gains for Republicans in the midterms. And now, the president could face a major political and economic problem on the back end, if large numbers of Americans expecting big tax refunds don’t get them this year. This would be an amazing political own goal, as jiggering with the withholding tables would result in no net benefit on the front end — Republicans still lost the House — and a large net detriment on the back end.
In theory, people should be happy about a lower refund: that means they didn’t give the government an interest-free loan throughout the year. But normal humans don’t think that way, and the lack of a refund would feel like a loss, tax experts agreed. “Ask people how much they paid in taxes, nobody knows. Ask them how much they got in their refund, people know,” said Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. “Everyone focuses on size of the refund, and it does affect perception.”
Beyond perception, there’s the reality that traditionally, about three-quarters of Americans receive tax refunds each year. It’s typically their largest single check annually. They plan consumer purchases, particularly durable goods and big-ticket items, around them. There’s an entire cottage industry of refund advance loans, where filers get refunds immediately from their tax preparer and pay them back when the IRS completes the return.
If those refunds don’t come through, even if people saw higher paychecks throughout the year, those planned purchases will not get made. “There would be some consumption that won’t happen, and that’s potentially significant,” said Gleckman. “What we’re going to see, we just don’t know yet.”
Because 2018 was the first year with the new tax regime, withholding tables required some tweaks. And the elimination of personal exemptions — which workers previously used as allowances on their W-4 forms — removed the main way to map a worker’s personal situation cleanly onto tax withholding.
The IRS had to guess how the changes in the law would impact individual tax burdens, and then apply that to withholding, and they had to do all this under the constant strain of underfunding. Congress gave the Treasury Department and the IRS the authority to accomplish this in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act; previously, Congress had a role in withholding, because the legislative branch is well aware of the political potency of the question.
Eventually, withholding tables were completed in time for workers to see changes to paychecks by February. But Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin asked workers to use an IRS calculator to ensure that the correct amount of money was being withheld from their paychecks.
The calculator wasn’t even available at the time that Mnuchin suggested this. And the idea that hundreds of millions of people would voluntarily do the IRS’s job for it and double-check their withholding burden, rather than let their employer figure it out, is fanciful. Damon Jones, a public policy professor with the University of Chicago, explained in a paper in 2010 that the common reaction to tax withholding changes is inertia. And indeed, the payment processing firm ADP released an analysis stating that the “vast majority” of taxpayers didn’t change W-4 forms for 2018.
That means success or failure in estimating withholding was up to the Treasury Department and IRS. And there have been wild variations in how outside observers think they handled it. A UBS analysis estimated an increase in tax refunds of anywhere between $42 billion and $66 billion this year; Morgan Stanley came up with a similar number. In particular, UBS predicted higher refunds for married filers with children and lower ones for single taxpayers.
But the Treasury Department, in an analysis provided to the Government Accountability Office, simulated 2018 withholding, estimating that 3 percent more Americans will have taxes under-withheld in the calendar year, and 3 percent fewer will have them overwithheld. That translates to around 4 million fewer Americans receiving refunds on their 2018 taxes. GAO also criticized the Treasury Department for failing to properly document roles and responsibilities for making annual updates to withholding.
The Congressional Budget Office, in a midyear review, found that withholding revenues grew at a rate of less than half of that of the overall economy, suggesting that withholding was smaller than expected. In a later report, CBO said it “now expects tax withholding to be lower during fiscal year 2018.”
The IRS has tipped its hand slightly as well. In an announcement in January, the agency said it would waive some penalties for those who underpaid withholding throughout the year. Typically, those who pay less than 90 percent of their tax liability during the year pay the underpayment penalty; the IRS adjusted that to 85 percent. “We realize there were many changes that affected people last year, and this penalty waiver will help taxpayers who inadvertently didn’t have enough tax withheld,” said IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig in a statement. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants responded that the IRS’s relief was too meager, warning that “many taxpayers were unable to accurately calculate their tax liability for 2018 and may have inadvertently under-withheld their taxes and potentially face penalties.”
“There’s no consensus on what will happen,” said the Tax Policy Center’s Gleckman, who added that there was little indication that taxpayers did what Treasury wanted them to do: check their withholding to see if the IRS was accurately taking the proper amount throughout the year.
What we do know is that 102 million taxpayers received refunds last year, with an average of $2,778. And most of those went out the door for some wish-list item or a crucial household necessity that had been put off.
“People love them,” Gleckman said. “They’re especially important for low- and moderate-income people who count on getting the refund. The evidence is that they very often use them to make significant capital expenses, like a new refrigerator or the down payment on a car.” A study from JPMorgan Chase suggests that Americans defer health care decisions until they get their tax refunds.
It’s an indictment of American capitalism that so many people are so cash-strapped that they wait all year for a refund, something that they should have been getting in smaller increments every week, to make big purchases. Common sense would indicate that it’s better to get paid properly from the start of the year than to wait until the following year for a lump-sum refund. But people are now conditioned to getting the refund, and they plan around it throughout the year.
The fact that in 2018, workers may have received a bit more each week in their paycheck probably didn’t bear much thought. Most people receive pay stubs digitally and through direct deposit, and changes to hours, health insurance premiums, or contributions to 401(k) plans or pensions can all affect weekly take-home pay. So it’s difficult to disaggregate everything and know what corresponds to what.
We saw this with the Obama administration’s 2009 “Making Work Pay” tax credit, which dribbled out $400 to individual weekly paychecks through changes to withholding. Studies showed that nobody actually knew they received a tax cut.
From a political standpoint, many will see the lower refund as confirmation that the tax cuts didn’t benefit them, regardless of how accurate that may be. There’s already anecdotal evidence of this from early filers.
If refunds do come back lower, experts agree that there will be a decided impact on consumer spending, as those big-ticket items don’t get purchased. To the extent that filers rely on their refund for necessities, it could have more dire consequences than just slower economic growth. This could add to a reduction in growth from the 4 percent levels of mid-2018. That unusually high growth would fit with a story of keeping withholding too low throughout the year: It would be as if spending were pulled forward, only to snap back around tax time.
Ultimately, the effect of tax refunds will bubble up in taxpayer complaints and consumer spending levels in the first quarter. But the political ripples could further cement the already-dim views of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act among the public.
The post Trump Wanted to Goose Paychecks, but Now a Surprise Bill May Be Coming Due for Tax Filers appeared first on The Intercept.
The power is back on and the heat has been turned up at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, where incarcerated people endured freezing temperatures, dark cells, and deprivation of access to legal counsel for the past week, prompting outcry and the intervention of federal legislators.
While many celebrated the moment the lights came back on in the federal jail Sunday evening and looked forward to the hearings promised by concerned legislators, cases in federal court over the past two days have made it impossible to ignore the fact that the humanitarian crisis at the federal detention facility extends far beyond the electrical fire that shut down primary power to much of the facility on January 27.
Federal court hearings this week have revealed a staggering pattern of neglect: incarcerated people left on their own, in the dark and cold, to deal with medical crises and mental breakdowns. One incarcerated person had to physically stop their cellmate from hanging themselves. People housed at the federal jail reported that as many as nine incarcerated people were left without potentially lifesaving medical equipment because of the power shut down. Another incarcerated patient was left with an untreated gunshot wound.
“My problem is I don’t trust the representations coming out of BOP. I just don’t.”The revelations have left federal judges with a slate of cases to hold the federal officials running the jail — as well as the U.S. attorney’s offices stonewalling to defend the jail’s conduct — to account. Several of the judges have been openly incredulous as they dealt with the cases — evincing frustration with the federal lawyers as well as the Bureau of Prisons, or BOP, which runs the facility.
“My problem is I don’t trust the representations coming out of BOP,” said Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall, in a hearing in Brooklyn on February 4. “I just don’t.”
The legal actions kicked off when lawyers representing people locked up at the Metropolitan Detention Center began to realize that their clients were enduring arctic weather without adequate heat or clothing. They started filing dozens of motions in federal courts in Manhattan and Brooklyn, seeking hearings to get their clients transferred, to get them released, or just to get some straight information about what was going on inside.
One of the first of those hearings took place Tuesday in Manhattan, before Judge Analisa Torres. Across more than four hours of testimony by incarcerated people, employees, and observers, it became difficult to draw any conclusion other than that federal prison officials — including Metropolitan Detention Center Warden Herman Quay — had lied about conditions in the jail. (The Bureau of Prisons did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and U.S. attorneys present in court declined to comment.)
“Warden Quay informed the Southern District District Executive directly that the heat was unaffected,” Deirdre von Dornum, attorney-in-charge for the Federal Defenders of New York, a nonprofit legal organization that represents federal defendants and has many clients at the Metropolitan Detention Center, testified Tuesday. Having been in the building herself on February 1, von Dornum saw people shivering in freezing cells. In court, she said, “I have personal knowledge that what the Warden said was false.”
Von Dornum also testified that, though Bureau of Prisons officials had told Federal Defenders that medical care continued without a problem, they knew better. On von Dornum’s visit to the jail, she witnessed a crisis of medical neglect in the facility, meeting patients with everything from suicidal psychiatric conditions to potentially fatal respiratory ailments to suppurating gunshot wounds continuing to go without any medical treatment. “I spoke to some of those clients with Nicole McFarland standing next to me, indifferently,” von Dornum said, referring to the Bureau of Prisons lawyer who accompanied her on her visit.
After hearing this testimony, Torres took the remarkable step of moving her hearing from the courtroom to the jail itself, touring the facility personally, and bringing along the lawyers arguing before her. She also brought along a court reporter to record what happened. The transcript of her narration of the conditions she observed and of her conversations with incarcerated people reveals a shocking level of negligence.
The visit began in the jail’s Special Housing Unit, where people are held in solitary confinement. Torres peered into a cell and described the scene: “I can see abundant water damage,” she said. “Towards the back is a rectangular shaped cell. On the ceiling, you can see copious amounts of paint peeling and hanging from the ceiling. The ceiling is painted white, but the water-damaged area has a kind of a golden tone to it. It almost looks like wet tissues hanging from the ceiling.”
Helping to guide Torres was von Dornum, who had asked to tour the facility the week before but was refused by Quay, the warden. Only after von Dornum secured a court order was she able to finally visit on February 1. On that visit, she told Torres, the person housed in the dank and dripping cell had told her that water runs in whenever it rains, or snow melts, or there’s condensation, and that his sheets were soaking wet and hadn’t been changed for a week. A correctional officer confirmed the incarcerated man’s account, von Dornum told Torres.
The judge turned to Quay. “Excuse me, Warden, is there a way that I can ask him questions through the door?” she asked. As she questioned the man through a crack in the door, his responses were too faint for the court reporter to hear, so the judge relayed them for the record: “I just heard you say it was like sleeping under a waterfall, and you said that happened during the black-out, correct?” Yes, the man answered. The showers were freezing cold. He had asked for an extra blanket and was ignored. As he was speaking, Torres was looking at the water running into the cell from the ceiling. “You can see it, it is abundant,” Torres said. “It is plain as day.”
He “literally had to take the noose off his cellmate’s hand, he was trying to kill himself.”The man sharing the cell told Torres he had tried to warn the guards of his bunkmate’s suicidal breakdown but was ignored. He “physically had to take the – literally had to take the noose off his cellmate’s hand, he was trying to kill himself,” he told her. In response to his repeated calls for medical help, guards put a box over the opening to further isolate him and his roommate.
“Sorry to hear that,” Torres said. “Thank you for telling me.”
“Thank you for being worried about us, ma’am, and treating us like human beings,” the man replied.
“I’m very worried about you,” she said.
Torres moved on to more cells with leaking water, damp and yellowed blankets, and light fixtures covered in “black blotchy mold.” The group descended to the seventh floor, where incarcerated people were circulating freely in their unit and the lights were on. When von Dornum had visited four days earlier, there was frost on the windows, she said. A man told Torres his unit had only received blankets the day before, on February 4. “We went a whole week with it being freezing, no lighting, my toilet not working,” he said. “They’re not letting us take showers. They’re not feeding us properly.”
In another housing unit on the seventh floor, a man with colitis and psychiatric needs told Torres all of his medical issues were going unattended to. “I have a rash that’s bleeding,” he said. “I showed the officer my underwear, and they said, ‘it’s above my pay grade.’”
Another man with obstructive sleep apnea told Torres he was forced to sleep without a potentially lifesaving CPAP machine because his cell was without power for seven days before jail officials finally moved him into the adjoining building, which still had power. “I’m not alone,” he told her. “I think there were eight other people in the building that had obstructive sleep apnea.”
Von Dornum found even the cases she’d highlighted had still gone untreated.On down to the sixth floor, where four days earlier von Dornum had met a man with a gunshot wound to his hand whose dressing hadn’t been changed in two weeks, pus leaking out from the bandages. As with many of the other people she had met on that tour, von Dornum had flagged their cases to McFarland, the Bureau of Prisons lawyer accompanying her, and stressed the importance that they receive medical care. In the intervening days, conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Center had become a national news story and a focus of congressional oversight, but von Dornum found even the cases she’d highlighted had still gone untreated.
“I got these bandages on for over three weeks,” the man with the gunshot wound told Torres when she found him Tuesday. “They still didn’t take me out the building to change the bandages.” The man also has glaucoma, he told her, which was also going untreated. “I kept asking them,” he said. “I seen flashes in my eyes and I’m supposed to go immediately if I see flashes in my eye. And I was telling the officers, and they was just completely ignoring me.”
“All right,” Torres answered. “I’m certainly hoping you get to see the doctor soon.”
Returning to her Manhattan courtroom, Torres wrapped up the hearing briskly and issued a ruling: The two defendants whose bail applications had opened the door to this fact-finding mission would not be released or transferred, she said, because in all of the day’s evidence and testimony, the defendants’ lawyers hadn’t presented any evidence specific to their clients’ own claims of medical necessity and fear of reprisal.
If that ruling was disappointing for the defendants and their attorneys, however, those calling for greater oversight at the Metropolitan Detention Center saw the day’s proceedings as a massive victory. Torres’s visit, transcribed word-for-word and published on the record, peeled back the lid of secrecy on the prison even more vividly than the accounts powerful politicians gave to the media of their own inspections over the weekend. The BOP did not respond to questions from The Intercept by the time of publication.
AP
Beyond the nightmarish conditions inside the Metropolitan Detention Center, federal courts are also shining a light on the habitual opacity, misdirection, and outright deception by detention center officials that have allowed those conditions to fester.
John Maffeo, the facility manager for the Metropolitan Detention Center, testified Tuesday that he realized “it was going to be a long-term issue” once he learned the nature of the fire and how it had affected the building’s power system. “I knew it was not going to be a quick overnight return-to-service type of repair,” he said.
What emerged in the government’s responses to their requests was an official account contradicted by incarcerated people and the prison’s own employees.Even with the knowledge that power would be out for the “long-term,” though, emails introduced as evidence in a separate civil suit filed in a Brooklyn federal court on Monday show that Metropolitan Detention Center officials kept the knowledge to themselves. These separate revelations came as part of a case where a group of federal public defenders filed a suit claiming violations of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel — since they had been repeatedly denied access to their clients. What emerged in the government’s responses to their requests — leading up to the case and in court itself — was an official account contradicted by incarcerated people and the prison’s own employees.
“I’m trying to figure out if I am to rely on the information that at least resulted in inconsistent statements by those who are responsible for the custody of those housed at the MDC,” said DeArcy Hall, the judge who is presiding over the suit, at one point in a Monday hearing, apparently unnerved at the prevarications of prison officials.
At one point, a federal government lawyer tried to hand the judge a spreadsheet that purported to show temperatures in different parts of the massive federal jail. DeArcy Hall declined to take it seriously: “Given the fact that it’s been widely reported that there are inconsistencies between what was being said with respect to the people who are housed at the MDC and what MDC officials are reporting out,” she told the lawyer, “I appreciate you offering it to me, but it’s unhelpful.”
In an email to public defenders the day of the fire, prison officials said only that incarcerated people would not be allowed to meet their lawyers the following day. When the defense lawyers, who had heard rumors of some sort of incident, pressed for details the following day, Adam Johnson, a lawyer for the Bureau of Prisons, wrote, “I have been informed that the heat is operational and that the inmates are currently out of their cells in the units.” The next day, Johnson wrote again to say simply that “legal visiting remains suspended today.” Over subsequent days, Metropolitan Detention Center officials didn’t even bother to tell lawyers that they wouldn’t be able to visit their clients, and when lawyers asked, their emails went unanswered.
By February 1, some federal judges who had gotten wind that there was something going on at Metropolitan Detention Center were asking questions. Edward Friedland, a top official with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York, wanted an explanation from Quay, the Metropolitan Detention Center warden. Quay gave the prosecutor a status report: There had been a fire that knocked out power, he said, but “inmates have not been confined to their cells and are still allowed leisure/recreational activities.” That was simply not true, according to the accounts that more than 60 people inside Metropolitan Detention Center gave to von Dornum. Incarcerated people were confined to their cells on lockdown for at least 24 hours after the fire, and again for much of the rest of the week.
Each of these claims in Quay’s report have been widely contradicted by people inside the federal jail.“Heat has never been impacted,” Quay told Friedland, and “is in the high 60s and low 70s.” This too, is more or less universally contradicted by public accounts of staff and people incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center. “Hot water has not been impacted,” Quay said. “Prisoners are still receiving hot meals…. There is no problem with medical.” Each of these claims in Quay’s report have been widely contradicted by people inside the federal jail, who report cold meals, cold showers, and catastrophically inadequate medical attention.
At the same time, Metropolitan Detention Center officials were peddling the same nothing-to-see-here line to the press. Quay’s spokesperson told the New York Times on February 1 that people incarcerated at the jail had heat, light, hot water, and hot meals. On February 2, Quay himself told another reporter to her face that there were no heat problems or lockdowns.
As the Bureau of Prisons continues to insist everything’s fine in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and the U.S. attorneys who represent the bureau in court continue to take their client’s bald assertions as fact, those strategies are losing credibility with judges.
There’s also evidence the Bureau of Prisons sought to deceive lawmakers. When von Dornum made her visit on February 1, she arrived, by coincidence, at the same time as Rep. Nydia Velazquez, who had heard reports of problems at MDC and wanted to make her own visit. Von Dornum proposed that they tour the facility together, since von Dornum is familiar with MDC, but BOP officials refused to allow this. Instead, von Dornum testified, once Bureau of Prisons officials had separated Velazquez and von Dornum, they told the member of Congress she wouldn’t be able to talk to any incarcerated people directly, as they were all locked up for the regularly scheduled “count.” Had von Dornum been with her, the lawyer said, she would have told Velazquez that excuse didn’t hold water. “The count only lasts 20 to 30 minutes, so obviously she could have waited it out,” von Dornum said. Thwarted, Velazquez returned the next day with a larger delegation of elected officials, and managed to speak to some incarcerated people.
The hearing that kicked off Monday, for the Federal Defenders of New York suit, was part of an effort to ask for a court-appointed special master to oversee the Metropolitan Detention Center. At their first hearing before DeArcy Hall that morning, they sought a temporary restraining order, forbidding Metropolitan Detention Center officials from denying incarcerated people their Sixth-Amendment right to meet with a lawyer. If some emergency condition necessitated the suspension of lawyer visits, the warden should have to swear out an affidavit justifying the suspension and submitting it to a judge.
“They’re lying to us, and I want them on the hook if they’re lying to the judge.”“They’re lying to us, and I want them on the hook if they’re lying to the judge,” David Patton, the executive director of the Federal Defenders, said in court during conversations with government lawyers during a recess. When Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan Riley argued that no oversight was necessary because Bureau of Prison officials had told her the problems at Metropolitan Detention Center were resolved, DeArcy Hall made it clear that the uncorroborated word of the Bureau of Prisons held little weight in her courtroom.
DeArcy Hall directed government lawyers to take half an hour to cooperate with the Federal Defenders in drafting language for an order that would commit the Metropolitan Detention Center to explaining any suspensions of legal visitation to a judge while still offering flexibility in the face of a security emergency. The judge then left the courtroom, but in her absence the government lawyers representing the Bureau of Prisons refused to negotiate. “I’ve got a client, just like you,” Riley told Sean Hecker, who represented the Federal Defenders.
The stonewalling sent DeArcy Hall into a rage when she returned more than hour later to find no progress. “Was my time wasted?” she demanded. Not at all, Riley assured her. The Bureau of Prisons was happy to give a reason for any suspensions of legal visiting at Metropolitan Detention Center, she said, it just didn’t want to be ordered to do so and it couldn’t agree to an order making it swear to those reasons before a court. “You’ll agree to what I order,” DeArcy Hall said, cutting her off, promptly issuing a temporary restraining order requiring just what the Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Attorney’s Office had been resisting. A hearing to consider the broader question of the appointment of a special master to oversee Metropolitan Detention Center is slated for February 13.
For von Dornum, the defense lawyer, the hearing was a perfect illustration of why an independent monitor is necessary for the Metropolitan Detention Center. “The U.S. attorneys appear to be representing their client, the Bureau of Prisons,” she said, “as opposed to representing their client, the Department of Justice, which has an obligation to protect the constitution.”
The post The Power Is Back on at Brooklyn Jail, but a Visiting Federal Judge Found Untreated Gunshot Wound, “Black Blotchy Mold,” and Ongoing Crisis appeared first on The Intercept.
President Donald Trump arrives before delivering the State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol Building on Feb. 5, 2019 in Washington, D.C.
Photo: Zach Gibson/Getty Images
Last night’s State of the Union address and rebuttals were a fight over what constitutes “real America.” They weren’t a rehash of the debate about whether American authenticity is clustered at the coasts or spread out over the heartland. Rather, it was a contest for which politician, party, or movement has the most accurate assessment of what it feels like to be American today.
This is Trump’s home turf, or it used to be. Since he launched his presidential bid in June 2015, he’s painted a picture of an America in disarray. “Our country is in terrible trouble,” he said back then. “We don’t have victories anymore.” He evoked Mexicans invading and Chinese people stealing jobs. “When was the last time you saw a Chevrolet in Tokyo? It doesn’t exist, folks. They beat us all the time,” he said.
The media at the time hashed and rehashed Trump’s remarks, fact checking lies and condemning his racism, laughing all the way. Trump’s candidacy was a joke, they said — a clumsy Charybdis of falsehoods and xenophobia that would swallow itself before it caused too much trouble. But of course, those predictions were wrong.
What most missed then, but which should be obvious now, is that between his bigoted bromides, Trump was painting a picture of an America that felt more familiar to millions of viewers than anything they’d been served for years.
He acknowledged that although unemployment numbers were low and declining, the “real unemployment” numbers were higher — “anywhere from 18 to 20 percent.”
“Don’t believe the 5.6,” he warned during that first Trump Tower address. “Don’t believe it.”
“A lot of people up there can’t get jobs,” he said. Health care costs were going up. We spent relatively more on education, with fewer returns. Deductibles were “going through the roof.” Obamacare needed to be replaced with something “much better for everybody.” The infrastructure, airports, roads, “everything” was like “a third world country.” And the thing is, he wasn’t all wrong.
He struck his darkest note on his first day in office, during his inaugural address:
Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.
Trump was successful in large part because he is impressively adept at diagnosing America’s problems. “Make America Great Again” is not only a regressive slogan that recalls more prejudiced and unequal historical periods fondly; it’s also an acknowledgement that America, as it is, needs improvement. Or as Barack Obama put it, it could be “more perfect.” In 2016, the Democratic Party at times lost sight of the fact that making America great was a goal shared by both parties. Instead, it defaulted into “America is already great,” offering a platitude which couldn’t compete with the reality of unpaid bills and soaring health care costs.
Increasingly, however, Trump is in a political pickle — one that flows from a promise made during that inaugural address: “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.” Trump’s brand is diagnosing America’s ills, but as he ages into his incumbency, those ills increasingly manifest on his watch, and he’s forced to lean more heavily on new manufactured crises that can’t be attributed to his leadership.
As in his January Oval Office address, Trump’s State of the Union remarks were full of inaccurate fearmongering about the border. He criticized the high cost of health care and, in a somewhat unexpected turn, the scourge of childhood cancers and HIV.
But now it is Trump who must defend his record. It’s Trump who feels pressured to make the case that America is already great.
In the first portion of his remarks, he did exactly that. He celebrated combat veterans from WWII (when America presumably was great) and then lauded American astronauts who are “once again” going into space, drawing a rhetorical line between these achievements. He bragged about an “unprecedented economic boom” — a boom that started before his presidency and continues despite it — and held up low unemployment numbers as evidence of his leadership prowess.
Trump is facing is the impotence of incumbency.The Trump who advised Americans to consider “real unemployment” numbers is long gone. In his place stands a man so eager to defend his record that he reported employment statistics, his best Trump card, four different ways so as to magnify the impression of his success: “5.3 million new jobs”; “600,000 new manufacturing jobs”; blue-collar jobs, growing faster than anyone else thought possible; more people working than at any time during American history. Jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs.
Trump’s focus on jobs numbers is understandable given how little else he has to brag about: Cutting more regulations in two years than any other administration had done in four; a transparent greed-driven tax cut for millionaires and billionaires that’s growing more difficult to spin as tax season approaches and Americans start to see the consequences on their returns; America becoming the world’s No. 1 oil producer at a time when scientific consensus says that oil dependence is a death sentence. The accomplishments enumerated during last night’s address were underwhelming at best.
But what’s important to note here is that Trump is facing is the impotence of incumbency. Without being able to point to policies that have materially improved people’s lives, he’s forced to argue that his paltry efforts have made America great. And given the state of the nation, that’s no enviable position to be in.
In her reply, former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams was able to capitalize on Trump’s new posture. To justify his lack of accomplishment, Trump had to invent a twisted fantasy-scape of marauding Mexican murderers, while tiptoeing around his broken promises with vague references to health care costs that didn’t directly implicate his attacks on existing health care infrastructure.
Abrams was free to fill the role Trump once played so well, accurately identifying America’s problems.But Abrams was free to fill the role Trump once played so well, accurately identifying America’s problems: Voter suppression; farmers hobbled by a tariff war; factories closing; children caged at the border. Even Fox News pundits had to acknowledge: “She seemed to get more to what people’s lives are like in the reality.” With a diverse crowd standing behind her and a message that gave voice to a broad range of concerns, Abrams won the fight over what America really looks like.
Abrams deftly ran through the panoply of policy issues ignored by Trump, and offered a warm, compassionate alternative to Trump’s drowsy teleprompter recital. Our strength as a country, she argued, is our ability to pull together to advance common goals. “We may come from different sides of the political aisle, but our joint commitment to the ideals of this nation cannot be negotiable.” Unfortunately, Abrams argued, Republicans have bargained away their commitment to the ideals shared by most Americans. “Under the current administration, far too many hard-working Americans are fall behind, living paycheck to paycheck, most without labor unions to protect them from even worse harm. The Republican tax bill rigged the system against working people. Rather than bringing back jobs, plants are closing, layoffs are looming, and wages struggle to keep pace with the actual cost of living.”
Her message was concise and effective: “With a renewed commitment to social and economic justice, we will create a stronger America together. Because America wins by fighting for our shared values against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That is who we are, and when we do so, never wavering, the state of our union will always be strong.”
And while centrist hacks (and complicit mainstream media outlets) attempted to construe Sen. Bernie Sanders’s State of the Union response as a racially motivated upstaging, his State of the Union response, which he has given for the past two years, was, in fact, a complement to Abrams’s successful rebuttal.
Whereas Abrams had only 10 minutes to respond, a limitation intrinsic to the party’s official address, Sanders had the space to articulate, in detail, exactly where Trump went wrong. If winning the game is about accurately diagnosing the country’s problems, then Bernie came to play.
“I want to talk to you about the major crisis facing our country that, regrettably, President Trump chose not to discuss,” began Sanders. America is great again, he offered, appropriating Trump’s thesis before flipping it on its head: At least it is “for the members of his Mar-a-Lago country club.”
“For many of President Trump’s billionaire friends, the truth is they have never ever had it so good,” argued Sanders. “As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘This country has socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for the poor.’” Today, as then, the economy is great for the rich. Twenty-five hedge fund managers on Wall Street made nearly twice as much as all 140,000 kindergarten teachers in America, explained Sanders. Meanwhile, the “real wages for the average American worker are lower today then they were in 1972 … 46 years ago.” If Trump once wanted Americans to focus on “real wages,” Sanders was happy to oblige.
Sanders adroitly undermined Trump’s claim that his leadership resulted in low unemployment numbers, pointing out that job creation tapered off during Trump’s first year. He explained that the average worker received a raise of merely $1.60 a week, while “the three richest people in America saw their wealth increase by more than $68 billion.” He argued that Trump was right to want to address infrastructure, but wrong to try to privatize our highways — selling them off to the highest bidder for individual gain at the cost of citizens.
Sanders painted a clear picture of the winners and losers of the Trump era. Under this administration, Walmart, Pfizer, and other big corporations have paid out big bonuses to their CEOs while laying off employees — many of whom were already struggling to get by with the support of the social safety net. And the Vermont senator called Trump out for vowing to protect that social safety net as he supported cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
Sanders pointedly highlighted Trump’s hypocrisy about violence committed by undocumented immigrants, explaining that they commit less crime than natural-born Americans. He called out Trump for talking about the murder of Americans by an undocumented man in Nevada while staying silent about the deadliest incident of gun violence to ever happen in America, which also took place in Nevada in 2017. Sanders castigated Trump for failing to mention climate change, and for undermining the security of “Dreamers.”
But in the most powerful part of his address, Sanders didn’t merely react to Trump. In an ad lib not captured in the official transcripts, Sanders asked the only question that really matters: “Why don’t you do what the American people want you to do rather than what wealthy campaign contributors want?”
What do the American people want? Sanders ran down the stats:
According to a Fox News poll, 70 percent of Americans support a tax increase on families making over $10 million. According to Reuters, 70 percent of Americans and 52 percent of Republicans support “Medicare for All.” Seventy-two percent of Americans, including 51 percent of Republicans, want to expand Social Security benefits. According to Gallup, 76 percent of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, want the country to spend on infrastructure. Ninety-two percent of Americans want Medicare to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. Sixty-four percent of Americans, including 51 percent of Republicans, believe marijuana should be legal. Over 94 percent of Americans support background checks for all gun purchases.… And on and on and on.
A $15 minimum wage; free public college; government assistance for child care — what Americans want are progressive policies. So, Sanders asked, “why isn’t Congress and the White House doing what the American people want them to do?”
The answer is not complicated, he explained in a familiar but still salient refrain. “The answer has everything to do with the power of the monied interests.” Greed is destroying the nation, says Sanders, not Mexicans. The 1 percent is the source of American hardship, not the border.
In a separate response for the Working Families Party, Mandela Barnes, Wisconsin’s new lieutenant governor and a rising progressive star, hit some of the same notes as Sanders, singling out the wealthy few as a barrier to social justice advocacy. “We need a movement that sees our fights for economic justice, and racial justice, and climate justice, and for a real and reflective democracy as all bound up together,” he said. “Our movement seeks not only to change what is possible, but what is expected. We must commit ourselves to an America that works for the many, not the few.”
Senator Bernie Sanders looks at his notes as he watches the State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol Building on Feb. 5, 2019 in Washington, D.C.
Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
There was perhaps no greater testament to the power of Sanders’s reframing than the fact that Trump’s remarks seemed to anticipate not the official Democratic Party’s response, but rather the rhetoric most famously advanced by Sanders and fellow democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“Here, in the United States,” said Trump, “we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. America was founded on liberty and independence — and not government coercion, domination, and control. We are born free, and we will stay free.”
But Sanders, who was spotted scribbling notes during Trump’s address, was prepared to respond to this line of attack: “Trump said, ‘We are born free, and we will stay free.’ Well, I say to President Trump: People are not truly free when they can’t afford to go to the doctor when they are sick. People are not truly free when they cannot afford to buy the prescription drugs they desperately need. People are not truly free when they are unable to retire with dignity. People are not truly free when they are exhausted because they are working longer and longer hours for low wages. People are not truly free when they cannot afford a decent place in which to live. People certainly are not free when they cannot afford to feed their families.”
By the end of Sanders’s remarks, it was clear why Trump felt the need to call out socialism. Genuine, progressive populism — messaging that put society’s and people’s interests first — is a threat to Trump’s oligarchy-dressed-in-populist-clothing. Ocasio-Cortez agrees.
“I think that he needs to do it because he feels like — he feels himself losing on the issues,” Ocasio-Cortez told Rachel Maddow following Trump’s remarks. “Every single policy proposal that we have adopted and presented to the American public has been overwhelmingly popular, even some with a majority of Republican voters supporting what we’re talking about.”
“I think he sees himself losing on the issues, he sees himself losing on the wall in the southern border, and he needs to grasp at an ad hominem attack, and this is his way of doing it. What we need to realize is happening is this is an issue of authoritarian regime versus democracy. In order for him to try to dissuade or throw people off the scent of the trail, he has to really make and confuse the public. And I think that that’s exactly what he’s trying to do.”
Ocasio-Cortez is right; fear tactics and money only go so far. To paraphrase both Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders: They’ve got money, but we’ve got people.
The post Trump’s State of the Union Address Reveals His Growing Anxiety Over Encroaching Left-Wing Populism appeared first on The Intercept.
Washington tem tentado derrubar o governo venezuelano há pelo menos 17 anos, mas a administração de Trump assumiu uma postura mais abertamente agressiva do que seus antecessores. Na semana passada, funcionários do governo norte-americano elevaram seus esforços à potência máxima ao consagrar o seu escolhido para suceder o presidente venezuelano Nicolás Maduro antes mesmo de qualquer golpe de estado. O membro do congresso da Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, de 35 anos, anunciou que era agora o presidente, e a administração de Trump, juntamente com governos aliados, imediatamente o reconheceram como tal – tudo ocorrendo conforme um plano organizado previamente.
Está claro que o objetivo de Donald Trump é uma mudança de regime; sua administração não está nem tentando esconder isso. E seus aliados, como o vice-presidente Mike Pence e o senador republicano Marco Rubio, da Flórida, há muito tempo têm deixado óbvio o que buscam.
Seria um erro terrível seguir nesse caminho. As políticas de Trump apenas pioraram o sofrimento dos venezuelanos e tornaram quase impossível para o país sair de sua prolongada depressão econômica e hiperinflação.
Uma solução negociada é necessária para resolver o conflito político na Venezuela e, ainda assim, o compromisso do governo Trump com uma mudança de regime fora do sistema legal está rapidamente impedindo essa opção.Uma solução negociada é necessária para resolver o conflito político na Venezuela e, ainda assim, o compromisso do governo Trump com uma mudança de regime fora do sistema legal está rapidamente impedindo essa opção. Ainda pior, a estratégia aparente de Trump é aumentar o sofrimento através de sanções – algumas delas recém-anunciadas – até que uma fração dos militares leve adiante um golpe de estado para criar um novo governo favorável a Washington.
A legitimidade da eleição presidencial de 2018, boicotada pela oposição, ainda está sob discussão, mas os principais problemas com a estratégia de promover uma mudança de regime têm a ver com outras questões. A Venezuela é um país polarizado e derrubar o governo – mesmo que Washington não estivesse envolvida – apenas aumentaria essa polarização e as chances de maior violência ou até mesmo uma guerra civil.
Veja o exemplo da Nicarágua, onde em 1990 esquerdistas sandinistas e seus oponentes apoiados pelos EUA concordaram em acertar suas diferenças através de uma eleição. Ambos os lados tinham de concordar em certas condições para que os perdedores não fossem perseguidos: os sandinistas mantiveram controle sobre o exército após terem perdido as eleições e a paz foi mantida.
Compromissos necessários como esses seriam impossíveis de ocorrer sob a estratégia de mudança de regime que a administração de Trump busca.
A Venezuela é polarizada em suas linhas políticas e tem sido assim desde que Hugo Chávez foi eleito presidente em 1998 e lançou sua Revolução Bolivariana. A tentativa da oposição de derrubar Chávez em um golpe militar em 2002, apoiada e incitada por funcionários do governo George W. Bush, assim como a hesitante disposição das lideranças de oposição em aceitar o resultado das eleições democráticas em anos seguintes assentaram as bases para muitos anos de desconfiança.
No entanto, a polarização política da Venezuela também cruza com um grande abismo que permeia a maior parte da sociedade latino-americana: uma divisão de classe e raça. Assim como na maior parte das Américas, as duas questões estão correlacionadas. Nos protestos de oposição ocorridos na última década, era possível ver essas diferenças nas roupas vestidas e na cor da pele dos manifestantes pró e contra o governo. Os grupos de oposição e seus líderes eram consideravelmente mais brancos e originários de grupos com maior poder aquisitivo do que os venezuelanos que apoiavam o governo. Em manifestações mais recentes, houve um aumento nas ações contra o governo em regiões de classes trabalhadores e pobres de Caracas, mas a divisão entre classe e raça entre os chavistas e sua oposição não sumiu.
Outra linha da polarização venezuelana é a crença em soberania e autodeterminação. Os chavistas fizeram da independência da Venezuela em relação aos Estados Unidos o centro de sua causa, e seu governo, quando tinha dinheiro, buscou políticas no hemisfério que também trouxessem mais independência à região. A oposição e os inimigos do governo chavista, em contraste, agiram com proximidade do governo estadunidense nas últimas duas décadas – como pode ser visto na coordenação da última tentativa de golpe. A intervenção de Washington agrava a polarização nas questões de soberania e abre a oposição a acusações de alinhamento com um poder estrangeiro – e um poder que historicamente teve um papel terrível na região. Para compreender a hostilidade que isso criaria, imagine quanta animosidade foi gerada nos EUA pela intervenção russa na eleição presidencial de 2016 e multiplique isso por algumas ordens de grandeza.
O impacto polarizante da ação de Trump em prol de uma mudança de regime é o que torna isso tão perigoso.O impacto polarizante da ação de Trump em prol de uma mudança de regime é o que torna isso tão perigoso. A inflação é provavelmente de mais de 1 milhão por cento anualmente e estima-se que a economia tenha diminuído em 50% nos últimos cinco anos, um recorde latino-americano. Milhões deixaram o país em busca de trabalho. A oposição quase que certamente teria vencido a última eleição presidencial caso tivesse participado e se unido em torno de um candidato. (Na verdade, os Estados Unidos teriam ameaçado com sanções financeiras e pessoais o candidato de oposição que efetivamente participou, Henri Falcón, tentando evitar que ele concorresse a presidente.)
Embora as políticas econômicas do governo venezuelano tenham responsabilidade nos infortúnios do país, as sanções de Trump tornaram as coisas consideravelmente piores desde agosto de 2017, dizimando a indústria petrolífera e piorando a situação da falta de medicamentos que já matou tantos venezuelanos. As sanções de Trump também tornaram quase impossível para o governo tomar as medidas necessárias para sair da hiperinflação e depressão econômica.
Ainda que a mídia americana esteja silenciosa sobre o assunto, é importante perceber que as sanções de Trump são violentamente imorais – porque, de novo, elas matam pessoas – e, também, ilegais. Elas são proibidas sob a Carta da Organização dos Estados Americanos, a Carta das Nações Unidas e outras convenções internacionais das quais os EUA fazem parte. Tais sanções também violam a lei dos Estados Unidos, já que o presidente do país deve assumir, absurdamente, que a Venezuela representa “uma ameaça incomum e extraordinária à segurança nacional” dos EUA para que tais medidas sejam impostas.
A Venezuela não conseguirá sair da crise política em que está enquanto um lado tenta vencer o outro, como acreditam os proponentes da mudança de regime. O Vaticano assumiu um papel mediador em 2016, e o Uruguai e o México – que se mantiveram neutros no conflito político – ofereceram essa semana ajuda na mediação. Mas o time de Trump é uma influência poderosa sobre a oposição – e, até o momento, eles não demonstraram nenhum interesse em uma solução pacificadora.
Tradução: Maíra Santos
The post Os EUA ajudaram a levar a Venezuela ao caos – e Trump assegurará que as coisas permaneçam assim appeared first on The Intercept.
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Donald Trump received big bipartisan applause at his State of the Union. This week on Intercepted: As Trump openly pushed regime change in Venezuela, Democrats cheered him on. Trump also engaged in red-baiting during his speech by warning of the threat of socialism within the borders of the U.S. Jeremy Scahill talks about how economic sanctions are a mass-killing weapon intentionally aimed at the most vulnerable. Indian historian and journalist Vijay Prashad discusses the state of imperialism in the world, the battle for Venezuela, India’s upcoming election, and the history of U.S. dirty operations across the globe. As right-wing media and politicians have gone berserk over the FBI raid on the home of Trump crony Roger Stone, whistleblower Reality Winner remains behind bars. The Intercept’s Peter Maass discusses the hypocrisy surrounding the two cases and we hear excerpts from the recent play, “Is This a Room: Reality Winner Verbatim Transcription,” created by Tina Satter. The play is based entirely on the verbatim transcript of the FBI interrogation of Winner the day she was arrested. Plus, a sneak peak at the new film Donald Trump’s Day Off.
Transcript coming soon.
The post Trump Headlines a Benefit Concert for Imperialism appeared first on The Intercept.
The objection raised most frequently when it comes to a Green New Deal is its cost. It’s preposterous; it’s too expensive; we just can’t afford it.
But before scoffing at the prospect of the wealthiest nation in the history of the world funding such a project, it’s worth taking a look at what one of the country’s poorest states was recently able to spend.
South Carolina, in a bid to expand its generation of nuclear power in recent years, dropped $9 billion on a single project — and has nothing to show for it.
The boondoggle, which was covered widely in the Palmetto State press but got little attention nationally, sheds light on just how much money is genuinely available for an industrial-level energy transformation, if only the political will were there.
There are no firm figures tied to a Green New Deal, but former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s proposed version of the project would have cost between $700 billion and $1 trillion. The new plan, being crafted with the help of progressive groups like the Sunrise Movement and pushed to the top of the House legislative agenda by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives, promises more substantial change on a much shorter schedule. In addition to moving the U.S. to 100 percent renewable energy in 10 years, upgrading all residential and industrial buildings for energy efficiency, and eliminating greenhouse gases from manufacturing and agriculture, it includes a jobs guarantee and a recognition of the rights of tribal nations. Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey are planning to introduce legislation for the plan this week, Axios reported.
In South Carolina, lawmakers greenlighted a multibillion-dollar energy project and stuck utility customers with the tab. “In the private sector,” former Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Gregory Jaczko told The Intercept, “you would never be able to justify this.”
The saga, and related nuclear project failures, calls into question the role of new nuclear energy production in the effort to decarbonize the economy. New plants, Jaczko said, take too long to build for the urgency of the climate crisis and simply aren’t cost effective, given advances in renewable energy. “I don’t see nuclear as a solution to climate change,” Jaczko said. “It’s too expensive, and would take too long if it could even be deployed. There are cheaper, better alternatives. And even better alternatives that are getting cheaper, faster.”
The Nuclear BoondoggleIt started in 2008. SCE&G and Santee Cooper announced plans to add two nuclear reactors to the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station in Jenkinsville, South Carolina, and contracted Westinghouse Electric Company, owned by Toshiba, to handle construction. The state’s Public Service Commission (PSC) approved the plan in early 2009, with construction slated to begin in 2012, and the first reactor set to begin operating in 2016.
In late 2011, SCE&G announced the project’s first delay in a quarterly report to the Office of Regulatory Staff, which represents utilities in front of the PSC, citing “module redesign, production issues, manpower issues and Quality Assurance and Quality Control (QA/QC) issues.” The company estimated an 11-month setback and said its contractor, the Shaw Group, operating out of a facility in Louisiana, reported that the issues had been resolved. But SCE&G said they were still monitoring the situation “carefully” and considered “it to be a focus area for the project.” The Shaw facility would later face a federal probe over unrelated allegations that workers broke protocol and falsified records, which employees admitted to.
The company alerted more delays in mid-2013, citing manufacturing issues. Soon, Santee Cooper asked SCE&G to bring in another company to manage the project. Not long after that, both companies announced the project would cost $1.2 billion more than they’d expected. Again, they pushed back the project’s completion date.
Documents released as the project unraveled show that both SCE&G and Santee Cooper were well aware of shortcomings, mismanagement, and lack of oversight that eventually made the reactors impossible to complete, years before Westinghouse declared bankruptcy and both companies pulled out.
“They were allowed to charge the customers for all the money that they spent, plus a return,” Jaczko explained. “Even though they failed to deliver the project.”
Only 48 percent of South Carolinians know about the failed program, according to an October statewide poll surveying electric ratepayers.
“The utilities are incredibly powerful political lobbies in the state,” Jaczko said. “It’s now $2.3 billion that they’re gonna be able to get,” he said, and that doesn’t include the rate of return Dominion says it’s entitled to.
“It’s insane for a project that’s done nothing, and never will. And is just a giant hole in the ground,” he said. “Well, a filled-in hole now, at this point.”
Photo: Chuck Burton/AP
Thanks to a state law passed in 2007, residents in South Carolina are footing the bill for a massive failed nuclear reactor program that cost a total of $9 billion. Analysts say that corporate mismanagement and poor oversight means residents and their families will be paying for that failed energy program — which never produced a watt of energy — for the next 20 years or more.
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson has since called parts of the law, the Base Load Review Act, “constitutionally suspect,” and state senators have voted to overturn it — but that wouldn’t necessarily get ratepayers off the hook for paying for the failed project.
Both the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission opened separate investigations into the failed project, and at least 19 lawsuits have been filed against one company involved.
The two South Carolina companies, South Carolina Electric & Gas and Santee Cooper, a state-owned utility, spent $9 billion on a plan to build two nuclear reactors and eventually canceled it due to a series of cost miscalculations and corporate buyouts that left one construction company bankrupt and sent shockwaves all the way to Japanese tech giant Toshiba.
Dominion Energy, an energy giant in the region, has since bought out SCE&G’s parent company, SCANA Corp., for $7.9 billion — almost the entire cost of the failed project — pledged to partially refund ratepayers and cut electricity rates, which SCE&G hiked at least nine times throughout the project’s first eight years in order to pay for it.
When asked about the failed project, South Carolina Republican Rep. William Timmons laughed. He said ratepayers would still pay “a substantial portion” of the bill. “The SCANA portion, which is — approximately half has been substantially dealt with, with their restructuring and the purchase of Dominion,” he told The Intercept. “What’s left now is the Santee Cooper portion, and I think that’s still yet to be decided.”
“It is a major issue that the legislature’s dealing with,” Timmons said. The congressman didn’t have any updates on how or when the remainder of the bill would resolved.
After Dominion bought out SCANA and settled their portion of the bill, ratepayers are still responsible for about $2.3 billion. “For nothing, they get nothing,” Jaczko told The Intercept.
“They basically pay money up front for a project that never materialized, and now are still gonna be asked to pay for it. And that is a significant break from the way that traditional rate recovery used to work,” he said.
“It used to be that you didn’t start charging for a plant unless it was done and operating. Whether it was a nuclear plant, or a coal plant, or any other kind of thing.”
But because nuclear power involves heavier upfront capital costs and financing charges, Jaczko explained, states looking to revive nuclear power tried to bypass those extra costs by passing laws allowing companies to save money by recovering the cost of financing the projects during the period of construction.
“Even the law that was written in South Carolina envisioned the fact that the project could get canceled. But of course everybody promised that that wouldn’t happen,” Jaczko said.
Sen. Tim Scott told The Intercept that it was hard to pin the blame for the disastrous project on any one entity. “But certainly the Westinghouse bid coming back three times higher than their original estimation made the likelihood of success challenging. And then all the decisions that were made pending that being an accurate price all fell apart,” he said. He did not answer a question of whether ratepayers would have to pay $2.3 billion for nothing.
For conservatives and corporate-friendly Democrats, the idea of spending absurd amounts of money on a comprehensive national plan to wean the economy off dirty energy and create sustainable jobs is out of the question. It’s an idea much easier to swallow when its stated purpose is corporate profit, as in South Carolina. Or at the federal level, national defense. President Donald Trump signed into law last summer a $717 billion defense bill, up from $600 billion in 2016, and around $300 billion in 2000. In December the president tweeted that U.S. military spending was “Crazy!”
For scale, the national deficit for fiscal year 2019 is just shy of $1 trillion. Of the $4.4 trillion federal budget, military spending across agencies makes up close to $800 billion. The federal government spent about $1.1 trillion on health care in 2018. The latest government shutdown cost the U.S. an estimated $11 billion, the Congressional Budget Office reported. Trump requested $5.7 billion for a border wall, and Republicans in the House found it.
But $9 billion and zero nuclear reactors later, ratepayers in South Carolina have no say after their legislators played with the state’s resources and lost. If one state can throw away $9 billion on a project that never happened, legislators in Washington will have a difficult time claiming that they can’t find federal dollars to finance a plan that 81 percent of registered voters support.
“We can pay for a Green New Deal in the same way we pay for — whether it’s wars, or tax cuts, or any of the other great social programs that we have,” Greg Carlock told The Intercept. He’s a senior adviser at Data for Progress, where he authored a report outlining policy proposals for the Green New Deal. Unlike Ocasio-Cortez, Carlock says he disagrees with the argument that you have to tax the wealthy, or the middle class, to pay for a Green New Deal. Instead, he argues, Congress should just authorize new spending, like it does for everything else.
“There has been a really well-crafted narrative to bring up fears about deficit spending and the debt,” Carlock said. “I think that we, one, have to just break out of this fear that somehow this number that we call debt is a bad thing. Because it’s not the same kind of debt that a household has, or that a business has,” he said.
“The driver of inflation is not how many ones and zeros we’ve put out there,” Carlock said. “The driver of inflation is the availability of limited biophysical resources that that money is trying to go out and buy. And that’s why, when you think about this from a sustainability perspective, a Green New Deal that tries to improve the sustainability of our natural resources, is actually meant as a deflationary role.”
“The greatest threat to our economy and inflation is not the debt, it’s the climate crisis,” he added, “which will put an even greater strain on our resources. The whole point of a Green New Deal is to mitigate those threats, and it will be cheaper than the cost of future climate disasters.”
Investing in clean energy, sustainable jobs, and a basic standard of health care would actually save money in the long run — tens to hundreds of billions of dollars per year, according to a climate assessment released under the Trump administration this year. The argument that the money isn’t there just doesn’t hold up.
“Any politician whose first question about the Green New Deal is how to pay for it isn’t taking seriously the millions who will die if we fail to take action on the scale scientists say we need,” Stephen Hanlon, communications director for the Sunrise Movement, said in a statement to The Intercept.
“What we are talking about is a putting millions of people to work so they can buy food for their families, etc. This is the greatest investment in the American economy in generations, and that kind of investment pays substantial dividends,” Hanlon said.
“We will pay for this the same way we paid for the WWII (sic) and the original New Deal: deciding it’s a priority as a nation and that we can’t afford not to take action.”
Meanwhile, a $28 billion nuclear project in Georgia is headed for a similar fate.
The post South Carolina Spent $9 Billion to Dig a Hole in the Ground and Then Fill it Back in appeared first on The Intercept.
Last summer, Albertina Contreras could never have imagined that she would be spending an early February evening sitting in the gilded chamber of the U.S. Congress. In May, Contreras was locked in solitary confinement for eight days, without her daughter, Yakelyn — who had recently been taken from her by armed border guards.
Last night, Contreras was in Washington, D.C., listening to the man whose signature policies had incited those guards to tear Yakelyn away from her. President Donald Trump’s deluded fulminations against people like Contreras came to the fore again on Tuesday, as he stood on the dais and proclaimed that he was creating a “safe, lawful, modern, and secure” immigration system. And there Contreras was, with Yakelyn — it was the young girl’s 12th birthday — as special guests of Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., watching Trump spout his anti-immigrant anger to the nation.
“It’s still a hard reality for all the moms and dads who are still not reunited with their kids. Really, it’s a moment of desperation.”Trump — in line with his Republican Party’s agenda — took the time to bring up the tragic cases of people whose family members were allegedly killed by undocumented immigrants, noting “the heartache they have had to endure.” The children who recently died in Border Patrol custody went unremarked upon; nothing was said of the humanitarian aid workers being prosecuted and convicted for leaving water on trails where migrants die of thirst; no thought was spared for the heartache endured by families, like Contreras’s, who were torn apart by government agents, nor for those who remain separated from one another.
“Very happy,” Contreras said when I asked, a few hours before the State of the Union, how she would feel about being in the same room as Trump. “Thankful to be here. I don’t feel fear.” What would she say to Trump if she got a chance to speak directly to him? “I’d tell him that he should look into his conscience, that as migrants we have rights, that we are all worthy of that.”
Yakelyn holds up an official invitation to the State of the Union address.
Photo: Courtesy of Taylor Levy
Contreras is one of a handful of immigrant guests at the State of the Union — their stories highlighting the injustices of Trump’s bigotries and his policies toward people who come to the U.S. seeking refuge. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., invited Yeni González, another mother who was separated from her three children at the border. And Victorina Morales, an undocumented woman, worked as a housekeeper for years at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. She will attend the speech as the guest of Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J. “I’m not scared to show my face,” Morales, who recently quit her job and came forward, told the New York Times after being invited to Washington. “I am not speaking for me, I’m speaking on behalf of millions of undocumented immigrants who live in the United States.”
Trump’s immigration policies have led to a broad crackdown on people like Morales and Contreras — those who seek to come here out of desperation and, in some cases, arrive only to continue living in insecurity. Trump has used U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the interior to chase down people who are in the country without authorization. ICE has targeted their places of work, their homes, hospitals, and courts, as well as the sanctuaries where they organize to help those forced to navigate the byzantine bureaucracies of immigration law. The result has been devastated families and communities. Simultaneously, Trump uses the rhetoric of nativist demagogues to create the impression of a migration crisis at the border, while the real crises have been of his own making. The activists who work to help immigrants on the border have, again, been targeted, to say nothing of the families that were ripped apart in a jarring display of American cruelty — the kind of cruelty Contreras experienced firsthand.
Amazing to spend the day today with Yakelin. She is resilient, poised, and smart (as is her mom). Why is Donald Trump scared of them? They are exactly the kind of people we should want in America, not building a wall to keep out or locking up. pic.twitter.com/tbKzrkfhhD
— Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) February 6, 2019
Trump’s rhetoric at the House of Representatives on Tuesday, though bowdlerized for a national audience, mirrors the sort of language Contreras encountered when she first crossed the border. “You’re animals,” a border guard told her. “Don’t you watch the news? We don’t want to see more immigrants here.” The venomous guards prompted Contreras’s daughter, Yakelyn, and other children to scream, but Contreras was used to that kind of language, that kind of cruelty: It was why she was fleeing Guatemala.
“You’re animals. Don’t you watch the news? We don’t want to see more immigrants here.”Guatemala has one of the highest rates of deadly violence against women in the world, and Contreras’s ex-boyfriend regularly beat her in front of her children, she said. After going to the police for help and realizing they weren’t going to protect her, she set out for the United States. While she left her two youngest boys with her sister, Contreras didn’t want to leave her daughter, who would soon be a teenager, to suffer gender-based scorn and physical abuse.
For the last few years, the U.S. had served as an inconsistent refuge for women fleeing such violence. But last fall, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions ruled on a case limiting women fleeing domestic violence from access to asylum protections. (The ruling applies to other countries as well.) Sessions’s argument was that domestic violence is a “private” crime — a notion that leaves women unprotected by the law and reinforces misogynistic tropes.
Such a senseless overturning of a legal precedent was pulled off without much fanfare, perhaps because it came in a country where violence against women remains entrenched — indeed, in a country where the president, who stood tonight before Contreras to give a celebrated speech, has lewdly boasted of groping women.
It’s not hard to imagine Contreras cringing when she heard Trump say, “I want people to come into our country in the largest numbers ever, but they have to come in legally.” Contreras twice tried to cross the bridge in El Paso, Texas, to ask for asylum — an act that is legal under both U.S. and international law. Both times, Customs and Border Protection guards turned her away, forcing her to make a dangerous crossing with her daughter.
After suffering the first eight days of her detention at the border in solitary confinement, Contreras was held for more than 40 additional days before she was released in El Paso. She found temporary refuge at the Annunciation House, a faith-based charity that operates a shelter. At that point, she hadn’t spoken to her daughter for over 50 days, according to Taylor Levy, the legal coordinator at Annunciation House. Yakelyn, meanwhile, was almost 12 hours away in an Office of Refugee Resettlement facility in the southern tip of Texas. Levy told me Yakelyn attended classes and was comfortable there, but she was also scared. She recalled watching other separated children getting calls from their parents and bursting into tears. Some of the kids were learning that they or their parents were being deported — without being reunified first. Yakelyn’s tribulation was to know nothing: She hadn’t heard from her mother.
Finally, with the help of Levy, Contreras and her daughter were reunited. They moved to Tennessee to fight their immigration case. Another attorney representing the mother-daughter pair, Andrew Free, told me that Yakelyn is pursuing special immigrant juvenile status, a classification afforded to children who have been abandoned, abused, or neglected by their parents — in Yakelyn’s case, her father. And Contreras is applying for “withholding of removal,” a legal status that protects people from deportation but does not allow them to become citizens or travel outside of the country.
Free said that newly discovered memos by senior administrators and legal decisions in federal courts cast Trump’s family separation policy as an act comparable to kidnapping. What happened to Yakelyn “contains all of the essential elements of kidnapping,” he said. If Contreras doesn’t receive the protection of withholding of removal, Free explained, she may qualify for a U-visa, which is for people who have suffered a crime and are willing to work with law enforcement. “It shouldn’t matter that the people who effectuated the kidnapping, who took someone against their will and without legal justification,” are the U.S. government, he said.
Contreras, for her part, had a message for the family members still separated from each other: “That they have faith and patience. And that they be very courageous, like we’ve had to be.” She told me she wants to speak up and be present at the State of the Union for their sakes. She said, “I hope they get their kids back soon.”
The post Trump Ripped This Immigrant Family Apart. They Watched the State of the Union Together From the Congressional Gallery. appeared first on The Intercept.
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Recently, news broke that Virginia’s Democratic governor and attorney general both wore blackface in the 1980s. The controversy now enveloping the state has seemed all too familiar, as blackface photos of even more politicians have come out in recent years. How does this keep happening?
On this week’s Radio Atlantic, Alex Wagner asks Vann and Adam about the history of blackface: its origins, its meaning, and how it’s remained a presence in American culture for so long. Then they turn to the situation in Virginia. What does this revelation say about race and politics across the South?
Listen for:
An explanation of how blackface came to not only exist, but became the most popular form of entertainment in America
Vann explaining how Northam’s 2017 election in the wake of Charlottesville factors into the state’s current crisis
How this moment may cause lasting damage to the Democratic party in Virginia
Voices:
Alex Wagner (@AlexWagner)
Adam Serwer (@AdamSerwer)
Vann R. Newkirk II (@fivefifths)
From the travel ban to the border wall, immigration has played an outsize role in Donald Trump’s presidency—and Tuesday night’s State of the Union address was no exception. He mentioned more immigration-related words than his predecessors, linking immigrants with higher crime:
Study after study does not support that claim. At one point, Trump diverted from his usual talking points on the subject, indicating that he’s open to accepting more high-skilled legal immigrants. If it wasn’t a spontaneous wink of Trumpian hyperbole, argues Reihan Salam, it could be a promising sign of a pivot in the immigration debate.
In his speech, Trump also took up the mantle of eradicating AIDS in the U.S. It’s a laudable goal that is far from impossible—but it would require an upheaval of his policies and rhetoric as president. Putting an end to the AIDS epidemic would be elusive without outreach to racial minorities and LGBTQ people who are most at risk of getting HIV, but these people disproportionately lack health insurance—a problem the president has exacerbated—and are skeptical of the president in the wake of his ban on transgender military service.
Trump made a ploy to lambaste late-term abortions, in response to recent bills in New York and Virginia that would expand women’s options for ending their pregnancies in the third trimester. The Virginia legislation ultimately failed, and Trump’s invocation of it during the State of the Union looked to be an attempt to shore up support among his anti-abortion base. The partisan brawl over the two pieces of legislation could presage more fights over abortion rights, as the Supreme Court’s lurch to the right puts the future of abortion on unsteady footing.
Evening Reads
(Damian Dovarganes / AP)New York City announced on Tuesday that it’s cracking down on restaurants that sell food and drinks containing cannabidiol (CBD), a compound that can be derived from cannabis.
“CBD has shown real promise as a treatment for things like epilepsy and anxiety in early research, but as a consumer product, it’s largely unproven and unregulated, which makes it difficult for people to understand what they’re buying or what effect it will have on them. Even in its simplest forms, CBD has no labeling standards or regulated dosage guidelines, and businesses often don’t disclose exactly how much they’ve put in a brownie or latte.”
(Ilya Naymushin / Reuters)
It’s no surprise that typical parenting styles vary wildly across the world. But one surprising factor may play a role: a society’s level of income inequality.
“Parents want their children to do well in life, to be successful. And in a society that is very unequal—where there are lots of opportunities if one does well and very negative outcomes if one is less successful—parents will be more worried that their children won’t become high achievers in school. But if you go to a country where there is less inequality, parents may be less worried about that, not because they care less about their children, but because the negative outcomes aren’t as bad.”
Looking for our daily mini crossword? Try your hand at it here—the puzzle gets more difficult through the week.
Concerns, comments, questions, typos? Email Shan Wang at swang@theatlantic.com
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It’s Wednesday, February 6.
Today in the implosion of top Virginia Democrats: The state’s governor, Ralph Northam, still isn’t resigning in the aftermath of the scandal over a racist photo from his medical-school yearbook page. Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, who would succeed Northam, is facing his own problems over a serious allegation of sexual assault, which was detailed in a lengthy statement from his accuser today. Then today, Mark Herring, the state’s attorney general and third in line for the governorship, released a statement in which he admitted to wearing blackface in college. It’s all shaping up to be a catastrophic situation for Virginia Democrats, writes David A. Graham.
The House held a historic hearing on gun-violence prevention—its first in eight years. Also of note: Active-shooter drills may not be effective and may instead be psychologically damaging, Erika Christakis argues in the March Issue of The Atlantic.
Last night, President Donald Trump delivered his second State of the Union address. Here are the main takeaways from the spectacle:
The president called for unity, but he never laid out a strategy, or even a desire, to achieve it. Notably, Trump mentioned the Robert Mueller probe—which he avoided in last year’s speech—and pushed once again for a wall at the southern border. But he mentioned lowering prescription drug prices and a grand effort to eliminate HIV, and tipped his hat to last year’s bipartisan criminal-justice reform. Progressive Democrats roundly panned the president’s speech—but some moderate Democrats found things to like, reports Elaine Godfrey. These Democrats said they see a path forward for deal making on issues like infrastructure and the opioid epidemic. Trump condemned abortion using graphic language, jumping on the growing criticism of a recent law in New York that would expand access to late-term abortions. His State of the Union comments might signal the GOP’s approach to abortion policy in 2020: the use of “extreme cases as a powerful wedge issue.” In the response, the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams laid out key Democratic policy measures, notably focusing on voting rights, an issue in which Abrams has special interest. Wearing white, the symbolic color of women’s suffrage, the Democratic women of the House of Representatives took a speech that wasn’t about them and managed to turn it into one that was, Megan Garber argues.—Madeleine Carlisle and Olivia Paschal
Snapshot
Female members of Congress cheer after President Donald Trump acknowledges the increased number of women in Congress during his State of the Union address on Tuesday. (J. Scott Applewhite / AP)
Ideas From The AtlanticTrump Doubles Down (David Frum)
“Successful State of the Union speeches are backed by considered plans of action. If a president talks about infrastructure modernization, it’s because he and his party have an infrastructure bill ready to go. The dysfunctional Trump administration does not.” → Read on.
The Vatican and the Gulf Have a Common Enemy (Graeme Wood)
“For the past week, the United Arab Emirates has been preparing for one of the most significant interreligious events in modern memory. A conference on “global fraternity” has featured rabbis, imams, swamis, cardinals, and obscure religious officiaries whose titles I had never heard before.” → Read on.
What I’ve Gained by Leaving the Republican Party (Peter Wehner)
“It would be deeply unfair to claim that most Republicans are bigots. But it is fair to say that most Republicans today are willing to tolerate without dissent, and in many cases enthusiastically support, a man whose appeal is based in large part on stoking racial and ethnic resentments, on attacking ‘the other.’” → Read on.
Trump’s Revealing Immigration Ad Lib (Reihan Salam)
“Given his propensity toward hyperbole, this could be dismissed as little more than a rhetorical flourish. One wonders, though, if it’s a sign of things to come.” → Read on.
◆Fight the Ship: Death and Valor on a Warship Doomed by Its Own Navy (T. Christian Miller, Megan Rose, and Robert Faturechi, ProPublica)
◆In Need of Water, an Idaho Town Turns to Its Neighbors (Emily Benson, High Country News)
◆It Will Take More Than Congress to Cure America’s War Addiction (Gunar Olsen, The New Republic)
◆That’s Not Actually True (Kiese Laymon, Scalawag)
We’re always looking for ways to improve The Politics & Policy Daily, and will be testing some formats throughout the new year. Concerns, comments, questions, typos? Let us know anytime here.
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In an interview for a 2016 Fader cover story, the rapper 21 Savage offered a rare glimpse into one of his most deeply held inspirations. The artist born She’yaa Bin Abraham-Joseph, who gained notoriety for his deadpan delivery of eerie tales said to be culled from his experiences with poverty and gang life in Atlanta, spoke about his longtime practice of Ifa. The West African religion is common in many Caribbean countries and Afro-diasporic communities in the United States, and he’d briefly referenced its role in his life earlier that year, during an interview with The Breakfast Club, the syndicated radio show. But here the rapper described a holistic reason Ifa appealed to him: “I’m African American. I’d rather follow an African religion,” he told The Fader before describing its tenets. “That’s my heritage.”
Though casual listeners know the rapper primarily for his chart-topping raps about worldly excesses—illicit drugs, emotionless sex, and riches of dubious provenance—21 Savage has also long exhibited an investment in the cultural products and historical legacies of black people around the world. Ifa, for example, is a Yoruba spiritual tradition; the practice finds its roots in what is now southwestern Nigeria and parts of Benin and Togo. Like many hallmarks of the African diaspora, Ifa’s primary route of travel to the Americas was the transatlantic slave trade.
For both the religion and the rapper who practices it, that pathway is a contested voyage. On Sunday morning, shortly before the Super Bowl commenced, the 26-year-old musician was reportedly detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 21 Savage was taken into custody following a “targeted operation” in the Atlanta area. ICE authorities allege that the artist came to the country on a visa in 2005, which he overstayed when it expired the following year. In a statement that emphasized Abraham-Joseph’s felony conviction (though not its later expungement), the agency spokesperson said that the rapper has been placed in “removal proceedings before the federal immigration courts.” The statement referred to him as a “United Kingdom national,” and later messaging cast the rapper’s Atlanta-driven popular image as a calculated falsehood: “His whole public persona is false,” the agency spokesperson reportedly told CNN’s Nick Valencia.
The rapper’s representatives have now publicly stated that he was brought to the United States at the age of 7. Alleging that he is under 23-hour lockdown, they referred to the arrest as a civil-law violation. Much of their ire rests not just with the circumstances of his arrest, but also with ICE’s framing of Abraham-Joseph’s inherent criminality: The agency did not note that he was brought to the U.S. as a minor (a circumstance many Dreamers share), or that he filed a visa application in 2017. Nor was there any explanation of the rapper’s ethnic background; Abraham-Joseph was born in London, but his family has direct links to Dominica, as he has discussed in interviews.
Immediately following news of the detainment, narratives echoing ICE’s language proliferated online. Many American-born fans did not further inquire about the rapper’s history, or consider that living in the U.S. through his early teen years might have influenced his decision to use the slippery catchall identifier “African American.” Instead, perhaps unsurprisingly, rap enthusiasts and casual observers alike began to recycle markedly unfunny and callous jokes. There were references to redcoats, Queen Elizabeth II, Hogwarts, and of course, tea—plus a dubbed-over rap video and edits to the cover of his latest album, i am > i was. Naturally, there were plenty of Drake comparisons.
These quips relied on the dangerous logic of ICE’s statement: the implication that Abraham-Joseph’s newly revealed immigration status renders him a fraudulent cultural interloper. This, despite the rapper having spent his formative years in Georgia’s DeKalb and Fulton Counties. The uncritical responses reflected an unfamiliarity with the agency’s wide-ranging tactics to discredit its detainees, and the broader systems that contribute to that targeting. Absent from many of the responses to the rapper’s detainment was a nuanced understanding of how dangerous the process of immigration can be, how mandatory assimilation can feel upon arrival in America, and how easily black humanity is revoked.
In her 2006 book, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, the critical theorist Saidiya Hartman chronicled and contextualized a trip she took to Ghana as a descendant of African people enslaved in the United States. Hartman framed her oft-thwarted attempts to reconstruct familial and ethnic histories as the lingering effects of a forced cultural amnesia: “Everyone told me a different story about how the slaves began to forget their past. Words like ‘zombie,’ ‘sorcerer,’ ‘witch,’ ‘succubus,’ and ‘vampire’ were whispered to explain it,” she wrote. “In these stories, which circulated throughout West Africa, the particulars varied, but all of them ended the same—the slave loses mother.”
Implicit in the idea of “losing mother” is the tragedy of losing the right to belong, or the ability to trace one’s history and attendant social context. It is a kind of internal displacement. Consider, then, the important comparison Hartman makes later in the text, between the forced migration that enslaved people endured and the conditions that drive Ghanaians on the continent to migrate from their country (most often to the U.S. or Europe):
In Ghana, they joked that if a slave ship bound for America docked on the coast today so many Ghanaians would volunteer for the passage that they would stampede one another trying to get on board.
But who would ever envy slaves or view a cargo hold as an opportunity or risk death to arrive in the Americas? … Each year young men and boys risked deadly voyages to escape poverty and joblessness, while girls fled to Abidjan and other cities and were trafficked internationally as prostitutes. It was the dire circumstances of the present that caused Ghanaians to make wisecracks about volunteering for the Middle Passage.
To understand the links between the conditions that shaped blackness in America and those that affect people outside the country, it’s instructive to consider antiblack violence—physical, psychological, social, and economic—as a global phenomenon. If Ghana, like many African and Caribbean nations, still grapples with the lingering effects of European colonial intervention, then even its highest-status citizens are not wholly free. More pointedly, exodus toward the U.S. from black nations is a doubly fraught endeavor: Even well-heeled immigrants are often leaving countries still dealing with the afterlife of colonial violence; on top of that, they must traverse oft-difficult conditions only to arrive in a country shaped by the peculiar institution of transatlantic slavery.
Black people born in the U.S., in turn, cannot always meaningfully lay claim to American citizenship. The birth certificate as a tool of identity verification was long denied to enslaved peoples and their descendants. Proving one’s citizenship without the kind of documentation often refused to black people in this country has often been a profoundly difficult task. Tracing genealogy, for example, often turns up reminders of both institutional violence and legal dead ends. But even black people in America who can point to verified legal documentation must contend with the constant suspicion of their foreignness: Former president Barack Obama, the Hawaii-born son of a Kenyan immigrant, spent much of his tenure plagued by rumors of a falsified origin story.
Pervasive antiblack sentiment challenges the accessibility of U.S. citizenship—but it also haunts the work and lives of the country’s most famous black thinkers. The profound racism that pushed W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Josephine Baker, and others out of the United States is most often discussed as a personal decision, but it also constituted a kind of forced de-citizening. As the professor and critic Hortense Spillers notes in her provocatively titled 2006 article “The Idea of Black Culture”: “Du Bois died in Accra, estranged from the land of his birth, on the eve of the 1963 March on Washington; slated to have appeared on the podium that day, Du Bois might be said to have missed the moment of a certain fruition.”
A similar de-citizening affects poor and disenfranchised people, at a much more granular level. ICE did not exist until 2003, but in the time since then, it’s ballooned to “more than 20,000 law enforcement and support personnel in more than 400 offices in the United States and around the world … [with] an annual budget of approximately $6 billion.” Its tactics often echo the existential divisions of Hartman’s “losing mother” idea. “The agency talks about, and treats, human beings like they’re animals,” the then–congressional candidate Dan Canon told The Nation last year. “They scoop up people in their apartments or their workplaces and take them miles away from their spouses and children.”
In the fiscal year ending September 30, 2018, ICE ordered a reported 287,741 deportations, with African immigrants representing the biggest proportional spike. For black immigrants, who are overrepresented in ICE holdings, the agency’s labyrinthine workings can operate in concert with the more localized discrimination propagated by the criminal-justice system.
Such discrimination affects native-born black Americans as well. Last April, the Florida resident Peter Sean Brown, who was born in Philadelphia, was detained in immigration holdings and told he would be deported to Jamaica, a country he said he’d never seen. Brown’s place of residence “is among more than a dozen Florida counties that in January 2018 entered a new arrangement with ICE under what are called ‘Basic Ordering Agreements,’” The Washington Post reported. “They stipulate that the federal agency compensate sheriffs to the tune of $50 for extending the detention of ‘criminal aliens,’ as the National Sheriffs’ Association put it in a statement.”
Immigration authorities have said that 21 Savage’s detention was the result of an early morning traffic stop. But his arrest also happened a week after the rapper addressed the border crisis during his performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, days after he performed at a Super Bowl concert alongside fellow Atlanta musicians, and hours before fans of the Los Angeles Rams and New England Patriots traversed Atlanta’s newly revitalized downtown area to enter the $1.6 billion Mercedes-Benz Stadium. If not in intention, then certainly in symbolic effect, the rapper’s highly publicized detention also underscored a troubling dynamic spurred by many commercial sporting events: a palpable uptick in surveillance, jailings, and social ostracizing of vulnerable populations in the host area—a reminder of who local authorities deem worth protecting.
On Tuesday evening, two days after 21 Savage’s arrest, President Donald Trump gave his 2019 State of the Union address. In the speech, he employed a familiar strategy: praising ICE and his own efforts to build a wall along the nation’s southern border, while stoking anti-immigrant sentiment among his base. “In the last two years, our brave ICE officers made 266,000 arrests of criminal aliens, including those charged or convicted of nearly 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes, and 4,000 killings,” the president said, before pledging: “I will never abolish our heroes from ICE.”
Such rhetoric and the policy decisions that it inspires have taken “the handcuffs off law enforcement,” as ICE’s former acting director Thomas Homan once said, praising Trump’s approach to immigration. Since the news of 21 Savage’s detention was reported, it’s the rapper’s identity—not the difficult hurdles of immigration—that has been called into question. Abraham-Joseph’s representatives have made various statements addressing the status of his visa. Still, his birth certificate has been leaked, an uncomfortable parallel to the Obama birtherism that first propelled Trump into the spotlight as a political figure. The rapper’s case is shocking, but its foundation is familiar: the country’s steadfast tradition of scrutinizing black people and immigrants alike.
Not long ago, it looked to some like the conservative media might be on the verge of open revolt against President Donald Trump. After a five-week standoff with congressional Democrats over his proposed border wall, the self-styled master negotiator had blinked—agreeing to reopen the government without securing any funds for his signature campaign promise. Anger and outrage rippled across the #MAGA media landscape.
“TRUMP CAVES,” declared The Daily Caller.
“NO WALL FUNDS,” bellowed the Drudge Report.
On Fox Business, the host Lou Dobbs concluded that Speaker Nancy Pelosi had “just whipped the president of the United States,” and “to deny it is to escape from reality.” And in Breitbart News, a home-page article proclaimed, “The White House finally caved to Democrats’ demands, despite Trump’s repeated assertions this week that he would not do so.”
This rare outcry spawned a round of trouble-in-paradise coverage of the tensions between Trump and his typically adoring media cheerleaders. Some even wondered whether the split could ever be repaired without a wall getting built.
As it turned out, though, Trump knew just how to win them back: Get behind a podium, and change the subject.
Indeed, less than two weeks after they were attacking him for his shutdown surrender, many of the same high-profile voices on the right are now rushing to celebrate Trump’s triumph at the State of the Union.
At The Daily Caller, the gauzy headline leading the homepage Wednesday morning read, “Choosing Greatness.” Drudge went with “TRUMP ROCKS HOUSE.”
Dobbs could hardly wait for the speech to end before describing it as “a hallelujah moment,” and “the best State of the Union I’ve ever heard.” And at Breitbart, the reconciliation was marked with a joyous headline: “TRUMP MAKES MAGA GREAT AGAIN.”
[Read: Trump’s call for unity was never going to be real]
Notably, the bulk of this praise was not directed at the border-security rhetoric in Trump’s address. (The immigration section of the speech was largely a retread of the talking points he’s been deploying, with limited success, for months). Instead, right-wing outlets played up his call for a federal prohibition on late-term abortions and his repudiation of socialism.
The enthusiasm for these elements of the speech is understandable, of course. Among the ranks of pro-Trump pundits, immigration is not the only animating issue. Some are dyed-in-the-wool social conservatives; others have roots in the small-government Tea Party movement. Meanwhile, some avowed restrictionists—most prominently, Ann Coulter—weren’t quite ready to let Trump off the hook. Coulter spent much of Trump’s address needling him on Twitter. “45 minutes in, we got 30 seconds on the wall,” she complained at one point. “This was the lamest, sappiest, most intentionally tear-jerking SOTU ever,” she wrote later. “Please fire your speechwriter.”
But the general fawning in the conservative media over Trump’s State of the Union performance—and their quickness to make amends with him even after being burned—is emblematic of a larger dynamic. To many right-wing pundits and outlets, the president is not merely a vehicle for a policy agenda—he is a bottomless font of content; a culture warrior who knows how to pick fights that drive traffic, boost ratings, and sell books. More to the point, he remains tremendously popular with their audiences. These outlets may get away with some performative resistance when Trump fails to live up to his heroic image. But they can’t afford to stay mad at him when he’s on national TV owning the libs.
Trump, who has prized style over substance throughout his political rise, seems to intuitively understand this dynamic. When it appeared last month that the government shutdown might interfere with his scheduled State of the Union address, one former Trump adviser told me, there was never any doubt he’d figure out how to give that speech.
“There was no way Trump was going to miss the State of the Union,” said the former adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to talk candidly. “He would have said, ‘Forget the wall funding, I want the pomp and circumstance. What do you need, Nancy?’ ”
Trump may never get his wall. But as long as he has a stage to stand on and a camera pointed at him, he can count on the affection of the #MAGA media.
As the Donald Trump administration signals the possibility of cutting the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan after more than 17 years of conflict, Mohammad Ismail, a photographer with Reuters, spent time visiting with and photographing some of the young adults living in the city of Kabul. This generation is war-weary and ready for peace, but they are now contemplating an uncertain future as talks take place that might allow the Taliban to regain some level of power. Ismail: “For young people who were babies when the Taliban were driven from power by a U.S.-led campaign in 2001, the prospect of peace with the hard-line Islamists brings a daunting mix of hope and fear. For villagers in rural Afghanistan, where traditional ways have always counted for more than central government law, life may not change much. But for the young of Kabul and other cities, there is much to lose, in particular the freedoms restored after the Taliban were ousted—from playing music, to modeling and adopting trendy haircuts—which they’ve grown up with.”
Updated at 5:17 p.m. ET on February 6, 2019
As the day broke on Wednesday, it seemed hard to believe that the Virginia Democratic Party’s spree of scandal could get any weirder and bleaker. Governor Ralph Northam is under fire for wearing blackface, and for a bizarre yearbook photo that shows a man in blackface and another in a Klan hood. (Northam denies he is either.) Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, who will succeed Northam if he resigns, is now the subject of a sexual-assault accusation.
Then the Democrats’ septem horribilis got more horrible. Attorney General Mark Herring, who is second in line for the governor’s seat behind Fairfax, acknowledged late Wednesday morning that he wore blackface at a party in college in 1980, when he was 19. In a statement, Herring said he’d dressed up as the rapper Kurtis Blow and performed a song.
“Because of our ignorance and glib attitudes—and because we did not have an appreciation for the experiences and perspectives of others—we dressed up and put on wigs and brown makeup,” Herring said. He said that the incident occurred only once and that he had often thought about the error in judgment over the years and worried that it would cause problems as he moved forward in politics.
[Read: Every Democrat wants Ralph Northam gone—except Ralph Northam]
“Although the shame of that moment has haunted me for decades, and though my disclosure of it now pains me immensely, what I am feeling in no way compares to the betrayal, the shock, and the deep pain that Virginians of color may be feeling,” he said. Herring did not announce plans to resign, but said that conversations in the coming days would indicate whether he could or should remain in his post.
Even without Herring stepping down, the bombshell throws the Democratic Party, and Virginia’s government, even further into disarray. The controversy began when Virginia lawmakers considered, and Northam defended, a late-term-abortion bill. A disgruntled tipster led a conservative blogger to publish Northam’s medical-school yearbook on Friday. The governor has faced almost unanimous calls to step down, including from the state Democratic Party, the Democratic caucus in the legislature, and the Democratic National Committee, but has thus far refused. The Washington Post reports that Northam, who voted twice for President George W. Bush, might leave the Democratic Party in an attempt to keep his job.* After initially acknowledging and apologizing for the photo, Northam backtracked, saying he did not believe he was either man—but he did not explain why the photo appears on his personal page in a medical-school yearbook. He also said he had dressed up in blackface as part of a Michael Jackson costume on another occasion.
Fairfax, a young African American politician, had been seen as an attractive replacement for Northam, especially given the circumstances, until the accusation of sexual assault emerged. Fairfax has emphatically denied any wrongdoing and says he had a consensual sexual encounter with his accuser, Vanessa Tyson, a professor of politics at Scripps College. (He has also accused Levar Stoney, a rival Democrat who is mayor of Richmond, of spreading the story. Stoney denies doing so.) This week, Tyson hired the same law firm that represented Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Justice Brett Kavanaugh of attempting to rape her in high school. Fairfax has also refused to resign.
But in today’s Democratic Party, which puts racial justice and women’s equality front and center, and depends on the votes of women and minorities to succeed, it’s difficult to imagine either man having much of a political future. That turned attention to Herring—and from there led to Herring’s acknowledgment Wednesday, which seemed to be an attempt to prevent an embarrassing revelation from emerging somewhere else.
With all three men’s political futures in flux, it’s impossible to predict who might be left standing as the scandal progresses and who will end up in the governor’s office. But to state the obvious, the scandals are a huge problem for the Democratic Party of Virginia. The state has tilted to the left in recent years, electing two Democratic governors in a row and voting for Democrats in each of the past three presidential elections; the fact that the state’s top three elected officials are Democrats shows their growth, though Republicans hold a one-seat advantage in both chambers of the General Assembly. The scandals will likely make it harder for Democrats to take control of either chamber in this fall’s elections.
The challenges will extend well beyond November, though. Virginia has styled itself as a moderate, even at times progressive Upper South state—far away from the social conservatism of the Deep South—in part thanks to the Democratic tilt of Northern Virginia. Democrats have disavowed the white supremacy of Harry Byrd, once the dominant politician in the state. Yet race has been a central issue in Virginia’s recent elections. The white-supremacist march in Charlottesville in August 2017 is an obvious spark point, but the march also showed the strength of racism still within the state, and helped bring out other elements. Corey Stewart, a Republican who espouses a neo-Confederate platform, unsuccessfully ran for the gubernatorial nomination in 2017, losing to Ed Gillespie but driving Gillespie to defend Confederate monuments. Gillespie lost. Stewart won the U.S. Senate nomination in 2018, and was routed by Senator Tim Kaine.
[Vann R. Newkirk II: Ralph Northam’s mistake]
If those elections showed that Virginia still has a very real race problem, the past week has shown that it is not confined to the Republican Party. The Democratic Party of Virginia, like the Democratic Party nationally, has changed its ideology faster than it has changed its politicians. The older generation of leaders and elected officials in the party are young enough to have grown up at a time when young men should have known it was unacceptable to dress in blackface, but old enough that they might have done it anyway. There are no post-racial states, and no section of the United States that does not remain haunted by white supremacy.
Looming over these scandals is a question of redemption: Is there any way for politicians who behaved abhorrently years ago to gain forgiveness? One case study is Senator Robert Byrd of neighboring West Virginia, who led a local Klan chapter as a young man. He was also a prominent segregationist, involved in a filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But Byrd later came to regret his actions, saying, “The greatest mistake I ever made was joining the Ku Klux Klan.” He went on to support civil-rights legislation later in his career.
Both Herring and Northam have pointed to their progressive work on race since entering politics, hoping that might mitigate their past actions. Herring, perhaps, has done better, with his acknowledgment that the moment haunted him for years, and by getting ahead of the story. Herring may also have more luck in portraying his blackface moment as teenaged idiocy than Northam, whose offenses occurred when he was in medical school. Northam has stumbled both in the revelation that he dressed up in blackface another time and in his unconvincing attempts to explain away the yearbook photo and deny knowledge of it.
But whether either apology will be enough remains to be seen. In some ways, it may be easier to have been a proud racist and then have a road-to-Damascus moment, as Byrd did, than to engage in casual, private racism like Northam and Herring. The fate of Virginia’s politicians will offer new indications of where the Democratic Party is right now, and where it is headed.
* This story originally stated that Northam was previously a Republican. We regret the error.
President Donald Trump’s calls for bipartisanship during his State of the Union address drew indignant scoffs from Democratic leadership and members of the party’s progressive wing. “The president failed to offer any plan, any vision at all, for our future,” said Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, referring to the speech as an “embarrassment.” Much of the news media focused on these dismissive reactions, painting a picture of a Democratic Party unwilling to hear the president. But one bloc of House Democrats is responding in a more positive fashion: the moderates the Democratic Party needs to maintain its House majority.
“President Trump’s call for unity was welcome news,” said Representative Joe Cunningham of South Carolina, who defeated the pro-Trump Republican Katie Arrington in November. Representative Ben McAdams of Utah, who unseated the Republican Mia Love, concurred: “As the president said, we can bridge old divisions and forge new solutions, if we work together.”
It might not be the most surprising news that moderate Democrats are reacting with, well, moderation to the president’s overtures. Most of them spent months during their respective campaigns making appeals to Republicans—including some of the president’s own supporters—and pledging to reach across the aisle to pass legislation. But their reaction is nevertheless meaningful: These are not only the lawmakers who can make or break Democrats’ control of the House, but if Congress is to pass bipartisan legislation at some point in the next two years, these moderate lawmakers, not vocal progressives, are likely to be the most involved. Their apparent openness to Trump’s entreaties shows how willing some of the most consequential freshmen are to quietly breaking with their party, even at a time of intense rancor over another potential government shutdown.
These House Democrats are some of the so-called majority makers, the 41 lawmakers who flipped red seats to blue in the November midterm elections. Their openness is all the more notable because of how partisan other parts of Trump’s speech were. Toward the beginning of the address, his second State of the Union, Trump encouraged partnership and collaboration between Democrats and Republicans. “We must reject the politics of revenge, resistance, and retribution and embrace the boundless potential of cooperation, compromise, and the common good,” Trump said. But in the same speech, he lambasted the “partisan investigations” into his 2016 campaign, painted a grim picture of immigration, and doubled down on his demands for billions of dollars to construct a physical barrier along the southern border. The combined result, as my colleague David Graham put it, “was a speech that exalted bipartisanship without displaying a strategy, or even an appetite, for achieving it.”
House Democratic leadership waved away Trump’s talk of unity, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi lamenting the president’s long history of “empty words” and the progressive Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan saying in an interview on MSNBC that “so much of what he was saying [doesn’t] translate into his actions.”
[Read: Trump’s call for unity was never going to be real]
But where the most high-profile Democrats saw Trump performing the cause of unity, some moderate Democrats seemed reassured, particularly when it came to his calls for infrastructure investment and lowering prescription-drug prices. Representative Haley Stevens of Michigan said that she was “encouraged” by Trump’s comments on both fronts. “The president is right,” said Representative Max Rose, a freshman representing parts of New York City. “The American people are united around doing something to lower health-care costs, rebuild our infrastructure, and end the opioid epidemic.” Representative Anthony Brindisi of New York pledged on Twitter that in these areas, he will “be the first one at the table, ready & willing, to work [with] anyone serious about getting things done.”
There may be a performative aspect to some of the moderates’ reactions, too: Their districts have high shares of Republican voters, and they may feel an imperative to publicly take the president at his word when he calls for bipartisanship. There’s also still a long way to go before they’d actually need to work with Trump on initiatives such as infrastructure. First, more imminent problems are on the horizon: The 17 members of a bipartisan conference committee have only a week left to reach a deal funding the Department of Homeland Security before the government shuts down again. And even if a shutdown threat is averted, the administration has a history of false starts on legislation.
But in at least voicing a willingness to work with Trump, these moderate newcomers are showing that recent fights over the wall and the shutdown haven’t curbed their bipartisan appetite. As lawmakers return to the business of governing in the weeks and months to come, and as Democrats begin working their way down their list of legislative priorities, all eyes will be on this group to see in what other circumstances they’re willing to break the party line.
James GrahamYour office is a den of thieves. Don’t take my word for it: When a forensic-accounting firm surveyed workers in 2013, 52 percent admitted to stealing company property. And the thievery is getting worse. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners reports that theft of “non-cash” property—ranging from a single pencil in the supply closet to a pallet of them on the company loading dock—jumped from 10.6 percent of corporate-theft losses in 2002 to 21 percent in 2018. Managers routinely order up to 20 percent more product than is necessary, just to account for sticky-fingered employees.
Some items—scissors, notebooks, staplers—are pilfered perennially; others vanish on a seasonal basis: The burn rate on tape spikes when holiday gifts need wrapping, and parents ransack the supply closet in August, to avoid the back-to-school rush at Target. After a new Apple gadget is released, some workers report that their company-issued iPhone is broken—knowing that IT will furnish a replacement, no questions asked.
What’s behind this 9-to-5 crime wave? Mark R. Doyle, the president of the loss-prevention consultancy Jack L. Hayes International, points to a decrease in supervision, the ease of reselling purloined products online, and what he alleges is “a general decline in employee honesty.” The changing nature of the workplace may also bear some blame. Full-time employees now spend an average of 3.3 hours a day working from home—a fact reflected in the frequent disappearance of household items from the office. On social media, for instance, anonymous workers have confessed to stealing everything from light bulbs and toilet paper to Oreos, Windex smuggled out in a water bottle, and a fake Christmas tree. After one Reddit user expressed guilt over snatching coffee for weekend enjoyment, another poster offered a compelling rationalization: “You weren’t stealing the coffee. You were planning to work from home this weekend. Obviously you need coffee if you’re going to be working.” With the divide between apartment and cubicle blurring, taking stuff home isn’t even thought of as theft anymore, says Brian Friedman, the asset-protection director for HD Supply. “It’s [considered] an entitlement.”
You might not worry about sneaking off with the occasional package of Oreos. But David Welsh, a business professor at Arizona State University, says that even the pettiest of thefts can start workers down a crooked path. In a 2014 paper, Welsh and his co-authors concluded that peccadilloes such as taking a pen from the office tend to “snowball into larger violations” through a social-cognitive mechanism known as moral disengagement. The process is simple: Just create an internal monologue to minimize your unethical deed (It’s okay to steal this paper, because I print so many work documents at home). From there, your heists can escalate, while your self-image remains intact.
Don’t believe it? Then let me tell you about Gilberto Escamilla, the employee who stole $1.3 million worth of fajita meat from a juvenile-detention center in Texas. Escamilla, a correctional officer, pleaded guilty to felony theft for the scheme, which lasted nine years and included untold sums of brisket, pork chops, chicken, and sausage. At a 2018 hearing, Escamilla explained what had happened. “It started small and got bigger,” he said. “It got to a point where I couldn’t control it anymore.” The judge, unmoved, sentenced him to 50 years in prison.
This article appears in the March 2019 print edition with the headline “Raiders of the Office Park.”
If you like cannabidiol cupcakes and live in New York City, it’s time to learn how to bake your own. The city’s health department confirmed in a statement Tuesday that it had begun a crackdown on restaurants that use the compound—better known as CBD—as a food additive, embargoing products and warning of fines to come. In doing so, New York becomes the first major American city to begin enforcement on CBD’s questionably legal but enormously popular use in prepared food and drink. Until now, NYC consumers could find CBD in a wide range of products, including brownies, lattes, cocktails, and empanadas.
“Restaurants in New York City are not permitted to add anything to food or drink that is not approved as safe to eat,” according to a New York City Department of Health spokesperson. “Until cannabidiol … is deemed safe as a food additive, the department is ordering restaurants not to offer products containing CBD.” Eater reports that five restaurants in the city have been visited by the DOH and issued CBD embargoes so far, but because of the compound’s explosive popularity in the past year, scores more could be affected. Starting in July, restaurants that violate the ban could be subjected to fines of up to $650, according to the New York Post.
[Read: The sad news about CBD cupcakes]
Even though New York City’s intent to enforce its food-additive restrictions wasn’t announced ahead of time, it’s hardly a surprise that regulatory agencies are stepping in to mediate how CBD is sold. The compound can be derived from both cannabis and hemp plants; while industrial hemp cultivation was made legal in the United States in late 2018, the Food and Drug Administration has made clear that for regulatory purposes, it will treat CBD the same no matter which plant it comes from. The agency considers both illegal as additives in consumer food products, even if it hasn’t announced any specific plans for its own enforcement.
In January, the Los Angeles County Department of Health announced it would be docking points on restaurant inspections for CBD’s use in prepared food and drink starting in July. Maine, which has legalized recreational cannabis, and Ohio, which has a medical-marijuana program, have also cracked down on CBD edibles and prepared foods at the state level. As the compound shows up in more places and products, a continued escalation in enforcement efforts seems likely.
CBD has shown real promise as a treatment for things like epilepsy and anxiety in early research, but as a consumer product, it’s largely unproven and unregulated, which makes it difficult for people to understand what they’re buying or what effect it will have on them. Even in its simplest forms, CBD has no labeling standards or regulated dosage guidelines, and many businesses don’t disclose exactly how much they’ve put in a brownie or latte. At some businesses, customers have difficulty discerning which menu options include added CBD and which don’t.
[Read: The bespoke high is the future of marijuana]
According to Griffen Thorne, a California-based attorney who specializes in cannabis law, that lack of standardization is what makes most regulatory agencies nervous about CBD. “The packaging and labeling requirements aren’t there yet in states that don’t have a cannabis regime,” he told me when I spoke with him about CBD’s sudden popularity in food. “If you go buy a CBD beverage and it’s not specially packaged—it just looks like another coffee or whatever—someone might take a sip who doesn’t intend to.” Purveyors also often make medical claims about CBD’s effects for which there is little scientific proof, including its potential as an anti-inflammatory and a treatment for aches and pains. Thorne said that those promises could also be a source of legal trouble for businesses in the future.
Cannabis law is changing rapidly across the United States and at all levels of regulation and enforcement, which means that any attempt to cash in on growing consumer interest in weed and its derivatives assumes a certain amount of risk on the part of business owners. CBD in consumer foods might become legal and well regulated in coming years, but for the moment, even states where cannabis is legal seem wary of allowing restaurateurs to inject it into random products. Until then, anxious people looking for something to chill them out can still experiment with CBD in other forms, like oils or topical creams. And they might find that baking their own brownies is even more soothing than ordering off a menu.
“You weren’t supposed to do that!”
Donald Trump, midway through his State of the Union speech on Tuesday evening, did a rare thing: He applied his habit of rhetorical excess to someone other than himself. “No one,” he said, “has benefited more from our thriving economy than women, who have filled 58 percent of the newly created jobs in the last year.” The president had apparently not been expecting the line, the statistic bolstering the broader point about the “thriving economy,” to be met with applause. The Democratic women of the House of Representatives, however—nearly all of them clad in white, the symbolic shade of women’s suffrage, as a show of political unity—applauded it anyway.
And then, even though they weren’t supposed to, they did something else: They rose to their feet. First a few of them, then several, and finally all of them, an eddy of brightness within a sea of dark suits, the women cheering, clapping, laughing, and pointing to themselves as job-fillers—reveling in the irony that their presence in the Congressional chamber was one thing a boast-prone president really could claim credit for: Many of the women, indeed, had ended up in their new jobs precisely as a reaction to the presidency and policies of Donald Trump.
It was that most unexpected of moments in a State of the Union event that was otherwise dully divisive: unscripted, human, fun. The rote inertias of party politics colliding with the brief delights of, simply, a party. But the scene that erupted in the House chamber on Tuesday was also a moment of reclamation. Here was a line in a speech that, like most of the president’s lines, was meant to be about him; and here was a group of women—many of them newly elected to Congress and many of them women of color—insisting that it was, in fact, about them.
There is politics as performance and there is politics as an intimate and urgent force in people’s lives; the State of the Union, a spectacle that is also a setting for declarations of presidential policy, summons both. The speech often hosts a series of uncomfortable collisions—between empowerment and exploitation, between people highlighted as fellow citizens and people used as props. The Democratic women of the House, their outfits all but demanding attention and comment, effectively weaponized those tensions: Knowing the power of the image—understanding the capabilities of the strategic spectacle—they essentially objectified themselves. But they didn’t exploit themselves: In their uniforms, instead, they were insistently joyful and insistently vocal and, perhaps above all, insistently present. Within an event designed to center itself on the chief executive, they reclaimed their time. (“Thank you very much,” the president said, after the women first stood to be counted, perhaps attempting to restore the evening’s promised Trumpcentrism. “Thank you very much.”)
The women’s choice of white as the outfit of unity was its own kind of reclamation. “Suffragette white,” after all, has an extremely fraught history, in large part because suffrage itself has an extremely fraught history. It wasn’t “women,” the collective, who in practice got the vote in the America of 1920, as Trump would later claim; it was merely white women who did. The suffragist agenda, in a decision whose errors would reverberate into a feminist movement that would go on to preach justice but too often fail to practice it, deliberately excluded women of color.
But reclamation, as a political weapon but also as a broader ethic, allows a new kind of history to be made. (The white worn on Tuesday—a uniform chosen for the occasion by Representative Lois Frankel of Florida, the chair of the Democratic Women’s Working Group—echoed the all-white outfits Democratic women wore to Trump’s first State of the Union, in 2017, and the black they wore in 2018, as a visual nod to the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.) The lawmakers who donned white on Tuesday found ways both to acknowledge the shamefulness of history and to repurpose it—but to do so, they made clear, on their own terms. As Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts tweeted on Tuesday evening: “The women of the #116th were asked to wear white tonight in tribute to the #suffragetes Tonight, I honor women like #AlicePaul who led the movement & women like #IdaB who were excluded from it. Kente cloth & the color white. Holding space for both #womanists & #feminists, always.” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York—acknowledging the fact that Shirley Chisholm, as well as Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton, wore white in ceremonial settings as a nod to suffrage—put it like this: “I wore all-white today to honor the women who paved the path before me, and for all the women yet to come. From suffragettes to Shirley Chisholm, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the mothers of the movement.”
A broad coalition that makes space for individualized nuance: that complicated idea, it turned out, was part of the easy imagecraft of the evening. Nancy Pelosi, perched between the president and an American flag—and fresh off a political victory over Trump, as she refused to bend to his demands for a border wall—presided over the scene, herself clad in the all-white uniform, ensuring its visual harmony. The House speaker gave her caucus a slight nod when the president delivered a line they might applaud. She scowled when Trump lied, and spun, and preached division. As he concluded his speech, she offered him a rousingly petty and therefore exceedingly internet-friendly round of applause. At times on Tuesday, Pelosi resembled a conductor of a human orchestra, aware of the emotions of the audience and attuned to the rhythms of the score, using sweeps of her hands to convey to her musicians when, precisely, the crescendo should swell.
She, too, had some repurposing to do. And her own approach to that work helped foment the other striking moment of an otherwise unstriking speech: a scene that came just a few lines after Trump found himself pleasantly surprised by applause from the Democratic side of the aisle. “Don’t sit yet, you’re gonna like this,” he said teasingly—flirtatiously—to the women who had just risen at his words. He paused dramatically. “Exactly one century after the Congress passed the constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote,” the president said, “we also have more women serving in the Congress than at any time before.”
He was right, to an extent: The women did like it. The line may have been historically inaccurate, and it may have been delivered by a president who has been both accused of and known to brag about sexual assault—a president who has referred to women as horses and pigs and dogs—but in that moment, the women of the 116th Congress chose to focus on the message rather than the messenger. They rose again, cheering and applauding: not the president, but themselves. And then they took the celebration further: They started chanting. “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” they yelled, the sentiment spreading through the congressional chamber, thunderous and insistent and, against all odds, jubilant.
And so, for a moment, that most basic cheer, which Donald Trump and his supporters had for so long co-opted as their own, was co-opted once again: The chant—one that, in political settings, has so often suggested swaggering jingoism and cowboy diplomacy and the polite fiction that politics are effectively indistinguishable from sporting events—took on a new kind of symbolism. On Tuesday, “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” echoed through the House, a cheer of progress and possibility, its syllables centered on women who were clad in history but looking to the future. As the president delivered his prepared remarks, the lawmakers engaged in an ad-lib that doubled as that most fundamental of American activities: being told you weren’t supposed to do that, and doing it anyway.
The president’s nearly 90-minute State of the Union address to Congress had all the trappings of Trumpism—dark riffs on crime along the U.S.-Mexico border, a shot at “ridiculous, partisan investigations” into his administration, and promises of robust new trade deals across the globe. Yet Donald Trump also used much of his speech to tout what he called the hottest economy in the world and a greatest-hits list of sorts from the past two years, focusing on legislative victories that transcended intra- and cross-party lines.
It was the kind of message discipline that Republicans craved, but never got, ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. As polls continued to show their majority status all but lost, GOP leaders begged Trump to talk up tax cuts in lieu of caravans. He found those talking points dry, though, and kept to his own strategy—his party losing the House in the process.
But now, with his own name on the ballot, he suddenly seems to be taking the advice seriously. Trump’s State of the Union address quashed any speculation that he may not run for reelection, signaling—at least for now—that his vision is 2020.
[Peter Beinart: Trump shows why he can’t be counted out]
In the speech, Trump notably attempted to build a case for his tenure on the basis of policy wins, rather than on the verbal put-downs and cultural standoffs he tends to relish instead. This is not to say, of course, that Trump didn’t indulge in the loaded rhetoric that helped him clinch the Republican nomination in 2016. (“Wealthy politicians and donors,” he said, “push for open borders while living their lives behind walls and gates and guards.”) But his lengthy appraisal of bipartisan initiatives such as criminal-justice reform stemmed from a growing consensus inside the White House that messages tailored only to Trump’s base will not a two-term president make.
“He’s calling for cooperation and he’s calling for comity—c-o-m-i-t-y—and also compromise,” Kellyanne Conway emphasized on Tuesday, spelling out comity for emphasis.
For Trump, the joint session could not have come at a better time. The White House has struggled to sift through the political wreckage of the recent government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history. Polling showed that most Americans blamed the president for the 35-day debacle. His approval ratings continued to inch lower. Administration officials thus viewed the State of the Union address as an opportunity to focus the nation’s attention on the accomplishments that Trump, until Tuesday, had abysmally failed in selling.
[David Frum: Trump doubles down]
He introduced Alice Johnson—sitting next to Jared Kushner—who in 1997 was sentenced to life in prison as a first-time, nonviolent drug offender. “Over the next 22 years, she became a prison minister, inspiring others to choose a better path,” Trump said, a story that “deeply moved” him and highlighted the “disparities and unfairness” in many sentencings. He commuted Johnson’s sentence in June.
Stories like Johnson’s, he said, inspired him to “work closely with members of both parties” to pass criminal-justice reform in December, with Kushner serving as his point man on Capitol Hill. Trump went on to introduce Matthew Charles, who in 1996 was sentenced to 35 years in prison for “selling drugs and related offenses.” Charles, he said, “completed more than 30 Bible studies” and became a law clerk over the next two decades. “Now Matthew is the very first person to be released from prison under the First Step Act.”
These stories generated some of the loudest applause of the evening from both sides of the chamber. Many Democratic women, clad in suffragette white, broke from their otherwise stony expressions to stand and cheer. The scene underscored just how unifying criminal-justice reform has been; until its passage, there had been no bipartisan accomplishment of this significance in the Trump era. But it also brought into sharp relief just how little Trump has spoken of it: It’s worth wondering how different January 2019 may have looked if the White House had focused on extolling the legislation’s almost immediate impact, rather than on stoking partisan rancor over a border wall.
[Read: President Trump’s second State of the Union address]
Trump expressed hope that lawmakers could tackle similarly bipartisan initiatives in the next year. He called lowering the cost of health care and prescription drugs, for example, a “major priority.” “It is unacceptable that Americans pay vastly more than people in other countries for the exact same drugs, often made in the exact same place,” he said. “This is wrong, this is unfair, and together we will stop it.” He said he had requested that Congress pass legislation to deliver “fairness and price transparency” to American patients. In the next beat, he said he had asked Congress to “make the needed commitment” to eliminate HIV transmissions in the United States over the next 10 years. The pair of topics garnered hearty applause.
And yet, despite Trump’s more disciplined focus on compromise, the specter of the wall—and the bitter divide it has wrought—was ever present. It’s true that Trump will need to attract support from outside his base to compete in 2020. But after two years of failing to construct a border wall, Trump is aware that enthusiasm from his core supporters—which has helped buoy him through political tumult—may be waning. Which meant that sandwiched between soaring calls for unity were starkly partisan appeals for the wall. “As we speak, large organized caravans are on the march to the United States. We have just heard that Mexican cities, in order to remove the illegal immigrants from their communities, are getting trucks and buses to bring them up to our country in areas where there is little border protection,” Trump said. “This is a moral issue.” Democrats erupted in boos and groans.
[Read: Trump’s call for unity was never going to be real]
The segment resonated with its intended audience, though. “He committed to build a wall,” Steve Bannon told me. “What’s not to like?” An administration official who had previously told me that the president’s lack of follow-through on immigration had caused him to rethink his support texted me that the speech was a “home run.” “Solid,” went the assessment of a former senior White House official. “Gave the base some hard-core immigration stuff.”
What was most striking, though, was that other than calls for a border wall, Trump’s riff on immigration included no concrete policy proposals. This was a decided difference from his address in 2018, when he outlined four “pillars” for reforming the nation’s immigration system: a path to citizenship for 1.8 million “Dreamers”; a $25 billion trust for a wall along the Mexican border; ending the visa lottery in favor of a merit-based immigration system; and limiting family reunification to sponsorships for spouses and minor children only. To review those proposals today is to understand just how little progress the president has made vis-à-vis his key campaign promises, even when his party controlled both chambers of Congress.
It was for that reason, perhaps, that the president’s immigration rhetoric on Tuesday felt plucked from a campaign rally: With Democrats now at the helm of the House, the chances of passing Trump’s favored reforms are all but gone. The president’s only recourse, then, is to conjure the fire-and-brimstone images that earned him votes along the trail in 2016. He thus seemed to speak into a kind of void on Tuesday evening, attempting to amp up his most ardent supporters with platitudes, knowing the days of specific immigration-policy proposals are likely over.
Whether that will be enough come 2020 remains to be seen. Ultimately, any votes gained through Trump’s appeals to bipartisanship will likely be meaningless, should loyalty from his base crumble. The coming days will present something of a dilemma for Trump in this respect, with government funding running out on February 15. The president will have to decide whether to commit to his call for a border wall—whether by declaring a national emergency or by catalyzing another disastrous shutdown—or to compromise with Democrats, keeping the government open but potentially alienating his supporters in the process.
In other words, Trump may have won plaudits on Tuesday from both sides for achievements such as criminal-justice reform. But a 2016 campaign message centered almost exclusively on the border wall continues to define him, for better or for worse. “We made clear in 2016 that nothing else mattered,” a source close to Trump’s reelection campaign told me. “So if we can’t say we followed through, I don’t think passing all the bipartisan bills in the world will save us.”
Fabrizio Zilibotti was born in Italy and met his wife (who’s Spanish) in London. Their daughter was born in Sweden, where she spent some of her childhood before the family moved to the U.K. and then Switzerland.
As he spent time in each of these countries, Zilibotti—who now lives in the U.S., teaching economics at Yale—became intrigued by the variety of parenting philosophies he encountered, from Sweden’s laissez-faire style of child-rearing to the U.K.’s more rule-oriented approach. Parents in every country, he reasoned, loved their children more or less equally, so it seemed a little puzzling that they had such divergent ideas about what was best for their kids.
That puzzle is the impetus for Love, Money, and Parenting: How Economics Explains the Way We Raise Our Kids, a new book that Zilibotti co-authored with Matthias Doepke, an economist at Northwestern University (who himself grew up in West Germany).
Zilibotti and Doepke are both economists, so it makes sense that they focus on the incentives that different societies give parents to raise their kids in a certain way. In particular, Zilibotti and Doepke trot out data point after data point indicating that one very important determinant of parents’ child-raising strategies is the level of inequality in a given society.
I recently spoke with Zilibotti about this pattern and about other society-wide variables that shape parenting style. The conversation that follows has been edited for length and clarity.
Joe Pinsker: Why do you and your co-author think parenting in the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s was so much more laid-back than what came afterward?
Fabrizio Zilibotti: In a nutshell, we think that economic conditions have a lot of influence on the way parents raise their children. So, in the United States, compared to the 1960s and 1970s, the number of hours parents spend supervising the activities of their children has increased dramatically. This trend is especially strong in countries where economic inequality has grown the most, and in general that’s where we see more of what’s become known as "helicopter parenting.”
Why is this so? Well, parents want their children to do well in life, to be successful. And in a society that is very unequal—where there are lots of opportunities if one does well and very negative outcomes if one is less successful—parents will be more worried that their children won’t become high achievers in school. But if you go to a country where there is less inequality, parents may be less worried about that, not because they care less about their children, but because the negative outcomes aren’t as bad. There are some other things they care about—maybe to see their children happy and to let them express their individuality. And those things can get sacrificed when there is pressure on them to be high achievers.
[Read: ‘Intensive’ parenting is now the norm in America]
Pinsker: Does helicopter parenting “work”? If it’s a rational reaction to economic conditions, is it actually giving kids any advantages?
Zilibotti: We have, again, some data on that. There is a lot of variation, but at least on average, it appears so, based on the best of the statistical techniques we can use. We can see that parents’ involvement—in the form of an “intensive” parenting style—tends to be associated with better educational attainment. This is especially strong when you look at post-college education, but it is also true for college attainment.
Pinsker: You argue that another factor that shapes parenting style is how a country’s education system is set up. What incentives does the American system produce, and how do those incentives compare to other countries’?
Zilibotti: The United States has a number of features that are important in shaping the way parents behave. One of them is that there is a lot of differentiation in the quality and prestige of schools and universities. The process of entering or being admitted to university is really competitive, and the preparation for that starts many years earlier.
In parts of Europe, the concern about admissions to schools and universities is much less pronounced. In Finland, for example, there is much less variance in school quality, and the type of incentives that this creates for parents is really different. Parents don’t move around because of a bad school district or a good school district. Finnish kids and parents know that it doesn’t matter much to be at the top of the class, because the difference between universities is, relatively speaking, not very large.
Pinsker: In the book, you note how today’s standards around disciplining children are a major break from the past. What did these standards used to be like, and why do you think they changed?
Zilibotti: If you look at the course of history—I would say until the age of the Enlightenment—it was universally accepted that children must be strictly controlled and disciplined, because children don’t know what the right behavior is. There was a lot of debate in the 19th century about new approaches to education and recognizing the individuality of children. These were influential, but they were very much a discussion in the intellectual elite—it took until after World War II to have widespread change in the attitudes that parents had towards children. Helicopter parents are generally not smacking children or doing anything of that sort.
Now, I grant that part of this is maybe what Steven Pinker has discussed as a general rejection of violence. But I also think that it’s very important to consider that in early times, family jobs were usually static, so parents had to teach children more or less how to be like them; farmers would teach their children to be good farmers. More recently, children acquire more education and skills outside of the family, and when this happens, it means that parents cannot really control their children directly—I wouldn’t be able to look over my daughter’s shoulder to see if she’s studying hard enough in the library. So it becomes much more important to motivate children [to do things on their own] than to tell them what they can and can’t do.
Pinsker: Your book suggests that to some degree, parents who are overwhelmed by the pressures they feel in a given society don’t have any choice but to respond to these larger economic forces. Do you think that parents can opt out of any of the child-rearing strategies that economic forces steer them toward?
Zilibotti: I think it’s hard to opt out individually. It’s hard to preach the virtue of free-range parenting to Americans or convince Swedish parents that they should be more pushy—it’s not going to work, because it’s not the response that works best in those societies, economically.
There are other forms of intervention that might work, but they relate more to policies and institutions. If we reach the consensus that the current competitive system puts a lot of strain on families and we want to improve the quality of family life, improving daycare can be something that changes early opportunities for children. Making schools less unequal, like emphasizing more federal funding and less local school funding, may be another way. Just opting out of the incentives—it’s hard.
This article contains spoilers through all eight episodes of Russian Doll.
In the third episode of Russian Doll, “A Warm Body,” Nadia (Natasha Lyonne) tries to investigate the spiritual significance of her ongoing deaths, having already considered (and rejected) the idea that she’s simply having a bad drug trip. Her attempts to consult a rabbi are blocked by the rabbi’s resolute assistant (Tami Sagher), but after Nadia eventually wears down Sagher’s character with her tenacity and her confessions about uterine fibroids, the woman offers Nadia a prayer. It translates, she says, as “Angels are all around us.”
Nadia rolls her eyes at this offering, the kind of cozy sentiment that’s more typically encountered on fridge magnets and embroidered throw pillows. A few scenes later, though, she’s compelled to spend a night guarding a homeless man’s shoes so he won’t leave the shelter and freeze to death. Then she meets another man, Alan (Charlie Barnett), in an elevator, and he upends the show entirely when it’s revealed that he dies repeatedly, too, just like she does. It’s entirely possible that the scene in the rabbi’s office is just an entertaining interlude, or a way to divert suspicions that the building that Nadia keeps being resurrected in is some way meaningful. But the prayer also sets up an idea that reverberates throughout the episodes to come: Every person has the potential to make a profound difference in another person’s life, angel or not.
Russian Doll could just as easily be titled Onion, because the layers of the new Netflix series feel endless. Your interpretation of whether it’s primarily about addiction, trauma, video-game narratives, existential questions about the construction of the universe, the imperative of human connection, the redeeming power of pets, or the purgatorial experience will likely depend on your own formative life experiences. Somehow, though, Russian Doll manages to be about all these things and more, weaving myriad themes and cultural references into a tight three-and-a-half-hour running time. What starts out feeling like a zany homage to Groundhog Day ends up being darker, deeper, and much more complex as the show moves forward, with clues and references that often reward closer attention.
One of the most straightforward threads of Russian Doll considers addiction. Lyonne, who co-created the series with the playwright Leslye Headland and the actor and producer Amy Poehler, has spoken about how parts of the story were inspired by her own history with drugs, even if the series isn’t specifically autobiographical. Throughout the show Nadia binges on drugs and alcohol, usually after a climactic emotional confrontation she wants to avoid thinking about.
[Read: The existential zaniness of ‘Russian Doll]’
Every time she dies and returns to the loft bathroom where her story repeatedly reboots, viewers hear the same song, Harry Nilsson’s “Gotta Get Up”—a work that speaks about wanting to move beyond partying, recorded by an artist whose own addictions contributed to his early death at 52. And a bravura sped-up scene in the second episode alludes darkly to Nadia’s self-destruction when it shows her inhaling from a pipe that’s in the shape of a gun—just like the door handle of the bathroom she keeps returning to.
The cyclical structure of the show also feels like a metaphor for addiction, and for Nadia’s habit of repeating the same patterns of behavior over and over. Her “emergency” code word that she shares with her aunt Ruth is record player—yet more imagery of an object spinning round and round. But Russian Doll makes it clear, too, that Nadia is emotionally wounded, and that she self-medicates with drugs and alcohol as a way to try to paper over the trauma in her past. (As the rabbi puts it, “Buildings aren’t haunted. People are.”) Nor is she unique in doing so: In the second episode, when she seeks out a drug dealer by invoking the spectacular passion project Jodorowsky’s Dune, one of the chemists she meets tells her he’s been “working on this new thing to help people with depression,” i.e., joints spiked with ketamine.
All this context is further unfurled in the seventh episode, which features flashbacks to Nadia’s childhood spent with her mentally ill mother (Chloë Sevigny). As her loops get less and less stable, Nadia’s trauma and guilt begin to manifest in the form of herself as a child. During that time, she tells Alan, “things with my mom were not good.” Her confrontation with herself is the most obvious representation of the enduring pain she continues to carry as an adult, but others are more subtle. In the third episode, long before Sevigny’s character has been introduced, Nadia holds coffee and a carton of sliced watermelon in one hand—a nod to the memory in a later episode of Nadia’s mother obsessively buying watermelons in a bodega. In the sixth, Nadia gives Horse (Brendan Sexton III) the last gold sovereign from her Holocaust-survivor grandparents, telling him that the necklace, her only inheritance, is “too heavy.”
The question of exactly what’s happening to Nadia—and, later, to Alan—is one of the most intriguing parts of Russian Doll’s story. Nadia’s ongoing loops of existence, in which her reality gets smaller and smaller as people and things begin to disappear, mimic the structure of a matryoshka, better known as the Russian nesting dolls of the show’s title. But they also mimic the structure of video games, in which characters die repeatedly and return to the most recent point at which a player has pressed “save.”
Nadia, a video-game developer, briefly goes to work in the second episode, where she fixes a bug in code she’s written that keeps a character suspended in time rather than animated. Later, after she meets Alan, they discuss a game she once helped design that he insists is impossible to complete. “You created an unsolvable game with a single character who has to solve entirely everything on her own,” he tells her. She counters that the game is actually solvable, only to find that, like Alan, she keeps falling into a trap and dying before she completes it.
The theory that Nadia’s ongoing loops are part of a simulation her brain has created to help her process her trauma and “complete” her recovery is an enticing one. (In several of her deaths, Nadia falls down an open sidewalk cellar door that resembles the firepit her game character repeatedly perishes in.) This thesis is complicated midway through the series, though, by Alan, a stranger whose fate somehow seems inexplicably tied to Nadia’s. Alan, in many ways, is Nadia’s polar opposite, the yin to her yang. She’s unfettered, chaotic, messy, outspoken, commitment-phobic; he’s buttoned-up, obsessive-compulsive, repressed, intent on proposing. The pets that both characters are attached to—a park-dwelling bodega cat and a loner fish enclosed in a tank—feel like external representations of their inner selves.
On the night that Alan and Nadia first meet, while she’s buying condoms in the bodega and he’s apparently smashing containers of marinara sauce, Alan has decided to end his life. Nadia later concludes that her failure to help him in this moment causes some kind of rupture, or a “bug in the code,” that splits their reality into an ongoing loop of different paths. Their fates are irrevocably entwined, and the only way for the pair to break out of the cycle is to try to help each other.
As an explanation for everything that’s happened in the show so far, a rupture in the space-time continuum is both plausibly scientific and oddly spiritual. Nadia and Alan, brought together as two halves, form one entity that sparks a powerful reaction, trapping them within parallel threads of existence until they manage to save each other. Both, without schmaltz, become the other’s guardian angel in the final episode, when they’re separated and placed in two different loops.
In Alan’s version of reality, he goes to Nadia’s party, makes amends with her friend Lizzy (Rebecca Henderson) for an ongoing feud involving mastiff puppies (the emotional power of pets, again), and is given a scarf containing “good karma.” In Nadia’s timeline, her friend Max (Greta Lee) throws a drink on Nadia, then gives her a clean white shirt to wear. In the final scene, as two pairs of Nadia-and-Alans meet at a parade, they walk past each other and disappear, leaving the sentient Alan (in his scarf) and the sentient Nadia (in the white shirt) together, reunited.
Myriad questions are left hanging in the air, naturally. How does this conclusive ending fit into a supposed three-season plan? Are the multiple Nadias in gray coats seen in the midst of the parade a sign that there are multiple planes of reality running alongside one another beyond the time loops? Are the references to Dolores Huerta and the similarity of the parade to Bread and Puppet Theater protests signs of Russian Doll’s progressive politics? Is there any spiritual hope for the slimy academic, Mike (Jeremy Bobb)? Will Nadia ever make it to breakfast with her bruised ex, John (Yul Vazquez), and his daughter?
One of my favorite moments in Russian Doll comes right near the end, when Nadia banters for a brief moment with Alan’s elderly neighbor. He chastises her for smoking, telling her that his wife died of lung cancer. She says something about life being a box of timelines. They both seem charmed by each other. The scene doesn’t serve any enduring purpose or offer any heightened meaning. But it represents a moment of connection with a stranger—the kind of connection that, for Alan and Nadia, becomes the essence of everything.
“Our country and many others around the world have entered a dark period when virulent nationalism and bigotry are on the rise,” says Atlantic staff writer Emma Green. In a new Atlantic Argument, Green explains how the recent uptick in anti-Semitism is particularly alarming in Europe; a recent CNN poll revealed that a quarter of Europeans believe Jews have too much influence in business, finance, and wars across the world.
“So how do we stop this?” Green says in the video. “The question we should be asking is whether the latest wave of anti-Semitism can be stopped with elections alone.”
According to The Lego Movie 2 (which bears the cute subtitle The Second Part), everything that’s gone wrong in pop culture over the past five years can be mapped onto the arc of Chris Pratt’s career. When the actor voiced the hero Emmet Brickowski in 2014’s The Lego Movie, Pratt was still part of the cast of Parks and Recreation and often played avuncular sidekicks in rom-coms such as The Five-Year Engagement. In other words, he was ideal casting for the role of a plastic everyman who cheerfully sings along to The Lego Movie’s earworm of a theme song, “Everything Is Awesome.”
Five years later, Pratt’s career has skyrocketed. The actor has added to his résumé starring roles in action franchises, such as Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World, that emphasize his chiseled features, eternal 5 o’clock shadow, and devil-may-care attitude. In the world of The Lego Movie 2, Emmet is unchanged, but everything else has seemingly been decimated by a blockbuster-worthy apocalypse. The glimmering city of Bricksburg is a deserted ruin, the local surfboard shop now sells chain saws, and the adorable princess Unikitty (Alison Brie) is now a feral monster. Everything is not awesome, and there’s even a new hero in town who’s better suited to the times—a stubbled dinosaur trainer–spaceship pilot named Rex Dangervest. His voice actor? Also Chris Pratt.
It’s good to know that Pratt is at least somewhat in on the joke of his own recent choice of roles. But The Lego Movie 2 is doing more than just poking fun at his transformation from cuddly pal next door to muscle-bound action hero. The sequel, directed by Mike Mitchell (Trolls) and written by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (who made the first Lego Movie), is about the lazy tropes that have infected so much big-budget entertainment in recent years. Rex Dangervest is less a character than he is an attitude—arrogant bravado plus sublimated emotion, a set of skills wrapped up in a haircut.
This, according to The Lego Movie 2, is the role model the movie industry has to offer young viewers these days—a hero who spends most of his time brooding about his tragic past, and who claims he can’t get too close to anyone, lest they die and leave him all alone. Where Emmet’s skill lies in construction (he can make nearly anything out of Lego bricks), Rex has a talent for destruction (he can collapse structures with a well-aimed punch). The metaphor—that pop culture seems more and more geared toward mayhem—gets laid on a little thick. But much like the first Lego Movie, this film is largely fascinated with the dynamics of how children play. And how they play has a lot to do with the heroes that pop culture gives them.
I loved the first Lego Movie because its anarchic comedic style played perfectly into its overarching message. That film was a rambunctious hero’s journey about Emmet learning that he was “the special” (a sort of prophesied savior) and taking down the evil Lord Business (Will Ferrell). Environments would shift at any given moment, new characters were introduced on a whim, and the rules of the universe changed constantly, because the setting was actually a suburban basement. The story was being guided by the imagination of a kid (Jadon Sand) who, like any other kid, was making things up as he went along, but Lord and Miller managed to translate that into a legible plot.
[Read: ‘The Lego Movie’ is further evidence of Will Ferrell’s subversive genius]
The Lego Movie 2 tries to build on that earlier premise by depicting a push and pull between the original kid, Finn, and his younger sister, Bianca (voiced by Brooklynn Prince, the unforgettable breakout star of The Florida Project). In the intervening five years, Finn has drifted further toward end-of-days storytelling (the adventures he imagines best resemble Mad Max: Fury Road), while Bianca’s sparkly toys keep invading with weapons made of hearts and smiley stars, as they try to pull gruff heroes such as Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) and Batman (Will Arnett) into a sunnier direction.
The film doesn’t feel quite as seamless as the original edition; the sequel is trying to make its plot more chaotic while also incorporating a brand-new message about learning to play with your younger sister. Still, the themes at work are fascinating. Rex—an antihero who teeters on the edge of villainy—becomes a stand-in for the kind of negative messaging Finn is getting from all angles of pop culture, while new characters such as the shape-shifting Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi (Tiffany Haddish) represent the boundless, but overwhelming, energy of Bianca’s approach, which Finn finds grating and malevolent.
An on-brand mix of knowing references, witty one-liners, and celebrity guest stars (Maya Rudolph and Stephanie Beatriz join the ensemble this time) keep The Lego Movie 2 a consistently entertaining experience for its one-hour-and-46-minute running time, though the visual overload might be too much for some. Lord and Miller, who also produced the wonderfully clever and kinetic Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse last year, remain completely unable to phone in an animated film. This is a project that’s loaded with big ideas and worthy morals for its younger viewers, even if it has a little trouble streamlining them all into an easily digestible plot.
Edmon De HaroAt 10:21 a.m. on December 6, Lake Brantley High School, in Florida, initiated a “code red” lockdown. “This is not a drill,” a voice announced over the PA system. At the same moment, teachers received a text message warning of an active shooter on campus. Fearful students took shelter in classrooms. Many sobbed hysterically, others vomited or fainted, and some sent farewell notes to parents. A later announcement prompted a stampede in the cafeteria, as students fled the building and jumped over fences to escape. Parents flooded 911 with frantic calls.
Later it was revealed, to the fury of parents, teachers, and students, that in fact this was a drill, the most realistic in a series of drills that the students of Lake Brantley, like students across the country, have lately endured. In the year since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last February, efforts to prepare the nation’s students for gunfire have intensified. Educators and safety experts have urged students to deploy such unlikely self-defense tools as hockey pucks, rocks, flip-flops, and canned food. More commonly, preparations include lockdown drills in which students sit in darkened classrooms with the shades pulled. Sometimes a teacher or a police officer plays the role of a shooter, moving through the hallway and attempting to open doors as children practice staying silent and still.
These drills aren’t limited to the older grades. Around the country, young children are being taught to run in zigzag patterns so as to evade bullets. I’ve heard of kindergartens where words like barricade are added to the vocabulary list, as 5- and 6-year-olds are instructed to stack chairs and desks “like a fort” should they need to keep a gunman at bay. In one Massachusetts kindergarten classroom hangs a poster with lockdown instructions that can be sung to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”: Lockdown, Lockdown, Lock the door / Shut the lights off, Say no more. Beside the text are picture cues—a key locking a door; a person holding up a finger to hush the class; a switch being flipped to turn off the lights. The alarm and confusion of younger students is hardly assuaged by the implausible excuses some teachers offer—for instance, that they are practicing what to do if a wild bear enters the classroom, or that they are having an extra-quiet “quiet time.”
In the 2015–16 school year, 95 percent of public schools ran lockdown drills, according to a report by the National Center for Education Statistics. And that’s to say nothing of actual (rather than practice) lockdowns, which a school will implement in the event of a security concern—a threat that very well may turn out to be a hoax, perhaps, or the sound of gunfire in the neighborhood. A recent analysis by The Washington Post found that during the 2017–18 school year, more than 4.1 million students experienced at least one lockdown or lockdown drill, including some 220,000 students in kindergarten or preschool.
In one sense, the impulse driving these preparations is understandable. The prospect of mass murder in a classroom is intolerable, and good-faith proposals for preventing school shootings should be treated with respect. But the current mode of instead preparing kids for such events is likely to be psychologically damaging. See, for instance, the parting letter a 12-year-old boy wrote his parents during a lockdown at a school in Charlotte, North Carolina, following what turned out to be a bogus threat: “I am so sorry for anything I have done, the trouble I have caused,” he scribbled. “Right now I’m scared to death. I need a warm soft hug … I hope that you are going to be okay with me gone.”
As James Hamblin wrote for The Atlantic last February, there is precious little evidence that the current approach is effective:
Studies of whether active-shooter drills actually prevent harm are all but impossible. Case studies are difficult to parse. In Parkland, for example, the site of the recent shooting, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, had an active-shooter drill just [a] month [before the massacre]. The shooter had been through such drills. Purposely countering them may have been a reason that, as he was beginning his rampage, the shooter pulled a fire alarm.Moreover, the scale of preparedness efforts is out of proportion to the risk. Deaths from shootings on school grounds remain extremely rare compared with those resulting from accidental injury, which is the leading cause of death for children and teenagers. In 2016, there were 787 accidental deaths (a category that includes fatalities due to drowning, fires, falls, and car crashes) among American children ages 5 to 9—a small number, considering that there are more than 20 million children in this group. Cancer was the next-most-common cause of death, followed by congenital anomalies. Homicide of all types came in fourth. To give these numbers yet more context: The Washington Post has identified fewer than 150 people (children and adults) who have been shot to death in America’s schools since the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School, in Colorado. Not 150 people a year, but 150 in nearly two decades.
Preparing our children for profoundly unlikely events would be one thing if that preparation had no downside. But in this case, our efforts may exact a high price. Time and resources spent on drills and structural upgrades to school facilities could otherwise be devoted to, say, a better science program or hiring more experienced teachers. Much more worrying: School-preparedness culture itself may be instilling in millions of children a distorted and foreboding view of their future. It’s also encouraging adults to view children as associates in a shared mission to reduce gun violence, a problem whose real solutions, in fact, lie at some remove from the schoolyard.
We’ve been down this road before. In an escalating set of preparations for nuclear holocaust during the 1950s, the “duck and cover” campaign trained children nationwide to huddle under their desk in the case of a nuclear blast. Some students in New York City were even issued dog tags, to be worn every day, to help parents identify their bodies. Assessments of this period suggest that such measures contributed to pervasive fear among children, 60 percent of whom reported having nightmares about nuclear war.
Decades later, a new generation of disaster-preparedness policies—this time geared toward guns rather than nuclear weapons—appear to be stoking fear once again. A 2018 survey by the Pew Research Foundation determined that, despite the rarity of such events, 57 percent of American teenagers worry about a shooting at their school. This comes at a time when children are already suffering from sharply rising rates of anxiety, self-mutilation, and suicide. According to a landmark study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, 32 percent of 13-to-18-year-olds have anxiety disorders, and 22 percent suffer from mental disorders that cause severe impairment or distress. Among those suffering from anxiety, the median age of onset is 6.
Active-shooter drills reflect a broad societal misunderstanding of childhood, one that features two competing images of the child: the defenseless innocent and the powerful mini-adult. On the one hand, we view children as incredibly vulnerable—to hurt feelings, to non-rubberized playground surfaces, to disappointing report cards. This view is pervasive, and its consequences are now well understood: It robs children of their agency and impedes their development, and too often prevents them from testing themselves either physically or socially, from taking moderate risks and learning from them, from developing resilience.
But on the other hand, we demand preternatural maturity from our children. We tell them that with hockey pucks and soup cans and deep reservoirs of courage, they are capable of defeating an evil that has resisted the more prosaic energies of law-enforcement officers, legislators, school superintendents, and mental-health professionals. We ask them to manage not the everyday risks that they are capable of managing—or should, for their own good, manage—but rather the problems they almost by definition cannot.
This second notion of the child stems from what I call adultification, or the tendency to imagine that children experience things the way adults do. Adultification comes in many forms, from the relatively benign (dressing kids like little adults, in high heels or ironic punk-rock T-shirts) to the damaging (the high-stakes testing culture creeping into kindergartens). We also find adultification in the expectation that kids conform to adult schedules—young children today are subjected to more daily transitions than were previous generations of children, thanks to the dictates of work and child-care hours and the shift from free play to more programmed activities at school and at home.
Edmon de HaroSimilarly, we expect children to match adults’ capacity to hurry or to be still for long periods of time; when they fail, we are likely to punish or medicate them. Examples abound: an epidemic of preschool expulsions, the reduction in school recess, the extraordinary pathologizing of childhood’s natural rhythms. ADHD diagnoses, which have spiked in recent years, are much more common among children who narrowly make the age cutoff for their grade than among children born just a week or so later, who must start kindergarten the following year and thus end up being the oldest in their class; this raises the question of whether we are labeling as disordered children who are merely acting their age. The same question might be asked of newer diagnoses such as sluggish cognitive tempo and sensory processing disorder. These trends are all of a piece; we’re expecting schoolchildren to act like small adults.
[Read: How the reversal of adult and child roles is hurting kids]
Adultification is a result of a mind-set that ignores just how taxing childhood is. Being small and powerless is inherently stressful. This is true even when nothing especially bad is going on. Yet for many children, especially bad things are going on. Nearly half of American children have experienced at least one “adverse childhood experience,” a category that includes abuse or neglect; losing a parent to divorce or death; having a parent who is an alcoholic or a victim of domestic violence; or having an immediate family member who is mentally ill or incarcerated. About 10 percent of children have experienced three or more of these destabilizing situations. And persistent stress, as we are coming to understand, alters the architecture of the growing brain, putting children at increased risk for a host of medical and psychological conditions over their lifetime.
How misguided to take young brains already bathed in stress hormones and train them to fear low-probability events such as mass shootings—and how little most of us think about what we’re doing. Whereas much adultification involves subjecting kids to things we adults do to ourselves (sleep too little, rush too much), we are at some distance from the harms being inflicted in schools. Even though only a quarter of shootings that involve three or more victims take place at schools, we seldom hear about realistic live-shooter drills in nursing homes, places of worship, or most workplaces. They would likely inconvenience if not incense adults, and scare away business. But we readily force them on children.
If today’s students feel anxious, perhaps it’s partly because, after being told by adults that they’re not capable of handling life’s little challenges, those same adults are bequeathing them so many big challenges, ranging from the college-admissions rat race to an economically precarious future; from climate change to gun violence. Of course, this impulse fits into a longer history of dispatching children to fix adults’ messes, a history that connects the young civil-rights icons Ruby Bridges and Claudette Colvin with the Parkland survivors-turned-activists David Hogg and Emma González.
Audrey Larson, a Connecticut high-school student, would seem to fit squarely into this tradition, having recently won an engineering prize for designing a collapsible, bulletproof wall intended for use in classrooms. Because she grew up near Sandy Hook Elementary School, the site of a 2012 massacre, she wanted to do something tangible to alleviate her classmates’ fear of school shootings. Larson told a reporter that “we can’t wait around anymore” while politicians dither on gun violence. One judge lauded the project’s “robustness and detailed design work.” But I was struck more by the contrast between her prizewinning effort and her earlier, more whimsical entries: a dog-scratching gadget and a pair of glowing pajamas.
Our feverish pursuit of disaster preparedness lays bare a particularly sad irony of contemporary life. Among modernity’s gifts was supposed to be childhood—a new life stage in which young people had both time and space to grow up, without fear of dying or being sent down a coal mine. To a large extent, this has been achieved. American children are manifestly safer and healthier than in previous eras. The mortality rate of children under 5 in the United States today is less than 1 percent (or 6.6 deaths per 1,000 children), compared with more than 40 percent in 1800. The reduction is miraculous. But as in so many other realms, we seem determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
At just the moment when we should be able to count on childhood, we are in danger of abandoning it. When you see a toddler dragged along with her parents to a restaurant long past bedtime; or when you consider the online kindergarten-readiness programs that are sprouting up like weeds (preventing kids from rolling around in actual weeds); or when you think about that 12-year-old North Carolina boy writing an anguished farewell note to his parents, it’s hard to avoid the sense that we are preparing a generation for a kind of failure that may not be captured in actuarial statistics. Our children may be relatively safe, but childhood itself is imperiled.
This article appears in the March 2019 print edition with the headline “Not Just A Drill.”
If a successful State of the Union address inspires your side to clap enthusiastically while making it difficult for your opponents not to join in, Trump’s was a success. It contained many lies, of course. And it falsely and viciously equated undocumented immigration with murder, as usual. But it offered a preview of how Trump, despite his unpopularity, could campaign effectively in 2020.
In 2016, Trump amended traditional Republican ideology in several key ways: He foregrounded his opposition to immigration, he de-emphasized cutting Social Security and Medicare, he attacked free trade, and he promised to end costly wars. In so doing, he jettisoned parts of the GOP agenda—free trade, entitlement reform, and an interventionist foreign policy—that enjoyed support among party elites but few ordinary voters. And by emphasizing immigration and trade while holding fast to the cultural agenda of the Christian right, he roused the GOP’s white, working-class base. This strategy helped him perform far better than most commentators expected when the general election began.
[David Frum: Trump doubles down]
In Trump’s first two speeches to Congress, he deviated from this formula. In 2017, he spoke at length about his plans to repeal and replace Obamacare, a political loser. While Trump’s voters loathe Barack Obama, most Americans in both parties want to preserve the health-care protections he signed into law. In his State of the Union address last year, Trump hyped the tax cut he had signed the previous December. But that, too, was unpopular. Like the Obamacare repeal, upper-income tax cuts are a generic GOP cause that Trump had not placed at the center of his 2016 run. Both issues highlighted a core GOP weakness—the perception that it champions the rich at the expense of other Americans—which Trump had somewhat obscured during the campaign.
This year, Trump returned to the formula that helped win him the presidency. He emphasized immigration, which more than anything else binds him to his base. And he mentioned “late-term abortion,” which helps him shore up support on the Christian right. But he also refocused on issues that in 2016 helpfully distinguished him from his Republican predecessors. He devoted more of his speech to trade than he had in 2017 or 2018, and he took particular aim at China, which was politically shrewd. When he declared, “We are now making it clear to China that after years of targeting our industries and stealing our intellectual property, the theft of American jobs and wealth has come to an end,” even Nancy Pelosi and many Democrats stood up and cheered.
Trump also reprised another 2016 theme that was largely absent from his last two addresses to Congress: military nonintervention. In so doing, he both reasserted his distance from an unpopular party establishment and drew on the strengths that he enjoys as a Republican. Just days ago, Republican senators voted overwhelmingly to rebuke Trump for his plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan. But in his speech, Trump doubled down, declaring that “as we work with our allies to destroy the remnants of ISIS, it is time to give our brave warriors in Syria a warm welcome home” and that in Afghanistan, “the hour has come to at least try for peace.”
[Read: Stacey Abrams’s new strategy for Democrats]
Were Trump a Democrat, such moves might be politically dangerous. The Syria withdrawal can easily be compared to Obama’s troop withdrawal from Iraq, which many Republicans blame for the rise of ISIS. And the deal Trump’s administration is negotiating with the Taliban—which looks mostly like a fig leaf to allow the United States to abandon the Afghan government it has been protecting for close to two decades—evokes America’s abandonment of South Vietnam.
But Trump knows that, as a Republican, he is largely insulated from the charges of surrender that would plague a Democrat who made similar moves. And he knows that while the Republican foreign-policy class may grumble, leaving Syria and Afghanistan is popular among the rank-and file voters of both parties. When Trump declared, “Great nations do not fight endless wars,” Pelosi rose again, as did most Democrats and Republicans in the hall. This is Trump’s Nixon in China, and absent some disaster, it will serve him well in his reelection bid.
The final element of Trump’s speech that seems likely to reappear frequently in 2020 was his use of Venezuela’s plight as a springboard from which to denounce “socialism.” It was another crafty move. Many of the policy proposals that Democrats have embraced as they have moved left—higher taxes on the rich, Medicare for all, free college, and a $15 national minimum wage—are popular. In the post–Cold War era, politicians such as Bernie Sanders have also improved socialism’s image by linking it to benign Nordic countries such as Sweden and Denmark rather than the Soviet Union.
[Reihan Salam: Trump’s revealing immigration ad lib]
By citing Venezuela, Trump counters that. He turns an economic debate into a cultural one. He makes “socialism” a byword for the left’s supposed effort to turn America into a developing-world, nonwhite country. And thus, rather than risking his supporters being wooed by Democrats offering populist economic proposals, he again stokes their fears that Democrats will make America unrecognizable.
Is this race-baiting political spin good for the country? Of course not. As policy, Trump’s new State of the Union address—like virtually all his speeches—is a national embarrassment. But as politics, it shows why Trump, for all his self-inflicted wounds, cannot be counted out.
The fact that Republicans no longer possess a majority in both houses of Congress, and thus can’t pass legislation—such as upper-income tax cuts and the repeal of Obamacare—that party elites demand, probably helps Trump. It frees him to focus on rebuilding the heterodox image that helped him in 2016. If Trump’s third address to Congress marked the launch of his reelection campaign, he’s off to a pretty good start.
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