MoJo Wire

Quick hits from the Mother Jones newsroom

  • The 3 Worst Arguments That Republicans Made Against DC Statehood

    March 22, 2021

    J. Scott Applewhite/AP

    With Joe Biden in the White House and a slim Democratic majority in Congress, residents of the District of Columbia are probably the closest they’ve ever been to finally gaining statehood. It’s a real moment for a movement that has long been at the bottom of the wishlist for the Democratic agenda; the bill that would grant statehood to DC—HR 51—was approved by the Democratic-led House last year but never made it to the floor of the GOP-controlled Senate. But now that Democrats have won control of the upper chamber, the fight has resumed. On Monday, the House held a hearing on DC statehood.

    The case against DC statehood is steeped in anti-Black racism, a fact that House Republicans worked hard to obfuscate during Monday’s hearing. Though the typical talking points against statehood were made ad infinitum—that it’s unconstitutional, and that it’s nothing more than a Democratic power grab—some participants found even more nonsensical reasons for why DC shouldn’t become a state. Here are the worst:

    DC shouldn’t become a state because it doesn’t have any car dealerships, landfills, or airports

    In his opening statement, Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) made the bizarre argument that “DC wants the benefits of a state without actually having to operate like one.” It was a confusing statement made only more confusing when he elaborated on what that meant—that “DC would be the only state without an airport, without a car dealership, without a capital city, without a landfill.” 

    Apart from the fact that DC does, indeed, have numerous car dealerships, nowhere in the Constitution does it state that dealerships—or landfills and airports—are a requirement for statehood. 

    DC shouldn’t become a state because lawmakers already see political yard signs on their way to work

    The one GOP witness who testified against statehood at Monday’s hearing was Zack Smith, a Heritage Foundation fellow who has published a number of articles that make a constitutional case against the legislation. That’s exactly what he did throughout the hearing, but it was in his opening statement that he noted that the framers of the Constitution “wanted to avoid one state having undue influence over the national government.” He argued that DC residents “already impact the national debate” because of how politically engaged they are, visually speaking. “For the members here today, how many of you saw DC statehood yard signs, or bumper stickers, or banners on your way to this hearing today?” Smith said. “Where else in the nation could such simple actions reach so many members of Congress?”

    DC shouldn’t become a state because it lacks manufacturing

    Midway through the hearing, Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) cited a good friend of his who argues that economic wealth comes from manufacturing, agriculture, or natural minerals, “and those are things that I think every state has to some degree.” He then asked the witnesses to fill him in on the number of manufacturing, agriculture, and mining jobs in DC, adding that “all three of which would have to be very tiny compared to what we get in a normal state.”

    When DC Mayor Muriel Bowser replied that the district “doesn’t have any mines” but does have heavy investments in the solar and hospitality sectors, Grothman cut her off to accuse her of not answering his question.

  • What People Are Spending Their Stimulus Checks On

    March 22, 2021

    Getty

    The $1,400 checks from the American Rescue Plan have been hitting bank accounts across the country, and here at Mother Jones, we’ve been curious about how people are spending their new infusions of cash. Here are just a few plans from a recent audience callout, as well as a friendly invitation to subscribe to our newsletter to join in on similar conversations, daily news hits, and much more. 

    A literal garden of hope

    My fiance and I will both be getting the full $1,400, for a total of $2,800 coming into the household coffers. We plan to use it for getting our organic vegetable garden/orchard going this year. We just purchased a new house in February, with a lovely huge garden area, complete with an established compost bin. Buying seeds and seed starter supplies, plus soil amendments will make the stimulus the gift that keeps on giving.  The rest will go right into savings. —Shannon

    Long overdue health check-ups and car maintenance

    When my next infusion of funds arrives, I hope to do what I’d planned for the first two: get my vision checked (my bifocal specs are waaayyyy out of date) and get my car fixed so it doesn’t overheat so easily…I’m on Social Security and have a part-time job that nets me $73 a week. Woohoo! If I can, I’d also like to pay off my credit card debt (it’s small) and maybe get ahead on utilities and phone accounts. That’s about as frivolous as I get these days. —Susan

    Focus on grad school

    I’m an older graduate student who went back to school after my kids grew up. I lost the job I used to pay tuition and fees because of COVID. My refund will help me not have to take time off.  That makes me overjoyed!!! —Jules

    Housing charity

    The last one went to the local food bank. The local food banks are doing ok at the moment, so it will go elsewhere, probably housing. The important thing is to put it somewhere it will be spent quickly instead of sitting in my savings account doing nothing. —Walt

    Furniture to finally welcome guests after a long year

    When I relocated from Westchester County, New York to Salem, Massachusetts in late January 2020, I expected visits from my grandchildren, as well as the family members I left behind in NY. After spending the entire month of February sick with a constant non-COVID cough, the shutdown went into effect, and so no guests could visit. For the first time in my life, I spent months without touching another living creature.

    I think I’ll buy some furniture so that my home can be ready to welcome my long-awaited guests this Summer (fingers crossed!). I haven’t felt any enthusiasm for setting up my home since I live alone, and it was too sad to be getting ready to see those I love most in the world until now. It will be fun to get out and get to know my new neighborhood.—Claudia

  • The Sunday News Shows Went All-In on the “Border Crisis,” and I Think It Gave Me Hives

    March 21, 2021

    Meet the Press

    It was Border Crisis Day on the Sunday morning news shows, which meant that folks tuning in to ABC’s This Week were treated to the Powerhouse Roundtable panelists parked in front of a fence in El Paso, as if they were College GameDay hosts getting ready for a big Alabama-LSU game down in Death Valley.

     

    Meanwhile, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas made appearances on not one, not two, not three, not four, but five different morning shows to lay out the administration’s talking points about what he called earlier this week “historic and unprecedented challenges at our border”: that migrants (and particularly children) shouldn’t come to the United States now, that the Biden administration has to rebuild a system destroyed by the Trump administration while simultaneously caring for vulnerable kids, and that that process will take time—lots and lots of time. Here he is on This Week:

    Among his many stops, Mayorkas was a guest on Meet the Press, which is hosted by NBC’s Chuck Todd. Now, there are lots of ways to tease a broadcast about a situation in which, as the Los Angeles Times‘ Molly Hennessey-Fiske tweeted Saturday, more than 5,000 unaccompanied minors were in border agencies’ custody as of the weekend, with more than 600 of them being held for 10 days or more in poor conditions that they’re supposed to be transferred out of within 72 hours. But this uniquely vapid bit of framing—the politics are what matter the most!—ain’t it:

     

    You wouldn’t know it from Todd’s intro, but thanks to a series of asylum-killing rules implemented by the Trump administration, tens of thousands of people have been languishing in dangerous Mexican border towns, waiting for their opportunity to have their claims heard by US officials. And as BuzzFeed News‘ Hamed Aleaziz wrote in October, the Trump administration had turned away immigrant children from the border 13,000 times under a public health measure known as Title 42, which effectively sealed the border to asylum seekers starting in March 2020. (For more about the current border dynamic, check out my colleague Isabela Dias’ sharp interview with Jennifer Podkul, the vice president for policy and advocacy at Kids in Need of Defense (KIND).)

    But since Republicans—scrambling in a post-Trump, post-insurrection, post-stimulus, post-Dr. Seuss world—have pivoted to making the increase in unaccompanied minors at the border their 2022 wedge issue, we’re all about to be dragged along for the ride. (Like Todd says, Biden can’t control the news cycle!) After House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) went on Fox & Friends earlier in the week to slam the White House for what he called “more than just a crisis—this is a human tragedy,” hawk Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said on Fox News Sunday that “the border is wide open” under Biden, despite the fact that the Title 42 border closure remains in place for everyone but unaccompanied migrant children.

    Cotton, it should be noted, is calling on Biden to shut the border on these kids. That was and would be another kind of crisis—just maybe not one that’d result in wall-to-wall coverage on the Sunday morning news shows.

  • Democrats Just Announced They’re Off to a Record-Setting Fundraising Start to 2021

    March 21, 2021

    AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

    The Democratic National Committee said Saturday that it’s off to a record-setting year for fundraising, marking a dramatic turnaround from where Democrats were four years ago. According to filings it made with the Federal Election Commission, the DNC fundraised $8.5 million in February and $18.4 million since the beginning of the year, which is a blistering start for the Democrats in a non-presidential election year. That’s a good sign that donor enthusiasm, and in particular from the grassroots of the party, has carried through the opening days of President Joe Biden’s administration as his agenda begins to unfold.

    According to the DNC, 67 percent of the funds it raised came from small donors, meaning people who gave $200 or less. These types of donors are a huge prize for political fundraisers, not only because if they turn out in bulk they can quickly generate huge sums, but also because they represent a vote of support and a sign of active enthusiasm from the party’s base.

    That said, the Republican National Committee also had a strong February—in fact, the RNC out-raised the DNC for the month of February, pulling in $9.3 million, and had an even higher proportion of individual donations coming from small donors, about 72 percent. And the Republicans reported having nearly twice as much money on hand—$83.9 million—as the Democrats did.

    The GOP numbers were a bit of a turnaround, too: In the first two months of the year the RNC had only raised $16.5 million from donors, falling behind the Democrats. That kind of fundraising stumble is something, even if the Republicans still have an upper hand overall. For years, and particularly in the Trump era when the former president proved to be such a powerful fundraiser, the DNC has frequently trailed the RNC’s totals (the DNC was out-raised by the RNC by $400 million in 2020). And, four years ago, the DNC was anything but competitive with the RNC in terms of fundraising.

    In fact, at the beginning of March 2017, with Democrats still reeling from Trump’s inauguration and his administration moving quickly to shatter many of Washington’s norms on immigration, trade and ethics, the DNC reported having just $10.2 million in cash on hand and another $2.7 million in debt to pay down. Despite liberal outrage at Trump’s actions, the DNC had managed to raise just $5.5 million that February, about half of what the Republicans had pulled in. 

    Another key difference between the two parties—and another point of potential optimism for the Democrats—is that since the February fundraising period has ended, Trump has launched a turf war with the RNC over the use of his name and likeness for fundraising. Despite a nasty cease-and-desist letter, the party continued to use the former president’s name to raise money, and he will likely cooperate with at least some of the GOP’s fundraising priorities in coming months. But it’s going to be a much bumpier ride than Democrats will have with Biden as their party standard.

     

  • America’s Right-Wing “Patriots” Are Fawning Over the British Monarchy to Own the Libs

    March 20, 2021

    Patrick van Katwijk/AP

    I’m not American. I’m still learning things about this great country. That America fought a big war of independence, however, is not one of them. It’s in the immigrant starter-pack. America cancelled the monarchy long ago, in the pre-Twitter national dawn of 1776, from which much pride, and a whole day off work, is derived.

    So it was puzzling to learn that the great defenders of American patriotism are feeling queasy these days about the long-term survival of the poor sods helming the same monarchy that was once defeated in such glorious battle.

    What did it take for this historical tide to turn in the favor of the tyrants, the oppressors of liberty? A single accusation of racism by a woman of color.

    If you’re finding yourself with nothing to do next Thursday, be sure to tune into a virtual event hosted by the Heritage Foundation, the policy think tank, with the hyperventilating title, “The Crown Under Fire: Why the Left’s Campaign to Cancel the Monarchy and Undermine a Cornerstone of Western Democracy Will Fail.” The event promises to explain how “the American radical left has seized upon the claims from Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, that the Royal Family created a hostile, racist environment for the couple” to launch an attack on the British monarchy, and in turn, the very ideals of Western Civilization itself. Will they stop at nothing?!

    This enemy-of-my-enemy contortion act isn’t isolated. Our friends over at Refinery29 have documented a vast cast of rightwing notables fawning over the monarchy, including Megyn Kelly, Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro, and Erick Erickson.

    I know I am still just student of American history (from a country that has yet to fully shirk the monarchy, no less) but I never thought the rhetorical outgrowth of the Mr. Potato Head Gender Scandal would be tearing up the Declaration of Independence to own the libs?

  • You Won’t Be Able to Go Watch the Tokyo Olympics in Person

    March 20, 2021

    James Matsumoto/SOPA Images/ZUMA

    Today, Japanese officials confirmed that outside spectators won’t be able to turn up to watch the world’s biggest sporting event this year. Seiko Hashimoto, the president of the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee, called it “an unavoidable decision.”

    “Currently, the COVID-19 situation in Japan and many other countries around the world is still very challenging and a number of variant strains have emerged, whilst international travel remains severely restricted globally,” read a statement released by top organizers on Saturday. “Based on the present situation of the pandemic, it is highly unlikely that entry into Japan will be guaranteed this summer for people from overseas.”

    The 2020 Summer Olympics were meant to be convened last year, of course—it’s right there in the name. And you know the rest of that story: The pandemic got in the way, and the games were left in disarray.  Organizers are now forging ahead with plans to hold it this July, open to local (inoculated) sports fans following strict protocols. They now need to sort out how to refund tickets snapped up by masses of overseas spectators, according to the New York Times:

    Overseas buyers purchased 600,000 tickets to Olympic events, as well as 30,000 tickets to the Paralympic Games starting in August, organizers said. The Paralympics will also bar spectators from abroad. In bidding for the Games, the Tokyo organizers said that 7.8 million tickets would be made available. Typically, about 10 to 20 percent of Olympic tickets go to international spectators.

    The idea of holding the Games at all this year remains deeply unpopular amongst the Japanese public, according to the Times: Nearly 80 percent want them canceled or postponed.

  • Federal Judge Smears the Press: “A Threat to a Viable Democracy”

    March 19, 2021

    President George W. Bush presents a Presidential Medal of Freedom to Laurence H. Silberman on June 19, 2008 at the White House.Alex Wong/Getty Images

    For four years, former President Donald Trump told Americans that the media was the enemy of the people. Millions believed him, and journalists increasingly felt in danger when among his supporters. Last summer, reporters were pepper sprayed and arrested while covering protests against police violence. In shocking disregard for press freedom, one such reporter was actually tried in state court (and thankfully acquitted). But through all this, the judiciary’s firm commitment to the First Amendment and the freedom of the press were supposed to be bulletproof—immune from Trump’s political narrative.

    Apparently, that’s not the case. On Friday, Judge Laurence Silberman, a senior judge on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, attacked the media as a dangerous organ of the Democratic Party that should no longer enjoy legal protections once thought necessary to protect a free press. Silberman urged the Supreme Court to overturn its landmark decision in New York Times v. Sullivan, which protects the press from most defamation suits.

    Silberman, a conservative Reagan appointee, used a dissenting opinion in a case unrelated to American politics to announce his feelings about the US media. He called media bias against Republicans a “long-term, secular trend going back at least to the ’70s” that had now taken over nearly every outlet.

    “Two of the three most influential papers (at least historically), The New York Times and The Washington Post, are virtually Democratic Party broadsheets,” he wrote. “And the news section of The Wall Street Journal leans in the same direction. The orientation of these three papers is followed by The Associated Press and most large papers across the country (such as the Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, and Boston Globe). Nearly all television—network and cable—is a Democratic Party trumpet. Even the government-supported National Public Radio follows along.” Only Fox News, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and the New York Post carried the banner of the right. 

    “Big tech,” he alleged, was also in the pocket of the Democratic Party because it censored conservative voices—another frequent Trump allegation without basis in reality. Upstart conservative outlets, he claimed, are inhibited by big tech, “either by direct bans or content-based censorship.” (Nevermind that Facebook actually tweaked its algorithms so that users would see more content from right-wing sites like the Daily Wire, while limiting the circulation of content from Mother Jones.) 

    Silberman asserted that the left’s supposed ideological monopoly over the media benefits Democratic political candidates and endangers the American way of life. “It is fair to conclude, therefore, that one-party control of the press and media is a threat to a viable democracy,” he wrote. “It may even give rise to countervailing extremism. The First Amendment guarantees a free press to foster a vibrant trade in ideas. But a biased press can distort the marketplace. And when the media has proven its willingness—if not eagerness—to so distort, it is a profound mistake to stand by unjustified legal rules that serve only to enhance the press’ power.”

    In recent years, Republican politicians like Trump and Devin Nunes have sought to use the legal system to bully the press, filing lawsuits against mainstream media outlets. But what Silberman ignores is that conservative news outlets could find themselves in even greater legal jeopardy if the courts make it easier for plaintiffs to win libel suits. A perfect illustration is the fallout from conspiracy theories falsely positing that electronic voting systems were used to steal the 2020 election from Trump. In December, Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax began airing clarifications and corrections after the voting technology company Smartmatic threatened to sue them for airing the baseless election fraud claims. Last month, Smartmatic followed through, suing Fox and other Trump allies for $2.7 billion. 

    The recent voting machine suits get at a larger truth about the current moment that Silberman misses: Divisions between the right and the left are increasingly less about ideology and more about reality. Who won the 2020 election is a paramount example. If the right continues to insist on alternative facts, then it will certainly seem like bias when reliable news outlets debunk that misinformation. Likewise, as myriad news reports have shown, companies like Facebook end up censoring more conservative content when they try to filter out false or hateful content.

    It’s not a loyalty to any party that’s at play, it’s a dedication to reality.

  • Rand Paul Won’t Stop Resisting Anthony Fauci’s COVID Guidance

    March 18, 2021

    Susan Walsh/Pool/CNP/Zuma

    At a Thursday Senate hearing on the nation’s coronavirus response, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) once again suggested that he knew better than Dr. Anthony Fauci when it came to mask requirements.

    Paul repeatedly pressed Fauci on the utility of wearing masks given that prior infection and vaccination confer immunity to the coronavirus. But he didn’t seem to want to hear Fauci’s response about the possibility of reinfection by emerging, contagious COVID variants.

    “If we’re not spreading the infection, isn’t it just theater?” Paul said. “If you got the vaccine and you’re wearing two masks, isn’t that theater?”

    “Here we go again, with the theater,” Fauci said. “Let’s get down to the facts.”

    When Fauci again brought up the danger of variants against which vaccinated and previously infected people may not be immune, Paul accused him of “making policy based on conjecture.”

    “You’ve been vaccinated and you parade around in two masks for show,” he said. “You want to get rid of vaccine hesitancy? Tell them they can quit wearing their masks after they get their vaccine.”

    “I totally disagree with you,” Fauci said. “Let me just state, for the record, that masks are not theater. Masks are protective.”

    This isn’t the first time Paul and Fauci have sparred at Senate hearings. Last May, Paul criticized Fauci for his recommendation that schools not open in the fall. Then, in September, he falsely suggested that New York City succeeded at flattening the curve in the early months of the pandemic not because of shutdowns and strict adherence to CDC guidelines, but because the initial devastating outbreak had allowed the population to reach herd immunity.

  • Heavily Armed Man Arrested Outside Residence of VP Kamala Harris

    March 17, 2021

    Lawrence Jackson/White House/Zuma

    A man in possession of a rifle and ammunition was arrested outside the Naval Observatory, which contains Vice President Kamala Harris’ residence, Wednesday afternoon. Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, do not currently live at the Naval Observatory because it is undergoing renovations.

    According to police bulletins, the Texas man, a former Army drone operator who was apparently experiencing paranoid delusions, said he was going to DC “to take care of his problem.” He was charged with carrying a dangerous weapon, carrying a rifle or shotgun outside of a business, possession of unregistered ammunition, and possession of a large capacity ammunition feeding device.

    The incident was particularly worrisome given the recent violence at the Capitol, and the base personal attacks former President Trump and his minions leveled against Harris during the campaign and beyond. Among other things, Trump has referred to Harris as mean, “nasty,” “horrible,” “disrespectful,” “shameless,” and a “disaster,” and said that electing her would be “an insult to our country.”

    While the suspect’s political ideologies are not yet clear, one can only imagine how a mentally unhinged fan of the former president might interpret such attacks on the vice president’s character.   

  • They’re Really Going to Tell Us the Atlanta Shootings Aren’t About Racism, Huh?

    March 17, 2021

    Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP

    On Tuesday night, a 21-year-old white man walked into an Atlanta-area massage parlor where he opened fire and killed four people. From there, the white man entered two similar businesses and killed four more people, prompting a massive police manhunt that eventually led to his arrest. The death toll from the rampage included six Asian women, a critical fact that raised fears of a racially motivated hate crime.

    But, not long after most of the country awoke to learn of the horrific details, law enforcement officials on Wednesday appeared intent on focusing on a different narrative. After the arrest, the suspect had “made indicators that he has some issues,” Cherokee Police Sheriff Frank Reynolds told reporters in a press conference, potentially a “sexual addiction.” Reynolds said that officials believed the suspect had “frequented these places in the past and may have been lashing out” in order to get rid of a “temptation.”

    Though officials acknowledged that the murders had occurred during a surge in anti-Asian violence across the country, that felt mostly like a footnote attached to the emphasis that it was still too early to make the determination that a hate crime had taken place. The logic appeared largely, if not solely, rooted in the suspect’s claims to police that his decision to kill six Asian women had not been motivated by race. Soon after the presser ended, the Cherokee police department issued the following statement:

    To an Asian American woman watching from a distance, the admonishment not to rush to assume racist elements strikes me as perplexing. The alacrity with which the police have released information heavily intimating that this has more to do with sex, specifically the sexual frustrations of a white man, feels obscene. One can be cautious about what caused a man to kill people while still acknowledging that watching people who look like you die for no reason looks exactly like what it is. But law enforcement officials made a specific choice in ignoring that and echoing the words of a killer. And their stress for caution before labeling Tuesday’s murders as racially motivated—while foregrounding the potential sexual nature of the investigation—runs the risk of falsely treating misogyny and racism as if they’re mutually exclusive, when in fact, overwhelming evidence has shown that the two toxic forces are often interwoven. The fact that Asian women make up 70 percent of the recent rise in anti-Asian attacks is further proof of the parallel traumas. In the case of Asian sex workers, there’s really no separating the inherent racism rooted in a white man’s assertion that “sexual addiction” prompted him to commit violence.

    Time and again, that dangerous instinct on ignoring the full picture has proven effective at minimizing how acute violence lays bare the rot of racism and sexism generally. You see it exposed, excruciatingly so, right there in the language Georgia police officials used to describe Tuesday’s murderous rampage, or as they called it, an act of “lashing out” to eliminate sexual urges. (A familiar predicament for all men, right?) Law enforcement officials even went as far as to reduce the murders as a “really bad day” for their suspect.

    As for the women who were murdered, they’ve already been tarnished by a flood of abhorrent jokes on social media about Asian sex workers. They did not get the full humanity of having a “really bad day.” By pressing the potential sexual undertones of Tuesday’s rampage, it’s not a stretch to imagine that the strange performance by Georgia police officials will further fuel the grotesque instinct to crack such jokes amid a tragedy. 

    “We are not about to get it into victim blaming, victim shaming here,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms responded after a reporter asked if sex work took place at the targeted businesses. “We don’t know additional information about what his motives were, but we certainly do not begin to blame victims.”

    Well, some of us aren’t.

  • Watch Rep. Marie Newman Explain Why the Equality Act Matters to Trans Kids

    March 17, 2021

    Charlie Riedel/AP

    On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee convened a hearing on the Equality Act, a sweeping measure that would enshrine explicit protections for LBGTQ people into law. The bill would amend the Civil Rights Act to include nondiscrimination protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and override most parts of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) that allow for discriminatory acts based on firmly held religious beliefs.

    During the hearing, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), and others theorized that, if passed, the religious right would become “second class citizens” and decried the “radical Democrats’ war on women.” But there was one notable exception to the manufactured hysteria being hawked by elected officials: Marie Newman, a Democratic representative from Illinois. 

    Newman testified on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of families that support a transgender loved one, including her own. At age 14, Newman’s daughter, Evie, came out to her parents as transgender. Newman describes Evie’s coming out as “the happiest day of our lives, our family was whole again.”

    “Still, as a mother, I knew the challenges ahead,” she continued. “My daughter would grow up in a nation where, as an example, in 25 states she could be discriminated against merely because of who she was. That was upsetting to me. She could be thrown out of a restaurant, she could be evicted from her apartment, she could be denied access to education, and denied healthcare. Just because of who she is. On top of that, the likelihood of facing hateful, vile attacks—and she has, verbal and physical—for simply existing and being her authentic self was almost a certainty. Signing the Equality Act into law isn’t going to change that reality overnight. It absolutely will not. But it will ensure that Americans like my daughter are afforded the same civil rights already extended to every other American across the nation.”

    Newman is hardly the only parent speaking out on behalf of their trans children. In February, a police officer in Alabama begged lawmakers not to outlaw gender-affirming health care for trans kids, arguing that such care saved his now-adult daughter’s life. Earlier this week, a lawyer in Missouri went before lawmakers to speak out against a bill that would ban his daughter from playing on the girl’s volleyball team. “Let them have their childhoods, let them be who they are,” he pleaded.

    This is also not the first time Newman, a freshman lawmaker, has had to take a stand for her daughter in the halls of Congress. Just a few weeks ago, Newman displayed a transgender pride flag outside her office to signal her support for the Equality Act. In response, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) hung a sign outside her office (which faces Newman’s) proclaiming “There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE. ‘Trust The Science.’” 

    Despite the conspiracy theorist-turned-congresswoman’s opposition, the Equality Act passed the House 224-206. Should it pass the Senate, President Joe Biden is expected to sign it into law.

    “Families like ours cannot afford for this legislation to fail,” wrote Newman in a recent op-ed for Time. “We cannot allow more young Americans to believe that the only two answers to the question of who they are as a person is suicide or abandonment.”

  • Violence Against Women Act Runs Into GOP Objections on Guns and Trans Rights

    March 16, 2021

    Vice President Joe Biden holds up a report as he speaks at the National Archives in Washington to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act, Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014. Biden said violence against women is the ugliest form of violence there is. He's calling it a stain on America's national character that must be exposed and eliminated. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)Susan Walsh/AP

    Three years after Republicans in Congress allowed the Violence Against Women Act to expire, Democrats have introduced an expanded version of the landmark legislation. But some Republicans’ initial objections to provisions concerning gun control and trans rights leave the fate of the bill uncertain. 

    Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) introduced the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2021 on March 8. The bill expands on legislation first passed in 1994 to improve the criminal justice response to domestic violence and sexual assault and provide funding for victims’ services, as well as training, prevention, and law enforcement programs. This reauthorization is so far cosponsored by 168 Democrats and two Republicans, but other Republicans in Congress are finding new ways to attempt to undermine it. 

    In a statement, Rep. Jackson Lee said the Violence Against Women Act and its subsequent reauthorizations have “ushered in a seismic transformation on how society perceives violence against women.” President Joe Biden sponsored the original legislation as a senator and is now urging “Congress to follow past precedent and bring a strong bipartisan coalition together for swift passage of VAWA.” 

    The last reauthorization to extend VAWA for five years expired in 2018. Although the House passed bipartisan legislation during the last Congress with the support of 33 Republicans, the GOP-controlled Senate allowed it to lapse. Among the sticking points for Republicans was a provision to end the so-called “boyfriend loophole” by expanding the the provision that prohibits perpetrators of domestic violence from purchasing guns to include dating partners and stalkers. The NRA fiercely opposed the provision, which it called “a gun-control poison pill,” and lobbied against the bill.

    This year’s version keeps that provision in place, while also expanding survivors’ access to housing and extending “the jurisdiction of tribal authorities over non-Indians who commit a crime in Indian country,” among other new protections. Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.), who was just confirmed by the Senate to lead the Interior Department as the first Native American Cabinet secretary, is one of the cosponsors of the bill. 

    While Democrats and advocates for survivors of domestic and sexual violence are pushing for VAWA to be reauthorized quickly in light of the significant increase in domestic violence in the United States during the pandemic, some House Republicans have already geared up to undermine provisions of the bill involving gun control and trans rights.

    Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) has led the fight on both counts. First, he submitted an amendment to replace all “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” language with “biological sex.” He has also proposed adding “findings included in a study by Pew Research Center on gun ownership increases” where women cited “personal protection as the primary reason for obtaining a gun.” (Other studies have shown that firearm possession can put women at greater risk for violence.) He would like to include a sentence saying that VAWA can’t take away a person’s constitutional right to bear arms “based on an allegation where such person does not have the opportunity to contest such allegation.” 

    Other Republicans have joined the fray. Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona proposed an amendment to authorize grants to train survivors on how to use firearms. Rep. Debbie Lesko or Arizona, a survivor of domestic violence but a critic of trans rights, suggested a change to prevent service providers “from being compelled to place a woman or child into a circumstance in which they fear for a violation of privacy or safety.” In 2019, Lesko had defended a similar proposal by arguing that it wasn’t “fair to women” that the government was “forcing these organizations to take in biological males to be sleeping right next to biological women.” Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee wants to stipulate that organizations that provide services exclusively “to women based on sex at birth” can’t be prevented from receiving grants. QAnon enthusiast Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) proposed an amendment to strike a severability clause ensuring that even if parts of the legislation are deemed unconstitutional, the rest should still stand.

    Late last week, Greene also used inflammatory and inaccurate language to decry VAWA on Twitter:

    If the bill passes in the Democratic-led House, it still faces the prospect of a filibuster in the Senate, which Democrats could only overcome with the backing of at least 10 Republicans. 

  • Conservatives Are Upset About Dr. Seuss and It’s All WAP’s Fault

    March 16, 2021

    Atlantic Records/Zuma

    Last summer, when Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B released “WAP”—which stands for wet-ass pussy—conservatives had a collective conniption fit. Prepare my fainting couch, the pearl clutchers wailed. At the time, I wrote that conservatives were offended by WAP because it was a song about Black women using their bodies not for labor, what conservatives seem to believe is the traditional function for a Black woman’s body, but for enjoyment. 

    Well, it’s been seven months, and they still have WAP on their minds. Today, you can find your local right-wing hysteric lamenting the fact that everything from Dr. Suess to Mr. Potato Head has been cancelled, and nonetheless WAP reigns supreme. Never mind that the song has absolutely nothing to do with children’s books or toys, the relentless conservative obsession with WAP finds it convenient to somehow conflate them. 

    It’s not the only song about sex one can hear on a regular basis, and it’s certainly not the only vulgar music the youths are listening to today. (Let me introduce you horrified Fox News hosts and other guardians of all that is right and good about America to my favorite Spotify playlists!) But, like so many of the problems facing conservative America, the connection that exists among cancelling Mr. Potato Head and Dr. Seuss, while permitting WAP to reign supreme, is ultimately the responsibility of Black people—or at least whatever stand-in word we’re using for Black people these days.

    A few weeks ago the Dr. Seuss estate announced that of the approximately 39 books Theodore Seuss Geisel wrote, six of them with racist and offensive imagery would no longer be in circulation. It was a carefully considered business decision, but conservatives, like comedian Tim Young, behaved as if this was only the first step on a slippery slope, and soon the President of the Woke Mob would replace all children’s books with sexy rap lyrics. 

    Your conservative relatives, who mainline Fox News from dawn ‘till dusk, have concluded that liberal teachers, who are planted in public schools like some communist cells from another era, are teaching children all over the country all this woke nonsense. The cherished and totally illusory Leave-It-To-Beaver version of the country will soon be replaced by first graders chanting WAP lyrics—”there’s some whores in this house, there’s some whores in this house”—every morning before the bell rings instead of the Pledge of Allegiance. (And we all know the violence that the libs inflicted on school prayer.)

    Adding a little fuel to the flames, it didn’t help that Cardi and Meg performed their hit song at the Grammy’s on Sunday night, an awards show that literally exists for many of the same people who write and perform songs like WAP.  The timing was propitious. Not only had Dr. Seuss been obliterated, but the company that makes the potato toys had recently announced that they were dropping the “Mister” part of the name. The reasoning was so that children could make whatever kind of families they wanted. They later reassured customers that Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head would continue to exist.

    It’s unclear what the point of the announcement was (and I don’t care because I am an adult), but the main takeaway was that concerned parents could sleep soundly at night knowing that plastic potato heads were still available to children far and wide. Enter Dave Rubin, a conservative YouTube show host, who connected the Grammy WAP performance with the so-called cancellation of Mr. Potato Head. “We took out Mr. Potato Head because he was a Mister,” he complained, “but we have [WAP]…that’s all okay.” 

     

    Conservatives are up in arms! First, Black people demand to stop being killed by police, now my potato toys and Dr. Seuss? What’s next? Women in the workplace? A woman of color as vice president? 

    Conservatives are amplifying this non-issue because they’re hoping their followers, fans, and viewers would be distracted from the fact that they’ve already lost the most important battles that actually mean something in individual lives. The vaccine rollout, the COVID relief bill, action on climate change, fixing our dismal health care system—these are the issues that non-Fox News viewers, and even some Fox viewers as well, care about. According to recent polling, 41 percent of Republican voters are in favor of President Joe Biden’s massive COVID relief bill. Republicans and right-wingers know they can show nothing in terms of policy or achievements to present as arguments against any of those major issues. So, they’ll just ignore them all and pretend that this country’s most the most pressing emergency is that Black rappers are rapping about sex and your kids will have to settle for Green Eggs and Ham (still being published and sold!) for their bed time story instead of If I Ran the Zoo.

    I almost feel sorry for right-wing ideologues. They used to be so good at creating a boogeyman to terrify their increasingly isolated supporters: A Black president run amok, caravans of immigrants coming to take your jobs, and of course, the always-looming specter of full equality. They tested out die for the economy during a pandemic last spring, but it just didn’t have the same oomph as Mr. Potato Head provides.

    Of course, conservative grievances always have been performative, but the discourse around WAP has reached such new levels of farce that I find myself genuinely confused. Are people like Rubin and Young simply performing for the outrage machine? Or, seven months after WAP hit number one on the charts, maybe they finally really believe their own bullshit.

  • Democrats Are Fighting Back Against the Effort to Recall Gavin Newsom

    March 16, 2021

    Allen J. Schaben/Getty

    The Recall Gavin campaign has officially grabbed the attention of its target. Yesterday, Democrats launched a Stop the Republican Recall campaign, the first sign from the party and Newsom’s office that the recall effort poses a legitimate threat.

    The group rolled out an anti-recall TV ad and promoted a slew of major Democrats against the effort. It pushed the recall as ridiculous, brought by a “coalition of national Republicans, anti-vaxxers, QAnon conspiracy theorists and anti-immigrant Trump supporters.” The recall opponent group cites the Los Angeles Times’ reporting on the links between the recall funders—largely California GOP members and a small group of wealthy tech—and some of its far-right, white supremacist supporters. Though the campaign claims to have gathered over 2 million signatures—more than enough to trigger a special election—a recent poll shows in that event only 38 percent of Californians would vote to oust Newsom.

    The RecallGavin2020 campaign, which began late last year, has morphed from a fringe petition initiated by a retired police sergeant and promoted by an eye-patch-wearing political consultant into a catch-all raison d’être for lockdown weary Californians, Republicans, and far-right conspiracists alike—the pinnacle of the state’s recall fever. When I profiled Randy Economy, the campaign’s spokesperson and said political consultant, he gleefully raved about those appropriating his effort for their grievances. As I reported then, a few prominent and wealthy tech barons have joined the recall.

    Some of the campaign’s biggest monetary backing has come from Silicon Valley moguls dissatisfied with the state’s attempts to regulate Big Tech. Billionaire investor and Golden State Warriors part-owner Chamath Palihapitiya may not share Economy’s self-proclaimed “fiercely independent” politics, but that didn’t keep him from donating $100,000 to the recall effort—after hinting at his own plans to challenge Newsom. (Palihapitiya has since said he won’t run.) Venture capitalist Doug Leone and his wife have also donated about $100,000 to the recall effort. The investor and former PayPal executive David Sacks is another recall backer; his wife, Jacqueline, gave $25,000 in support.

    Though the campaign alleges to already have more than enough votes to force a recall vote, the most recent February numbers from the Secretary of State indicate that the campaign would still need over 800,000 signatures, even more if ensuring valid, verified signatures. Petitioners have until March 17 to submit signatures after which the registrar’s office has until late April to certify them. If a special election is forced and goes in favor of his critics, Newsom will be the second California governor to be booted from office after the 2003 recall of Democrat Gray Davis.

    At Dodger Stadium last week, Newsom addressed Californians for his second State of the State Address since the pandemic began to highlight the strides his administration has taken to distributing vaccines. Though Newsom did not explicitly mention the recall effort by name, he referenced those “promoting partisan, power grabs with outdated prejudices,” that he will “not be distracted from getting shots in arms and our economy booming again.”

  • Why HR 1 Is the Most Significant Democracy Reform Bill in Decades

    March 15, 2021

    Screenshot/Mother Jones

    House Resolution 1, the For the People Act, includes a slew of pro-voter policies. It would expand automatic registration and two-weeks early voting, across all 50 states; it would beef up mail-in voting. It is, in the words of Mother Jones’ resident voting rights expert, Ari Berman, “really the most significant democracy reform bill since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965.”

    The bill has passed the House. But it is facing a filibuster in the Senate. (You know, the tool Southern segregationists used to impede civil rights bills for decades.)

    As Republicans push “Jim Crow 2.0 laws” in many states, Berman says, HR 1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights act could safeguard voting rights.

    Watch him break it all down here:

  • The Senate Confirms Deb Haaland to Be the First Native American Cabinet Secretary in US History

    March 15, 2021

    Deb Haaland speaks during the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing on her nomination to be Interior Secretary on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, in February.GRAEME JENNINGS/Getty

    In a historic vote on Monday, the Senate confirmed President Joe Biden’s pick to lead the Department of the Interior, New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland, voting 51–40 to make her the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary.

    The vote was largely split along party lines. Of the 51 senators voting in favor of Haaland’s confirmation, just four were Republicans: Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska). No Democrats voted against the nomination. Nine senators, including three Democrats, did not vote.

    The confirmation is a victory for environmental advocates. In her two years in Congress, Haaland backed efforts like the Green New Deal and “30 by 30,” a House effort to protect 30 percent of US land and ocean by 2030—positions that earned her a 98 percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters. During her confirmation hearing in February, she pledged to be “a fierce advocate for our public lands” and to run a department that makes decisions “based on science.” 

    As I wrote earlier this month, conservationists are hoping that among Haaland’s first priorities will be reversing the Trump administration’s sweeping attacks on public lands and wildlife. “Following up on the Trump administration, it’s a tall order,” Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity, told me at the time. “He just did so much to undermine protections for endangered species and wildlife, that there’s just a lot of work to do.”

    At the top of Haaland’s to-do list for protecting vulnerable species, environmental advocates told me, should be reversing Trump’s broad rollbacks to the Endangered Species Act: 

    Over four years, Trump’s administration issued five rules that redefined how the Endangered Species Act is interpreted, Greenwald says. The first three came as a set in 2019 and made sweeping changes to how species are protected and the act is enforced. “It was really a broad base attack on the law,” says Rebecca Riley, legal director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Nature Program. The changes were so broad—for instance, allowing officials to “compile and present” economic factors in listing decisions—that most species listed under the act or waiting to be listed would be affected in one way or another, advocates told me at the time. Some of those species included the grizzly bear, moose, and monarch butterfly.

    The two other rollbacks, which were enacted in the final months of Trump’s presidency, focused specifically on habitat. As Kristen Boyles, an attorney with Earthjustice whose work includes Endangered Species Act litigation, explains, the regulations “created more loopholes” for agencies to avoid issuing habitat protections—a change which “really cuts at the heart of the act,” Boyles says. “If [at-risk species] need anything, they need that habitat protected more than almost anything else.”

    Environmental groups, some of which have sued the federal government over the rollbacks, are hoping all five rules will be reversed either through litigation or by putting new rules in place. As Interior secretary, “[Haaland] will have a lot of work ahead of her to restore the Endangered Species Act,” Riley says. “The Trump administration did everything they could to weaken the law.” 

    You can read more about what conservationists are calling for in my piece here. 

  • Democrats Are Pushing to Make the Stimulus Package’s Historic Anti-Poverty Measures Permanent

    March 14, 2021

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)Stefani Reynolds/Getty

    Last week, President Biden signed into law historic anti-poverty measures as part of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package. Now, Senate Democrats are pushing to make the temporary provisions from the American Rescue Plan into permanent fixtures.

    The law gives most families a $3,600 tax credit for each child under age 6 and $3,000 for children aged 6 to 17. “Though framed in technocratic terms as an expansion of an existing tax credit, it is essentially a guaranteed income for families with children, akin to children’s allowances that are common in other rich countries,” wrote the New York Times’ Jason DeParle. Columbia University researchers project that the provision could cut child poverty in half. In its current form, the provision lasts only a year.

    Yet even before the stimulus package was signed into law, some Democrats voiced support of extending the benefit indefinitely. Speaking on MSNBC on Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed, “I’ll do everything I can to make it permanent.” He added, “That’s one of the most important things we can do. We can change America, if we make them permanent.”

    The stimulus package also expands the federal nutrition program for low-income women and children, enhancing monthly vouchers for fruits and vegetables from $9 for children and $11 for women to $35 for both. In a press conference on Sunday, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand called for the increases to be extended indefinitely.

    Gillibrand previously called to permanently extend another provision, which expands sick leave benefits for workers. “One of my goals is to make paid leave permanent,” she told Yahoo Finance. “We are still the only industrialized country in the world without access to paid leave and most workers do not have access.”

  • Sen. Ron Johnson Wasn’t Worried During Capitol Attack Because Rioters Weren’t BLM

    March 13, 2021

    Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) speaks during a Senate hearing this month about the January 6 attack on the Capitol.Greg Nash/AP

    Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said he didn’t feel threatened on January 6 because the rioters who committed any number of crimes while storming the Capitol “would never do anything to break the law.” Johnson added that he would have been concerned if the rioters had been affiliated with Black Lives Matter or antifa. More than 300 people have been charged in the attack.

    Johnson’s remarks came during a Thursday appearance on the Joe Pags Show, a right-wing radio program hosted by Joe Pagliarulo. “Even though those thousands of people that were marching to the Capitol were trying to pressure people like me to vote the way they wanted me to vote, I knew those were people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law, and so I wasn’t concerned,” Johnson said.

    Johnson continued, “Now had the tables been turned—now, Joe, this will get me in trouble—had the tables been turned and President Trump won the election and those were tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa protesters, I might have been a little concerned.”

    One police officer was killed and 140 officers were injured during the attack on the Capitol. Rep. Mark Pocan, a fellow Wisconsinite, called Johnson’s remarks “seriously embarrassing to our state” in a Saturday tweet. “We’ve moved from just plain old fringe, extremist rants to fringe extremist and racist rants,” Pocan wrote.

  • Schumer and Gillibrand Join Calls for Cuomo to Resign

    March 12, 2021

    Seth Wenig/Pool/AP

    New York’s two Democratic senators, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, released a statement Friday afternoon joining the chorus of voices in Congress calling for Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s resignation.

    “Due to the multiple, credible sexual harassment and misconduct allegations, it is clear that Governor Cuomo has lost the confidence of his governing partners and the people of New York,” the senators wrote. “Governor Cuomo should resign.”

    As my colleague Inae Oh reported this morning, New York Democrats in the House have already called for the governor to step down.

    Cuomo, once lauded for his handling of the coronavirus outbreak in New York, is currently beset by two scandals: multiple accusations of workplace sexual harassment, and an apparent attempt to cover up the death toll of the coronavirus on the state’s nursing home population. As support for the governor dwindles, Schumer and Gillibrand are among the most powerful voices calling for Cuomo to resign.

  • Nebraska Governor Claims Legalizing Medical Cannabis Will “Kill Your Kids”

    March 12, 2021

    TNS/Zuma

    In response to efforts to legalize medical cannabis in Nebraska, the state’s Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts trotted out the oldest anti-weed trope in the book: “If you legalize marijuana, you’re gonna kill your kids.”

    Where to begin? Sure, driving high can lead to a fatal car crash, but even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention admit that “a fatal overdose is unlikely”—and that most people who use marijuana don’t go on to use other drugs.

    And we’re not even talking about recreational weed. We’re talking about a plan to allow people with qualifying medical conditions to receive prescriptions from their doctors. Medical cannabis, now legal in 33 states and DC, has been shown effective at treating chronic pain, reducing nausea from cancer treatments, and alleviating loss of appetite associated with HIV/AIDS.

    As justification for his anti-cannabis stance, Ricketts cited two instances of people who consumed extremely high doses of marijuana and then died by suicide. One was a 19-year-old who jumped from a balcony in 2014 after eating six times the recommended dose of a marijuana cookie. The other was a 23-year-old who had been consuming dabs, a highly concentrated form of THC, in the weeks leading to his death. While tragic, such cases are extremely rare—and have nothing to do with medical weed.

    For more logic along the lines of Ricketts’, see Reefer Madness (1936):