#Center for Effective Lawmaking | The University of Virginia

[xtruss]

Illustration and Design By Ally J. Levine

— By Moira Warburton | Published March 12, 2024

The U.S. Congress is navigating yet another government funding deadline — the eighth in less than six months — and are at an impasse over sending aid to key allies in Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel. Divisions among Republicans in the House and Senate killed a major bipartisan border policy bill. Reforms to bedrock programs like Medicare and Social Security are desperately needed but no closer to getting passed. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives spent close to a month without a speaker last year due to infighting between moderate and hard right factions of the Republican party.

When U.S. Representative Chip Roy, a Republican from Texas, begged his colleagues in November to “give me one thing I can campaign on and say we did,” he was articulating what many lawmakers and observers were feeling: Congress isn’t working.

The simplest expression of this is the number of bills passed by Congress. Just twenty-seven bills were passed last year — a record low — but even before that, the number of bills signed into law by the president has been falling.

Congress Is Passing Fewer Laws

Experts point to several reasons for this. One key factor is an increase in polarization — Democrats and Republicans are farther apart ideologically than they’ve been in the last 50 years, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. That’s led to a decrease in bipartisanship, a necessary ingredient for bills to pass in a governing body full of checks and balances.

Fewer bills getting through to the president’s desk means the small number of mandatory ones that Congress must pass — such as government funding or annual legislation authorizing defense policies — are getting longer, said Molly Reynolds, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, as lawmakers try to jam the bills with policies that wouldn’t otherwise get a vote.

“Those large packages have come to bear more of Congress’s legislating,” she said. A longer bill takes more time to read, debate and get voted on, slowing down the process further.

Drawing of a truck carrying an oversized load of green boxes. People are throwing boxes on and off the truck, seemingly in disagreement about what the truck should be carrying.

With more policies being shoved into bills increasing in length, the use of policies known as “poison pills” is another hurdle — partisan policies that will be completely unacceptable to the other party. Case in point: Republicans attempting to ban mail delivery of abortion pills via a crucial agriculture funding bill that must be reauthorized every five years.

The length of bills “represents an increasing dysfunction in the institution,” Michael Thorning, director of structural democracy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said. “Congress has difficulty taking action on a lot of individual pieces because of the politics or because of time constraints, and it’s easier to package some of these things up into ‘must pass’ bills… And then it’s a question of, ‘What can we add to this before it becomes so top heavy that it topples over?’”

The spikes in the number of bills passed correlate with periods when one party controlled all levers of government — House, Senate and the White House. But even when one party controls the majority, “unified party control is not doing as much work as it used to,” Sarah Binder, a professor of political science at George Washington University, said. “The minority party has become especially increasingly aggressive in using the rules of the game, particularly in the Senate, in blocking measures from even going to the floor.” That can be seen in the number of measures passed by each chamber of Congress, which is falling too.

Fewer Measures Passed In Congress

Another more elusive factor in Congress’s decreasing productivity is that members are spending less time talking to each other. A typical senator’s schedule includes flying back to Washington, D.C., on Monday for votes in the evening, then flying back to their home state on Thursday evening. The “Senate Friday” effect is commonly cited among reporters and staffers on the Hill – a sudden surge in activity on Thursday afternoons, as senators rush to finish any votes so they can go home for the weekend.

The House more often has votes Friday morning, but there is still an expectation of going back to the district for a longer weekend, plus recesses when lawmakers are home for weeks at a time. That Monday to Thursday schedule leaves just two full days for a laundry list of work.

Drawing of people standing on opposite sides of a chasm. Their body language, many standing with crossed arms, indicate frustration with the people on the opposite platform.

“Congress is not spending enough time in Washington to get the basics done,” Thorning said. The shortened in-person schedule “really interferes with members’ one opportunity to interact with each other, to learn collectively, to ask questions of witnesses collectively.”

Representative Derek Kilmer, a Democrat who chaired the now-defunct House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, said the issue of Congress’s shortened schedule was the main thing he would fix if given a choice.

“Part of the reason why when people are watching C-SPAN and no one’s there, it’s because they’re on three other committees at the same time,” he told Reuters. “The dynamic that creates is members ping pong from committee to committee. It’s not a place of learning or understanding. You airdrop in, you give your five minute speech for social media, you peace out.”

“Time is the biggest challenge,” Representative William Timmons, Kilmer’s Republican counterpart on the modernization committee, agreed. “We have to build trust with our colleagues, and we don’t have the time to build the trust with our colleagues.”

The amount of action happening on the floor isn’t a perfect representation of how much Congress is talking to each other – lots of action happens in committee rooms or briefings – but it is a marker of a decrease in action taking place in the main arena where lawmaking was intended to occur.

Less Action on The Floors of Congress

Fewer pages of proceedings are being recorded by the Congressional Record, which publishes all debates and speeches that take place on the floor in the House and Senate.

It is not clear how these hurdles to productivity will be solved. Part of the problem is that the current Republican Party holds a tiny majority in the House of just five seats, giving disproportionate power to any small group of members who wish to exert their influence, as seen by the far right House Freedom Caucus repeatedly blocking legislation it disagrees with, even though it was put forward by their own party, much to the frustration of their colleagues.

“We’ve had divided government in earlier periods and haven’t seen this level of low legislative productivity,” Craig Volden, director of the Center for Effective Lawmaking at the University of Virginia, said. “The question is, what is the Republican Party going to sort itself into, in terms of its main priorities, and what is the best strategy they see as advancing those priorities?”

Timmons acknowledged facing this issue himself.

“I have somebody running against me (in the primary election) that agrees with all the votes that I make, he just doesn’t agree that I don’t scream and yell,” he told Reuters. “Next Congress we’re going to have to figure out how to relearn the muscle memory of voting as one… If we have a narrow majority and we can’t do anything, that’s not good.”

Kilmer is part of a wave of lawmakers retiring Congress – 45 at time of publication, not the highest number on record but enough to draw attention. But he remains optimistic about Congress’s ability to change.

“I don't think it's a secret that Congress is a fixer upper,” he said.

Sources: U.S. Congressional Record, Center for Effective Lawmaking at the University of Virginia

Edited By: Julia Wolfe and Alistair Bell

#United States Congress #Less Action #Fewer Measures Passed #Passing Fewer Laws #Why Less Productive #United States 🇺🇸 #House | Senate #U.S. Congressional Record #Center for Effective Lawmaking | The University of Virginia #Moira Warburton #Reuters.Com

[wilwheaton]

A Jordan speakership would be the logical end point of the House GOP’s decline. Most Republican lawmakers have given up on trying to actually do the basic job of passing legislation, either because the House rules make it so difficult for rank-and-file members or because they have little interest in it to begin with. Elevating Jordan would be a triumph for show over substance, for extremism over common sense, and for election denial over democracy. Jordan stands out among his predecessors and colleagues because he is not a real lawmaker. By this I don’t mean Jordan isn’t a member of the House of Representatives. What I mean is that he is quite literally not a “lawmaker.” The Center for Effective Lawmaking, a project by Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia, rates House members based on their legislative performance. In the 117th Congress, Jordan was tied for fourth place among the least effective lawmakers. Jordan sponsored only a single bill in the last Congress—on social media censorship, a perennial issue among some conservatives—and it did not advance out of committee. He has never successfully drafted a bill that became law. Jordan’s legislative record is surprisingly threadbare even by the standards of modern Congresses. He does not appear to even propose names for new post offices in his state, introduce resolutions for holidays or commemorations, or any of the other mundane work that lawmakers often carry out.

Jim Jordan Is the Nihilist That House Republicans Deserve

[96thdayofrage]

When Georgian Jimmy Carter won the 1976 presidential race, no politician from the Deep South had been elected since 1844. Despite Carter’s Dixie roots, the incoming president boasted a large Black fan base, having supported Black causes as a lawmaker in his home state. Four out of every five Black voters reportedly backed Carter and, decades later, when the country welcomed its first Black president, Carter continued to speak out about race relations in America. His record on civil rights before and after entering the White House reveal why Carter long garnered support from communities of color.

A Voting Rights Supporter

During his tenure as a Georgia state senator from 1963 to 1967, Carter worked to overturn laws that made it challenging for Black people to vote, according to the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. His pro-integration stance did not prevent him from serving two terms as state senator, but his views may have hurt his gubernatorial bid. When he ran for governor in 1966, an outpouring of segregationists turned out to the polls to elect Jim Crow supporter Lester Maddox. When Carter ran for governor four years later, he “minimized appearances before African American groups, and even sought the endorsements of avowed segregationists, a move that some critics call deeply hypocritical.” But Carter, it turned out, was simply being a politician.

When he became governor the following year, he announced that the time had come to end segregation. Clearly, he’d never supported Jim Crow but catered to segregationists just to win their votes.

Appointments of Black People in Key Positions

As Georgia governor, Carter didn’t just verbally oppose segregation but also worked to create more diversity in state politics. He reportedly raised the number of Black people on Georgia state boards and agencies from just three to a staggering 53. Under his leadership, almost half, 40 percent, of public servants in influential positions were Black.

Social Justice Platform Impresses Time, Rolling Stone

Gov. Carter’s views on civil rights so markedly differed from other Southern lawmakers, such as notorious Alabama Gov. George Wallace, that in 1971 he made the cover of Time magazine, which dubbed the Georgian the face of the “New South.” Just three years later, legendary Rolling Stone journalist, Hunter S. Thompson, became a fan of Carter after hearing the lawmaker discuss how politics can be used to effect social change.

A Racial Gaffe or More Duplicity?

Carter sparked controversy on April 3, 1976, while discussing public housing. The then-presidential candidate said that he thought community members should be able to preserve the “ethnic purity” of their neighborhoods, a statement that sounded like the tacit support of segregated housing. Five days later, Carter apologized for the comment. Had the pro-integrationist really meant to express support of Jim Crow housing, or was the statement just another ploy to get the segregationist vote?

Black College Initiative

As president, Carter launched the Black College Initiative to give historically Black colleges and universities more support from the federal government.

“Other administration education initiatives covered in the collection include science apprenticeships for minority students, technical assistance to Black colleges, and minority fellowships in graduate management education,” according to the “Civil Rights During the Carter Administration” report.

Business Opportunities for Black People

Carter also tried to close the wealth gap between whites and Black people. He developed initiatives to give Black-owned businesses a boost. “These programs focused primarily on increasing the government’s procurement of goods and services from minority business, as well as through requirements for procurement by federal contractors from minority firms,” the CRDTCA report states. “The aided industries ranged from construction to manufacturing to advertising, banking, and insurance. The government also maintained a program to help minority-owned exporters gain footholds in foreign markets.”

Affirmative Action Supporter

Affirmative action became a heavily debated topic when the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case of Allan Bakke, a white man denied admission to the medical school at the University of California, Davis. Bakke sued after UC Davis rejected him while admitting less qualified Black students, he argued. The case marked the first time affirmative action had been challenged so vigorously. Yet, Carter continued to support affirmative action, which endeared him to Black people.

Prominent Black people in the Carter Administration

When Carter became president, more than 4,300 Black people held elected office in the U.S. They also served in the Carter cabinet. “Wade H. Mc-Cree served as solicitor general, Clifford L. Alexander was the first Black secretary of the army, Mary Berry was the top official in Washington on educational matters prior to the establishment of the Department of Education, Eleanor Holmes Norton chaired the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and Franklin Delano Raines served on the White House staff,” according to the Spartacus-Educational website. Andrew Young, a Martin Luther King protégé and the first African American elected as a Georgia congressman since Reconstruction, served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. But Young’s outspoken views on race caused controversy for Carter and Young resigned under pressure. The president replaced with him another Black man, Donald F. McHenry.

Expansion from Civil Rights to Human Rights

When Carter lost his bid for re-election, he opened the Carter Center in Georgia in 1981. The institution promotes human rights across the world and has overseen elections in a number of countries and curbed human rights violations in places such as Ethiopia, Panama, and Haiti. The center has also focused on domestic issues, such as in October 1991, when it launched the Atlanta Project initiative to address urban social problems. In October 2002, President Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize for “his decades of untiring efforts to find peaceful solutions to international conflict.”

The Civil Rights Summit

Jimmy Carter was the first president to speak at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library Civil Rights Summit in April 2014. The summit commemorated the 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking Civil Rights Act of 1964. During the event, the former president urged the nation to do more civil rights work. “There’s still a gross disparity between Black and white people on education and employment,” he said. “A good amount of schools in the South are still segregated.” Given these factors, the civil rights movement isn’t just history, Carter explained but remains a pressing issue in the 21st century.

[theculturedmarxist]

The University of North Carolina has rescinded its offer of a tenured journalism professor position to the author of the New York Times '1619 Project' after an intense backlash.

Instead, UNC officials confirmed this week that Nikole Hannah-Jones, who won the Pulitzer Prize for the 2019 series which 'reframed' American history to focus on when the first Africans arrived to Virginia as slaves, will join its faculty this summer with a five-year contract.

That means one of the New York Times's most vaunted reporters who the newspaper has doggedly stood by even as the project has come under withering criticism by historians for its inaccuracies didn't qualify for a permanent appointment.

The university's Hussman School of Journalism and Media had announced late last month that Hannah-Jones had been tapped for its Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism, a tenured professorship. 

The news was swiftly condemned by conservative political groups with links to the UNC Board of Governors which oversees the state university's 16-campus system, according to NC Policy Watch.

Among the loudest critics was the The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, which argued that Hannah-Jones is unqualified for the position because her 1619 Project was 'unfactual and biased'.

The conservative watchdog group said her hiring signaled 'a degradation of journalistic standards, which should deter any serious student from applying to the journalism school'.

The 1619 Project proved a cultural lightening rod, drawing criticism from some historians who said it was a cynical view of American history - and also contained inaccuracies and generalizations.

The backlash over Hannah-Jones' hiring proved fierce enough to cause UNC to dramatically reduce its offer to a mere five-year contract - with the possibility of tenure after that but no guarantee.

A member of the Board of Trustees at UNC's main Chapel Hill campus explained the decision to NC Policy Watch, saying that it all came down to politics.

'This is a very political thing,' said the trustee, who asked to remain anonymous. 'The university and the Board of Trustees and the Board of Governors and the Legislature have all been getting pressure since this thing was first announced last month.

'There have been people writing letters and making calls, for and against. But I will leave it to you which is carrying more weight.'

'It's maybe not a solution that is going to please everyone. Maybe it won't please anyone. But if this was going to happen, this was the way to get it done.' 

Susan King, the dean of UNC Hussman, called the decision 'disappointing'.

'It's not what we wanted and I am afraid it will have a chilling effect,' King said, according to NC Policy Watch.  

Daniel Kreiss, an associate professor at Hussman, also condemned the controversy over Hannah-Jones' hiring.

'Obviously, they knew the hiring could be controversial,' he said. 'But I think it's all quite silly to be honest.

'Nikole Hannah-Jones is one of the most prominent journalists in the United States, frankly in the world, today and [is] doing exactly the kind of work that is necessary to help the US come to terms with its racial history.

'She's an alum we're frankly quite proud of and should be. We've had her in to give numerous talks over the years. Like her work, they've been rigorous, historical, investigative, and it makes a strong and forceful argument for coming to a full understanding of the US's history to move forward from there.'

Hannah-Jones has not publicly commented on the news that she will no longer be eligible for tenure.  

In a statement on April 27, Hannah-Jones said her UNC courses would teach how to write stories that are 'truly reflective of our multiracial nation.'

It's sort of a homecoming for Hannah-Jones, who is a MacArthur Fellowship Genius Grant recipient. She got a master's degree from Hussman in 2003.  

'This is a full-circle moment for me as I return to the place that launched my career to help launch the careers of other aspiring journalists,' she tweeted on Monday. 'I'm so excited to continue mentoring students from the classroom and for all I will learn from them.'

She said she'd still be at the New York Times where she wrote the 1619 Project, which was published in 2019 as a collection of essays, photo essays, poems and short fiction stories.

She joined the New York Times in 2015 after working at ProPublica, the Oregonian, the Raleigh News & Observer and the Chapel Hill News, according to a release from the school.

Teaching at UNC is a sort of homecoming for Hannah-Jones, who graduated from Hussman in 2013.  

Hannah-Jones became a household name in journalism with the 1619 Project - which was slammed by former President Donald Trump as 'totally discredited' and part of the 'twisted web of lies' that has caught fire in American universities that teach American is a 'wicked and racist nation.'

Trump formed a '1776 Commission' in response to teach 'patriotism.' It released a report this year before being ended by President Joe Biden.

The series 'reframed' American history to have it start in 1619, when the first slaves from Africa arrived to Virginia, instead of 1776, when the founding fathers declared independence from Britain.

In her essay, Hannah-Jones wrote that slaves laid the foundations of the US Capitol and built founding fathers' plantations. She said the 'relentless buying, selling, insuring and financing of their bodies' made Wall Street and New York City the financial capital of the world.

'Before the abolishment of the international slave trade, 400,000 enslaved Africans would be sold into America. Those individuals and their descendants transformed the lands to which they'd been brought into some of the most successful colonies in the British Empire,' Hannah-Jones wrote.

'But it would be historically inaccurate to reduce the contributions of black people to the vast material wealth created by our bondage,' she said. 'Black Americans have also been, and continue to be, foundational to the idea of American freedom. More than any other group in this country's history, we have served, generation after generation, in an overlooked but vital role: It is we who have been the perfecters of this democracy.'

The project heralded by some and criticized by others, including a number of historians and Trump, who adamantly opposed the idea that it should be taught in classrooms.

Princeton historian Sean Wilentz criticized the '1619 Project', and some of Hannah-Jones's other work, in a letter sent to top Times editors and the publisher, The Atlantic reported in December 2019.

The letter, which was signed by other scholars James McPherson, Gordon Wood, Victoria Bynum, and James Oakes refers to 'matters of verifiable fact' that 'cannot be described as interpretation or "framing''' and says the project reflected 'a displacement of historical understanding by ideology,' The Atlantic reported.

Wilentz and the other signatories demanded corrections.

Trump called it 'revisionist history' and threatened to withhold federal funding from public schools that used it.  

Republican lawmakers in a handful of states, including Iowa and Missouri, are continuing his fight to ban it from schools.

Bills were introduced in those state legislatures that would punish school districts that use the '1619 Project' by cutting federal funding.  

A major critic of the project has been The Heritage Foundation, which says it 'has been tireless in its efforts to debunk the radical and anti-American positions taken by The New York Times and the '1619 Project.'

One of The Heritage Foundation's articles pointed out post-publication edits that the Times made, including changing a in Hannah-Jones' leading article in the series to say that 'some of' the colonists fought the American Revolution to defend slavery.

'The editors called this a 'small' clarification, and it was indeed very small, although considering that the 1619 Project's full-throated commitment to demonstrating that American history can only be explained through the lens of slavery, this correction appears nothing short of essential,' Heritage policy expert Jonathan Butcher, a senior policy analyst for Heritage's Center for Education Policy, wrote.

One of the project's supporters, Seth Rockman, an associate professor of history at Brown University, wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post that the project 'is a testament to patriotism, not a repudiation.'

Rockman wrote that history is 'an ongoing conversation in which trained professionals and multiple publics wrestle with the meaning of the past' and disagreement is desirable 'as it shows us that something important is at stake.'

He said there are warranted criticisms that 'we should spend our time debating,' for example the project was 'insufficiently attentive' about how the Native Americans lost their land.  

Trump suggested, however, that the project's teachings were dangerous.

'Critical race theory, the 1619 project, and the crusade against American history is toxic propaganda, ideological poison that if not removed will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together,' he said, according to the Atlantic. 'It will destroy our country.'

Hannah-Jones, meanwhile, said on Twitter that 'history, in general, is contested.'

'The project unsettled many. I think that is good.'  

#1619 project #bourgeois history

[newstfionline]

Sunday, March 21, 2021

Happiness Report: World shows resilience in face of COVID-19 (AP) The coronavirus brought a year of fear and anxiety, loneliness and lockdown, and illness and death, but an annual report on happiness around the world released Friday suggests the pandemic has not crushed people’s spirits. The editors of the 2021 World Happiness Report found that while emotions changed as the pandemic set in, longer-term satisfaction with life was less affected. “What we have found is that when people take the long view, they’ve shown a lot of resilience in this past year,” Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, one of the report’s co-author, said from New York.

The Pandemic Stalls Growth in the Global Middle Class, Pushes Poverty Up Sharply (Pew Research Center) The COVID-19 pandemic is having a deep effect on the global economy. In January 2020, as reports of the novel coronavirus were emerging, the World Bank forecasted that the global economy would expand by 2.5% that year. In January 2021, with the pandemic still holding much of the world in its grip, the World Bank estimated that the global economy contracted by 4.3% in 2020, a turnabout of 6.8 percentage points. The economic downturn is likely to have diminished living standards around the world, pushing millions out of the global middle class and swelling the ranks of the poor. A new Pew Research Center analysis finds that the global middle class encompassed 54 million fewer people in 2020 than the number projected prior to the onset of the pandemic. Meanwhile, the number of poor is estimated to have been 131 million higher because of the recession.

Fallout from riot, virus leaves toxic mood on Capitol Hill (AP) The mood is so bad at the U.S. Capitol that a Democratic congressman recently let an elevator pass him by rather than ride with Republican colleagues who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s election. Republicans say it’s Democrats who just need to get over it—move on from the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, end the COVID-19 restrictions and make an effort to reach across the aisle toward bipartisanship. Not yet 100 days into the new Congress, the legislative branch has become an increasingly toxic and unsettled place, with lawmakers frustrated by the work-from-home limits imposed by the virus and suspicious of each other after the horrific riot over Trump’s presidency. Particularly in the House, which remains partly shuttered by the pandemic and where lawmakers heard gunshots ring out during the siege, trust is low, settled facts about the Jan. 6 riot are apparently up for debate and wary, exhausted lawmakers are unsure how or when the “People’s House” will return to normal.

US schools prepare summer of learning to help kids catch up (AP) After a dreary year spent largely at home in front of the computer, many U.S. children could be looking at summer school—and that’s just what many parents want. Although the last place most kids want to spend summer is in a classroom, experts say that after a year of interrupted study, it’s crucial to do at least some sort of learning over the break, even if it’s not in school and is incorporated into traditional camp offerings. Several governors, including in California, Kansas and Virginia, are pushing for more summer learning. And some states are considering extending their 2021-22 academic year or starting the fall semester early. Many cities, meanwhile, are talking about beefing up their summer school programs, including Los Angeles, Hartford, Connecticut and Atlanta—the latter of which considered making summer school compulsory before settling for strongly recommending that kids who are struggling take part.

Forecast for spring: Nasty drought worsens for much of US (AP) With nearly two-thirds of the United States abnormally dry or worse, the government’s spring forecast offers little hope for relief, especially in the West where a devastating megadrought has taken root and worsened. Weather service and agriculture officials warned of possible water use cutbacks in California and the Southwest, increased wildfires, low levels in key reservoirs such as Lake Mead and Lake Powell and damage to wheat crops. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s official spring outlook Thursday sees an expanding drought with a drier than normal April, May and June for a large swath of the country from Louisiana to Oregon. including some areas hardest hit by the most severe drought. And nearly all of the continental United States is looking at warmer than normal spring, except for tiny parts of the Pacific Northwest and southeast Alaska, which makes drought worse.

‘Tough’ U.S.-China talks signal rocky start to relations under Biden (Reuters) U.S. and Chinese officials concluded on Friday what Washington called “tough and direct” talks in Alaska, which laid bare the depth of tensions between the world’s two largest economies at the outset of the Biden administration. The two days of meetings, the first high-level in-person talks since President Joe Biden took office, wrapped up after a rare and fiery kickoff on Thursday when the two sides publicly skewered each others’ policies in front of TV cameras. The talks appeared to yield no diplomatic breakthroughs—as expected—but the bitter rivalry on display suggested the two countries had little common ground to reset relations that have sunk to the lowest level in decades. The run-up to the discussions in Anchorage, which followed visits by U.S. officials to allies Japan and South Korea, was marked by a flurry of moves by Washington that showed it was taking a firm stance, as well as by blunt talk from Beijing warning the United States to discard illusions that it would compromise.

Volcano Erupts In Southwestern Iceland After Thousands Of Earthquakes (NPR) A volcano on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwest Iceland erupted Friday evening, producing a river of lava that could be seen from the capital, Reykjavik, 20 miles away. The eruption took place about three miles inland from the coast and poses little threat to residents. They were advised to stay indoors with windows closed against any gases that are released. This is the first eruption in the Reykjanes Peninsula in nearly 800 years, the Associated Press reported. Thousands of earthquakes took place in the weeks leading up to the eruption, the meteorological office reported. Earlier this week, swarms of earthquakes rattled the peninsula, with over 3,000 quakes on Sunday alone. Scientists attributed the earthquakes to magma intrusions, molten rock movement about a kilometer below the earth’s crust.

A New Year in Iran, but the country’s crises remain the same (AP) The Persian New Year, Nowruz, begins on the first day of spring and celebrates all things new. But as families across Iran hurried to greet the fresh start—eating copious crisp herbs, scrubbing their homes and buying new clothes—it was clear just how little the country had changed. A year into the coronavirus pandemic that has devastated Iran, killing over 61,500 people—the highest death toll in the Middle East—the nation is far from out of the woods. And although Iranians had welcomed the election of President Joe Biden with a profound sigh of relief after the Trump administration’s economic pressure campaign, the sanctions that have throttled the country for three years remain in place. “I was counting down the seconds to see the end of this year,” said Hashem Sanjar, a 33-year-old food delivery worker with a bachelor’s degree in accounting. “But I worry about next year.”

2 journalists detained as Myanmar junta clamps down on press (AP) Two more journalists were detained in Myanmar on Friday, part of the junta’s intensifying efforts to choke off information about resistance to last month’s coup. Mizzima News reported that one of its former reporters, Than Htike Aung, and Aung Thura, a journalist from the BBC’s Burmese-language service, were detained by men who appeared to be plainclothes security agents outside a court in the capital of Naypyitaw. The journalists were covering legal proceedings against Win Htein, a detained senior official from the National League for Democracy, the party that ran the country before the takeover. The coup reversed years of slow progress toward democracy after five decades of military rule. In the face of persistent strikes and protests against the takeover, the junta has responded with an increasingly violent crackdown and efforts to severely limit the information reaching the outside world. Security forces have fired on crowds, killing hundreds, internet access has been severely restricted, private newspapers have been barred from publishing, and protesters, journalists and politicians have been arrested in large numbers.

Spectators from abroad to be barred from Tokyo Olympics (AP) At last it’s official after countless unsourced news reports and rumors: spectators from abroad will be barred from the postponed Tokyo Olympics when they open in four months. Officials said the risk was too great to admit ticket holders from overseas during a pandemic. The Japanese public has also opposed fans from abroad. Several surveys have shown that up to 80% oppose holding the Olympics, and a similar percentage opposed fans from overseas attending.

‘You can’t escape the smell’: mouse plague grows to biblical proportions across eastern Australia (The Guardian) Drought, fire, the Covid-19 pestilence and an all-consuming plague of mice. Rural New South Wales has faced just about every biblical challenge nature has to offer in the last few years, but now it is praying for another—an almighty flood to drown the mice in their burrows and cleanse the blighted land of the rodents. Or some very heavy rain, at least. It seems everyone in the rural towns of north-west NSW and southern Queensland has their own mouse war story. In posts online, they detail waking up to mouse droppings on their pillows or watching the ground move at night as hundreds of thousands of rodents flee from torchlight beams. After years of drought, rural NSW and parts of Queensland enjoyed a bumper crop due to the recent wet season. But this influx of new produce and grains has led to an explosion in the mouse population. Locals say they started noticing the swarms up north in October and the wave of rodents has been spreading south ever since, growing to biblical proportions.

#headlines #news

[starkerkeyz]

So what has protesting accomplished?

👉🏾Within 10 days of sustained protests:

Minneapolis bans use of choke holds.

👉🏾Charges are upgraded against Officer Chauvin, and his accomplices are arrested and charged.

👉🏾Dallas adopts a "duty to intervene" rule that requires officers to stop other cops who are engaging in inappropriate use of force.

👉🏾New Jersey’s attorney general said the state will update its use-of-force guidelines for the first time in two decades.

👉🏾In Maryland, a bipartisan work group of state lawmakers announced a police reform work group.

👉🏾Los Angeles City Council introduces motion to reduce LAPD’s $1.8 billion operating budget.

👉🏾MBTA in Boston agrees to stop using public buses to transport police officers to protests.

👉🏾Police brutality captured on cameras leads to near-immediate suspensions and firings of officers in several cities (i.e., Buffalo, Ft. Lauderdale).

👉🏾Monuments celebrating confederates are removed in cities in Virginia, Alabama, and other states.

👉🏾Street in front of the White House is renamed "Black Lives Matter Plaza.”

Military forces begin to withdraw from D.C.

👉🏾 Today Minneapolis City Council Votes to disband police department after years of discrimination and corruption. Instead, they will implement more effective public safety systems.

Then, there's all the other stuff that's hard to measure:

💓The really difficult public and private conversations that are happening about race and privilege.

💓The realizations some white people are coming to about racism and the role of policing in this country.

💓The self-reflection.

💓The internal battles exploding within organizations over issues that have been simmering or ignored for a long time. Some organizations will end as a result, others will be forever changed or replaced with something stronger and fairer.

Globally:

🌎 Protests against racial inequality sparked by the police killing of George Floyd are taking place all over the world.

🌎 Rallies and memorials have been held in cities across Europe, as well as in Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand.

🌎 As the US contends with its second week of protests, issues of racism, police brutality, and oppression have been brought to light across the globe.

🌎 People all over the world understand that their own fights for human rights, for equality and fairness, will become so much more difficult to win if we are going to lose America as the place where 'I have a dream' is a real and universal political program," Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German ambassador to the US, told the New Yorker.

🌎 In France, protesters marched holding signs that said "I can't breathe" to signify both the words of Floyd, and the last words of Adama Traoré, a 24-year-old black man who was subdued by police officers and gasped the sentence before he died outside Paris in 2016.

🌎 Cities across Europe have come together after the death of George Floyd:

✊🏽 In Amsterdam, an estimated 10,000 people filled the Dam square on Monday, holding signs and shouting popular chants like "Black lives matter," and "No justice, no peace."

✊🏽 In Germany, people gathered in multiple locations throughout Berlin to demand justice for Floyd and fight against police brutality.

✊🏾 A mural dedicated to Floyd was also spray-painted on a stretch of wall in Berlin that once divided the German capital during the Cold War.

✊🏿 In Ireland, protesters held a peaceful demonstration outside of Belfast City Hall, and others gathered outside of the US embassy in Dublin.

✊🏿In Italy, protesters gathered and marched with signs that said "Stop killing black people," "Say his name," and "We will not be silent."

✊🏾 In Spain, people gathered to march and hold up signs throughout Barcelona and Madrid.

✊🏾 In Athens, Greece, protesters took to the streets to collectively hold up a sign that read "I can't breathe."

✊🏾 In Brussels, protesters were seen sitting in a peaceful demonstration in front of an opera house in the center of the city.

✊🏾In Denmark, protesters were heard chanting "No justice, no peace!" throughout the streets of Copenhagen, while others gathered outside the US embassy.

✊🏾 In Canada, protesters were also grieving for Regis Korchinski-Paquet, a 29-year-old black woman who died on Wednesday after falling from her balcony during a police investigation at her building.

✊🏾 And in New Zealand, roughly 2,000 people marched to the US embassy in Auckland, chanting and carrying signs demanding justice.

💐 Memorials have been built for Floyd around the world, too. In Mexico City, portraits of him were hung outside the US embassy with roses, candles, and signs.

💐 In Poland, candles and flowers were laid out next to photos of Floyd outside the US consulate.

💐 And in Syria, two artists created a mural depicting Floyd in the northwestern town of Binnish, "on a wall destroyed by military planes."

Before the assassination of George Floyd some of you were able to say whatever the hell you wanted and the world didn't say anything to you...

THERE HAS BEEN A SHIFT, AN AWAKENING...MANY OF YOU ARE BEING EXPOSED FOR WHO YOU REALLY ARE. #readthatagain

Don't wake up tomorrow on the wrong side of this issue. Its not to late to SAY,

"maybe I need to look at this from a different perspective.

Maybe I don't know what its like to be Black in America...

Maybe, just maybe, I have been taught wrong."

There is still so much work to be done. It's been a really dark, raw week. This could still end badly. But all we can do is keep doing the work.

Keep protesting.

#Copied and pasted from a Facebook friend #who got it from someone else #thank you to whoever gathered and organized this initially #black lives matter #blm

[patriotsnet]

How Many Republicans Are In The House Of Representatives

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-many-republicans-are-in-the-house-of-representatives/

How Many Republicans Are In The House Of Representatives

Texas V Azar: Another Legal Challenge With Tenuous Logic And Significant Potential Ramifications

Republicans register their fury as House holds historic first proxy vote

When GOP lawmakers passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that prospectively repealed the individual mandate penalty, it triggered a new lawsuit filed by 20 Republican-led states .

The plaintiff states argument is essentially this: The Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that the individual mandate was constitutional because the fine for non-compliance was deemed a tax rather than a penalty. Now that the tax for non-compliance with the individual mandate has been set at $0, plaintiffs in Texas v. Azar are arguing that the entire ACA is unconstitutional and should be struck down.

Legal scholars on both sides of the issue believe that this is an absurd argument, but Judge Reed OConner sided with the plaintiffs in December 2018, ruling that the ACA should be invalidated. And a few months later, the Trump administration agreed that the ACA should be overturned.

Oral arguments were held in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in July 2019, with Democratic-led states stepping in to defend the ACA since the Department of Justice has agreed with the plaintiffs in the case.

A group of Democratic-led states subsequently asked the Supreme Court to step in and hear the case during the 2020 term, instead of waiting for it to make its way back through the lower court. But the Supreme Court declined to do so. So for the time being, the Appeals Court is awaiting a decision from the lower court in terms of which provisions of the ACA should be overturned.

What Activists And Democrats Want To Happen

For years, Democrats and activists alike have pushed for an independent redistricting commission to draw Indianas maps. Their argument is that only an independent group can do so without party influence.;

But Republicans have long stifled any legislation that would make that change.;

Now activists such as Common Cause and;All IN for Democracy; and Democrats alike are asking for a transparent process with more time for analysis of the proposed maps and public comment after the proposed maps are released.;

What Is Gerrymandering And Does Indiana Do It

Gerrymandering is the practice of drawing electoral district lines to favor one political party or group over another.;

Indianas current state and congressional maps substantially favor Republicans, according to a recent study commissioned by activist group Women4Change and completed by;Christopher Warshaw, a political science professor at George Washington University.

Warshaw arrived at that conclusion by looking at the number of wasted votes; or the number of votes above what is needed to win in Democratic districts compared to those in Republican districts.;

During the 2012 House race immediately following redistricting, for example, the efficiency gap; or difference between wasted Republican and wasted Democratic votes;; was more extreme than 95% of other statehouse elections;throughout the country and in Indiana over the past five decades.;

Likewise, the 2014 state Senate election results, when the 2011 plan fully went into effect, had a higher efficiency gap than 96%;of other state Senate elections. A similar gap exists on the congressional side.;

Warshaw concluded the disparity wasnt just due to Indianas natural geographical makeup.;

Wesco argued that the maps Indiana uses currently are more fair than those used in the early 2000s when Democrats controlled the House.

Recommended Reading: Republican Vs Democrat Convictions Chart

Permission To Reproduce Cawp Materials

Reproduction of information on the CAWP website for non-commercial purposes is encouraged, provided that clear and visible credit is given to Center for American Women and Politics, Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University. Any information reproduced must include footnotes/endnotes that apply to that information. Commercial reproduction requires prior permission in writing from the Center for American Women and Politics. All CAWP fact sheets are available on this web site and may be downloaded and copied as needed.

Voting Members By State

As of July;30,2021:

District Executive Director of EMILY’s ListPolitical aide Delaware Health and Social Services SecretaryDelaware Labor Secretary Assistant General Counsel to the Florida Department of Community AffairsPresident of the Florida Association of Women Lawyers McLean County Board of CommissionersAir Force pilot President of the Maryland Board of Higher Education

As of January;3,2021:

District

“Directory of Representatives”. United States House of Representatives. Retrieved September 9, 2014.

^

“Biographical Directory of the United States Congress”. United States Congress. Retrieved October 31, 2020.

^Washington, U. S. Capitol Room H154; p:225-7000, DC 20515-6601. “Mike Rogers ), 117th Congress Profile”. Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives. Retrieved January 14, 2021.

^Washington, U. S. Capitol Room H154; p:225-7000, DC 20515-6601. “David Schweikert ), 117th Congress Profile”. Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives. Retrieved January 14, 2021.

^Washington, U. S. Capitol Room H154; p:225-7000, DC 20515-6601. “Doug LaMalfa ), 117th Congress Profile”. Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives. Retrieved January 14, 2021.

^Washington, U. S. Capitol Room H154; p:225-7000, DC 20515-6601. “Julia Brownley ), 117th Congress Profile”. Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives. Retrieved January 14, 2021.

^

^“History of Maryknoll”. Retrieved March 13, 2016.

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South Carolina House Of Representatives Elections 2012

See also: South Carolina State Senate elections, 2012 and State legislative elections, 2012

South Carolinas 2012 legislative elections were marred by a series of events that eventually led to nearly 250 candidates being removed from the primary ballot. Here is a brief timeline of those events, followed by a detailed account of what happened.

Deadline for candidates to file a required statement of economic interest. Many candidates from both parties fail to do so.

Week of April 16: The State Ethics Commission gives candidates an additional 10 days to turn in the form. Democrats call the decision unfair while Republicans say that they are okay with it.

May 2: The South Carolina Supreme Court rules any candidate who did not file the form must be removed from the ballot. Calls for a rehearing are denied.

May 9: While the Senate attempts to pass legislation to allow challengers back on ballot, attorney Todd Kincannon requests a delay in the primary. Both efforts fail.

Primaries take place as scheduled.

Additional filing time

Republicans said they were fine with the commissions decision.

Candidate disqualification

14Footnotes

Elections to the U.S. House were held on . All 435 seats were up for election.

In 2010, 54 incumbents lost to challengers in the general election with Republicans swinging 63 total seats in their favor.

The 147 Republicans Who Voted To Overturn Election Results

By Karen Yourish,;Larry Buchanan and Denise LuUpdated January 7, 2021

When a mob of President Trumps supporters stormed the Capitol building on Wednesday, they forced an emergency recess in the Congressional proceedings to officially certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. The disruption came shortly after some Republican lawmakers made the first of a planned series of highly unusual objections, based on spurious allegations of widespread voter fraud, to states election results. The chambers were separately debating an objection to Arizonas results when proceedings were halted and the Capitol was locked down.

When the Senate reconvened at 8 p.m., and the House of Representatives an hour later, the proceedings including the objection debates continued, although some lawmakers who had previously planned to vote with the objectors stood down following the occupation of the Capitol. Plans to challenge a number of states after Arizona were scrapped, as well but one other objection, to Pennsylvanias results, also advanced to a vote. Here are the eight senators and 139 representatives who voted to sustain one or both objections.

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Republicans Win Control Of House With Historic Gains

Republicans expected to pick up between 60 and 70 seats in House, ABC projects.

John Boehner Gets Emotional at NRCC

The GOP House victory would be the biggest gain for a party in a midterm since 1938, when Democrats lost 71 seats amid deep economic malaise during the Great Depression.

House Minority Leader and likely future speaker John Boehner was moved to tears when he addressed a crowd of supporters in Washington.

With their voices and their votes, the American people are demanding a new way forward in Washington, Boehner said. The peoples priorities will be our priorities. The peoples agenda will be our agenda. This is our pledge to America, this is our pledge to you.

The president called Boehner to congratulate him on the Republicans big win. Boehners office released a statement saying the two men discussed working together to focus on the top priorities of the American people, which Boehner has identified as creating jobs and cutting spending.

Thats what they expect, Boehner said. He thanked the president for the call.

From Virginia to Indiana, Florida to North Dakota, Democratic incumbents felt the wrath of an angry electorate, fueled by record turnout among conservative voters, exit polls showed.

Comparison To The Senate

US Midterms 2018: Democrats take the House and Republicans keep the Senate | #GME

As a check on the regional, popular, and rapidly changing politics of the House, the Senate has several distinct powers. For example, the “advice and consent” powers are a sole Senate privilege. The House, however, has the exclusive power to initiate bills for raising revenue, to impeach officials, and to choose the president if a presidential candidate fails to get a majority of the Electoral College votes. The Senate and House are further differentiated by term lengths and the number of districts represented: the Senate has longer terms of six years, fewer members , and larger constituencies per member. The Senate is referred to as the “upper” house, and the House of Representatives as the “lower” house.

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In 2012 Democrats Won The Popular Vote But Lost The House Not This Year

It didnt take long in the wake of the 2012 elections for Democrats to point out an inconsistency: The party won the popular vote in House races by more than 1 million votes, but the Republicans still controlled more seats. This was fodder for all sortsofprognostication, focusing on redistricting and the Big Sort;as possible rationales.

That same scenario didnt repeat itself this year, however. In fact, 2012 is one of only two times in the past 12 cycles that the winner of the House popular vote didnt also win more seats. The other was 1996, when Democrats barely won more of the popular vote. Both years followed strong shifts in control of the House.

Looking at the data another way, 2012 is the big dot on the graph below, the one point thats distinctly not in either the lower left quadrant or the upper right .

Also note in the first graph that, since 1992, Democrats have received more of the popular House vote in four of six presidential cycles. Republicans have received more votes in five of the six midterm cycles. So 2016 seems to be setting up as a possible repeat of 2012: a presidential year following a dominant Republican performance. It could be a much better test of whether the Big Sort is providing a substantial long-term benefit to the GOP or if 2012 was an outlier.

An Incoming Class Of History

Several of the newly elected state representatives are making history.;

The Republican Madison Cawthorn, 25, who beat the Democrat Moe Davis to represent North Carolinas 11th Congressional District, will become the youngest member of Congress in modern history.

The Democrat Cori Bush is set to become the first Black congresswoman from Missouri after winning in the states 1st Congressional District.

The Democrats Mondaire Jones and Ritchie Torres will also be the first openly gay Black men to serve in Congress, after winning in New Yorks 17th and 15th districts respectively.

And nine out of the eleven Republicans who have so far unseated incumbent Democrats are women wins that will drastically expand the representation of women and especially of women of color in the House Republican caucus.

Currently, there are just 13 voting female Republican representatives in the House and 11 female Republican incumbents who ran for reelection in 2020.

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How Many Republicans Voted For Obamacare

The Affordable Care Act, also called Obamacare, received no Republican votes in either the Senate or the House of Representatives when it was passed in 2009. In the Senate, the bill was passed with a total of 60 votes, or 58 Democratic Party votes and 2 Independent Party votes. The House passed the legislation with 219 Democratic votes.

The Affordable Care Act received 39 votes against it in the Senate, all from Republicans. One senator abstained from voting. In the House, the ACA received 212 votes against it, with 34 coming from the Democratic Party and 178 from the Republican Party. There were enough votes for the ACA in the Senate to prevent an attempt to filibuster the bill, while the House vote required a simple majority.

The ACA originated in the Senate, though both the House and Senate were working on versions of a health care bill at the same time. Democrats in the House of Representatives were initially unhappy with the ACA, as they had expected some ability to negotiate additional changes before its passage. Since Republicans in the Senate were threatening to filibuster any bill they did not fully support, and Democrats no longer had enough seats to override the filibuster, no changes could be made. Since any changes to the legislation by the House would require it to be re-evaluated in the Senate, the original version was passed in 2009 on condition that it would be amended by a subsequent bill.

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Membership Qualifications And Apportionment

Under Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, seats in the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states by population, as determined by the census conducted every ten years. Each state is entitled to at least one representative, however small its population.

The only constitutional rule relating to the size of the House states: “The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative.” Congress regularly increased the size of the House to account for population growth until it fixed the number of voting House members at 435 in 1911. In 1959, upon the admission of Alaska and Hawaii, the number was temporarily increased to 437 , and returned to 435 four years later, after the reapportionment consequent to the 1960 census.

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Personnel Mail And Office Expenses

House members are eligible for a Member’s Representational Allowance to support them in their official and representational duties to their district. The MRA is calculated based on three components: one for personnel, one for official office expenses and one for official or franked mail. The personnel allowance is the same for all members; the office and mail allowances vary based on the members’ district’s distance from Washington, D.C., the cost of office space in the member’s district, and the number of non-business addresses in their district. These three components are used to calculate a single MRA that can fund any expenseâeven though each component is calculated individually, the franking allowance can be used to pay for personnel expenses if the member so chooses. In 2011 this allowance averaged $1.4 million per member, and ranged from $1.35 to $1.67 million.

The Personnel allowance was $944,671 per member in 2010. Each member may employ no more than 18 permanent employees. Members’ employees’ salary is capped at $168,411 as of 2009.

About Legislative Sessions In Colorado

The Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution declares that any power not already given to the federal government is reserved to the states and the people. State governments across the country use this authority to hold legislative sessions where a states elected representatives meet for a period of time to draft and vote on legislation and set state policies on issues such as taxation, education, and government spending. The different types of legislation passed by a legislature may include resolutions, legislatively referred constitutional amendments, and bills that become law.

Article V of the Colorado Constitution establishes when the Colorado General Assembly, of which the House is a part, is to be in session. Section 7 of Article V states that the Assembly is to convene its regular session no later than the second Wednesday of January of each year. Regular sessions are not to exceed one hundred twenty calendar days.

Section 7 also states that the Governor of Colorado can convene special sessions of the General Assembly. Special sessions can also be convened by a two-thirds vote of the members of both legislative houses.

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Most Recent Election For Speaker

The most recent election for House speaker took place January 3, 2021, on the opening day of the 117th United States Congress, two months after the 2020 House elections in which the Democrats won a majority of the seats. Incumbent speaker, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, secured a narrow majority of the 427 votes cast and was elected to a fourth term. She received 216 votes to Republican Kevin McCarthy‘s 209 votes, with two votes going to other persons; also, three representatives answered present when their names were called.

[olgagarmash]

An HIV crisis raises the question: Should health officials be activists? – STAT

Most local health officials don’t accept their jobs expecting to be roped into political activism.

Amid Covid-19, though, politics became a central element of health experts’ job descriptions. In Washington, government researcher Anthony Fauci publicly feuded with former President Trump. In many cities and states, local health departments were forced to square off against governors who resisted coronavirus mitigation strategies like business closures or mask mandates.

The series of squabbles has raised the question of whether, to be effective, local health officials need to add politics to their list of day-to-day responsibilities. And while the fights have been most pronounced amid the pandemic, they’ve even cropped up in states otherwise lauded for their coronavirus response, like West Virginia.

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There, the dynamic has played out in the context of a worst-in-the-nation HIV outbreak linked to injection drug use. This month, as local officials scrambled to prevent further spread, the state legislature all but banned one of their most effective tools for doing so: syringe exchanges that distribute sterile needles to people whose drug use places them at high risk of infection.

“Working seven days a week on things that are outside our area of expertise, the political backlash against popular strategies — it has taken its toll nationwide on our public health workforce,” said Michael Kilkenny, the CEO of the Cabell-Huntington Health Department in West Virginia, which serves the hard-hit city of Huntington. “It is frustrating, and we see what the consequences are.”

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Willingly or not, local health officials’ involvement in local West Virginia politics has been slowly escalating since 2018, when Charleston, the state’s largest city, closed its only city-run needle exchange.

This month, several local officials vocally opposed a controversial bill aimed at tightly regulating syringe-exchange programs, but the state Senate eventually approved it on a 27-7 vote.

The new requirements make things harder for the people trying to access the services and those trying to provide them. They require that programs tag syringes with individualized bar codes, and that recipients present a photo ID and receive new syringes at a 1:1 ratio to old ones they bring back, a requirement that flies directly in the face of federal recommendations.

“We now have a state law that makes it illegal to run a program based on CDC best practices,” said Robin Pollini, an epidemiology professor at West Virginia University.

HIV-prevention advocates say the move comes at the worst possible time. The state’s HIV case count, proportional to its population, is already among the worst nationally. Kanawha County, which is the state’s largest at 180,000 residents, recorded roughly as many HIV cases in 2019 as all of New York City, where 8 million people live. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned that the known HIV cases in West Virginia could represent the “tip of the iceberg” of a much larger crisis.

Syringe exchanges have long been demonstrated to be effective tools used to prevent people who use drugs from sharing needles and, in the process, spreading diseases like HIV or hepatitis C.

Local health officials aren’t just going up against their political superiors. Often, they’ve clashed with the very communities they serve. West Virginia residents, for example, have also gone head-to-head with health officials to oppose the syringe exchange, alleging that it increases drug use in their neighborhoods or puts people at risk of stepping on a stray needle.

It mirrors a broader national theme: Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, governors in Republican-controlled states like Texas and Arizona have sought to ban local governments from imposing disease-prevention measures like mask mandates or school closures.

In many cases, the pushback has forced local health officials to decide between honoring the desires of the community they serve, or following the science and advocating directly against their own constituents and the mayors or county leaders they work for.

Even those who push back are often fighting a losing battle. Raw emotion will always win out against data-driven arguments presented by a government official, said Kilkenny, the Cabell County health executive.

“If you are scared to death, you’re not analyzing what’s going on,” he said. “You are running or you’re fighting. While you’re running or you’re fighting, you’re not thinking.”

Amid the backlash, local health leaders say they often have little recourse, even when they’re aware that the public’s desires conflict directly with their mission of preventing illness and saving lives.

“The implications are tough, because oftentimes local health officials are either hired by or supervised by county executives or mayors,” said Oscar Alleyne, the chief of programs for the National Association of County and City Health Officials. “They have to navigate those eggshells while at the same time clearly articulating what works.”

In critics’ eyes, however, walking on eggshells isn’t enough. In the face of a health emergency, Pollini argued that working to change the political landscape is an essential part of a public health official’s job — especially if local politics are keeping them from addressing a crisis.

“If you understand the science and you’re a public health person, you have to make an effort to turn public opinion,” she said.

In West Virginia, some local officials have attempted to land somewhere in between.

Kilkenny highlighted his testimony before a state Senate committee, which he said may have helped to water down the legislation, allowing syringe exchanges to continue in limited form. An earlier version of the bill would have outlawed the exchanges entirely.

“We educated [lawmakers] that we need this tool,” he said. “It was not successful in changing the outcome. But it possibly mitigated what would have been completely devastating legislation and made it only very very challenging.”

Sherri Young, who leads the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department and serves the state’s largest county, said that appropriately weighing science against community discomfort is often impossible. Her county has not operated a syringe exchange since 2018. Two local nonprofit groups have offered limited services since, the larger of which may be forced to close in light of the new law.

“I don’t know that the right balance has been struck,” Young said. “The ideal situation, if I could design anything, is one that the public would be comfortable with, but does work for prevention of HIV.”

She also defended the department’s work, saying it has worked to combat the HIV crisis via testing and aggressive outreach to vulnerable populations, especially in anticipation of controversy surrounding syringe exchange programs.

“We knew, because it was going to be a political issue, how to prepare for it moving forward,” she said.

Pollini, however, was direct in her criticism. Young, she said, didn’t fight hard enough to preserve evidence-based strategies like syringe exchange programs.

“We will continue to have people infected with a completely preventable disease,” she said, “because no one is standing up and saying: Hey, let me have a conversation with you about these programs and why they’re so important to our community.”

source https://wealthch.com/an-hiv-crisis-raises-the-question-should-health-officials-be-activists-stat/

[orbemnews]

C.D.C. Eases Outdoor Mask Guidance for Vaccinated Americans WASHINGTON — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took a major step on Tuesday toward coaxing Americans into a post-pandemic world, relaxing the rules on mask wearing outdoors as coronavirus cases recede and people increasingly chafe against restrictions. The mask guidance is modest and carefully written: Americans who are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus no longer need to wear a mask outdoors while walking, running, hiking or biking alone, or when in small gatherings, including with members of their own households. Masks are still necessary in crowded outdoor venues like sports stadiums, the C.D.C. said. But President Biden hailed it as a landmark moment in the pandemic, wearing a mask as he approached the lectern on a warm spring day on the White House grounds — and pointedly keeping it off as he walked back into the White House when he was done. “Go get the shot. It’s never been easier,” Mr. Biden said. “And once you’re fully vaccinated, you can go without a mask when you’re outside and away from big crowds.” The C.D.C. stopped short of telling even fully vaccinated people that they could shed their masks outdoors altogether — citing the worrying risk that remains for transmitting the coronavirus, unknown vaccination levels among people in crowds and the still-high caseloads in some regions of the country. The guidance also cautioned even vaccinated people against going without masks in medium-size outdoor gatherings. But even the C.D.C.’s director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, emphasized a more expansive interpretation, telling reporters at a White House briefing, “We no longer feel that the vaccinated people require masks outdoors,” outside “large public venues, such as concerts, stadiums and things like that.” The order had immediate ripple effects in the states. Governors in California, New York, Louisiana, Maine and Massachusetts all relaxed outdoor mask mandates after the C.D.C.’s announcement. In Tennessee, Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, went much further, ignoring the federal government’s advice as he declared it was “time for celebrations and weddings and conventions and concerts and parades and proms” to take place “without limits on gathering sizes.” On Capitol Hill, a group of Republican lawmakers who are also medical professionals released an advertisement on Tuesday encouraging vaccination, in which they appeared wearing white coats with stethoscopes draped around their necks. Senator Roger Marshall, a freshman Republican from Kansas and a medical doctor, told viewers that the reason to get vaccinated was simple: “So we can throw away our masks, and live life as free as before.” Mr. Marshall, who organized the effort, said it was based on research conducted by Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster working to reduce vaccine hesitancy among conservatives. In an interview, Mr. Luntz said Mr. Biden’s announcement was a positive step, and could give people who are reluctant to get vaccinated a reason to get their shots. “It gives them a light at the end of the tunnel,” he said. “‘Tell me when I can get rid of my mask’ is actually the language that they use, so the fact that this is a meaningful, measurable step toward returning to normal is a big deal.” For Mr. Biden, who will address Congress on Wednesday and mark his 100th day in office on Thursday, the C.D.C.’s announcement was a moment to bask in what he called the “stunning progress” Americans had made since he took office. Next week, he said, he will outline a plan “to get us to July 4 as our target date to get life in America closer to normal and begin to celebrate our independence from the virus.” Americans have been whipsawed on the issue of mask wearing since the beginning of the pandemic, when top health officials said people did not need them — in part because of severe shortages of protective gear for health care workers on the front lines. Masks became the centerpiece of the culture wars that surrounded the pandemic, especially after President Donald J. Trump insisted that they were optional and that he would not wear one. That led states to adopt patchwork mask restrictions, often along partisan lines, despite the evidence of a mask’s protection for individuals and those around them. Many states have already lifted restrictions they had put in place for indoor and outdoor activities. Others maintained mask-wearing requirements even for outdoor spaces, citing the threat of potentially more contagious variants. Updated  April 27, 2021, 6:29 p.m. ET The guidelines issued Tuesday reflect some basic coronavirus math: As the number of vaccinated people goes up, cases are going down. So far, about 43 percent of Americans have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, and 29 percent have received both doses of the two vaccines requiring double shots. The United States is averaging around 55,000 new cases a day, a roughly 20 percent drop from two weeks ago, according to a New York Times database. “I know the quarantine and shutdowns throughout the pandemic have been exhausting,” Dr. Walensky said. “I know we all miss the things we used to do before the pandemic, and I know we all want to do the things we love and soon. Today is another day we can take a step back to normalcy of before.” Her remarks, and those of the president, got a welcome reception even from some of the Biden administration’s fiercest Republican critics in Congress, many of whom have complained that coronavirus restrictions were an intrusion on their personal freedoms. “It’s about time,” said Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, who recently excoriated Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the federal government’s top infectious disease specialist, at a hearing on Capitol Hill. “Now when do we get the rest of our liberties back?” Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, who has spread fringe theories and given a platform to vaccine skeptics, called the guidance “long overdue.” Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, who quit wearing masks indoors after he was vaccinated, said he was “glad the C.D.C. finally acknowledged what has been obvious for a long time, which is that wearing a mask outside is silly and not remotely justified by the science.” In fact, the science behind the C.D.C.’s new guidance is not comprehensive. A growing body of research indicates that the odds of the virus spreading outdoors is far lower than it is indoors, but the risk is not zero and is hard to quantify. Most if not all of the research about viral transmission outside was done before the vaccine was available, so it does not distinguish between the risk to those who are inoculated and those who are not. But experts say that viral particles disperse quickly outdoors, meaning brief encounters with a passing walker or jogger pose very little risk of transmission. “The two main things you have going for you outdoors is that the virus rapidly becomes diluted” and decays quickly in the sunlight, said Linsey Marr, an aerosol expert at Virginia Tech, adding, “I think something like sitting at a baseball game where people are really cheek by jowl, side by side, and in front and behind each other, and there’s yelling, cheering — I would wear a mask in that situation.” Still, the evidence is somewhat thin. A recent systematic review of studies that examined the transmission of the novel coronavirus and other respiratory viruses among unvaccinated individuals identified only five studies about the coronavirus that met the authors’ criteria. The study concluded that fewer than 10 percent of infections occurred outdoors, and that the odds for indoor transmission was 18.7 times as high as outdoors (the odds of super-spreading events was 33 times as high as indoors). One of the paper’s authors, Dr. Nooshin Razani, an associate adjunct professor in epidemiology, biostatistics and pediatrics at University of California, San Francisco, cautioned that the low odds of transmission outdoors may simply reflect the fact that people spend little time outdoors. In one documented case in Italy, the virus spread between joggers who were running outdoors together, side by side. The C.D.C.’s new guidance was issued amid growing debate over why the federal government was still recommending that people wear masks outdoors. Writing in The New England Journal of Medicine last week, Dr. Paul Sax, an infectious disease expert at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Massachusetts, said it was time to end outdoor mask mandates. Along with the guidelines, the C.D.C. published a color-coded chart outlining masking recommendations for a variety of scenarios such as, “dine at an outdoor restaurant with friends from multiple households,” “visit a barber or hair salon” and “go to an uncrowded, indoor shopping center or museum.” But Dr. Marr said that seemed overly complex: “I would have to carry around a sheet of paper — a cheat sheet with all these different stipulations.” She added: “I worry that this is not as helpful as it could be.” And there are other scenarios, not addressed in the guidelines, in which wearing a mask outdoors can still be an important social signal. For instance, Dr. Mercedes Carnethon, an epidemiologist at Northwestern University, noted, no vaccine has yet been authorized for children under 16. “When we’re going to require children to wear masks, at school and on the playground when they’re at school,” she said, “I think that it is responsible for the adults in the situation to model that behavior and normalize mask wearing even when outside.” Emily Anthes and Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting. Source link Orbem News #Americans #CDC #eases #guidance #mask #Outdoor #vaccinated

[scentedrunawayshark]

THE OPIOID CRISIS

How does this natural parental reaction to pain lead to what we now recognize as, the ‘OPIOID CRISIS?’

There is no simple answer.  

We should recognize that our instincts are to comfort our loved ones and if possible, reduce their experience of pain.

A kiss may work for a graze but not for a fracture or a hip replacement.

Loving care will not relieve the pain of a terminal illness.

Opiates (opioids) are not cures. They are pain relievers. They are drugs either derived from or designed to mimic the effect(s) that opium has on the human brain.

Opioids work by interacting with neurotransmitters in the brain and blocking the (pain) signals that they are sending. This enables opioids to serve as powerful pain killers.

BUT, the relief from pain may release the feelings of intense pleasure, which lead to addiction.

Opioid addiction (largely the ‘pleasure’ effect) is one of the most serious problems faced by America today.

HOW HAS THE PROBLEM BECOME A CRISIS?

WHO’S TO BLAME FOR OPIOID EPIDEMIC?

As always, the easy answer is WE ALL ARE!  Opioids seem to offer something for everyone.

You, me – traumatic/chronic pain relief

The Surgeon – a stable operating environment

Physicians – options to prescribe for chronic and palliative care

Manufacturers/suppliers – a revenue stream from opium/opioid products

In traumatic situations, in the ER, the surgery, opioids offer pain relief for the patient and a controlled operating environment for the surgeon. Win-Win.

In post-operative recovery, the controlled use of opioids can reduce pain to manageable levels.

For chronic (long-term) pain relief e.g. joint pains, backache etc. opioids in low dosages, and taken only when necessary (and as prescribed) can be extremely effective in masking pain.

But that is all they do.  They MASK PAIN. They do NOT cure. Extending a prescription or increasing the dosage will provide no further medical benefit but may very likely increase the risk of opioid dependency – the feelings of intense pleasure that are the side effect of this most addictive drug family.

In some circumstances, these side effects are acceptable risks; terminal illnesses and end of life (palliative) care are examples.

OPIOID DEPENDENCY – THE PRESCRIPTION EPIDEMIC

Most people’s introduction to opioids is the result of a major surgical operation and consequent care programs or a Doctor’s prescription for chronic pain relief.

The highly addictive nature of these pain relievers makes it easy for the human brain to crave more. [Note: Most prescription drugs are self-administered e.g. take 3x daily after meals.] It is only when a course of drugs (the prescription) ends, that many patients realize they’ve become dependent on the effects of opioids to function “normally.” [Undisciplined ‘self-administration’ often puts the pleasure effect of the drug ahead of the intended medical purpose.]  

There is considerable self-discipline required to overcome a dependence on opioids.

First, there may be the return of the original pain for which treatment was prescribed

Secondly, the absence of the ‘pleasure effect’ may be overwhelming.

This is the point at which Physicians are faced with the dilemma of either responding to the patient’s requests or of insisting that they endure the pain that comes with the withdrawal symptoms of opioids.

Patients may look for other means of getting their high.

Prescription opioids are expensive, and this creates a market (illicit) for heroin. It is often cheaper, more potent, and easier to obtain.

The evidence suggests that as many as 80% of heroin users were introduced to opioids on prescription.

WHAT LIES AHEAD?

The recent judgment against Johnson & Johnson could influence the approach taken in more than 2,000 lawsuits pending around the US, filed by states and cities.  They will be looking at the ruling by Judge Thad Balkman in which he said: “Johnson and Johnson carry responsibility for helping to fuel the state’s opioid epidemic by aggressively marketing painkillers.”

Oklahoma brought similar cases against Purdue Pharma and Teva, both of whom settled before trial.

It is an open question of how the settlement funds should be used.  $200 million of the Purdue settlement is committed to funding an Addiction Studies Centre at Oklahoma State University but the state lawmakers argue that it is for the state to decide how the funds should be used.

The first federal trial, which involves two counties in Ohio, is scheduled for October 21st in Cleveland. Other suits have been filed in West Virginia and many more state and federal cases could be tried as soon as next year.  In general, plaintiffs will argue that drugs were improperly marketed and that companies failed to stop shipments of suspicious orders.  In the Cleveland cases Judge Dan Polster is pushing the parties to settle, partly to avoid lengthy (and costly) litigation but mainly to set precedents for the thousands of cases which will inevitably follow.

HOW DOES THIS AFFECT YOU?

These cases are a legal minefield; there are dozens of defendants, raw material suppliers, manufacturers, and distributors.  There are thousands of plaintiffs, each with different interests and literally millions of Americans either directly or indirectly affected.  In theory, anyone could bring a case but it would be neither practical nor affordable.

State and local governments are already battling for the allocation/control of settlement funds.  And that is before any federal cases have come to court!

It seems likely that settlements will be focused on medical and care projects with special emphasis on substance abuse treatment and research into nonaddictive analgesics.

Health Insurance and Mental Health Services

These FAQs and answers are extracts from MentalHealth.Gov. How to Get Help

Do you have Insurance Questions about Mental Health or Addiction Services?

Help is available if you have:

Been denied coverage

Reached a limit on your plan (such as co-payments, deductibles, yearly visits, etc.)

Have an overly large co-pay or deductible

You may be protected by Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Coverage. Parity laws require most health plans to apply similar rules to mental health benefits as they do for medical/surgical benefits. If you need more information about the protections that apply to you, there are Federal and State Agencies who can provide assistance.

Q. What can I do if I think I need mental health or substance use disorder services for myself or family members?

Here are three steps you can take right now:

Learn more about how you, your friends, and your family can obtain health insurance coverage provided by Medicaid or CHIP or the Health Insurance Marketplaces by visiting HealthCare.gov.

Find out more about how the law is expanding coverage of mental health and substance use disorder benefits and federal parity protections:

Find help in your area with the Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator or the Find a Health Center.

[silverblogxyz]

AOC 'one of the least effective members of Congress,' study says

AOC ‘one of the least effective members of Congress,’ study says

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was among the least effective members of the last Congress, according to a study from a nonpartisan group.  While AOC introduced 21 ‘substantive’ bills to Congress, her legislation failed to progress any further, according to the Center for Effective Lawmaking – a joint project between Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia.  None of the…

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[politicalbombshow]

AOC One Of The Least Effective Members Of Congress

AOC One Of The Least Effective Members Of Congress

According to a new study, Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is one of the least effective members of Congress. The New York Post reported: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among the least effective members of the last Congress according to a new survey from the nonpartisan Center for Effective Lawmaking — a joint project of Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia. AOC…

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[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Imagine this scenario: In November’s elections for the U.S. House, Democrats win the national House vote by a few percentage points and gain nearly 20 additional House seats,1 by both winning open seats and defeating some longtime GOP incumbents. In the Senate, Democrats pick up Nevada; win races in states President Trump carried in 2016, including in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and West Virginia; and only narrowly lose in the GOP strongholds of Indiana, Missouri and Tennessee.

That sounds like a pretty good night for Democrats. But it wouldn’t be. That scenario would leave Republicans with a majority of, say, 222-213 in the House and a 51-49 advantage in the Senate.

Don’t get me wrong — I share the view of other analysts that Democrats are favorites to win the House this fall, and that an accompanying Democratic win in the Senate is somewhat less likely.2 But based on the data we have now, the scenario above is certainly possible — just as possible as, say, Trump being elected president and Republicans winning both houses of Congress on Nov. 8, 2016.

That potential outcome didn’t get enough coverage in the run-up to the 2016 election. So let’s avoid repeating that mistake in 2018. How would the political world react if Republicans maintained control of Congress in November? I can’t say for sure, but here are four likely responses.

Renewed GOP attempts to shrink government

If Republicans control the House and Senate next year, I would expect them to push some kind of health policy proposal that uses the so-called reconciliation process, which requires only a majority of votes in the Senate, rather than a filibuster-proof 60. That legislation could be a full-scale repeal of Obamacare. Or it could be a bill that doesn’t repeal all of Obamacare but both cuts spending on Medicaid and turns Medicaid into a block-grant program where states can choose to spend the dollars they get from the federal government as they see fit. Overhauling Medicaid was a key plank of the various Obamacare repeal bills Republicans pushed in 2017.

Republicans in the House are currently trying to add requirements that food stamp recipients be either employed or actively looking for a job in order to continue to receive those benefits. That legislation is currently stalled, but it’s a long-held GOP goal.

You might think that doesn’t sound like a particularly popular agenda heading into the 2020 elections. And shouldn’t last year have convinced Republicans to give up on health care? After all, they struggled to pass an Obamacare repeal bill in the House when they had more than 230 members, and it failed in the Senate. So why would Republicans come back to this? Well, some conservative lawmakers on Capitol Hill, major party activists and officials in the Trump administration want to.

“They will be searching for an agenda, and health care is a natural place for them. And there will be pressure for them to act,” said Yuval Levin, a conservative health policy expert who served in the Bush administration.

And the political environment in 2019 could shift in ways that both force Republican party leaders to move in a more conservative direction and make it easier to get conservative proposals through both houses of Congress.

Sure, the GOP’s overall margin in the House might narrow. But the House and Senate Republicans who are defeated in November will likely come from the bluer districts and states that the party currently holds — including some where Clinton won in 2016. So the remaining Republicans will, on average, represent more conservative constituencies than the current group does. They will not be scared to vote for an Obamacare repeal — after all, they voted for one in the run-up to 2018 and kept their seats. And they may face intense pressure back home from conservatives if they oppose it.

Moreover, the more conservative factions among House Republicans, particularly the Freedom Caucus, are likely to have more influence in 2019 if the party retains the majority. With Speaker Paul Ryan retiring, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy is the favorite to become the top Republican in the House, but Freedom Caucus members are looking for ways to either get one of their own elected speaker or extract some concessions from McCarthy. The Freedom Caucus strongly pushed for an Obamacare repeal even after the effort’s failure in the Senate, and the caucus has also been pushing the party to be much more aggressive in cutting federal spending. So McCarthy may have to pledge to pursue an Obamacare repeal and other conservative fiscal policies if he wants to be the speaker.

“They will be dominated by the Freedom Caucus and will get serious about slashing safety-net expenditures,” said U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, a Democrat from Kentucky. “The Senate will not go along, so it will be worse gridlock, I would think.”

Yarmuth is right to bring up the other chamber of Congress. Even with continued GOP control of the House, if the party’s advantage in the Senate stays narrow, more moderate members like Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski remain potential barriers to major spending cuts.

Weakening of the investigations against Trump

If Democrats don’t control the House or the Senate, they can’t initiate investigations of Trump or some of his more controversial cabinet members, such as Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt.

More importantly, after the 2018 elections, the electoral process will recede as a constraint on the president and GOP in terms of the Russia investigation (assuming it’s still going) — at least for a while.

We don’t really know why Trump, despite his constant criticisms of the investigation, has not fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, or why he has not directly tried to stop the probe by special counsel Robert Mueller. Maybe Trump, despite his rhetoric, has some real respect for the rule of law. I think it’s more likely that Trump understands that firing Rosenstein or making a drastic move to stop the Mueller probe would increase both the chances of Democrats winning the House and/or Senate this year, and the odds that the resulting Democratic-led chamber(s) would feel compelled to push to impeach Trump. But if the GOP emerges from 2017 and 2018 without losing control of the House or the Senate, I suspect that, with the next election two years away, the president will feel freer to take controversial steps to end the Russia probe. And I doubt Republicans on Capitol Hill would try to stop him.

“If the GOP retains the House, Trump will claim credit,” said Didi Kuo, a scholar at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. “He will be emboldened to do as he pleases with respect to the Mueller investigation.”

In fact, certain Trump defenders on Capitol Hill, particularly House Intelligence Community Chairman Devin Nunes, could emerge emboldened from a 2018 election in which Democrats directly targeted them for defeat but failed. Republicans like Nunes, already in effect running an investigation of Mueller’s investigation, could take more steps to push back against the FBI, Justice Department and any other part of the federal government seen as threatening Trump’s power.

A Democratic freakout

Nancy Pelosi already had Democratic critics who felt she had stayed on too long as the party’s House leader, blocked a younger generation of lawmakers from taking power and failed to lead Democrats back to majority power. But that situation has gotten worse in the first few months of 2018. Republicans are running millions of dollars in ads linking Democratic congressional candidates to the unpopular Pelosi, leaving some of these Democratic hopefuls feeling compelled to distance themselves from the California Democrat and say they do not want her to remain the party’s leader. If Republicans win the House this fall, I expect Democrats on the Hill will force Pelosi out as leader after pinning at least some of the blame for their defeat on her (or just deciding that they need someone new).

“It will be like 2016 for Democrats. They will think they lost an election they should have won,” said Seth Masket, a University of Denver political scientist who is working on a book about the post-2016 Democratic Party. “There would be enormous anger directed at Pelosi.”

But I don’t think she would be alone in being deposed. The No. 2 and No. 3 Democrats on the Hill (Steny Hoyer of Maryland and James Clyburn of South Carolina) are basically the same age as the 78-year-old Pelosi (Hoyer is 78, Clyburn 77) and considered part of the old guard by some younger Democrats. It’s more likely that Hoyer and Clyburn will be pushed out of leadership completely than that one of them will be asked to replace Pelosi and lead the party into the 2020 elections. Some party activists are dissatisfied with the Democratic National Committee too, and I’m not sure DNC Chairman Tom Perez can survive a major Democratic underperformance this fall either.

This freakout could go way beyond sidelining the Democratic leaders in Washington, though. Would the calls asking for a figure from outside of politics (say, Oprah Winfrey) to run for president to save the Democratic Party and save the country from Trump get louder, in effecting casting aside more traditional presidential candidates like Sens. Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren? Before the 2020 presidential election, would party activists beg former president Barack Obama to get more involved in electoral politics, taking a 2018 defeat as a sign that the current crop of Democrats are not equipped to take on Trump?

I’m not sure about the specifics, but that seems like the right scale here; if Democrats feel they’ve underperformed in 2018, we may come to see the party’s post-2016 reprisals as only the warm-up act for the internal strife that would follow these midterms.

A media reassessment

The initial media reaction to the 2016 election (“Should we cover Middle America more often?”) has largely been supplanted, I would argue, by news organizations investing more time and resources in covering the Trump administration, particularly the Russia investigation. That’s a logical decision. There is a lot of news in Washington — and that news is probably both more important and more likely to attract clicks and eyeballs (media is a business) than what’s happening in, say, small-town Wisconsin.

That decision has also been reinforced by two factors. The Mueller investigation and the media’s own reporting has shown that there is much to be covered in terms of Russian interference in the election and connections between Russians and Trump allies, if not the president himself. And polling since Trump’s election has suggested that American voters are not particularly enthusiastic about Trump or congressional Republicans — even if the voters gave the GOP total control in the 2016 election. Trump is unpopular for a president this early in his tenure, and polls suggest a majority of Americans disapprove of the job he’s doing and a plurality would prefer Democratic control of the House.

So the media has covered the Trump story largely through Washington, not Middle America, and has covered Trump fairly negatively.

I suspect that a Republican win in the House, even if the majority of voters back Democrats (Republicans’ built-in seat advantage makes it possible for the party to hang on to congressional control while losing the nationwide popular vote), would spur some rethinking of that tactic. Coverage might go in a somewhat pro-Democratic direction, asking if something is amiss with the electoral system if Democrats keep winning the national popular vote but remain shut out of power. But I think there will be renewed questions about whether the media is out of touch with a country that not only elected Trump but also kept his party in power in Congress despite intense coverage of the president’s foibles.

Other important things would happen, of course. GOP control of the Senate would allow Trump to continue to fill federal courts with conservative judges. Moving the judiciary to the right has become one of the chief goals of the administration and a major part of Trump’s appeal to more traditional Republicans who might otherwise be wary of his political style. Additionally, a good 2018 for the GOP might send the message abroad that the American public has ratified Trump’s domestic and foreign-policy approach, and world leaders like Germany’s Angela Merkel might begin to more forcefully distance themselves from the U.S.

“For all those [foreign leaders] who have found reassurance in the idea that this is a temporary aberration and that America will go back to its regularly scheduled programming soon, it would be an argument for starting to recalculate,” said Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, the executive editor of Foreign Affairs magazine.

In any case, it’s worth thinking through the repercussions of various 2018 outcomes, even relatively unlikely ones. As we all should have learned by now, unlikely isn’t the same as impossible.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Perry Bacon Jr.

[dipulb3]

Major conservative groups unify behind state GOP efforts to restrict voting

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/major-conservative-groups-unify-behind-state-gop-efforts-to-restrict-voting/

Major conservative groups unify behind state GOP efforts to restrict voting

Heritage Action for America, the political arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, has publicly committed to spending at least $10 million to “secure and strengthen state election systems.” And guidelines sent out earlier this year by the Heritage Foundation — including extending identification requirements to absentee voting and barring third-party groups from collecting voters’ absentee ballots — have emerged in bills now racing through the Legislature in Georgia and other statehouses.

Organizations ranging from the libertarian-leaning advocacy group FreedomWorks to the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List also have jumped into the voting rights battle this year.

The involvement of national groups shows that efforts to restrict voting in dozens of states “are not a coincidence,” said Hillary Holley, organizing director of the Georgia-based voting rights group Fair Fight Action. “This is a strategic imperative that’s well-funded.”

The Republican-controlled House in Georgia is slated to vote Thursday on a package of voting changes that include limiting ballot drop boxes, requiring identification for absentee ballots and making it a misdemeanor to give food or soft drinks to voters waiting in line to cast their ballots.

Officials with Heritage Action say roughly 20,000 of its activists are working on the ground in the state to encourage its passage.

Lawmakers in the Peach State are expected to take final action on the measures next week before adjourning. That puts Georgia on track to become the second Republican-controlled state this year to pass major legislation clamping down on ballot access. Earlier this month, Iowa passed its own restrictions, including cutting down the number of days available for early voting.

In all, more than 40 states were considering bills that include voting restrictions as of mid-February, according to the liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. Since then, more have joined in.

On Wednesday, Republican lawmakers in Michigan — another presidential battleground — introduced a package of 39 election bills. They include new voter ID requirements and a ban on prepaid postage for absentee ballots.

National groups

The leaders of Republican groups say they have joined the fray because worries about election fraud have become an animating force for conservative activists in the wake of the 2020 elections. Last year saw a dramatic increase in the use of mail-in voting, ballot drop boxes and other tools to avoid spreading the coronavirus.

Turnout surged to record levels, helping Democrats take the White House and the US Senate majority.

Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly made false claims that widespread voter fraud contributed to his defeat last November, and Republican lawmakers have cited an erosion of public confidence as a key reason they are racing to tighten voting laws.

“If voters don’t have trust in our elections, then voting turnout will be suppressed,” Jessica Anderson, the executive director of Heritage Action, said in an email to Appradab. She said her group will “spend whatever it takes to reach our goals.”

Ken Cuccinelli, who helped run the Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administration, now oversees the Election Transparency Initiative — a joint effort of The Susan B. Anthony List and another group focused on social issues, American Principles Project. His initiative has a roughly $5 million budget and its goals include stopping a sweeping elections and campaign finance bill Democrats hope to advance in the US Senate.

“Why is a pro-life and social conservative group engaging in this space?” Cuccinelli said in an interview this week. “The sort of simple answer is: Our members are effectively demanding it.”

“Other groups are seeing the same thing,” he said. “They are having members who are asking the question: ‘Why should I give you any money? Why should I knock on doors? Why should I write my congressman when these elections are moving in the direction of being a sham?’ “

Cuccinelli argues that congressional Democrats are trying to expand voting in ways that are unpopular with Americans, such as allowing voters to sign an affidavit, rather than presenting identification to vote.

Other Republican organizations that have launched new voting initiatives include the Republican National Committee and the Republican State Leadership Committee.

FreedomWorks recently added Cleta Mitchell — a veteran GOP elections lawyer who assisted Trump on a January call in which he urged Georgia officials to “find” him votes — to run its national “election protection initiative.” The effort will focus on “election integrity” in seven battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Honest Elections Project, a conservative group launched to work on voting issues, has issued its own list of “best practices” for elections that include more photo identification.

Honest Elections’ director, Jason Snead, a former Heritage policy analyst, said no evidence “has yet to be produced” showing widespread fraud that would have changed the 2020 election results. But he said that shouldn’t stop states from pursuing safeguards.

“We do not live in a country, thankfully, where we see a lot of bank robberies going on,” Snead said. “But every bank in the country still has security systems in place, and they are not going to get rid of them.”

Fighting voting rights package in Congress

The groups are fighting on a dual track.

Even as GOP lawmakers work to help advance bills at the state level, national Republican organizations are waging an aggressive campaign against the so-called For the People Act, a far-reaching congressional bill that would bring sweeping change to the ways in which elections are conducted and funded.

The bill, which has passed the Democratic-controlled House and is under consideration in the Senate, would effectively establish a federal floor on voting procedures — requiring, for instance, 15 days of early voting, prepaid postage on absentee ballots and voter registration on the same day as the election.

Progressive groups, which also plan to plow millions into the fight to support the Senate bill, describe the legislation as potentially their last chance to preserve voting rights as Republican lawmakers race to erect more barriers to the ballot at the state level.

Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, cast the Senate measure as federal overreach. “This legislation would forcibly rewrite the election laws of all 50 states,” McConnell said during a Senate hearing Wednesday.

Right now, Democrats lack the votes to change Senate rules to eliminate the 60-vote threshold required to overcome a filibuster on the legislation. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia is the only Democrat not to sign on to the voting bill in the Senate, and the conservative Democrat is a leading proponent of preserving the filibuster.

FreedomWorks plans a “multi-seven-figure” campaign on voting issues that will include keeping pressure on Democrats such as Manchin to retain the filibuster, according to FreedomWorks spokesman Peter Vicenzi.

Over the weekend, activists tied to two of the conservative groups at the forefront of voting battles — FreedomWorks and Heritage Action — staged a rally outside the West Virginia State Capitol, urging Manchin to stay the course.

[nothingman]

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Protesters hold signs and chant slogans outside of the Philadelphia Convention Center as the counting of the ballots continued in Pennsylvania on November 6, 2020. Mail-in ballots continued to be counted in the battleground state for days after the election. | Chris McGrath/Getty Images

A new Brennan Center report shows an unprecedented amount of legislation seeking to restrict voting access has been introduced in state legislatures this year.

In 2020, voters turned out at the highest level in 100 years, thanks in part to expanded vote-by-mail. In response, state-level Republicans are introducing an unprecedented amount of legislation to restrict voting rights, according to a new report from the Brennan Center for Justice.

State legislators in 28 states have filed 106 bills restricting the franchise thus far in 2021 — and the overwhelming majority have come from Republicans. Compare that to last year at this time: Then, only 35 such bills had been filed in six states.

“We are seeing a backlash,” says Eliza Sweren-Becker, the report’s lead author. “Rather than going out and trying to persuade voters, we’re seeing legislators trying to shrink the electorate in order to ensure job security for themselves.”

The proposed legislation largely falls into two categories: bills that either increase the difficulties individual Americans would face absentee voting or that give officials greater leeway to shrink the voter pool. Some are attempts to roll back voting rights expansions necessitated by the pandemic; others are retreads of policies Republicans have pushed before, like expanded voter identification laws.

The passage of these laws will, essentially, depend on whether Republicans control both the statehouse and the governorship in the states in which they’ve been introduced — a reality in 18 of the 28 states. And while Sweren-Becker says their constitutionality would hinge on the way each bill is written and implemented, a lot of them have a decent chance at sticking around.

The news isn’t all bad: A whopping 406 bills have been introduced in 35 states that would expand access to voting, including permanently codifying the absentee voter policies that allowed voters in some states to cast their ballots early and remotely. Some states will consider both expansive and restrictive voting rights bills; which path the state follows will likely hinge on which party controls the legislature.

Tim Ryan Williams/Vox

At the national level, Democrats in Congress are pushing a number of voting rights bills. Last year, the House passed the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would provide for federal oversight in states with a recent history of racial discrimination in voting laws. On Thursday, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) reintroduced his annual Vote From Home bill with Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), which would mandate universal absentee voting — or the ability to vote by mail without an excuse — for federal elections and disallow states from imposing “additional conditions or requirements on the eligibility of the individual,” save for the postmark deadline.

“Last year we saw a widespread expansion of vote-at-home access as a safe and secure way to participate during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Blumenauer said in a release. “We should continue to make voting easier, not harder.”

At each level of government, the fight over the future of how America’s democracy operates is in full effect — and states are moving quickly.

What Republicans are trying to pass, briefly explained

State legislators’ proposals run the gamut from seemingly reasonable to downright offensive, but they all aim to lower the likelihood of a vote getting cast or counted.

Legislators have introduced bills in Republican-controlled Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Wyoming; and divided Alaska, Kentucky, Kansas, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania, according to the Brennan Center report.

They’ve also introduced them in Democratic-controlled Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, and Washington, though those bills are less likely to succeed.

Tim Ryan Williams/Vox

The bills contain a number of tactics to increase the individual cost of voting. With mail-in voting, three states would strengthen the excuse requirement — in Missouri, for example, the coronavirus would no longer be an excuse to vote absentee, while in Pennsylvania, a proposed bill would eliminate no-excuse absentee voting after it was passed with bipartisan support in 2019.

State legislators have proposed further limiting who can assist voters with their absentee ballots and adding cumbersome witness requirements, such as mandating witnesses to give identification information.

In Arizona, where President Joe Biden became the first Democrat to carry the state in more than two decades, Sweren-Becker said state legislators introduced a particularly egregious “voter-suppressive hat trick,” which restricts who can assist voters in delivering absentee ballots, requires all mail-in ballots to be notarized, and adds a voter ID requirement for returning ballots in person.

Legislators in 10 states introduced new voter ID laws, including creating them for the first time in six states.

In one particularly absurd example, Georgia Republicans want to require that absentee voters provide a photocopy of their ID two times throughout the voting process.

State legislators in Mississippi and New York are trying to require proof of citizenship when registering to vote, explicitly targeting noncitizens. And to increase the challenges associated with obtaining a ballot, legislators in four states introduced bills to cut election day registration.

Legislators are also trying to give election officials more opportunities to throw out ballots or purge voters from the rolls. According to the Brennan Center report, one common tactic is to make it easier for officials to remove voters from the permanent absentee list and throw out votes due to signatures mismatches — a measure introduced in Pennsylvania despite the state supreme court explicitly ruling that a mismatched signature could not be the sole reason for rejecting a ballot. Republican state lawmakers also want to increase poll watcher access to ballot-counting processes, move up ballot postmark deadlines or remove secretaries of states’ discretion in setting those deadlines, and allow officials to be more proactive in purging voter rolls, to the point of allowing practices that courts have deemed improper.

It’s an unprecedented deluge of bills, but it’s not coming out of nowhere.

The GOP’s proposed laws are directly tied to Trump’s election fraud lies

Many of the bills being introduced this year aim to tackle the very practices that former President Donald Trump decried as unfair while peddling various false election conspiracies — but enacting some of his preferred reforms might actually backfire.

In the dozens of lawsuits the Trump campaign filed and saw thrown out by courts, they falsely claimed that Biden only won due to the votes of noncitizens, illegally cast absentee ballots whose signatures could not be verified (conveniently only in counties Biden won), and ballots miscounted because Trump-friendly poll watchers weren’t allowed in to watch. All of these claims were proven false by recounts and in courts, where no evidence of widespread ballot fraud was found, and it was proven that poll watchers were indeed present.

But that hasn’t stopped state GOPs from seizing the opportunity to try to justify new restrictive proposals based on Trump’s lies.

“We are certainly seeing state [legislatures] take up the mantle of this voter fraud lie and use it as a justification to restrict access to voting, to essentially enact voter suppression,” Sweren-Becker said.

Though there’s a renewed vigor to the suppression efforts in 2021, the strategy is nothing new. As Emory University historian Carol Anderson explained to Vox’s Sean Illing, America has a long history of “conservative whites continually finding new ways to rob minorities of their right to vote.” In recent decades, that’s meant state GOPs have attempted to discourage traditional Democratic voters — most notably Black voters and immigrants — from turning out.

Trump’s court challenges and Twitter rants, too, were targeted at throwing out votes in the cities of states Biden flipped, such as Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Atlanta — all of which have significant Black populations.

I hope y’all understand Black voter suppression doesn’t stop on Election Day. It’s just going to get worse because they know what we did. @morethanavote ✊ https://t.co/Tl0g752kjL

— LeBron James (@KingJames) January 27, 2021

Trump’s issue with mail-in voting was conceptual, and he railed against it on Twitter and discouraged his followers from partaking in it. By following him on his crusade, state-level Republicans could be making the same mistake the former president did.

Historically, vote-by-mail had a nonpartisan benefit — it juiced turnout for both parties. Vote-by-mail did benefit Democrats more in 2020, but there’s no guarantee that continues to be the case. Last year, Trump discouraged his voters from taking advantage of it; his misinformation made it a partisan game. And considering his propensity for turning out new voters and low-information voters, making voting more difficult may mean his base could skip future elections where obtaining a ballot that Trump is not on requires more work.

So despite the rash of new restrictive proposals, there’s no guarantee these laws work out exactly as state Republican parties hope, if they even pass in the first place. But Trump is giving Republicans a whole new voter suppression playbook to work with — and as long as state GOPs follow his mold, restrictive voting bills are likely to feature prominently on their agendas.

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A Cabinet That ‘Looks Like America.’ But Who Does the Talking?

“No matter how you slice and dice the data, whether you’re looking at the cabinet or at White House staff, you’re going to see the same commitment to diversity.”

— Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center

President Biden’s proposed cabinet would be the most diverse in U.S. history, comprising more women and people of color than any cabinet before it — which, in many ways, fulfills Mr. Biden’s campaign promise to select a team that “looks like America” and modernizes the predominantly male, white institution.

“Building a diverse team will lead to better outcomes and more effective solutions to address the urgent crises facing our nation,” he said in a speech in December when announcing some of his cabinet nominees.

If the Senate confirms Mr. Biden’s picks, more than half of his 25-member cabinet will be nonwhite and 48 percent will be female, according to an analysis by the nonprofit group Inclusive America, which tracks diversity in government.

And there will be other notable firsts: In addition to the barrier-breaking Vice President Kamala Harris, there will be America’s first female Treasury secretary (Janet Yellen), its first openly gay secretary (Pete Buttigieg, for the Department of Transportation), its first Native American secretary (Deb Haaland, for the Department of the Interior), the first woman to serve as director of national intelligence (Avril Haines) and the first immigrant to lead the Department of Homeland Security (Alejandro Mayorkas), to name just a few.

In positions beyond the cabinet — like senior White House staff members, the newly created Covid-19 Equity Task Force chair or deputy secretaries of departments — the Biden administration is “at parity or better than” the makeup of the overall American population, said Mark Hanis, a co-founder of Inclusive America. Women make up 60 percent of the team beyond the cabinet, and just over 40 percent of that team is nonwhite.

In the last four administrations, cabinets — which can change in size if the president decides to elevate certain positions to cabinet-level — were predominantly white and women made up no more than 33 percent.

“No matter how you slice and dice the data, whether you’re looking at the cabinet or at White House staff, you’re going to see the same commitment to diversity,” said Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, which specializes in presidential scholarship.

These levels of diversity are particularly notable when compared with the numbers in Congress. Female representation in both the House and the Senate has been hovering between just under 20 percent and 25 percent since 2015, according to the Center for American Women and Politics, and currently about 20 percent of the lawmakers in both the House and the Senate are Black or Latino.

But checking off a list of diverse candidates is one thing. It is quite another to give diverse candidates a true voice and an opportunity to shape policies, particularly if one of those candidates is the first from a particular group to take up a position.

Within the cabinet, there is a hierarchy of influence based on their department’s jurisdiction, Dr. Tenpas explained. Leadership of the military or monetary policy is seen as more influential than, say, education, which has a narrower set of responsibilities.

The five most important cabinet positions, informally known as the “inner cabinet,” are the secretaries of state, the Treasury, defense and homeland security (a critical position created in response to the 9/11 attacks) and the attorney general, she said, because of their broad jurisdiction. Traditionally, vice presidents were not given much authority, but that position has grown in stature in recent years and has also become one of the most influential positions in the cabinet, as former Vice Presidents Dick Cheney and Mr. Biden have demonstrated.

The other secretaries in a cabinet represent what is known as “constituency-based” or “clientele-based” departments and are seen as having less influence, Dr. Tenpas added. Often, women and people of color in the cabinet are pigeonholed into those “outer cabinet” roles, like education, veterans affairs or agriculture.

Of course, this is not the first time women have served in the inner cabinet — Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Rodham Clinton all served as secretary of state and Janet Reno and Loretta Lynch as attorney general — but having women as Treasury secretary and vice president changes precedent and shakes up the power dynamics of the president’s tight circle.

“Mr. Biden’s biggest breakthrough is that he’s appointing different people to different jobs,” Dr. Tenpas said.

In Her Words is written by Alisha Haridasani Gupta and edited by Francesca Donner. Charts by Lalena Fisher. Our art director is Catherine Gilmore-Barnes, and our photo editor is Sandra Stevenson.

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