Will Biden’s climate-change agenda make a difference?
Executive
orders can get Biden only so far. To
effect lasting change, we need new laws, but getting buy-in from Congress is
likely to be extremely difficult. With
the filibuster still in place, new legislation will need 10 Republican Senate
votes, not to mention the vote of West Virginia Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin, who
in a 2010 campaign ad literally shot the last major climate bill with a rifle.
--Spencer
Bokat-Lindell, New York Times
If
Biden wants new laws, he could try to build consensus. Instead, he seems determined to handle
climate change the way Democrats tackle all problems: by ramming through
massive spending schemes without bipartisan support.
--Kevin
Williamson, NationalReview.com
The
politics of climate are changing. Americans
are witnessing and experiencing prolonged droughts and heat waves, rampaging
wildfires, more damaging hurricanes, persistent coastal flooding and extreme
weather of all kinds—just as climate scientists predicted. This is becoming an
issue that the Right cannot ignore . . . . Biden’s executive orders won’t by themselves
make greenhouse gases go away, but they’re a clear statement of intent. Biden
believes that breakthroughs in green technology should happen here in America,
and that the jobs from those advances should go to U.S. workers. Republicans will resist, if only for
resistance’s sake. But history is on
Biden’s side, and history—eventually—always wins.
--Washington
Post
Our China problem
President
Biden’s biggest foreign policy “nightmare may be China. In coming years, there is a significant risk
of a military confrontation with the world’s most populous nation, because
President Xi Jinping is an overconfident, risk-taking bully who believes that
the United States is in decline. Xi has
been sending threatening signals about invading Taiwan, whose independence he
finds galling; as a test, he could order China’s military to seize the Pratas
and Kinmen islands now controlled by Taiwan, or a cyberattack on Taiwan’s
banking system, or a blockade of its oil deliveries. That kind of aggression
could draw the U.S. into perhaps the most dangerous confrontation with another
nuclear power since the Cuban missile crisis.
Even
if Xi does not go that far, Biden has to contend with China’s oppression of
Hong Kong, its genocide of the Uighurs, its contempt for human rights and its
unfair trade practices. Biden has
recruited a tough-minded team of Asia experts who understand that China is an
untrustworthy adversary. But a China policy that is too confrontational
could lead to a dangerous escalation of tensions. Let’s keep the cold war with Beijing cold.
--Nicholas
Kristof, New York Times
Executing
mentally ill prisoners
On its way out
the door, the Trump administration went on a spree of lame duck executions of
chilling injustice and inhumanity. The
administration killed three federal prisoners alone, for a total of 13 since
July—triple the number of federal executions over the past six decades. The overwhelming majority of state-sanctioned
killings are of people suffering from intellectual disabilities, severe mental
illness, and/or a disabling history of childhood abuse and trauma.
Consider Lisa
Montgomery, executed in January: She was gang-raped at 11 by her stepfather and
his friends, brain damaged by severe beatings and trafficked by her mother to
pay bills. She was delusional throughout
her life. Executed prisoner Daniel Lewis
Lee also suffered severe childhood abuse that left him mentally ill. Wesley Purkey, executed in July, was sexually
abused by his mother and had schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Judges and juries often discount the role of
severe childhood abuse and mental illness in serious criminal behavior, viewing
disturbed and delusional people as more dangerous and deserving of execution. It’s unconscionable—and it’s one more reason
President Biden should end the federal death penalty and lead a campaign for
nationwide abolition of capital punishment.
--Austin Sarat,
Slate.com
Bigelow’s metaphysical explorations
Robert Bigelow has spent his life
hunting for extraterrestrials and proof of an afterlife. The Las
Vegas real estate mogul, 75, believes these Holy Grail pursuits are related,
with an interdimensional explanation. “If
we see a shadow going through one wall and through another,” he says, “we don’t
know for sure if it was a discarnate human spirit or E.T.”
Growing up in Nevada, Bigelow
became hooked on UFOs and aliens, after his grandparents had a close encounter
with a glowing object. He vowed to get
rich so he could research UFOs. His
booming long-term rentals business, Budget Suites, allowed him to sink more
than $350 million into Bigelow Aerospace, whose secret collaboration with the
Pentagon to study UFOs was revealed in 2017. Bigelow’s dueling obsession, the afterlife,
began after the 1992 death by suicide of his 24-year-old son, Rod Lee. After his wife of 55 years, Diane, died last
June, Bigelow founded the Institute for Consciousness Studies to research life
after death. Bigelow’s institute is
giving $1 million in prizes this year for research offering the best evidence
that consciousness persists after death. “I am personally totally convinced of it,” he
says.
--Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times
How to fix social media
With former President Trump banned from Twitter,
Facebook, and several other sites, the siren calls for social media regulation
will soon become deafening, said Andy Kessler. Most would-be reformers want to rewrite
Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which largely exempts
social media companies from legal liability for what users post on their sites.
But attempts to fix Section 230 would
massively backfire, forcing Twitter, Facebook, et al., to heavily censor on
their sites all controversial posts, lest they be sued into
oblivion. We often forget, however, that
Section 230 doesn’t forbid suing users of social media for
libel or holding them accountable. The
problem is anonymity: The nastiest and most irresponsible posters hide behind
fake names and handles. Forcing users to register with, say, a credit card or
other ID and use their real names might cut the sites’ user bases in half, but
advertisers would rejoice and it would limit the need for tens of thousands of
content moderators. If you post threats
or libelous attacks on people, you will risk getting sued. Post about buying zip ties and invading the
Capitol, and the FBI knocks on your door. Ending anonymity would put an
immediate damper on today’s worst offenders.
--Andy Kessler,
Wall St. Journal
It’s not all better
The Biden era
presages a return to typical presidential dishonesty, without the cult of
personality that defined the Trump era.
But presidential lies were destructive long before Trump appeared, so
the press and the public should resist the temptation to assume that the Biden
administration will always be on the level, or that its dishonesties can be
forgiven because Joe Biden’s predecessor wielded falsehood with such
abandon. There will be moments when the
public interest conflicts with the political interest of the White House, and
during some of these moments, the president will lie. All presidents do.”
--Adam Serwer, TheAtlantic.com
LGBTQ rights: Did Biden go too far?
President Biden has already
achieved the most sweeping expansion of LGBTQ rights in American history. In a
historic executive order, Biden directed all federal agencies to interpret
civil rights laws as prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual
orientation and gender identity. The
order—which extends the Supreme Court’s landmark Bostock ruling on
employment—will ensure equal protection for LGBTQ people in housing, education,
health care, and more. Biden also
reversed Trump’s ban on transgender people enlisting in the military.
--Mark Joseph Stern, Slate.com
The new president has given gay
and transgender people something precious—hope for the future. After Trump’s overt hostility toward
transgender people like me, Biden’s empathetic actions, and his inclusion of
LGBTQ people in his administration, make me want to dance in the streets.
--Allison Hope, CNN.com
Biden’s order goes too far and
undoes decades of feminist progress. By embracing the fashionable woke notion
that gender is purely a matter of identity, unrelated to biology, it will force
female athletes to compete with biological males, who will unjustly claim
titles, trophies, and scholarships. Trans
girls who go through puberty as males retain huge natural advantages over girls
and women, with greater bone density, muscle mass and lung capacity. That’s why a pair of trans track-and-field
athletes in Connecticut were able to easily dominate girls’ competitions,
sparking a lawsuit on behalf of several girls whose athletic dreams were
crushed.
--Ramona Tausz, New York Post
Transgender advocates say these
fears are exaggerated. Gillian
Branstetter of the National Women’s Law Center notes that 16 states already
allow transgender students to compete as women and says girls’ athletics did not vanish as a result.
--Samantha Schmidt, Washington
Post
Still, this culture war aggression
isn’t the act of a president who’s seeking unity. Biden has adopted the radical view that the
law must treat trans women as absolutely indistinguishable from biological
women. The impact will be felt well
beyond sports. Consider a battered
women’s shelter where traumatized women do not want to be around biological
males, or a high school locker room, where blending naked trans girls and
biological girls is asking for trouble. Dividing the country along these deep and
inflammatory issues of identity is Biden’s first big mistake.
--Andrew Sullivan, AndrewSullivan.substack.com
Kiss
the office goodbye?
As a general
rule of human civilization, we’ve lived where we work. But nobody will forget
the lesson we were all just forced to learn:
Telecommunications doesn’t have to be the perfect substitute for
in-person meetings, as long as it’s mostly good enough. For the most part,
remote work just works.
Remote work
could do to America’s residential geography in the 2020s what the highway did
in the 1950s and ’60s: spread it out. The past 12 months have offered a glimpse
of the nowhere-everywhere future of work. We’re only beginning to understand
just how strange that future might be.
--Derek
Thompson, TheAtlantic.com
Should it be
easier or harder to vote?
Republicans failed to help Donald Trump steal the 2020 election, but they’re
already trying to steal the next one.” Horrified by the record turnout that
powered Joe Biden’s narrow victory in swing states, GOP lawmakers in 28 states
have introduced 106 separate bills restricting citizens’ access to the ballot
box. If enacted, the bills would curtail
early and absentee voting; impose more stringent voter ID requirements; reduce
the number of polling places and ballot drop-boxes; eliminate automatic and
same-day registration programs; and make it easier for Republican officials to
“purge” voter rolls of Democrats.
--Ari Berman, MotherJones.com
As always, Republicans are justifying their
voter-suppression efforts in the name of “ballot integrity.” But that’s hard to square with a proposed
Arizona bill that would empower the state’s (Republican) legislature to simply
decertify unfavorable election results and let them choose their own electors. Republicans are keenly aware that their base
of white, rural, mostly male voters is being steadily outnumbered by minorities,
young progressives, and educated suburban women. As Alice O’Lenick, a GOP election official in
Georgia put it, new voting restrictions are needed so that we at least have a
shot at winning
--Washington Post editorial
We’re at a fundamental crossroads in American
politics. Democrats can’t block these
anti-democratic measures at the state level—17 of those 28 states are under
full Republican control. But the House
is poised to pass H.R.1, or the For the People Act, which would mandate
automatic voter registration in every state, along with unlimited absentee
voting and 15 days of early voting. The bill would also prohibit extreme
gerrymandering and so-called dark money campaign funding, while restoring
voting rights to ex-felons. Republicans
will no doubt filibuster the bill, so unless Democrats can persuade all of
their 50 senators to abolish the filibuster, expanded voting rights is dead on
arrival. That will have enormous
consequences for the future balance of power between the parties.
--Ronald Brownstein, TheAtlantic.com
The Democrats’ bill isn’t about defending democracy . .
It’s about cementing Democratic political power. The bill is designed to auto-enroll likely
Democratic voters, such as food-stamp recipients, while enshrining in law
fraud-susceptible practices such as ballot harvesting and same-day
registration.
--Wall Street Journal editorial
All while making it harder for Republican candidates
to raise money. Banning anonymous
political donations may sound neutral, but the Left routinely shames,
ostracizes and organizes boycotts of Republican donors. H.R.1 might be better
named the “For the People Who Are Not Conservatives Act.”
--Jack Fowler, NationalReview.com
Both parties assume
that making it easier to vote helps Democrats.
But that’s hardly certain. The
massive turnout in 2020 no doubt helped Biden, but the predicted “Blue Wave”
did not materialize: Republicans flipped
15 House seats and won big in state elections.
--Bill Scher, WashingtonMonthly.com
The GOP needs to start thinking long-term. If Republicans double down on restricting
voting rights, they might squeeze out another decade of power before being
crushed by the demographic tide. To stay
competitive, the GOP needs to nominate moderates who can win elections without
voter suppression, gerrymandering and the other anti-democratic dark arts. By
forcing the Republicans to evolve sooner rather than later, H.R.1 is the
long-term rescue package they desperately need.
--Lee Drutman, Washington Post
The Cassandra of the 'attention economy'
Michael
Goldhaber is the prophet of the internet era.
A former theoretical physicist, he foresaw in the 1980s how the nascent
world wide web would rewire our attention spans and reshape the social order. With a 1997 essay in Wired, he
helped popularize the term “attention economy,” warily eying a future in which
anyone can now have a crack at the global audience. In subsequent articles he predicted online
influencer culture, the coarsening of political discourse, and terrorists using
the web to recruit and communicate.
“It’s
amazing and disturbing to see this develop to the extent it has,” said
Goldhaber, 78, who lives quietly in Berkeley, Calif. He sees the rise of Donald Trump—who rose to
power by paying attention to people who felt starved of it—as a perfect emblem
of an era in which attention is power. He frets that rational discourse is drowned
out by the loudest and most ridiculous. The
Capitol insurrection, driven by conspiracy theories promoted online and on
cable TV networks that generate nonstop outrage, only deepened his worry that
the attention economy and a healthy democracy may be incompatible. “It felt like an expression of a world in
which everyone is desperately seeking their own audience and fracturing reality
in the process,” he said. “I only see
that accelerating.”
--Charlie
Warzel, New York Times
The real divide in politics
American politics is longer a conventional fight between the Left and Right. Politics has become a fight between those who are willing to respect evidence and those who aren’t. Donald Trump’s radical presidency ushered in a new era of ruthless, relentless, denialist propaganda at a scale we used to see only in dictatorships. He persuaded tens of millions of Americans that Covid-19 was nothing to fear, that masks were useless and finally that the election was stolen—inciting a violent insurrection. To regain sanity, address our nation’s many problems and resolve political debates, we need a common standard for judging truth. That standard must be evidence. Science has used the evidence standard with spectacular success—to devise vaccines, cure diseases, and unravel many of the mysteries of the universe. It requires revising your theories and beliefs when the evidence shows they’re wrong. Politicians prefer to deny reality rather than admit they are wrong, but for our country to remain a functioning democracy, the press, the public and rational conservatives and progressives must create a fact-based alliance that crosses party lines. Relying on evidence is our only way to solve our problems and escape paralyzing polarization.
--William Saletan, Slate.com
Evidence of long-lasting Covid immunity
Most people who survive Covid-19 retain a robust immune response to the disease for at least eight months, and potentially much longer, a new study has found. Since the start of the pandemic, there have been isolated reports of people being reinfected with the coronavirus. But a new study of blood samples from 188 Covid patients suggests that about 90 percent of people who recover from the disease retain stable immunity. This is in part because antibodies aren’t the only weapon in the immune system’s arsenal: The samples revealed that T cells and other defensive elements were ready to pounce on the virus if it reappeared. Because the immune system targets hundreds of different parts of the virus, the findings should apply to the new, more transmissible coronavirus variants that first appeared in the U.K. and South Africa. “There’s a lot of different arms of the immune system recognizing the virus,” co-author Daniela Weiskopf, from the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, tells The Washington Post. “If you have a mutation, it wouldn’t evade all these different arms.” The researchers believe immunity likely lasts longer than eight months, because at the time of the study it had shown no signs of decay. They are unsure why 10 percent of people see their immune response degrade. Given that uncertainty, says co-author Alessandro Sette, “If I’d had Covid, I would still not throw away my masks.”
--The Week
