A Member Of Congress Tested Positive For COVID-19 After Her Republican Colleagues Refused To Wear Masks During The Capitol Attack

At least six Republican members of Congress could be seen in video footage refusing to take a face mask while sheltering with their colleagues during the insurrection.

Salvador HernandezBuzzFeed News Reporter

Last updated on January 11, 2021,

Michael Brochstein / Sipa USA via AP

Democratic Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman on Monday announced that she tested positive for COVID-19, adding that she believes she was exposed to the virus while in protective isolation during the attack on the Capitol, where several of her colleagues refused to wear face masks


"I received a positive test for COVID-19, and am home resting at this time," she said in a statement. "While I am experiencing mild, cold-like symptoms, I remain in good spirits and will continue to work on behalf of my constituents."

She added that she is currently in isolation.

Watson Coleman was rushed off the floor of the House of Representatives Wednesday as Trump supporters attacked the Capitol, violently forcing their way past police.

While isolated in a room, video footage shows that at least six Republican members of Congress refused to accept face masks.

"I'm not trying to get political here," Oklahoma Rep. Markwayne Mullin can be seen telling Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, who was handing out the masks. "I appreciate you."



The video was published by Punchbowl News.

In a statement, Watson Coleman's office said she believed she was exposed while in protective isolation.

Watson Coleman is a cancer survivor who underwent chemotherapy in 2018

On Sunday, the Capitol's attending physician notified members of Congress that they may have been exposed to someone who tested positive for COVID-19 while they were being sheltered during the attack, the Associated Press reported.

"Individuals may have been exposed to another occupant with coronavirus infection," Dr. Brian Monahan told the lawmakers.

Among the members of Congress who are seen wearing no masks and refusing one when offered were Mullin and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Greene is a new member of Congress who has openly supported and spread lies of the mass delusion QAnon and reportedly refused to wear a mask earlier this month on the floor of the House. She later did don a mask that read "Trump won," propelling the lie that President Donald Trump won the election.

Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Rep. Michael Cloud of Texas, and Rep. Doug LaMalfa of California were also seen in the video without masks.



President-elect Joe Biden, speaking after he received the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, called the refusal of Republican lawmakers to wear the masks as they sheltered in place "irresponsible."

"I was appalled," Biden said. "It's not a political issue. It's an issue of public safety."

Watson Coleman also reported that she had already received the first of two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, like many of her colleagues.

The CDC has said, however, that infection of the novel coronavirus is still possible after a vaccine, noting that it takes a while for the doses to get the body to build immunity.

"It typically takes a few weeks for the body to build immunity (protection against the virus that causes COVID-19) after vaccination," according to the CDC. "That means it's possible a person could be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 just before or just after vaccination and still get sick. This is because the vaccine has not had enough time to provide protection."


Mullin, Greene, Biggs, Perry, Cloud, and LaMalfa did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Biggest fall in UK retail sales since 1995 despite online boom

Impact of Covid lockdowns and shifting spending habits result in 0.3% drop from 2019 level

Richard Partington Economics correspondent
@RJPartington

Tue 12 Jan 2021 00.01 GMT
 

Consumers largely stayed away from the high street, with non-food items in physical shops falling by 24%. Photograph: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images


UK retail sales suffered the biggest decline in 25 years last year as the closure of non-essential shops during lockdowns more than outweighed the online spending boom fuelled by Covid-19.

The British Retail Consortium (BRC) said total sales fell by 0.3% last year from the level in 2019 – the worst performance since records began in 1995 – reflecting the impact of government lockdowns and shifting consumer spending trends.

Rishi Sunak warns UK economy will get worse before it gets better

However, the overall drop in spending masks an explosion in sales for some shops, and a dramatic collapse for others. Amid a decline in spending in pubs, restaurants and hotels during the crisis, sales of food bought from shops increased by 5.4% on the year. However, sales of all other products fell 5% from a year earlier.

While online sales were boosted during lockdown as consumers largely stayed away from the high street, sales of non-food items in physical shops collapsed by 24%.

The decline in sales volumes comes after the first annual fall since 1995 in 2019, when years of weak wage growth hurting households’ finances and Brexit fears led to a 0.1% drop in retail sales compared with 2018 levels

Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the BRC, said Christmas had offered little respite for retailers, as many shops were forced to shut during the peak trading period. Calling on the government to provide fresh financial support for the sector, she said: “With shops still closed for the foreseeable future, costing stores billions in lost sales, many retailers are struggling to survive.”

Despite the sharp drop in non-food sales, the latest figures from the BRC showed that total retail sales rose by 1.8% in December compared with the same month a year ago. It said there was a rise in the purchase of food-based gifts at Christmas, as many shoppers bought what they could from shops that remained open. The volume of food and drink sales was the highest for festive spending on record.


Separate figures from Barclaycard – Britain’s biggest credit card provider – showed that consumer spending fell by 2.3% in December as tougher government controls hampered the high street and hospitality sectors in the pivotal Christmas period.

It said online retail increased by 52.2% in December as Britons shopped from home, while tighter restrictions led to in-store retail declining 8.3%. Barclaycard records almost half of UK transactions, and differs from the BRC figures because it monitors spending in shops, online and elsewhere across the economy – such as in pubs, restaurants and hotels.

With few opportunities to socialise before Christmas, sales in pubs and bars fell by more than 70%, while spending in restaurants plunged 65%. Physical retailers – such as department stores and clothes shops – also recorded declines of 15% and 7% respectively.Sign up to the daily Business Today email or follow Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk

Raheel Ahmed, head of consumer products at Barclaycard, said: “With the latest government guidance to stay at home and a vaccine rollout on the horizon, we are all hopeful of a brighter and more prosperous year ahead.

“Yet, for now, the reality of lockdown life remains and it’s once more a hugely challenging time for high-street retailers as well as the hospitality, leisure and travel industries.”

Shake-up at top of Royal Mail sparks speculation that company could be broken up

By MATT OLIVER FOR THE DAILY MAIL PUBLISHED:  11 January 2021 | 

A shake-up at the top of Royal Mail has sparked speculation that the company could be broken up.

The firm named former Ocado executive Simon Thompson as the boss of its UK operations as it grapples with falling letter numbers and an explosion in parcel deliveries.

The 54-year-old, who spent some of last year running the NHS test and trace app designed to help tackle the coronavirus crisis, was put in charge yesterday, replacing interim chief Stuart Simpson.


Breaking away?: Simon Thompson's appointment as boss of Royal Mail Group's UK arm only – and not the whole business – will fuel speculation that the company could be broken up

Thompson, who has also worked at iPhone maker Apple and supermarket Morrisons, has been tasked with expanding Royal Mail's UK parcel operations after an internet shopping boom during the Covid-19 pandemic has sent demand soaring to record levels.

But his appointment as chief executive of Royal Mail Group's UK arm only – and not the whole business – will fuel speculation that the historic company could be broken up.

The changes come after the departure of former group chief executive Rico Back in May, who was ousted following acrimonious rows with unions that delayed modernisation plans and led to poor performance.

Following Back's departure, the role of group chief has now been abolished.

Instead, Thompson will report directly to the board and have equal status to Martin Seidenberg, the German boss of GLS, Royal Mail Group's European parcels business, a spokesman said. The pair will each get roughly equal salaries of about £525,000 per year.

Keith Williams, who has been executive chairman for the past eight months, will resume his previous role as non-executive chairman. Royal Mail claims the new structure is a better fit because the UK and European businesses have significant differences and each require their own separate strategies.

Williams said Thompson was the right man for a period of 'significant transition' in the UK, while adding that Seidenberg had made an 'impressive' start since taking over as GLS boss last summer.

The chairman, 64, said: 'We have two excellent leaders in place for each of our businesses, focused on the opportunities which they each have to grow and succeed in the future.'

Analysts said the new structure could make a break-up much easier. A spokesman for Royal Mail refused to comment on that suggestion. Daniel Roeska, a senior research associate at Bernstein, said: 'It doesn't close the door on a future break-up.'

U.S. officials probe abuse of manatee with 'Trump' written on its back

By Gabriella Borter


NAPLES, Fla. (Reuters) - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has opened an investigation into the harassment of a manatee found in a Florida river with the word “Trump” written on its back, the agency confirmed on Monday.

The West Indian manatee, a species classified as “threatened” under U.S. wildlife protection laws, was found on Sunday in the headwaters of the Homosassa River on the state’s west coast, about 100 miles (160 km) west of Orlando.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the manatee did not appear to be seriously injured.




The Citrus County Chronicle published a video showing an underwater view of the slow-moving mammal, with the word “Trump” written in big letters. How the letters were written was not immediately clear. It was also not clear if the act was meant to bring attention to President Donald Trump, a Florida resident.

The Tucson, Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity said it was offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to a conviction in the case.

Harassment of manatees is a federal offense punishable by a fine of up to $50,000 and/or up to one year in prison.

Manatees, nicknamed “sea cows,” are protected under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Strikes by boats are the top cause of death for the mammal; but loss of habitat, algae blooms and disease also threaten them. There are more than 6,300 manatees in Florida, up from about 1,267 in 1991.

 

Case of manatee with 'Trump' etched into back under investigation

• Mutilated aquatic mammal spotted at spring in Florida
• US Fish and Wildlife Service appeals for public’s help

Manatees are popular attractions in Florida but their numbers are at risk. Photograph: Kike Calvo/UIG via Getty Images

Guardian staff

Mon 11 Jan 2021 18.25 GMT

Federal wildlife officials in Florida are reportedly seeking information on the perpetrators of an attack on a manatee, which apparently had the word “Trump” scraped into its back.

Florida manatee deaths up 20% as Covid-19 threatens recovery

Read more

The attack on the animal was reported by the Citrus County Chronicle, which showed a picture of the large aquatic mammal with the name of the US president clearly visible by being etched into its skin.

“The US Fish and Wildlife Service is investigating the harassment of a manatee,” the paper said, adding that the manatee had been videoed in the Blue Hole spring, on the Homosassa River in the state.

Authorities were appealing for any and all information on who might have assaulted the manatee.

Large, gray and docile, manatees are popular attractions in Florida, though their numbers are at risk due to habitat loss and the danger of boat strikes.

Google’s New Union Will Put an Unconventional Organizing Model to the Test

The newly announced Google employees union, the Alphabet Workers Union, is the first union of white-collar workers at a major tech company. They'll be tasked with figuring out how to wield power while only a minority of the workforce

.
Google employees walk off the job to protest the company's handling of sexual misconduct claims, on November 1, 2018, in Mountain View, California. (Mason Trinca / Getty Images)

BY ALEX N. PRESS, JACOBIN
01.04.2021

Google workers just announced the formation of a union: the Alphabet Workers Union.

The union — named after Google’s parent company — is not the first at the trillion-dollar tech behemoth. Eighty contract workers at Google’s Pittsburgh office voted to unionize in 2019. That same year, more than two thousand cafeteria workers at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, California did the same. Security guards at Google have been organized since 2017. But a union that includes white-collar workers who are directly employed by Google is new. Also new is the union’s wall-to-wall approach, encompassing temps, vendors, and contractors, or “TVCs,” alongside direct employees, a good strategy given that TVCs make up over half of Google’s workforce.

Tech companies like Google work hard to keep their companies union-free. I’ve previously written that hostility to unions is foundational to the industry — it was a major reason Silicon Valley became tech’s epicenter, rather than the East Coast. As Intel cofounder Robert Noyce once said, “remaining non-union is essential for survival for most of our companies.” Noyce died a long time ago, but many current tech companies’ only claim to innovation is in finding new ways to evade labor law. White-collar workers at crowdfunding site Kickstarter and the app developer Glitch recently unionized, but the Alphabet Workers Union is the first such effort to go public at one of the FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google) companies. As such, the announcement will trigger strong reactions in some boardrooms, regardless of what the union says or does.


The new union is backed by the Communications Workers of America (CWA), which has some seven hundred thousand members. It is affiliated with CWA Local 1440, and members will pay 1 percent of their total compensation as dues. According to the New York Times, CWA organizers began meeting with Google employees in late 2019, and the union’s seven-person executive council was elected by members last month. The union was organized as part of CWA’s Coalition to Organize Digital Employees (CODE) campaign, an effort that seeks to unionize video game employees and other tech workers.

As of this morning, the Alphabet Workers Union represents 227 people. That number raises a question. When TVCs are included, well over two hundred thousand people work at Google. What does a two-hundred-person union mean in that context?
Minority Unionism

“Minority unions” are unions that do not represent the majority of workers, and do not act as exclusive bargaining agents with employers. This approach is nothing new. Before the passage of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in 1935, which codified workers’ right to union elections and exclusive representation by a union with majority support, minority unionism was common practice. Even without company recognition or a contract, such unions had shop stewards tackling workplace problems and pressuring the boss to redress them. They sustained momentum rather than allowing it to dissipate. And once the NLRA passed, those structures were a launching pad for broader unionization.

Minority unions aren’t simply relics of the past either. The difficulty of winning union recognition from employers in the United States has led many workers, particularly those in right-to-work states, to organize in such formations. Minority unions aren’t as powerful as a bargaining unit, but when conditions make such a unit impossible, they are better than nothing, offering additional protections and serving as a structure for collective action.

The question of whether the NLRA provides workers the right to bargain with an employer on a members-only basis, with the minority union representing its members and no one else, is unresolved. As Moshe Marvit and Leigh Anne Schriever note in a 2015 report on minority unionism, a case that would have brought the issue to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in 2006 was ultimately cut short. Should Joe Biden nominate more labor-friendly appointees — and successfully get congressional approval for those nominees — the NLRB could conceivably rule in favor of this interpretation. Indeed, it may not be a coincidence that the Alphabet Workers Union went public just before Biden’s inauguration. Also of relevance for minority unions is a 2017 decision by the Trump-era NLRB that makes it harder for workers to carve out smaller bargaining units. Previously, unions had the ability to form in one unit and, after gaining a foothold there, expand to other units within the firm. That is no longer a possibility.

Although most Google employees do not live in right-to-work states, they do face an uphill battle. Pro-union Googlers likely do not believe they can get majority support for a union anytime soon, which is a reasonable assessment. The company has immense resources for fighting unionization and, according to a recent NLRB complaint, is willing to break the law to do so. The workforce is dispersed across the country and around the world, which makes organizing much more difficult. The majority of the workforce are TVCs, not directly employed by Google, meaning they can’t legally belong to a recognized bargaining unit that deals with the company — a more traditional union would exclude these workers, substantially weakening its leverage and standing, while deepening divisions between TVCs and direct employees. Most direct employees are highly paid, adding another potential source of division.

But in the United States, almost every workplace is a hostile climate, and yet workers still sometimes organize majority unions. It’s possible that the members in the Alphabet Workers Union see it, as the New York Times put it, as “an effort to give structure and longevity to activism at Google, rather than negotiate for a contract.” Such activism has been building at Google. In recent years, Googlers have scuttled a contract with the Pentagon, criticized work with US Customs and Border Protection, and organized a twenty-thousand-person walkout over the company’s mishandling of workplace sexual harassment.

If “union” is the word we use for workers acting collectively, a union drive at Google is no surprise given this recent history. Minority unions can still win workplace victories, even if they’re not in a position to bargain. These unions can also clarify divisions — Google, like many employers, pushes for employees to feel ownership over the company. But tech is like every other industry— executives are scheming to drive down wages. Every worker, even a software engineer, needs a union, and the existence of one at Google clarifies the antagonism that is foundational to any capitalist workplace.

But there are dangers in announcing a union effort so early on. Unions are about workers’ collective power; unionizing is a show of strength, one that doesn’t just protect workers engaged in collective action, but also inspires them to get off the sidelines and join the effort. A minority union with so few members risks doing the opposite, suggesting to workers who are not yet involved that unionism is a fringe concept, further isolating the organization.

It’s too early to know what the effect of the public launch of the Alphabet Workers Union will be, but the members hope it will build the organization. As Auni Ahsan, a software engineer and founding member of the union, told In These Times, “Thousands or millions of people will wake up and see this story and see that you don’t need to wait for the labor board to approve your union. You have a union when you say you have a union.”

The path to unionizing a tech company is strewn with obstacles, but that’s true of any company. If the existence of the Alphabet Workers Union encourages workers, both within Google and beyond it, to unionize, it’ll be a contribution. What remains to be seen is what exactly the union will do, and how Google will respond.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alex N. Press is an assistant editor at Jacobin. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Vox, the Nation, and n+1, among other places.

The Washington Riot Was a Defeat for the Far Right, Not a Triumph

The riot at the Capitol on Wednesday was a symptom of right-wing weakness, not power. The real danger isn’t a MAGA coup, but a restoration of the neoliberal status quo that produced the nightmare of Trump and his minions.

Members of the National Guard and the Washington D.C. police keep a small group of demonstrators away from the Capitol after thousands of Donald Trump supporters stormed the building January 6. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

01.08.2021

BY RAFAEL KHACHATURIAN STEPHEN MAHER, JACOBIN

The attack on the Capitol Building in Washington, DC on Wednesday by a mob of Trump supporters reinvigorated fears of a fascist threat to liberal democracy. Social media posts and liberal magazines of record immediately characterized the rampage as a coup. In a somber speech delivered while the occupation was still underway, Joe Biden described it as an “unprecedented assault” on American democracy “unlike anything we’ve seen in modern times.”

But alarming as the scenes in Washington were, these events in fact represented a significant defeat for the far right. The riot and its quick repudiation by the political and economic elite made plain that there is currently little base in the state or among big capital for a Trumpist coup, despite the apparent — and unnerving — participation of police and security forces.

Wednesday’s violence was certainly disturbing. But with so much focus on the potential rise of fascism, we risk losing sight of the more immediate threat posed by a new president, backed by all the forces of the state and capital, strengthened by the riot, and determined to restore the neoliberal status quo ante.
Elite Backlash

Over the past four years, extreme-right groups like the Proud Boys became core constituents of the “mainstream” Republican Party base. The political and rhetorical style of Trumpism, the political conflicts it created, carved out space for these groups to mobilize and organize. Throughout his presidency, Trump chose to consolidate this hard-right base rather than fashion a wider centrist coalition. This allowed these groups to build, and increasingly enter the political mainstream.

Trump was the first president in modern history elected with very little backing from big capital. The chaotic, personalistic, and kleptocratic nature of his administration meant that he remained a problematic representative of the general interests of the capitalist class. Nevertheless, prior to the pandemic, tax breaks, deregulation, economic growth, and a booming stock market allowed him to enjoy quiet support among Wall Street and big business — and to build a sufficient popular constituency.

Yet in the course of his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election, these bases of support shrank to the most militant core. In the wake of the siege on the Capitol, whatever inroads these hard-right forces made into mainstream politics appear to have collapsed, at least for now. This will only serve to deepen the crisis of the Republican Party, members of which either endorsed or at least accepted Trumpism, with various degrees of enthusiasm, over the past four years.

The takeover of the Capitol has laid bare the lack of backing, both among corporate elites and within state institutions, for far-right authoritarianism. Capital, it seems, is still committed to liberal democracy, which has served to safeguard its interests throughout American history. Trump was unable to build a base of power within the state sufficient to usurp its normal constitutional and juridical processes — as shown in his ongoing battle with the “deep state,” and the alienation of the military and national security apparatuses.

On Sunday, none other than Dick Cheney organized every living secretary of defense to sign a statement, published in the Washington Post, repudiating Trump and insisting the armed forces would not participate in efforts to overturn the election. Now, major business organizations have issued some of the harshest statements in their histories rebuking Trump and calling for an end to the chaos of his presidency.

The National Association of Manufacturers — which generally leans Republican and has been the strongest source of business support for Trump — called for Trump to be removed from office. Similarly, the larger and more powerful Business Roundtable also issued a strong condemnation and demanded Wednesday evening that Congress move ahead that night in declaring Biden the president-elect. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon each issued their own condemnations, along with many others from a cross-section of American businesses.

Even before Wednesday’s events, the capitalist class had soured on Trump. In the days after the election, leading CEOs met to coordinate a business response to Trump’s anticipated contestation of the election results. If this gathering of a literal committee for the management of the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie indicated anything, it was that they saw securing political stability, and ensuring the integrity of liberal democratic institutions, as squarely in their interest.
Blackshirts, Brownshirts, and MAGA Chuds

The rise of German and Italian fascism in the twentieth century took place in the context of severe splits within the ruling classes of these societies. Dynamic new capitalist sectors, especially advanced manufacturing, could not find space within existing state institutions for the expression of their political power. In response, they came to cultivate and support radical forces — fascist parties — which would restructure the state to accommodate their emerging supremacy within their national economies.

The riots in Washington have not emerged from such a division within the ruling elite and have left the American capitalist class more unified than ever. They have not only extended their support to liberal democratic state processes in general, but also to the Democratic Party and Joe Biden in particular.

To be sure, the Trumpian right will hardly vanish from the political stage when the transfer of power does occur. Nor will GOP primaries stop serving as engines of far-right radicalization once Trump leaves office. Indeed, Trump himself is an outcome of this very dynamic.

For these reasons, we should remain vigilant about the shape and direction that the far right takes after Trump. In particular, we should watch for footholds they might establish among the police and border control, as well as at the electoral level. This will be especially important going forward, as they may feel emboldened by the experience of storming the Capitol.

As establishment Republicans seek to distance themselves from Trump, they will have to navigate the contradictions between an angry and mobilized far-right base, on the one hand, and building a broader electoral coalition, on the other. As the congressional votes to certify the electoral college result showed, a significant number of House and Senate Republicans were willing to question the legitimacy of the election — sitting in the very chambers that had been stormed by the angry right-wing mob just hours before.

In addition, the GOP remains entrenched in state legislatures, which only became more significant in the wake of the recent election. This being a census year, this power within state governments will be crucial in allowing the Republicans to gerrymander districts, helping them maintain electoral power for the next decade. So too are they firmly ensconced within the courts — thanks, in part, to Trump.


This is particularly concerning in light of a recent poll showing that 45 percent of Republican voters approved of the storming of the capital. Yet this is a far cry from the 87 percent of Republicans who approve of Trump — suggesting that even many Republicans who support Trump were turned off by the attack. It is also far too low a number to win a national election, especially in light of how this figure contrasts with attitudes toward the attack among Democrats (96 percent oppose) and independents (two thirds oppose). It will be difficult for the GOP to maintain its radical base while also winning nationwide office.

Still, unless GOP voters are polarized against the extreme right, and turnout for Republican primary contests increases dramatically, the party could continue to be a vehicle for building this hard-right base at the state level and in congressional races. The poll numbers certainly suggest that these forces have plenty of room to organize and recruit.

Their ability to do so will hinge on the extent to which the motley far-right coalition can be held together without completely relying on the institutions of the national Republican Party. And, of course, the ability for these forces to pose a real threat to liberal democracy will ultimately depend on attracting support from big capital — a possibility that, for now, seems remote.

The Riot as a Teachable Moment

It is up to the Left to expose the linkages between the Republican Party and the far-right groups it has systematically mobilized and encouraged — and which will no doubt come under closer state scrutiny as Biden takes office. Highlighting these ties could create further divisions within the Republican Party, with the goal of fracturing and dismantling it as a political force.

However, focusing exclusively on the specter of a fascist threat will only serve to enable a restoration of bipartisan neoliberal stability under Biden — exactly what created the conditions for the extreme right’s growth in the first place. Democratic control of the Senate certainly improves the Left’s chances to advance a progressive agenda. But it does not, on its own, save us from a return to austerity over the longer term, or bring an end to ecological and social devastation.

Only by organizing and fighting, both on the terrain of the state and in the streets, can the Left hope to make any real progress toward addressing the climate emergency, mitigating the social crisis wrought by decades of neoliberalism, and expanding vital programs for social provision, such as Medicare for All. And this will mean not just defeating the Right, but also taking on Biden and the Democratic establishment, now poised to serve as the crucial vehicle for renewing the neoliberal consensus.

COREY ROBIN: WHAT TRUMP’S IMPEACHMENT COULD MEAN

01.09.2021
BY COREY ROBIN, JACOBIN

Impeachment could, in theory, turn Donald Trump into an even bigger symbol of a rotten political and social order. It could help bury the Reagan order once and for all. But establishment Democrats would never be interested in the type of impeachment that fundamentally challenged the status quo.
US president Donald Trump waves as he walks along the West Wing Colonnade before departing from the White House on January 13, 2020 in Washington, DC. Mark Wilson / Getty

Over the last four years, I’ve argued that this is a potential moment of realignment, where the Reagan regime we’ve been living under could be shattered and repudiated, and replaced by a new political regime.

One of the reasons I’ve pressed so hard on the Trump/Carter comparison is to point out that the Reagan regime, like the New Deal regime in the 1970s, is more vulnerable than we realize. I continue to maintain that Trump’s inability to rule—most spectacularly put on display this past week—reflects the crumbling power of that regime.

That doesn’t mean the regime can’t do damage on its way out. The last sentence of my book, The Reactionary Mind, makes a point of saying “how much it [the Reagan regime] will take with it on its way out, remains to be seen.” But that regime is far weaker than at any point since its inception.

Now we come to the question of impeachment.

The last impeachment of Trump focused on an issue that did not go to the heart of the Reagan regime but was much more about the perfidy of Trump himself. In this respect, it was not unlike the impeachment of Clinton, which was also about the man (and perhaps more loosely about the cultural changes in the country), and quite different from the impeachment of Andrew Johnson and almost-impeachment of Richard Nixon, which were focused on those men as symbols of a larger regime-type problem.

The possible promise of the impeachment of Trump now (I say possible promise deliberately, so please keep reading) is that it could, in theory, turn Trump into a much larger symbol of something more rotten. Wednesday’s mob was attacking the legislature and the results of a democratic election, in which the forces of a reactionary party suffered a blow. Not a lethal blow, but a blow. The mob’s attack was a white supremacist spasm against not a multiracial democracy but the possibility of a multiracial democracy.


And here we come to the issue of a realignment and the real stumbling block to a realignment and an impeachment that could be about something much more. If the Democrats were a party genuinely interested in realignment, they would be doing a few things. Not only would they want to win elections, but they’d want to shatter the Republican Party. More than that, they’d want to take over the state apparatus and turn it to far different ends: to genuinely empower black people (not just in terms of symbolic representation but in terms of housing, education, jobs, and criminal justice); to genuinely empower a broader working class, which includes high percentages of African Americans and people of color; and to transform all the anti-democratic vestiges of our sclerotic, ancient constitutional order (the role of the filibuster in the Senate, the non-representation of Puerto Rico, DC, and other colonies/territories, the role of the Supreme Court, and more).

If the Democrats were to pursue that political, social, economic, and cultural agenda, it would be fulfilling the promise of the Nevada primaries, where we saw a genuinely multiracial coalition striving toward a more perfect social democracy.

The impeachment and conviction of Trump by that Democratic Party could be a genuine moment of beginning. It wouldn’t shatter the Republican regime, but it would be the opening shot. It would put the GOP on notice, and it would put more hidebound forces in the Democratic Party on notice.

I have no idea whether the existing Democratic Party will in fact impeach Trump. (For the record, I think it has to; I don’t see how Wednesday’s violent storming of Congress can go unpunished, and if the impeachment should reach the Senate, the conviction has to include, as a punishment, the permanent barring of Trump from future office and, if possible, the declaration of his inability to pardon himself and his cronies. But I doubt the impeachment will get that far.)

But what I do know is that the Democratic Party as it is currently constituted is not prepared to use an impeachment to launch the kind of realignment I’m talking about. There are a lot of references today to Reconstruction, the Lost Cause, and all that, but whether or not today’s Republican Party is like the white supremacist cadre of former slaveholders and their allies, it’s very clear that today’s Democratic Party is nothing like the Republican Party that smashed the slaveocracy and then sought, through a multiracial coalition of Jacobins and proto-comrades, to reconstruct the South, to completely transform the society in which formerly enslaved and newly subjugated peoples could sit as equals in the temple of democracy.

Where does that leave us? Where we were before: in a moment of extended suspension, an interregnum between an old world and a new. I see real possibilities, in theory, for the kind of confrontation with the Reagan order, and could imagine an impeachment battle leading to the kind of confrontation within the Democratic Party that we need for a realignment. Whether it will come, I don’t know.

I don’t quite see the political forces necessary to turn these political battles of impeachment into a larger question of the social standing of citizens. But sometimes those necessary forces are summoned, to our surprise, through the very fact of struggle or limited political battle.

If it comes to impeachment, that would be my hope.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Corey Robin is the author of The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump and a contributing editor at Jacobin.

 Some thoughts after the failed coup

by Ted Pearson 

Fri, Jan 8, via  caarpr

https://www.cc-ds.org/ 

In 1868 President Andrew Johnson was impeached. The heart of the charges against Johnson was that he had illegally attempted to prevent the Army from enforcing the 13^th and 14^th Amendments to the U. S, Constitution in the former slaveholding Confederacy. The Confederacy had been, perhaps, the first real fascist state in the world. Black slaves and poor white farmers there lived under a reign of terror. Conscription into the white supremacist army was universal and resistance was punishable by death. Dissent was criminal. Lynching of dissenters was commonplace. The repression was brutal. (See “Home Grown Yankees” by Isabella Black.) The Civil War they launched in the name of white supremacy cost the lives of 620,000 Americans in battle.

 

The essence of the charges against Johnson was that he had granted an effective amnesty to the traitors who had sought to destroy the United States of America. He allowed them to re-establish themselves in the South as the ruling class. The Senate failed to convict Johnson by one vote, a blot on that body that will remain forever.

 

In 1868 Johnson was driven out of office and Ulysses S. Grant was elected president. All three Reconstruction Amendments, including the 15^th which guaranteed male freed slaves the right to vote were enforced in the South by the U. S. Army. Some of the most progressive legislation in the history of the country was enacted in the South during that time. But the traitors were not arrested, were not tried, were not convicted, and were not imprisoned or executed, as traitors would have been under then existing law had it been enforced.

 

The price for the failure to prosecute the progenitors of this crime against the nation and against humanity quickly came due: in the 1876 election the leaderships of the Republican and Democratic Parties made a back-room deal to throw the election to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for a commitment to withdraw federal troops from the South, thereby unleashing a new reign of terror by the Ku Klux Klan against Black people and the whole working class. By the turn of the century Black people in the South were disenfranchised. Local multi-racial governments were overthrown and cities burned. Black politicians were murdered. Slavery was re-established in another form - the convict lease system, and Black people (and poor whites) were reduced to peonage by returning the land to the former slaveholders. The status quo ante was re-established. The only difference was legally holding Black people as chattel.

 

The United States still pays for its failure to extirpate the evil mythology of white supremacy and its evangelizers: political, academic, and religious. We pay for it through all the crimes associated with it: police murders, torture, and wrongful arrests and convictions of Black, Latinx and working class white people, which keep communities under the thumb of exploitation, malnutrition, lack of adequate health care, collapsing housing, and failing schools. We pay for it in the continuing genocide of aboriginal Native American people, the rape of the natural resources of the land, and the destruction of the environment and climate of the Earth by the global capitalist system.

 

Contrast this with Reconstruction in Germany and Japan after the defeat of the racist Axis war machine that was responsible for the death of some 75 to 80 million people world-wide. The Nazi and Japanese war criminals were arrested, tried, and executed or imprisoned. Nazi and white supremacist parties were outlawed. Nazi and Imperial war propaganda was illegal. Germany and Japan today are still capitalist and still have many problems – including a revival of a far right – but generally they have a higher standard of living, better health, and more democracy than the United States. Instead of statues of Nazi leaders in Germany the Nazi death camps have been made into museums for anti-racist education of young people. In Japan weapons of mass destruction are outlawed and only actual domestic defense forces are allowed.

 

Here in the U. S. following the failed coup d’état by Donald Trump there have been calls to “heal the nation” and “bring us together”. No doubt, most of the mainly white people who fell for Trump’s racist dog whistles and calls to violence against all who opposed him were conned. Like the victims of most cons, they were victims of their own greed and irrational fears that their God-given entitlement to a position of privilege was under threat from immigrants, Black people, Muslims, and Jews.

 

The United States is at cross-roads. The failed Trump coup forces the nation to decide. Will we let the traitors go, free to plot again? All those who organized and inspired this siege of the Capitol that resulted in five deaths are guilty of murder by accountability, starting with the leader, Donald Trump. Will they be prosecuted? This is not a political-tactical question of whether it will exacerbate the divisions in our society. It’s a fundamental strategic question of whether we will begin to excise the cancer of white supremacy from the body politic of the United States and begin to restore and assert the true soul of the nation that lies in the hearts of all those who are exploited and oppressed.

  "Enabling President's Unhinged, Unstable, and Deranged Acts": GOP Blocks Measure Urging Pence to Invoke 25th Amendment

"Their complicity endangers America, erodes our democracy, and it must end."

by

Jake Johnson, staff writer

Published on Monday, January 11, 2021 by Common Dreams

Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.) and members of the House Freedom Caucus conduct a news conference outside the Capitol on Thursday, December 3, 2020. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

A Republican congressman from West Virginia on Monday blocked a resolution calling on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove President Donald Trump from office, a move that came as Democratic lawmakers unveiled articles of impeachment against the president that are expected to receive a vote later this week.

In a brief session Monday morning, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) requested unanimous consent to pass a measure (pdf) urging Pence to "convene and mobilize the principal officers of the executive departments of the Cabinet to activate section 4 of the 25th Amendment to declare [Trump] incapable of executing the duties of his office."

Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.)—one of more than 100 House Republicans who voted last week to toss Arizona and Pennsylvania's electoral votes—objected to the request.

In response to Mooney's objection, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement that House Republicans are "enabling the president's unhinged, unstable, and deranged acts of sedition to continue."

"Their complicity endangers America, erodes our democracy, and it must end," Pelosi added.

.@LeaderHoyer asks for Unanimous Consent on H.R. 21 calling on @VP Pence to convene and mobilize the cabinet to invoke Section 4 of the 25th amendment. @RepAlexMooney objects. pic.twitter.com/IoEoOfuUxj

— CSPAN (@cspan) January 11, 2021

Having failed to pass the measure by unanimous consent, House Democrats are expected to bring the 25th Amendment resolution to the floor for a full vote on Tuesday, followed by a vote on articles of impeachment as soon as Wednesday.

As Politico reported Monday, at least 218 House Democrats have signed on to Rep. David Cicilline's (D-R.I.) impeachment article, which charges Trump with "inciting violence against the government of the United States."

"Tomorrow, the House will vote on [the 25th Amendment] resolution in person and we expect it to pass," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted Monday. "Then on Wednesday, we expect to vote on impeachment articles, which we also expect to pass. There can be no healing without accountability."

While Pelosi has committed to holding a vote to impeach Trump if Pence refuses to act, critics have chastised Democratic leaders for not moving more swiftly and forcefully in the wake of the deadly mob attack on the U.S. Capitol last week.

Murshed Zaheed, managing principal at progressive media firm Megaphone Strategies, argued that the unanimous consent request for the 25th Amendment measure was "an idiotic move that was going to fail with no upside" and called Democratic leaders "lollygaggers."

"Pelosi just wasted another day when she should have moved on this front immediately following the insurrection," said Zaheed, who is hardly the only progressive criticizing the speed with which House Democrats have moved on articles of impeachment.

There is no time to wait. Donald Trump must be impeached immediately. My statement on behalf of @MoveOn: pic.twitter.com/TmNnT2FC2Q

— Rahna Epting (@rahnamepting) January 11, 2021

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Monday that pressuring Pence and members of the Cabinet to take action against Trump is a lost cause and called on members of Congress to act as quickly as possible to impeach and remove the president.

"Pence isn't going to do the right thing, so we must," said Jayapal. "We need to impeach Donald Trump right now.