US set for flurry of ‘Christian nationalist’ bills advanced by religious right

Legislation that would erode LGBTQ and reproductive rights expected to be introduced in states across America, experts warn

An Amy Coney Barrett supporter holds aloft a poster outside the supreme court in October. The Christian right could be further emboldened after her controversial appointment. Photograph: Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images

Adam Gabbatt

@adamgabbatt

Fri 15 Jan 2021 09.30 GMT

Donald Trump is set to leave the White House and Republicans are about to relinquish control of the Senate, but experts are warning the US is facing a wave of rightwing ‘Christian nationalist’ legislation in 2021, as the religious right aims to thrust Christianity into everyday American life.

The Democrats owe their new control of the Senate to Black voters in Georgia

Theodore R Johnson

Read more

With the supreme court now dominated by Trump-appointed conservative justices, elected officials in states across the country are set to introduce bills which would hack away at LGTBQ rights, reproductive rights, challenge the ability of couples to adopt children, and see religion forced into classrooms, according to a report by the American Atheists organization.

In recent years Republicans have sought to infuse religion into state politics across the country, many of the bills lifted from model legislation drafted by well-funded Christian lobbying organizations under an effort known as “Project Blitz”.

As the coronavirus pandemic hit the US 2020 proved a relatively quiet year for religious bills, but in 2021, the US could see Republicans make up for lost time.

“Very few bills managed to be pushed forward last year due to the pandemic,” said Alison Gill, vice-president for legal and policy at American Atheists, which seeks to protect the separation of church and state. “Those issues that are contentious in the culture war will continue to move forward this year, and will affect LGBTQ people, religious minorities, and non-religious people and women and reproductive access.”

Over the past five years a wave of discriminatory laws have been introduced in state legislatures, frequently in the name of Christianity. LGBTQ people, in particular, have been targeted, including efforts to prevent trans people using certain bathrooms, and to prevent LGBTQ couples from adopting children.

The danger isn’t just to people in individual states. With the supreme court now dominated 6-3 by conservatives, challenges to federal law could work their way to the highest court in the US, where decisions could enshrine discriminatory laws

Gill said that after Brett Kavanaugh was appointed to the court in 2018, some states pushed a flurry of reproductive rights laws which would limit women’s access to abortion. The Christian right could be further emboldened after Amy Coney Barrett’s controversial appointment to the supreme court in October.

“In a lot of ways, and I think the reproductive bills are a good example of this, they’re not just passing laws that do negative things, they’re trying to set up future cases that will then go before the court, that can be used to advance an agenda,” Gill said.

“It’s not just about the negative law itself.”

There have been multiple efforts to blend the separation of church and state in recent years, driven by Christian nationalists who believe America was established as, and should remain, a Christian country.

In 2019, Christian hardliners introduced bills in several American states which would see the phrase “In God we trust” displayed on public buildings, in schools and on public vehicles, including police cars. Six states – Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Florida, Alabama and Arizona – approved versions of this legislation, and it became law for every public school in those states to display the phrase.

A year earlier, Oklahoma passed an adoption law which allows private adoption agencies to turn away LGBTQ couples on religious grounds. It became the 10th state since 2015 to pass some form of the law, which allows child placement agencies to deny anyone who does not match their religious or moral beliefs, an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity found.

In most of these states, parts of the legislation had almost identical wording. That’s a result of Project Blitz, an effort by rightwing Christian organizations to push through bills furthering their aims.

Project Blitz provides draft legislation to lawmakers across the country. Frequently, that legislation is copied, pasted and presented in state capitols. In 2018, state lawmakers introduced 74 bills similar to Project Blitz draft legislation, according to America Atheists. The bills ranged “from measures designed to restrict same-sex marriage to allowing adoption agencies to deny placements because of religion”, American Atheists said.

The aim is also to stuff up state houses with legislation, drawing mostly Democratic legislators’ time and attention away from other issues.

“It’s kind of like whack-a-mole for the other side,” David Barton, founder of the Christian-right organization WallBuilders and one of four members of Project Blitz’s steering team, told state legislators in a call which was made public.

“It’ll drive ‘em crazy that they’ll have to divide their resources out in opposing this.”

Project Blitz, and much of the Christian nationalist legislation, has broader aims than just drawing time and serving as an irritant, however. Christian nationalists hope to pave the way for further attacks.

Are Republicans really ready to unhitch their wagon from Donald Trump?

Read more

Katherine Stewart, a journalist and author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, said leaders behind Christian nationalists efforts “are playing a long and ambitious game”.

The people behind Christianity-based legislative efforts grouped their various efforts into three categories, according to how difficult they would be to pass, Stewart said, and each is part of a larger picture.

“The first category consisted of largely symbolic gestures, like resolutions to emblazon the motto ‘In God We Trust’ in public school classrooms,” Stewart said.

“But the point of phase one was to prepare the ground for phases two and three, which aimed to entangle government with their version of religion in deeper ways.

“Considered individually, these bills making their ways through state legislatures appear to have a scattershot quality. In reality, they are very often components of a coordinated, overarching strategy.”

(JESUIT) Pope’s adviser says Covid has highlighted ‘existential’ climate risk

Focus must be on justice for those fleeing impact of extreme weather events, says new scientific adviser to Vatican
 

Flames from a wildfire advance on a church in California. 

Photograph: Noah Berger/AP

Global development is supported by
About this content

Karen McVeigh
@karenmcveigh1
Fri 15 Jan 2021 08.00 GMT


The pope’s newly appointed scientific adviser said the coronavirus pandemic has forced world leaders to face up to the “existential risk” of the climate crisis.

Prof Ottmar Edenhofer said rich countries now had a moral duty to compensate poor countries already suffering the impacts.

Edenhofer, director of the climate research institute MCC in Berlin and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, was appointed to provide scientific advice to the Vatican agency focusing on justice for refugees, the poor and the stateless.

His appointment follows Pope Francis’s 2019 declaration of a climate emergency in which he said failing to act would be a “brutal act of injustice” towards the poor and future generations. Edenhofer told the Guardian he hoped his input would help drive action by governments.


Nigeria cattle crisis: how drought and urbanisation led to deadly land grabs
Read more

“Weather extremes triggered by the destabilisation of our climate are already driving migration movements worldwide,” he said. “Droughts can cause simmering conflicts to flare up violently, and crop failures can drive up food prices. Unfortunately, if the planet continues to warm, migration and conflicts are likely to increase further.

“The climate issue is fundamentally also a justice issue. It is therefore both a great honour and responsibility to provide scientific advice to the Holy See on these important issues.”

Asked how climate deniers such as Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro could be persuaded to change, Edenhofer said: “I think it’s impossible to convince Donald Trump. But other leaders like Joe Biden, and also in China leaders are convinced. China is fully aware it will suffer from the impacts of climate change on water supply, which will cause huge problems.

People displaced from their homes by drought in Qardho, Somalia. Photograph: Ben Curtis/AP

“Protecting citizens is one of the main works of governments and governments cannot ignore existential risks. Because of Covid, international leaders are more aware of ‘fat tail’ risks, those of low probability but with the potential for huge damage. And in poor countries, the impact of climate change is not about a possibility in the future but is being felt today.”
Advertisement


Edenhofer said the pope’s stark message on the crisis was important not only for Roman Catholics, but for evangelical Christians.

“We cannot underestimate the pope is basically speaking for 1.3 billion people. I would even argue the message the pope sends to the world is also important for evangelical Christians, who have a huge problem so far in recognising climate change as an important issue. Because most of them see this as a kind of western European leftwing agenda. The pope makes very clear this is something which is not a partisan issue but it is something which is important for the whole world.

“I’m very happy that the pope and the Catholic church as a global player have taken on responsibility to care about this issue. The Catholic church represents a socially conservative people and it is important the church can speak to these people.”

The economist, who served as co-chair on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on mitigation from 2008 to 2015, has also worked with Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, the man behind the radical call to action on climate change.

A farmer irrigates a parched field in Sichuan. China faces water shortages caused by the climate crisis. Photograph: TPG/Getty Images

His role, he said, was to update the Vatican on the scientific impacts of such changes on human development.

“Justice and peace for migration was always an issue of the Catholic church. But now, the care of the global commons, including biodiversity laws, climate change, land degradation, they are an integral part of human development and I see this as a very, very important step.”

Among the topics for papal discussion, he said, will be climate refugees and compensation for poorer countries from richer countries more responsible for toxic emissions.

“They [richer countries] have a moral obligation to reduce emissions and achieve carbon neutralisation and at the same time, they have to compensate people in the developing countries for climate damages. There’s no doubt about this.”

The Vatican, which Edenhofer said was responsible for persuading Poland to sign up to the Paris climate agreement, is expected to play an important role at the climate summit in Glasgow later this year.

 

Air pollution will lead to mass migration, say experts after landmark ruling

Call for world leaders to act in wake of French extradition case that turned on environmental concerns

People wearing facemasks to protect themselves against air pollution in Beijing, China, in 2018. Photograph: Wu Hong/EPA-EFE

Diane Taylor

Fri 15 Jan 2021 11.28 GMT

Air pollution does not respect national boundaries and environmental degradation will lead to mass migration in the future, said a leading barrister in the wake of a landmark migration ruling, as experts warned that government action must be taken as a matter of urgency.

Sailesh Mehta, a barrister specialising in environmental cases, said: “The link between migration and environmental degradation is clear. As global warming makes parts of our planet uninhabitable, mass migration will become the norm. Air and water pollution do not respect national boundaries. We can stop a humanitarian and political crisis from becoming an existential one. But our leaders must act now.”

He added: “We have a right to breathe clean air. Governments and courts are beginning to recognise this fundamental human right. The problem is not just that of Bangladesh and the developing world. Air pollution contributes to around 200,000 deaths a year in the UK. One in four deaths worldwide can be linked to pollution.

The comments follow a decision by a French court this week, which is believed to be the first time environment was cited by a court in an extradition hearing. The case involved a Bangladeshi man with asthma who avoided deportation from France after his lawyer argued that he risked a severe deterioration in his condition, and possibly premature death, due to the dangerous levels of pollution in his homeland.

The appeals court in Bordeaux overturned an expulsion order against the 40-year-old man because he would face “a worsening of his respiratory pathology due to air pollution” in his country of origin.

Yale and Columbia universities’ environmental performance index ranks Bangladesh 179th in the world for air quality in 2020, while the concentration of fine particles in the air is six times the World Health Organization’s recommended maximum.

Dr David R Boyd, UN special rapporteur on human rights and environment, agreed with Mehta’s analysis, telling the Guardian: “Air pollution causes 7 million premature deaths annually, so it is understandable if people feel compelled to migrate in search of clean air to safeguard their health. Air pollution is a global public health disaster that does not get the attention it deserves because most of the people who die are poor or otherwise vulnerable.”

He explained: “My work is really focused on increasing recognition and implementation of everyone’s right to live in a healthy environment, which surely includes clean air. I’m involved in a couple of really important lawsuits on this issue in South Africa and Indonesia. The good news is that we have solutions that simultaneously address air pollution and climate change primarily by rapidly phasing out fossil fuel use.”

Q&A

Why is air pollution so bad in Bangladesh?

Hide

In recent years, Bangladesh has become one of the worst countries in the world for air pollution. According to the World Health Organization, Bangladesh is in the top 10 countries for concentrations of PM2.5, the harmful pollution particles in the air.

The emphasis on modernisation through industrialisation and construction has proved devastating for Bangladesh's air and the biggest causes of pollution are vehicle emissions, waste burning and toxic industrial emissions from concrete, steel and brick plants which are pumped into the air. Air pollution, both ambient and household, was an extremely high risk factor in the 572,600 deaths in 2018 from noncommunicable diseases in Bangladesh, according to these WHO figures. According to one report, around 72% of national households in Bangladesh still use solid fuel for heating and cooking, which  contributes heavily to air pollution.

Efforts by the government to tackle pollution have mostly been lacklustre and ineffective. In 2019, the government attempted to close down thousands of illegal brick-making kilns in the cities. A clean air bill has recently been drafted, which includes draconian punishments for illegal industrial operations who are big polluters, but has yet to be passed by parliament. 

Was this helpful?

Alex Randall, coordinator at the Climate & Migration Coalition, said safe and legal routes to allow people to migrate needed to be established.

“Cases such as this, where air quality or other pollution become a reason for preventing deportation, are certainly important steps forward. They may potentially lay the foundations for other future cases in which the impacts of climate change provide grounds for allowing people to stay. In fact, several other cases mostly relating to people from climate vulnerable Pacific island nations have started to do this.

“However, these cases do not usually set legal precedents and people moving across borders due to climate change impacts remain in a legal grey area.”

According to the Environmental Justice Foundation, one person every 1.3 seconds is forced to leave their homes and communities due to the climate crisis but millions lack legal protection. It has called on all countries to rapidly and fully implement the Paris climate agreement.

A ruling by the United Nations human rights committee a year ago found it is unlawful for governments to return people to countries where their lives might be threatened by the climate crisis.

Tens of millions of people are expected to be displaced by global heating in the next decade.

… 

CLIMATE REFUGEES

Guatemala detains hundreds of US-bound migrants fleeing violence and hunger

Troops detain 600 people at Honduras border as caravan of thousands heads north

A mother and her children go through a police checkpoint in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on Tuesday. Photograph: Getty Images

Reuters in Tegucigalpa
Fri 15 Jan 2021 

Guatemalan troops have detained hundreds of migrants at the country’s border with Honduras as thousands of people, including many families with young children, continued to walk north as part of a caravan hoping to reach the US.

Six hundred migrants were detained at the border on Friday and transferred to immigration authorities on Friday, according to a military spokesman. Guatemalan authorities also returned a further 102 Honduran migrants to Honduras, after the first groups in the caravan set off from San Pedro Sula.




‘This was worse than Eta’: Hurricane Iota brings repeat destruction to Honduras
Read more

The Red Cross estimates that up to 4,000 people could join the caravan, as Honduras reels from violence and an economy shattered by hurricanes and coronavirus lockdowns.

“We’re suffering from hunger,” said Óscar García as he made his way toward the Guatemala border. The banana plantation worker said his home had been destroyed in November’s hurricanes, and that he was fleeing north hoping to earn enough to send money back to support his mother and his young daughter.

“It’s impossible to live in Honduras. There’s no work, there’s nothing,” he added.

The first migrant caravan of the year comes less than a week before Joe Biden takes office in the US.

While the president-elect has promised a more humane approach to migration, in a departure from Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico are coordinating their own security and public health measures aimed at curtailing irregular migration across the region.

That will probably be a relief for Biden, whose aides have privately expressed concerns about the prospect of growing numbers of migrants seeking to enter the US in the early days of his administration.

On Thursday, Guatemala cited the pandemic in order to declare emergency powers in seven border provinces migrants frequently transit through en route to Mexico. The measures limit public demonstrations and allow authorities to disperse any public meeting, group or demonstration by force.

On Friday, Mexico also deployed soldiers and riot police to its border with Guatemala.

Central America is reeling from a growing hunger crisis in the devastating fallout of the hurricanes and climate change, as well as corruption, violence and the coronavirus.

Bobi Wine says soldiers have stormed his home as Uganda counts vote

Opposition leader tweets ‘we are under siege’, while President Yoweri Museveni takes early lead in election

Emmanuel Akinwotu and Samuel Okiror in Kampala

Fri 15 Jan 2021 

Play Video

1:16 Ugandan opposition leader Bobi Wine says he and wife fear for lives – video

Soldiers have stormed the home of Bobi Wine, the Ugandan opposition leader has said, as votes continued to be counted in the country’s election.

“We are under siege,” the pop star turned politician tweeted. “The military has jumped over the fence and has now taken control of our home.”

President Yoweri Museveni has taken an early lead as votes are counted in Uganda’s most keenly watched election in years, while opposition figures said the vote had been marred by fraud and violence.

With a third of the votes counted, Museveni had more than 65% of the tallied ballots and was ahead of Wine in almost every region. Wine, one of 10 opposition challengers, had gained about a quarter of the vote, according to Uganda’s electoral body.

Lt Col Deo Akiiki, Uganda’s deputy military spokesperson, said the soldiers were at Wine’s house to protect him. “As presidential candidate, do you want his security to be compromised? It’s not a deployment to arrest him. Its a deployment to keep his security like any other presidential candidate has. It’s a simple as that.”

Wine, who has galvanised a mass movement of young people challenging the president’s 34-year rule, said at a press conference on Friday morning that Ugandans should reject the results.

“I am very confident that we defeated the dictator by far,” he said. “The people of Uganda voted massively for change of leadership from a dictatorship to a democratic government. But Mr Museveni is trying to paint a picture that he is in the lead.”

Results are expected to be announced by Saturday. A candidate must win more than 50% to avoid a runoff vote.

Helicopters and tanks were on patrol as millions went to the polls on Thursday following one of the most turbulent and violent election campaigns. Wine’s rejection of the results could prolong heightened tensions in the east African country.

Election officials count the ballots after polls closed in Kampala on Thursday. 

Photograph: Jérôme Delay/AP

Security forces loyal to Museveni violently suppressed opposition supporters during the campaign. Museveni’s bid for a sixth term in power was only made possible when MPs changed the constitution to remove age limits. He has repeatedly accused Wine of being a foreign-backed “traitor”, while Wine has branded him a “dictator”.


Many in Africa see the challenge to Museveni, who at 76 is twice as old as Wine, as emblematic of a continent-wide generational struggle between ageing leaders who refuse to relinquish power and younger voters mobilising against them.

Bobi Wine: the reggae singer vying to be Uganda’s next president


The charismatic Wine has the backing of many young people in Uganda – where the median age is 15.7 – who are drawn to his anti-establishment message.

Many observers have expressed fears of state-backed moves to prevent transparency during the polls. On Wednesday night internet access was cut off for most users in the east African country, though some have used VPNs to communicate online. Uganda’s electoral commission said the lack of internet access had not affected the tallying of the count from around the country.

After polls closed on Thursday, hundreds of Wine supporters in Kampala returned to their polling stations to heed his call to “protect the vote” by watching the count. At the station where Wine had voted, security forces chased his supporters away.

Isabella Akiteng, a civil society activist, said late on Thursday that she and 29 others who were observing the polls had been arrested at a hotel in Kampala and were being interrogated by police.

On Wednesday, the US and EU said they would not observe the elections, after several officials were denied accreditation.

Peter Mwesigye, director of the Africa Media Centre of Excellence, said it would take time to determine the extent of voter fraud and violence at the polls.

“We know definitely there have been credible reports of fraud, but it’s going to be much harder and it will take many more days for us to begin to get the sense and scope of it,” he said. “The shutdown of the internet robbed the process of transparency that is required of an election. It has basically been an environment that doesn’t qualify for one to call it a free and fair election.”

Lina Zedriga, deputy president of Wine’s National Unity Platform for northern Uganda, said it would use all non-violent means to challenge the result. “It’s a mess. We have witnessed yet another false and great sham election […] They are just alleging and creating their own results.

“We are calling upon our supporters to be calm. They want us to provoke and make us violent. We are non-violent people. We will definitely use all non-violent means possible that is going to be discussed by our legal teams.”

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M; GOOD OLD FASHIONED PRICE FIXING

Amazon.com and 'Big Five' publishers accused of ebook price-fixing

Class action lawsuit filed in US claims the houses ha
ve colluded with the online giant to keep prices artificially high

An Amazon Kindle e-reader on a bookshelf. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian


Sian Cain
@siancain
Fri 15 Jan 2021 THE GUARDIAN


Amazon.com and the “Big Five” publishers – Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster – have been accused of colluding to fix ebook prices, in a class action filed by the law firm that successfully sued Apple and the Big Five on the same charge 10 years ago.

The lawsuit, filed in district court in New York on Thursday by Seattle firm Hagens Berman, on behalf of consumers in several US states, names the retail giant as the sole defendant but labels the publishers “co-conspirators”. It alleges Amazon and the publishers use a clause known as “Most Favored Nations” (MFN) to keep ebook prices artificially high, by agreeing to price restraints that force consumers to pay more for ebooks purchased on retail platforms that are not Amazon.com.

The lawsuit claims that almost 90% of all ebooks sold in the US are sold on Amazon, in addition to over 50% of all print books. The suit alleges that ebook prices dropped in 2013 and 2014 after Apple and major publishers were successfully sued for conspiring to set ebook prices, but rose again after Amazon renegotiated their contracts in 2015.

“In violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, Defendant and the Big Five Co-conspirators agreed to various anti-competitive MFNs and anti-competitive provisions that functioned the same as MFNs,” the complaint states. “Amazon’s agreement with its Co-conspirators is an unreasonable restraint of trade that prevents competitive pricing and causes Plaintiffs and other consumers to overpay when they purchase ebooks from the Big Five through an ebook retailer that competes with Amazon. That harm persists and will not abate unless Amazon and the Big Five are stopped.”

The suit seeks compensation for consumers who purchased ebooks through competitors, damages and injunctive relief that would require Amazon and the publishers to “stop enforcing anti-competitive price restraints”.

The lawsuit comes a day after the state of Connecticut announced it was investigating Amazon for potential anti-competitive behaviour in its sales of ebooks. A spokesperson for Connecticut Attorney General William Tong confirmed on Wednesday that Amazon had cooperated with a subpoena requesting documents relating to its dealings with the Big Five.

Amazon declined to comment on the New York lawsuit when approached by Reuters.

Hagens Berman sued Apple and the Big Five publishers for fixing ebook prices in 2011, in a case that would eventually lead to suits from several US states and the Department of Justice, which accused Apple of colluding in order to break up Amazon.com’s dominance in the ebook market.

In that case, the five publishers settled for $166m (£120m), while Apple lost at trial and was order to pay out $450m in 2016, after a lengthy legal process that ended when the US supreme court declined to hear the company’s challenge.