It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, September 27, 2023
Opinion
Palestinian Americans are now tourists in their own land
ISRAEL AN APARTHEID STATE
Sari Bashi, Opinion Contributor
THE HILL Mon, September 25, 2023
The Israeli government, motivated by the plum prize of joining a coveted U.S. visa waiver program and desperate for a public relations win in light of mass protests, launched a pilot program in July. The program makes it easier for Palestinians holding U.S. citizenship to travel in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, thus giving a tiny number of Palestinians a small fraction of their right to freedom of movement.
As an Israeli and American Jew married to a Palestinian refugee and living in the occupied West Bank, I responded to this strange development with a mix of joy and outrage.
First, the joy. Three weeks ago, we loaded our car with towels and toys for a day at the beach in Jaffa. To get there, we had to pass a checkpoint two miles inside the West Bank, at a gate in the barrier that keeps Palestinians out of Israel and the parts of the West Bank restricted to Israelis.
I dropped my husband off near a break in the dusty roadside fence that leads to the Palestinian crossing point and drove through the Israeli side of the checkpoint with our two children. The security guard racially profiled me with a smiley “good morning,” designed to check my Hebrew accent, and waved us through. Amazingly, they let my husband cross on foot — thanks to his newly acquired U.S. passport.
For most of the last 11 years, we have lived together in the occupied West Bank. In that time, my husband has been allowed to enter Israel on only a few occasions, even though his parents were born on Israel’s southern coast and fled as children in 1948 as the Israeli army neared their village. His parents have not been allowed to return home, as part of an Israeli policy to maintain Jewish demographic superiority.
My husband grew up in a refugee camp in Gaza, where his family still lives. He managed to move to the West Bank, but has not been allowed to join me in Israel — not even when our newborn daughter was hospitalized for a month in Tel Aviv. Nor has he been allowed to travel between Gaza and the West Bank, due to severe restrictions. Our children have never met their grandmother, who lives 60 miles away.
As part of the visa waiver deal, the Israeli government has said it will allow US citizens to visit first-degree relatives in Gaza once a year. As a result, my husband might be allowed to see his elderly mother for the first time in 11 years.
Now, the outrage I feel. Despite concessions to the relatively few Palestinians who hold U.S. citizenship, another 5 million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are still denied their right to freedom of movement throughout the occupied Palestinian territory. And 5.9 million registered Palestinian refugees and their descendants, who live outside the areas where they or their families lived until 1948, are still denied their right to return to what is now Israel. Giving visas to a tiny number of Palestinian refugees is outrageous, because they should not be treated as tourists in their own land.
Successive Israeli governments have pursued the U.S. visa waiver, but it was out of reach until now for two main reasons. First, U.S. law requires nationals of countries in the program to have a visa rejection rate of no more than 3 percent, but the U.S. has on average denied 6 percent of Israeli applications. The denial rate dropped because of reduced travel during the pandemic, creating a unique eligibility window.
Second, the visa waiver program requires member countries to admit U.S. nationals without discrimination. But the Israeli authorities impose severe movement restrictions on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, including Palestinian Americans, while permitting visitor travel there for other U.S. nationals.
They have also routinely discriminated against U.S. citizens of Arab or Muslim origin seeking entry to Israel or Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza and those who are outspoken about Palestinian human rights. Anticipating U.S. approval for the visa waiver as soon as next week, the Israeli government is rolling back a small part of those restrictions. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly thanked President Joe Biden for the coveted gesture in their meeting Wednesday in New York, as opponents of Netanyahu’s policies demonstrated outside their hotel.
That Israel’s current far-right government is willing to bend on heretofore intransigent policies in return for visa-free travel for Israeli citizens shows the power of U.S. leverage over the conduct of Israeli authorities. So I feel hope, too.
Imagine what positive changes could be possible if the U.S. government were to heed calls to suspend its $3.8 billion annual military support to Israel, so long as the Israeli authorities continue discriminatory policies and practices that humanrightsorganizations, legal experts and even some mainstream Israeli scholars have concluded amount to apartheid.
The U.S. has all this leverage. It should use that leverage to pressure Israeli authorities to respect the right of Palestinians like my children’s grandmother to travel freely between Gaza and the West Bank, and to enter Israel not as tourists, but as refugees returning home.
Sari Bashi is program director at Human Rights Watch.
Opinion
Transgender fight at Rocklin school district just the start of far-right’s efforts
Michelle Sutherland Tue, September 26, 2023
Xavier Mascareñas/xmascarenas@sacbee.com
Recently, I cast the lone ‘no’ vote when the Rocklin Unified School District Board of Trustees passed a policy to out the identity of transgender students to their parents. I listened to the hundreds of community members on this issue as well as the warning from California Attorney General Rob Bonta that such a policy was illegal and subject to court challenge.
The trustees who support this policy are not listening. And school board members in other communities who agree with them are not done. If this topic comes to a school board meeting near you, chances are there’s not a whole lot you can do to prevent your board from jeopardizing your district’s money. They will try nonetheless.
How do I know this? Because this recent action is part of a coordinated, far-right political effort across our state, being packaged as “Parents Bill of Rights.” I expect that this is only the first of several ideological issues that boards intend to bring to their school communities.
Opinion
School boards like mine should be focusing on education-related issues, helping to improve our schools and our students’ learning. Instead, these trustees are actively using network news talking points and lies by omission to sow mistrust between parents and teachers.
My board was not looking for solutions, for a way to help kids, empower parents, or address teacher/administrator concerns. This was evident in that a two-person board subcommittee did not seek the input of students, teachers, counselors, principals, or even parents. When I suggested that we look for solutions that improve parent-child relationships while respecting concerns on both sides of the issue, my colleagues were not willing to engage in any meaningful dialogue. After the concerned public spoke, none of the concerns were acknowledged, let alone entertained.
My colleagues know that solutions made with collaboration and consideration don’t bring lawsuits. Peace and unity in a community do not make headlines. Without a legal fight, there’s no political advancement of their agenda. They seem to want this fight to go all the way to the Supreme Court, using our tax dollars to fund it. Would these board members feel so emboldened on this issue if the legal fees were coming out of their own pockets?
These inevitable legal costs to our school districts are sure to result in cost reductions elsewhere: meaning money that could have been spent on educational programs or additional staff will now be funneled toward fighting lawsuits.
Look over your school district’s most recent budget vote. If you see that cuts were made to valuable programs (learning supports, school nurses, librarians, etc.) or if you see that repairs and maintenance issues are being put off you can reasonably assume that money is being spent on political issues that have no relevance to the quality of our students’ education.
Our school boards have no business spending taxpayer money in this way.
Advancing a misguided and costly social agenda through a school district is a dereliction of duty. California students will end up paying the price, not only as a result of mismanagement of resources but in regard to their individual rights under the law. Regardless of how many times my fellow board members may claim that this stripping away of student rights is legal, remember that there is a reason that California Attorney General Rob Bonta has already filed a suit against this same policy elsewhere in the state.
Our laws do, indeed, entitle students to privacy, freedom of expression and equal protection and access to publicly funded programs.
Politics belong in political forums like the California Legislature. The local school board should concern itself solely with education.
Michelle Sutherland is a board member at the Rocklin Unified School District.
HARVEY MILK LAND
California Gov. Gavin Newsom Signs 9 Pro-LGBTQ+ Bills Into Law
Trudy Ring Mon, September 25, 2023
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed nine LGBTQ-supportive bills into law last week after vetoing one.
Newsom, a Democrat, announced the signings Saturday evening.
The bills are:
Assembly Bill 5 sets timelines for implementing LGBTQ+ cultural competency training for public school teachers and staff
Senate Bill 857 creates an advisory task force to identify the needs of LGBTQ+ students and put supportive measures into force
SB 407 directs the California Department of Social Services, when evaluating foster care homes, to make sure LGBTQ+ young people are not placed in hostile environments
AB 223 requires any petition for a change of gender and sex identifier by a minor to be kept confidential by the court
AB 760 requires public colleges and universities to update student records to reflect legally changed names and genders
AB 783 directs cities to advise applicants for business licenses that single-user restrooms must be labeled all-gender
SB 760 sets standards for all-gender restrooms in public and private K-12 schools
SB 372 requires licensing boards to update records to recognize legally changed names and genders
AB 994 assures that law enforcement uses arrestees’ chosen names and pronouns when posting information on social media, with some exceptions
The bill Newsom vetoed last week would have required courts, when making custody decisions, to consider whether a parent is supportive of a child’s gender identity. Newsom had said this measure went too far in dictating court actions and could have led “other-minded” politicians in California and elsewhere to “use this strategy to diminish the civil rights of vulnerable communities.”
Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener, who is gay, had objected to Newsom’s veto of that legislation but praised his signing of SB 407, which Wiener authored. “LGBTQ youth deserve a supportive and affirming home the same as any other child,” Wiener said in a statement to The Bay Area Reporter. “I’m proud that California is taking this step to expand support for LGBTQ youth at a time when elected leaders in other states are targeting them with cruel restrictions and hate.”
In a press release, Newsom said, “California is proud to have some of the most robust laws in the nation when it comes to protecting and supporting our LGBTQ+ community, and we’re committed to the ongoing work to create safer, more inclusive spaces for all Californians. These measures will help protect vulnerable youth, promote acceptance, and create more supportive environments in our schools and communities. I thank Senator Eggman and the LGBTQ Caucus for their dedicated leadership and partnership in advancing our state’s values of equality, freedom and acceptance.”
In the release, Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman, chair of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, added, “This year the LGBTQ Caucus took up the important work of protecting our communities in the face of vile anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, discriminatory laws across the country, and hatred. I appreciate the Governor’s partnership in signing some of our priority and endorsed legislation today and hope we can continue to educate about the harm LGBTQ+ people will continue to face if we fail to act.”
“While states across the nation are passing legislation that puts LGBTQ+ people and especially youth at risk, California is sending a clear message today — hate-filled attacks will not be tolerated and we will continue protecting and ensuring the safety of all members of the LGBTQ+ community,” Equality California Executive Director Tony Hoang noted in the release. “We are thankful to our legislative partners for championing these important bills and to Governor Newsom for continuing to be such a strong ally in improving and protecting the wellbeing of the LGBTQ+ community as we face growing attacks from far-right extremists.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signs bills to bolster protections for LGBTQ people
Associated Press Mon, September 25, 2023
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed several bills over the weekend aimed at bolstering the state’s protections for LGBTQ people, after issuing a controversial veto that was criticized by advocates.
The new laws include legislation that focuses on support for LGBTQ youth. One law sets timelines for required cultural competency training for public school teachers and staff, while another creates an advisory task force to determine the needs of LGBTQ students and help advance supportive initiatives. A third requires families to show that they can and are willing to meet the needs of a child in foster care regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
“California is proud to have some of the most robust laws in the nation when it comes to protecting and supporting our LGBTQ+ community, and we’re committed to the ongoing work to create safer, more inclusive spaces for all Californians,” Newsom said in a statement on Saturday. “These measures will help protect vulnerable youth, promote acceptance, and create more supportive environments in our schools and communities.”
The governor also signed legislation that requires schools serving first through 12th grade to have at least one gender-neutral bathroom available for students by 2026.
The law was spurred by a Southern California school district that instituted a policy requiring schools to tell parents when their children change their pronouns or use a bathroom of a gender other than the one listed on their official paperwork. A judge halted the policy after California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the Chino Valley Unified School District. The lawsuit is ongoing.
The governor’s bill-signings came after Newsom vetoed a bill on Friday that would have required judges to consider whether a parent affirms their child’s gender identity when making custody and visitation decisions.
Assembly member Lori Wilson, a Democrat who introduced the bill and has an adult son who came out as transgender when he was a teenager, was among the LGBTQ advocates who criticized the governor’s decision.
“I’ve been disheartened over the last few years as I watched the rising hate and heard the vitriol toward the trans community. My intent with this bill was to give them a voice, particularly in the family court system where a non-affirming parent could have a detrimental impact on the mental health and well-being of a child,” Wilson said in a statement.
California state Sen. Scott Wiener, who co-sponsored the bill, called Newsom's veto "a tragedy for trans kids," according to a statement posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
"Governor Newsom has been such a staunch ally to the LGBTQ community. A true champion. Respectfully, however, this veto is a mistake," Wiener added.
Newsom said existing laws already require courts to consider health, safety and welfare when determining the best interests of a child in custody cases, including the parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity.
The veto comes amid intense political battles across the country over transgender rights, including efforts to impose bans on gender-affirming care, bar trans athletes from girls and women’s sports, and require schools to notify parents if their children ask to use different pronouns or changes their gender identity.
Contributing: Christopher Cann, USA TODAY
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY
California governor signs law requiring gender-neutral bathrooms in schools by 2026
Justin Gamble and Nicole Chavez, CNN Mon, September 25, 2023 Smith Collection/Gado/Archive Photos/Getty Images/FILE
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a law requiring K-12 schools to provide gender-neutral bathrooms by July 2026.
The new law, Senate Bill 760, was among a series of laws signed by Newsom Saturday to expand protections for the state’s LGBTQ community.
“California is proud to have some of the most robust laws in the nation when it comes to protecting and supporting our LGBTQ+ community,” Newsom said in a statement.
Under the law, “each school district, county office of education, and charter school” would be required to have at least one gender-neutral bathroom on campus on or before July 1, 2026. The bathroom must be available for use during school hours and during school functions when students are present, the law states.
The law allows for the temporary closure of any gender-neutral bathroom only if there is a documented student safety concern, an immediate threat to student safety or for the bathroom to be repaired.
The law also requires the gender-neutral bathroom to have signage identifying the space as being open to all genders, be unlocked and accessible to all students. It requires schools to designate a staff member to serve as a point of contact to ensure the bathroom is compliant with state law.
State Sen. Josh Newman, who sponsored the law, applauded the governor’s action, telling CNN it was “only fair that everybody has access to a restroom without fear of outing, bullying, or stigmatization.”
Newman said he hopes the law becomes a model for other states to help protect children.
Tony Hoang, executive director of the LGBTQ civil rights group Equality California, said the governor’s action sends a “clear message” that California will protect the rights of the LGBTQ community.
“Hate-filled attacks will not be tolerated and we will continue protecting and ensuring the safety of all members of the LGBTQ+ community,” Hoang said.
In recent years, school districts across the country have debated LGBTQ inclusion and representation, including whether to allow classroom instruction on gender identity, CNN previously reported.
The issue of bathroom access has been the focus of national debate for years. In 2016, North Carolina enacted a law that required people using public bathrooms and locker rooms to use rooms that corresponded to the gender on their birth certificates, if the rooms in question were multiple-occupancy. The measure drew intense criticism from businesses and advocates and it was later repealed.
At the time, former President Back Obama’s administration issued guidance directing schools to let transgender students use facilities that correspond with their gender identity. Those protections were later withdrawn by the Trump administration in 2017.
Newsom signed the series of new protections for LGBTQ Californians into law a day after he vetoed a bill that would have required state judges to consider whether a parent affirms their child’s gender identity when granting custody and visitation.
In a statement explaining the veto, the governor noted that California’s courts are already required to consider a child’s health, safety and welfare, “including the parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity.”
He also urged caution “when the Executive and Legislative branches of state government attempt to dictate - in prescriptive terms that single out one characteristic - legal standards for the Judicial branch to apply.”
“Other-minded elected officials, in California and other states, could very well use this strategy to diminish the civil rights of vulnerable communities,” he wrote.
Several other states have issued policies relating to LGBTQ students and bathroom access. Earlier this year, a law went into effect in Idaho that prohibits transgender students from using public school bathrooms that do not align with their gender assigned at birth. Last month, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order, blocking enforcement of the law.
CNN
COLA UAW demands cost-of-living salary adjustment as Americans feel pinch of inflation
Bailey Schulz, USA TODAY Updated Tue, September 26, 2023
Although workers’ annual pay increases have outpaced inflation since May, their spending power has shrunk over the past two years as inflation drove up overall prices by roughly 12%. Essentials like groceries and utilities have jumped even higher.
With high costs eroding millions of household budgets, unions like the United Auto Workers are now starting to push employers to reinstate a once common but now rarer mechanism for ensuring that wages keep up with inflation.
But COLA is returning to the national conversation. The striking UAW, in its tense negotiations with automakers, has said it will not accept a contract agreement without a COLA, an unnamed source familiar with the contract talks told the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA TODAY network.
"(We've seen) very high inflation. Workers are feeling that pain and they're saying, 'We want to be protected,'” said Rebecca Kolins Givan, an associate professor at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations in New Jersey
Why COLA provisions disappeared
COLA provisions used to be common among union contracts, with 61% including them in 1976, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Twenty years later, the percentage had dropped to about one-third of that peak level.
The 61% included UAW contracts with the Detroit Three automakers (General Motors, Ford and Stellantis – formerly Chrysler), which adopted the wage adjustments in 1948 and 1950. The provisions followed a spike in inflation, with overall consumer prices up nearly 20% from the year prior in March 1947.
Inflation spiked once again ahead of COLA’s peak in the mid-1970s, with overall consumer prices growing 11.8% year-over-year in January 1975.
The prominence of unions in the 1970s and '80s also helped COLA numbers. Data from the BLS shows that 20% of American workers were union members in 1983 ‒ the first year for which comparable data are available ‒ versus 10% in 2022.
"When unions were stronger, they were able to fight for COLAs and win them," Givan said.
But as union power waned and inflation eased, so did COLA coverage. By 1995, 22% of union contracts had the provisions, according to BLS data.
The benefit was suspended in UAW contracts with the Detroit Three in 2009 after the automakers faced bankruptcy during the 2008 financial crisis. While the companies' finances have since bounced back, the COLA clauses have not. The latest ratified contracts from 2019 show that COLA language was removed from Ford and Chrysler agreements and remains suspended in the GM contract.
It’s unclear how many union contracts include COLAs today; BLS stopped collecting data on it after 1995 because of funding restrictions, according to the agency.
Experts say they have no reason to believe the cost-of-living adjustments have picked up substantially since then.
"I don't have any evidence that it was rebounding before the pandemic," said Harry Katz, a professor of collective bargaining at Cornell University.
Do nonunion workers get COLA?
COLA clauses were meant to help workers and employers deal with the uncertainty of multiyear contracts. Instead of both sides trying to predict future inflation rates during wage negotiations, COLA provisions helped them account for any unforeseen consumer price hikes.
While data on the prevalence of cost-of-living adjustments today are slim, Katz noted that they don’t make much sense in nonunion jobs without multiyear contracts.
“I don’t know of an instance where a nonunion workforce has a COLA,” he said. “You’re setting pay annually and you don’t have uncertainty with inflation. You don’t need a mechanism for that.”
Nonunion jobs typically do not have guaranteed raises. Instead, pay increases tend to vary by industry, company, location and job performance. Eighty percent of organizations surveyed by compensation research and software firm Payscale in late 2022 said they planned to provide base pay increases this year, with 56% planning to give bumps of more than 3%.
However, data show that U.S. wages have struggled to keep up with inflation over the past two years. While average U.S. wage growth finally began outpacing price increases in May, many Americans say they still haven’t caught up to the big run-up in prices.
If the UAW secures a COLA provision in its contract negotiations, that could help “set a new standard” for other union contracts, according to Givan of Rutgers.
“Other workers will also fight for a cost-of-living increase,” she said.
While there’s no good data that shows the state of COLA provisions, a number of unions have started demanding cost-of-living adjustments in recent months. Canada’s British Columbia General Employees’ Union and Hospital Employees’ Union, for instance, both secured deals last year that include COLA clauses.
Whether more contracts will include COLA depends on inflation levels and union power, according to Cedric de Leon, a professor of sociology and labor studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
If high inflation continues, “then I would bet that the labor movement continues to explore this sort of older COLA mechanism for addressing that,” he said, adding that an increase in union participation would also make future COLA provisions more likely.
But if inflation continues to ease, then contract negotiators may not prioritize COLA and instead focus on giving employees an overall pay increase.
“The thing is that we're living through history,” de Leon said. “We don’t actually know (what to expect). So it's just up in the air.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:
Mexico Mulls Charging Cuba for Oil as Cost of Donating It Climbs
Eric Martin Tue, September 26, 2023 a
(Bloomberg) -- Mexico’s state oil company is considering ways to start charging Cuba for oil it’s been giving to the destitute nation as the company faces its own fiscal struggles and the price of those donated barrels climbs sharply.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s top diplomat said the government is looking for ways to lessen the strain of what it describes as humanitarian aid on public finances as crude nears $100 a barrel, but “of course” any such move would have to avoid violating US sanctions.
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Mexico sent 350,000 barrels of Petroleos Mexicanos crude free of charge to Cuba in June and another 700,000 barrels the next month, marking its first exports to the island since 2019, according to port authority information and ship movements tracked by Bloomberg. The gift appears to be part of a renewed effort by AMLO, as the president is known, to strengthen ties with Havana.
Foreign Minister Alicia Barcena said those donations were made through the nation’s Agency of International Cooperation for Development. But now, as benchmark oil prices have surged 25% in three months and Mexico faces its largest fiscal deficit in more than three decades, the government is looking to see whether Pemex crude can be sold instead.
“Why not? It has to be seen how can that be, what type of transaction,” Barcena said in an interview last week on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. “We have a financial situation, of course. It’s not easy to donate.”
Selling, however, won’t be easy either thanks to sanctions on Cuba. Those restrictions generally prohibit US persons, dollars, entities, inputs and banks from being involved in the production of goods sold to the communist-run nation.
Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, has repeatedly called for the US to lift its trade embargo, first imposed six decades ago after the late Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba. Barcena made the call again in her speech at the UN, calling it “totally unjustified, contrary to international law and alien to the values and peaceful coexistence that prevails between the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean.”
While there were no Pemex oil exports to Cuba in August, according to the data, the two earlier shipments would have fetched a substantial price on the open market. The July donation was worth about $54 million and the June shipment could have fetched about $23 million, based on the average price for Mexico’s crude mix in those months.
The beleaguered driller is sending oil at a time when its crude production has halved since a 2004 peak and declined almost every year in the past decade and a half. Its debt is the highest of any oil major, at $110.5 billion by the end of June.
A Pemex representative didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment about the donated barrels.
Cuba used to import oil from socialist ally Venezuela before the US imposed sanctions on President Nicolas Maduro’s authoritarian regime during the Trump administration, which also ratcheted up pressure on Havana.
The island nation is now suffering its worst economic crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago, with blackouts, shortages and rampant inflation. Tighter US sanctions and the slump in tourism caused by the Covid-19 pandemic aggravated the downturn.
AMLO had earlier warmed ties with Cuba that had grown strained under one of his predecessors, when Mexico voted for a UN resolution criticizing the nation’s human rights record. Lopez Obrador, by contrast has lauded Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, giving him the Aztec Eagle award and inviting him to Mexico numerous times, including as a guest of honor at the nation’s 2021 Independence Day parade.
--With assistance from Lucia Kassai and Amy Stillman.
Bloomberg Businessweek
Conservatives Aren’t Just Boycotting Bud Light. They’re Trying to Build a Parallel Economy
Eric Cortellessa
TIME Tue, September 26, 2023
PublicSq. CEO Michael Seifert, left, investor Omeed Malik, right, and Donald Trump Jr., center, and Kimberly Guilfoyle ring the ceremonial bell on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street in New York City on July 20, 2023. Credit - John Angelillo—UPI/Alamy
The controversy started, like so many things nowadays, with an internet rumor. “Dear Women, Tampax pays this man $10,000’s to MOCK YOU,” tweeted a right-wing influencer in April. “Don’t buy Tampax.”
The offense in question: transgender TikTok personality Dylan Mulvaney had posted a video with the company’s tampons. Online conservatives, enraged by Tampax’s history of trans-focused marketing, were soon excoriating the brand for entering an advertising partnership with Mulvaney. No such sponsorship existed; Mulvaney recorded the video on their own accord. But the claim took off anyway, leading hard-right social media personalities to orchestrate a Tampax boycott.
Then something else happened: an “anti-woke” tampon brand that bills itself as a “Girls Only” club emerged to provide the aggrieved with an alternative. Garnuu had launched a year earlier, but with little traction. Now, it capitalized on the controversy by using the right-wing media ecosystem to amplify its deliberately provocative slogan: “Only Women Can Have Periods.”
The controversy brought a burst of social-media attention, which in turn brought an offer from another nascent firm: PublicSq., a Yelp-like directory of tens of thousands of conservative companies backed by Donald Trump, Jr., the former president’s son. After the first-of-its-kind marketplace urged Garnuu to join its platform, the company saw an immediate uptick in sales, according to Macy Maxson, Garnuu’s founder. “A lot of people were searching for feminine products,” she says. It was validation, in her eyes, that right-of-center Americans were eager to rebel against “corporate woke-ism” with their wallets. “We saw this very clear market.”
Garnuu’s story is part of a pattern. After Bud Light released an actual sponsored ad with Mulvaney in June, prominent conservatives engineered a boycott in retaliation. Within two months, Bud Light was no longer the nation’s most popular beer, according to Neilsen data analyzed by the consulting firm Bump Williams, with its sales dropping 24%. Target also saw a 5.4% drop in sales after conservatives revolted against the chain for displaying Pride merchandise in its stores. But the right hasn’t only waged economic warfare in the form of boycotts.
In recent years, there has been an explosion of business ventures that position themselves as right-wing alternatives to mainstream products, from social media platforms (Truth Social and Rumble), coffee sellers (Black Rifle), crypto startups (MAGA Coin), investment funds (Strive, the anti-ESG platform created by presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy), and even private healthcare insurance (America First Healthcare). Many of these firms are drawing investments from A-list venture capitalists and private equity groups, like the PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and the California-based Engaged Capital—a sign that a growing segment of the business community recognizes the potential for making money in the MAGA marketplace. Strive, for instance, recently surpassed more than $1 billion in assets.
The movement represents a change in recent American politics and consumer culture: Once, corporations sought to avoid putting off potential customers by wading into politics. Think of the days when Michael Jordan refused to exert his influence in a racially-charged Senate race in his home state of North Carolina. “Republicans buy sneakers, too,” he said. Today, many corporations lean on political ideology as a calling card, specifically targeting consumers based on their political tribe, whether it’s Ben & Jerry’s on the left or Hobby Lobby on the right.
The trend makes sense. Public polling has foundthat Americans increasingly tie their sense of selves with their political affiliations, while the nation has become more polarized over the last several decades. “People are more commonly defining themselves by their political identity,” says Jake Teeney, a marketing professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. “The more we define ourselves by this, we also define ourselves by our brands.”
Yet the parallel conservative economy remains a sector in its infancy, and its members are unproven. It’s not clear how many of these firms are profitable; some wouldn’t say when asked. Those that do report financial data publicly are still exceedingly small. In the first half of this year, PublicSq. generated less than $1 million in revenue. Company officials confirm that it has not yet made a profit. In other words, the verdict is still out on whether the rise of avowedly ideological businesses is an ephemeral trend or the beginning of a lasting shift.
For now, it’s expanding in response to a consumer demand for conservative alternatives. In one sense, the parallel economy is just the latest iteration of right-wing attacks on “woke” corporate behavior. In another, it’s a story of what’s happening to America at large, as the country is becoming increasingly fragmented. Now, there are well-funded efforts to reshape the U.S. economy along those same ideological fissures. If they succeed, Americans’ routine buying habits would no longer be a mere token of daily tedium, but an emblem of our national fracture.
In a conference room above the New York Stock Exchange last July, PublicSq.’s top investors were feverishly checking their phones. They all wanted to see how the moment was playing on social media. Together, they had just rang the opening bell to celebrate their company’s debut as a publicly-traded company. It was a milestone, they said, that marked the official arrival of what they call the “patriot economy.” Donning a black suit with a silver tie, a bearded Trump Jr. explained why the incipient platform had already attracted 65,000 companies and 1.4 million users. “We're playing in two different worlds,” he tells me. “The one that you hear about and read about in the media that everyone assumes is true, and then, like, the real world.”
It’s one of the core ideas baked into the entire enterprise: that the U.S. marketplace is as divided as the electorate. Founder Michael Seifert argues that it’s not companies like PublicSq. that are turning the purchase of basic consumer goods like tampons into political acts. It’s the corporate behemoths that have alienated conservatives by taking liberal stands. Seifert, a former marketing manager for a retail brokerage firm and frequent guest on right-wing podcasts like Steve Bannon’s War Room, cites a 2018 Nike ad filmed with Colin Kaepernick after the former NFL quarterback spurred a wave of professional athletes kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality. It was among the first examples, Seifert says, of one of the world’s most iconic brands openly siding with progressives in their push for societal change.
Then came the summer of 2020. Businesses in Seifert’s hometown of Carlsbad, Calif. were displaying Black Lives Matter and Pride Flags. From his vantage point, these moves revealed a transformation in America’s political and business environment. In January 2021, Seifert sat down with his wife and wrote out a list of local conservative-owned companies: restaurants, dry cleaners, restaurants. “From now on, we’re gonna go to these businesses,” he told his wife. When he posted the list on Facebook, it quickly garnered scores of comments and shares. That’s when Seifert got the idea for an app that would aggregate “anti-woke” companies in every town in America. “I had this aha moment,” he says. In a matter of months, Seifert had left his job at the real estate firm and recruited friends and business partners to create what would eventually become PublicSq.
What started as a bare bones app became more advanced and user friendly after catching the attention of folks who wanted to make it a new force in American life. In April 2022, Seifert heard Alex Bruesewitz, a Trump family friend and Republican consultant, mention the company on a popular right-wing podcast. Seifert reached out to Bruesewitz through Instagram to set up a meeting with Trump. Jr. It wasn’t a hard sell. The former President’s son quickly agreed to become an investor—he declined to share the exact figures—and connected Seifert with others who could help the firm scale up, including Nick Ayers, a former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, who became one of its lead business strategists, and Omeed Malik, a venture capitalist who runs Farvahar Partners and the anti-ESG hedge fund 1789 Capital. Malik became the firm’s main financier.
PublicSq. launched nationwide on July 4, 2022, with fewer than 30 employees and a database of roughly 10,000 companies. Around this time, it developed a business model of allowing companies and users on the app for free while selling advertisements and forging revenue-sharing deals with some of the businesses on the platform.
To maintain its ideological purity, PublicSq. requires companies to commit to five core values, such as “freedom and truth” and supporting “the family unit” and “the sanctity of life.” A small vetting team researches each business before approving the application, Seifert says, reading their website and social media pages to ensure they don’t have any “woke” infractions like promoting “environmental justice” or “trans rights.” The companies also agree not to support socially progressive causes or initiatives, such as employing affirmative action hiring practices or supporting access to abortions for its employees or the general public. “Can they donate to pro-abortion charities?” Seifert says. “We ask that they don’t.”
PublicSq. has kicked only two companies off the platform for violating its rules, according to Seifert. One was enforcing a vaccine mandate for its staff; the other was selling Pride-themed merchandise. “That was a direct violation in our mind,” Seifert says. He also recalls another application that didn’t make the cut: a Nevada-based brothel. “It’s not exactly a pro-family business.”
But those instances are rare, he insists. Most companies on PublicSq. know what it is and want to be there. That’s not necessarily a surprise, says Americus Reed, an identity theorist at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Businesses, given the recent eruption of what he calls “purpose-driven businesses” that appeal to consumers based on their politics. “The theory is that this is supposed to create a deeper way to connect with a potential consumer,” Reed tells me. “This is a risky strategy, but it has a very high upside.”
PublicSq. has already attracted thousands of unapologetically conservative companies, such as Nimi Skincare, which donates 5% of its profits to right-wing nonprofits like Turning Point USA and Moms for Liberty; the Liberty Cigar Company, a Georgia-based retailer whose owner met Seifert at the Conservative Political Action Conference; and Your American Flag Store, which sells “patriotically themed rustic flags,” including one that celebrates those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. They all share a strategy of targeting a specific kind of consumer. “It really parallels what we saw with Donald Trump,” says Kimberly Guilfoyle, Trump Jr.’s fiance who ran fundraising for the former President’s 2020 reelection campaign. “The forgotten men and women. This is the forgotten consumer out there who wants to feel good about what they’re doing with their hard-earned money.”
PublicSq. is betting that there are more of these businesses out there, and it wants to send a signal to other would-be “anti-woke” warriors. When Buffalo Bills safety Jordan Poyer had to cancel a charity golf game in June because sponsors pulled out upon learning it would be hosted at Donald Trump’s Doral golf club, PublicSq. stepped in and resuscitated the event. A few months after right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson left Fox News, PublicSq. inked a seven-figure ad deal in July for his new show on X, formally known as Twitter, helping to increase its visibility in the world of conservative infotainment.
The company’s capstone to date is the moment it became part of the Wall Street firmament: On July 13, Trump Jr., Guilfoyle, Seifert, Ayers and Malik rang the bell on the NYSE. “There are a lot of people that want to be anti-woke and all this crap,” Malik says. “This was professional. This was blue chip. This was institutional. That’s why it worked.” The stock opened at $23 a share as friends and family on the floor below chanted “USA! USA!” The cacophony from the firm’s supporters became so loud that an obviously frustrated Jim Cramer could be heard complaining while recording a CNBC broadcast on the exchange floor.
The PublicSq brand logo hangs outside at the NYSE before the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street in New York City on Thursday, July 20, 2023John Angelillo—UPI/Alamy
PublicSq.’s leaders see the project as intellectually guided by another company that famously captured the conservative base of a market: Fox News. For Trump Jr., the decision to consciously limit potential consumers marked a departure, he says, from the thinking that guided his career as an executive at his father’s company, The Trump Organization. “We built real estate in New York City and all over the world—high-end real estate,” he says. “I had the mentality like, well, we’ve got to cater to all 350 million Americans, like every one of them. Well, guess what: There's a really big marketplace, just in America, to cater to 50 percent.”
The Fox News prototype may not be so easy to replicate; cable news is dramatically different from beer or tampons. But the creation of alternatives is an essential ingredient for those on the right trying to undermine the corporate giants they see as tailoring their marketing to liberal cosmopolitans. “One of the biggest predictors of whether or not people engage in a boycott is substitutability,” says Teeny, the Kellogg professor. “If there are other options that they could switch to, then they're more likely to engage in a boycott than not. If you feel like there's no other tampon that does it right for you, there's no amount of conservative ideology that's probably going to get people to shift.”
In the last year, PublicSq.’s marketplace has more than doubled, going from 33,000 businesses on the platform to 65,000, according to the firm’s financial statements. Its user base has soared from 38,000 to 1.4 million. Yet its stock is down more than 50% since its initial public offering. Whether it represents a sustainable long-term business model remains an open question.
In the meantime, PublicSq. has big plans. It’s already created its own subsidiary firm to sell products on the platform. It’s first such offering: EveryLife, a diaper company that opposes abortion. (Seifert stresses they will only create product lines where it sees no viable alternatives on the app.) PublicSq. is also preparing to take aim at its largest target yet. The company plans to introduce e-commerce to the site next month, in the hopes of driving conservative consumers toward them and away from Amazon—itself the target of a simmering right-wing backlash since committing last year to cover the costs of employees who have to travel to get an abortion.
PublicSq.’s promotional efforts have been driven by a pugnacious approach on social media, where they attack mainstream companies for “going woke,” whether its Joann’s Fabric and Listerine for marketing to LGBTQ consumers, or Purina and Converse for embracing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. (None of the targeted companies responded to TIME’s requests for comment.)
But they are all in the crosshairs of a relatively novel marketing approach of picking a political side and catering to it. In today’s America, executives increasingly see the method as providing a clear path for consumers to develop a stronger bond with the product. “Your self-concept fuses with this brand,” says Reed, the Wharton professor. “The brand is part of who you are. I don't think this is a fad. I think you're going to see years more of this purpose-driven marketing.”
It’s the wager that an increasing number of businesses are taking. More and more, they are betting that the way to stand out against competitors is to embrace a new kind of American marketplace, where virtually everything you buy can become an act of political defiance. “We vote at the ballot box, but we also vote with our dollars,” Trump Jr. says. “Ultimately, I think success is getting to a place where in every sector of the economy you have businesses—big and small—fully embracing the patriot economy.”
