DUTERTE DEATH SQUAD
Philippines counter insurgency force 'operating with impunity', UN expert says

Reuters
Wed, November 15, 2023 

Ian Fry, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human right, holds a presser at Manila

MANILA (Reuters) - A United Nations expert on climate change and human rights urged the Philippines on Wednesday to "disband" its anti-communist task force, which he said was "operating with impunity" and sought an independent investigation into its operations.

U.N. Special Rapporteur Ian Fry was referring to the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict or NTF-ELCAC, which then Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte created in 2018 to end half a century of communist insurgency that has stunted development in some parts of the country.

Human rights groups have repeatedly accused the task force of "red-tagging," the practice of accusing rivals or critics of supporting or joining rebels, as a pretext to silence, arrest or even kill them. The government denies that.

The task force, under the order creating it, is chaired by the Philippine president, and is composed of cabinet officials, including the military and police chiefs.

"It is clear that ELCAC is operating beyond its original mandate, and is red tagging people from the community and indigenous peoples and it appears as though private financial interests are driving ELCAC to do this," Fry told reporters at the end of his 10-day visit to the Philippines.

"It's moved beyond its mandate and its usefulness and needs to be disbanded outright, and the government needs to develop another approach to deal with terrorism issues, but it's clear that this unit is operating with impunity," Fry said.

The task force said in response it "takes strong exception to the call" made by Fry and assured the U.N. official that it "is a working and effective human rights mechanism."

(Reporting by Karen Lema; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Huawei has a big problem with the popular Mate 60 5G smartphones: there's not enough supply to meet growing demand


South China Morning Post
Tue, November 14, 2023

Huawei Technologies is scrambling to crank up production of its new 5G smartphones to meet demand, according to analysts, as the wait time for its popular Mate 60 Pro model - the handset equipped with an advanced made-in-China chip that defies US sanctions - has been extended up to three months.

"Production capacity can't meet demand, which is the reason Huawei is doing pre-orders," said Counterpoint Research senior analyst Wang Yang, adding that presales help buy some time for Huawei to secure orders from its suppliers.

Wang also indicated that the secrecy surrounding the advanced Kirin 9000s processor used in the Mate 60 Pro has complicated how Huawei's supply chain partners have conducted parts provision, a lengthy process that typically takes between 12 to 18 months before a device is launched.

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

In an unusual move for a product that was already launched, Huawei last week introduced a subscription programme for the Mate 60 Pro that promised a wait time of no more than 90 days after consumers place their orders via the scheme on its official website. Each consumer can only buy one unit, while orders will be shipped in a random sequence within a 90-day time frame.

A pair of Huawei Technologies' Mate 60 Pro 5G smartphones are shown on display inside a store in Xian, capital of northwest Shaanxi province, on September 9, 2023. Photo Shutterstock alt=A pair of Huawei Technologies' Mate 60 Pro 5G smartphones are shown on display inside a store in Xian, capital of northwest Shaanxi province, on September 9, 2023. Photo Shutterstock>

Some consumers who joined that scheme shared their order status on Chinese microblogging platform Weibo, where they showed that promised delivery ranged from as early as this month to February next year.

Shenzhen-based Huawei's return to the 5G smartphone market and the lengths it must go to rebuild that once-highly profitable business show that the company still faces plenty of challenges ahead to overcome years of struggle on account of US trade sanctions.

Eight weeks since its launch in August, the Mate 60 series has recorded 2.4 million units in domestic sales volume, according to Counterpoint data.

A separate estimate by research firm Canalys showed that total Mate 60 shipments from the end of August to November 7 reached up to 2.5 million units, with the premium 5G Mate 60 Pro comprising more than 60 per cent of that volume.

"Huawei benefited from the sustained popularity of the Mate 60 series and some older models - especially in the mid-range and budget segments, which saw significant price reductions or subsidies - resulting in impressive sales figures [during that period of the Singles' Day festival]," Counterpoint senior analyst Ivan Lam said.

"But it's also worth noting that the Mate 60 series continued to experience supply shortages, which prompted limited daily sales," he said.

Huawei's biggest suppliers have been ramping up recruitment of assembly line workers to meet the rising orders for the Mate 60 Pro handset.

Foxconn Technology Group, the world's largest electronics contract manufacturer and the prime assembler of Apple's iPhones, in September started offering higher rates for workers that make Huawei's handsets at its plant in southern tech hub Shenzhen than those that assemble iPhones at its facility in Zhengzhou, capital of central Henan province.

China's top chip foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), maker of the 7-nanometre-grade Kirin 9000s, had good yields on its 7-nm line, according to a recent report by Dylan Patel, chief analyst at semiconductor research firm SemiAnalysis. He indicated that SMIC's 7-nm process technology should be considered similar to that of the existing N7 node of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), despite differences in certain engineering aspects.

"SMIC is, at worst, only a handful of years behind TSMC, and at most, only a few years behind Intel and Samsung, despite [US government] restrictions," Patel wrote in the report.

Patel said he believed that the supply shortages affecting Huawei's Mate 60 series reflect the huge demand for its first 5G smartphones in more than two years, rather than a sign that yields deficiency at SMIC has become a bottleneck in terms of ramping-up production of these handsets.

Meanwhile, the eight-week sales volume of Huawei's Mate 60 series has surpassed the four-month, 1.8-million-unit performance of the 4G Mate 50 series, which was launched in September last year.

The company's last 5G smartphone release was its Mate 40 series, which was launched in October 2020, more than a year after Washington added Huawei to its trade blacklist.

The Mate 40 series sold 2.6 million units in China within four months of its release. By comparison, the Mate 30 series released in September 2019 sold 7.5 million units over the same time span, according to Counterpoint. It forecast total shipments of the Mate 60 series could reach 4 million units over a four-month span since its launch.

Copyright (c) 2023. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Secret Service Agent Shooting At Car Thieves Doesn’t Entirely Add Up

Steven Symes
Tue, November 14, 2023 
 The Backfire News

News about a secret service agent assigned to protect President Joe Biden’s granddaughter Naomi Biden opening fire on some would-be thieves breaking into an unmarked Secret Service SUV has spread like wildfire. The incident, which took place in the Georgetown neighborhood in Washington, D.C. on the night of November 12, has helped punctuate just how bad car theft has become in the nation’s capital.

Find out about the recent Houston meat thief bust.

Not only is car theft in general a big problem in Washington, D.C. but so are carjackings, just like in many other metropolitan areas. A member of Congress was carjacked not that long ago, and we’ve heard there are supposedly several members of the House who sleep on cots in their offices to avoid the rampant crime in the city.

Many times the carjackings are done by young kids, a fact that was highlighted when the story of a 13-year-old killed during an attempted carjacking blew up in national news recently.

That said, there’s something off about this story. First of all, we find it ironic how the Secret Service can shoot at someone for breaking the window of their vehicle in an attempt to steal it but if a regular citizen were to do that it would almost certainly result in a criminal charge.

But that’s not what has left us feeling something is off. We assume Secret Service agents, like most law enforcement, train on their service weapon. If that’s true, then why didn’t the agent who squeezed off a few rounds hit the suspects? Was he just firing warning shots and not trying to hit them?

And how did the Secret Service let these three individuals get away? What if they’d tried assassinating Hunter Biden’s oldest child? Considering the state of the world today, one would think the Secret Service had better coverage than what was displayed.

Also, if it’s not that big deal if someone steals your car, like we’re told constantly, why is it such a big deal for a Secret Service vehicle to be swiped that the use of deadly force is justified? We’re not expecting any answers to our questions, but this story seems a little… interesting.

Image via United States Secret Service

Watch a super-rare dreamer anglerfish with ultra-black 'invisibility cloak' swim like a shadow in the deep sea

Harry Baker
Wed, November 15, 2023 

A silhouette of a fish against a watery back drop

Scientists recently filmed a super-rare, ultra-black anglerfish lurking like a living shadow in the deep sea off the California coastline.

Researchers from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) spotted the unidentified species of dreamer anglerfish (genus Oneirodes) on Sept. 29. They filmed it 2,562 feet (781 meters) below the surface while maneuvering a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) in Monterey Canyon — a massive deep-sea canyon that spans more than 292 miles (470 kilometers) off the California coast.

The researchers were collecting tiny, spiked organisms known as phaeodarians, which float in the water column and eat falling detritus, or marine snow, when they came across the football-size female fish. It is the first dreamer anglerfish seen in Monterey Canyon since 2016 and only the ninth time scientists have spotted these creatures in the area over the last 36 years, according to an MBARI statement.

"Coming upon a lurking anglerfish is an exciting experience for anyone exploring the deep water column," Bruce Robinson, a senior scientist at MBARI, said in the statement.

A video of the encounter clearly shows marine snow swirling around the evolutionary oddity, but little is visible beyond its distinctive outline. That's because its skin is so dark it absorbs light and acts like an "invisibility cloak," Robinson said.

Related: Why do deep-sea fish look like aliens?

This species of dreamer anglerfish belongs to an exclusive club of "ultra-black" deep-sea creatures, which absorb at least 99.5% of the light that hits them. Fifteen other marine species are known to absorb this much light, according to a 2020 study published in the journal Current Biology.

These animals are so dark that "it's like looking at a black hole," study lead author Alexander Davis, a marine ecologist at Duke University and MBARI, told The New York Times when the 2020 study was released.

The study revealed that these animals' skin is tightly packed with melanosomes — cells containing the pigment melanin, which also gives human skin its color. The shape and configuration of these cells enable them to absorb almost every wavelength of light that hits the creatures' skin.

"Ultra-black skin ensures that any light that hits you, even the bright light from your own streetlamp-like lure, is completely absorbed — nothing reflects back to expose your location," study co-author Karen Osborn, a zoologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and MBARI, said in the statement
.

A silhouette of a fish against a watery back drop

This enables dreamer anglerfish to remain completely hidden as they "lie secretly in wait for their prey" while using their fishing rod-like bioluminescent lures, Robinson said.

The curious camouflage also helps the dreamers to hide from predators. When the MBARI team first spotted the anglerfish, it was using its lure. But it swiftly turned off its light when it realized it was being watched.

Related: 10 bizarre deep sea creatures found in 2022

Scientists know the anglerfish in the new video is a female because of its size: Female dreamers can grow up to 15 inches (37 centimeters) long, while the males only grow to around 0.5 inch (1.3 cm) long.

related stories

—Upside-down anglerfish and other alien oddities spotted in one of the world's deepest trenches

—Weird deep-sea worm looks like a luminous lump of spaghetti

—Mysterious 'nightmare' shark with unnerving human-like smile dragged up from the deep sea

In addition to being a good place to spot anglerfish in the wild, California is one of the few places where anglerfish also wash up on shore.

On Oct. 17, another pitch-black female anglerfish, known as a Pacific footballfish (Himantolophus sagamius) washed ashore at Crystal Cove State Park in southern California. This was the second time the species washed up at this location, following the discovery of another female near the same spot in 2021.

Mike Johnson Says Americans 'Misunderstand' Separation Of Church And State

Nick Visser
Updated Wed, November 15, 2023 

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Tuesday that the notion of separation of church and state was a “misnomer” and that the nation required “everybody’s vibrant expression of faith.”

Johnson made the comments in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” after host Andrew Ross Sorkin asked about an image of the lawmaker praying on the House floor earlier this year.

“When the Founders set this system up, they wanted a vibrant expression of faith in the public square because they believed that a general moral consensus and virtue was necessary,” Johnson said. “The separation of church and state is a misnomer; people misunderstand it.”

“Of course, it comes from a phrase that was in a letter that [Thomas] Jefferson wrote. It’s not in the Constitution,” he continued. “And what he was explaining is they did not want the government to encroach upon the church — not that they didn’t want principles of faith to have influence on our public life. It’s exactly the opposite.”


Johnson, a religious conservative, was elected speaker last month and quickly sparked concern among Democrats for his efforts to oppose abortion and gay rights. He took a Bible to the rostrum in the House before taking his oath of office, saying the “Bible is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority … each of you, all of us.”

“Someone asked me today in the media, ‘People are curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue?’” Johnson recalled later that week on Fox News. “I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.’”

On Tuesday, Johnson said he believed the Founders “knew” religion would be “important to maintain our system” of democracy.

“That’s why I think we need more of that,” he said. “Not an establishment of any national religion, but we need everybody’s vibrant expression of faith because it’s such an important part of who we are as a nation.”

Speaker Mike Johnson calls separation of church and state ‘a misnomer’
Ed Pilkington
Wed, November 15, 2023

The speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, has delivered his verdict on the separation of church and state: it is a “misnomer”.

The second-in-line to the presidency informed Americans on Tuesday that their time-honored conception of one of the founding principles of the country was a “misunderstanding”. Speaking to CNBC’s Squawk Box, he tried to turn the conventional wisdom about the founders’ intentions on its head and claimed what they really wanted was to stop government interfering with religion, not the other way around.

Related: Mike Johnson, theocrat: the House speaker and a plot against America

“The separation of church and state is a misnomer,” the speaker said in an interview with the TV channel from the US Capitol. “People misunderstand it. Of course, it comes from a phrase that was in a letter that Jefferson wrote. It’s not in the constitution.”

Johnson was referring to Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut, written in 1802 when the third president was in the White House. It makes clear that the founding fathers subscribed to a powerful separation of church and state, which they enshrined in the establishment clause of the first amendment.

Jefferson in his letter quotes the establishment clause saying that Congress should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. He goes on to say that it builds “a wall of separation between Church & State”.

Johnson’s contentious remarks fall in line with years of effort on his part to bring Christianity into the center of American politics. The New York Times has dubbed him the first Christian nationalist to hold the powerful position of speaker.

FUNDAMENTALISTS TAKE OVER CONGRESS

Mike Johnson and other Republican members of Congress kneel in prayer in the House chamber on 6 January 2023. Photograph: Jon Cherry/Reuters

In the CNBC interview, Johnson was asked to explain the unusual sight of him praying along with a group of other members of Congress on bended knee on the floor of the House shortly after he was sworn in as speaker.

He has made no attempt to obscure his religious fervor. He told Fox News that anyone who wanted to know what he thought about any issue should “go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it – that’s my worldview”.

That worldview goes as far as to cast the US not as a democracy but as a “biblical” republic, as he stated in a 2016 interview. Before he entered politics as a member of the Louisiana legislature in 2015 he worked for many years as senior lawyer for the extremist Alliance Defense Fund.

The same group, renamed the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), has spearheaded attacks on LGBTQ+ rights before the US supreme court and played an important hand in the overturning of the right to an abortion in the court’s Dobbs decision.
View comments (80)


Speaker Johnson: Separation of church, state ‘a misnomer’
Lauren Sforza
Tue, November 14, 2023 

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) pushed back Tuesday on the belief that there should be separation between church and state on the U.S., arguing that the founding fathers wanted faith to be a “big part” of government.

“Separation of church and state … is a misnomer. People misunderstand it,” Johnson said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” when asked about him praying on the House floor. “Of course, it comes from a phrase that was in a letter that Jefferson wrote is not in the Constitution.”

“And what he was explaining is they did not want the government to encroach upon the church, not that they didn’t want principles of faith to have influence on our public life. It’s exactly the opposite,” the Speaker added.

The letter that Johnson referred to is Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists Association of Connecticut, who had expressed concerns about religious liberty. In his reply, Jefferson said that the First Amendment, which bars Congress from prohibiting free exercise of a religion, built “a wall of separation between Church & State.”

Johnson argued that “faith, our deep religious heritage and tradition is a big part of what it means to be an American” in his comments Tuesday. He further argued that “morality” must be kept among Americans “so that we have accountability.”

“That’s why I think we need more of that,” he said. “Not an establishment of any national religion, but we need everybody’s vibrant expression of faith, because it’s such an important part of who we are as a nation.”

He is not the only member of Congress who has who has suggested that faith should influence the government. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) faced backlash last year after she said she believes “the church is supposed to direct the government.”

“I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk — that’s not in the Constitution,” Boebert said at the Cornerstone Christian Center in Basalt, Colo. “It was in a stinking letter and it means nothing like they say it does.”

Johnson, who was elected as Speaker last month, faced criticism of his Christian faith. An op-ed in The New York Times published earlier this month claimed the Louisiana Republican’s election as Speaker “reflects the strength of white evangelical voters’ influence in the House Republican caucus.”

Before taking the oath of office last month, Johnson brought his Bible to the rostrum, saying, “The Bible is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority … each of you, all of us,” according to The Associated Press.

Before serving in Congress, Johnson served as a professor at the government school of Liberty University in Virginia, a Christian school, according to AP. From 2004-12, Johnson also served on the board of the policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention.

TRUMP ISN'T POTUS YET...

FBI raids home of Johnathan Buma, a bureau whistleblower who claimed his Trumpworld investigations were suppressed

Mattathias Schwartz
Updated Tue, November 14, 2023

FBI special agent and whistleblower Johnathan Buma alleged that the bureau stymied investigative leads that implicated Rudy Giuliani. On Monday, federal agents executed a search warrant at his Orange County home.Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty, and Insider

• FBI agents raided the Orange County home of Special Agent Johnathan Buma on Monday.

• Buma told Congress that the bureau forced him to stop investigating Rudy Giuliani.

• Documents show Buma is suspected of mishandling classified information, which his attorney denies.

A squad of federal agents in tactical gear executed a search warrant on Monday at the home of one of their own, FBI special agent Johnathan Buma, according to Buma's attorney, Scott Horton.

A search warrant reviewed by Business Insider states that Buma is suspected of violating laws against mishandling classified information, and a property receipt lists "classified material" and "possible classified material" as being among the items seized.

Horton said that both the allegations and the property receipts were false.

"There was no classified information found by the raid," he said. "I know that from talking to my client."

The FBI declined to comment.

In July, Buma filed protected whistleblower disclosures alleging bureau mismanagement and retaliation. His 22-page disclosure to the Senate Judiciary Committee alleges that Buma was ordered not to investigate Donald Trump's associates and that he was forced to shut down his most valuable confidential sources. It also describes evidence collected by Buma indicating that Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal attorney, was compromised by a Russian intelligence asset.

After his Senate disclosure was leaked, Buma, a 15-year FBI veteran who specializes in counter-intelligence investigations, spoke about his allegations in an interview with the New Yorker and a video interview with Business Insider.

Last month, one of Buma's sources, Charles Johnson, claimed that he had recruited Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel to be an FBI confidential human source with the code name "Philosopher." Business Insider and the Atlantic both confirmed that Thiel was indeed an FBI informant as well as details of Thiel's reporting to the FBI about approaches by the Kremlin.

Horton, Buma's attorney, told BI that the Monday raid at Buma's home in Orange County, California, was retaliation for Buma's actions as a whistleblower. "They deployed the level of personnel that would be customary for a major mafia figure for a single active-duty FBI agent suspected of having cooperated with a congressional investigation," Horton said. "That is his offense. This continues to raise grave concerns about how the bureau's counter-intelligence activities targeting the Russian intelligence services are undermined by political shenanigans on the part of senior bureau management."

The Buma raid raises larger concerns about the bureau's treatment of whistleblowers more generally, Horton added: "Under federal law, whistleblowers who cooperate with Congress and who file whistleblower complaints are strictly protected against retaliation. Senior management of the Bureau are signaling that they believe they are not bound by this law."

Property receipts reviewed by Business Insider show that the bureau seized a raft of documents and an extensive array of electronics from Buma's home, where he lives with his wife and three of their school-aged children: nine laptops, three smartwatches, six tablets, two phones, and one desktop computer. Horton said that most of those devices belong to his family, for use in his wife's work and their children's education.

At the time of the raid, Buma was on medical leave from the bureau, Horton added; he had already turned in his gun, badge, bureau car and bureau phone at an appointment with his supervisor earlier on Monday.

Trump's public plan for revenge hands Democrats "the greatest opportunity for a positive outcome"

Chauncey DeVega

SALON
Tue, November 14, 2023 at 3:45 AM MST·13 min read

Donald Trump Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

There is frustration among Democrats and others who support President Joe Biden that the polls are increasingly showing how his many public policy successes are not being rewarded. In addition, it appears that Biden’s chances for victory in 2024 are being undermined by growing support for third party candidates and a loss of support among key Democratic Party constituencies.

As seen last week, Donald Trump is escalating his public threats and promises to become America’s first dictator with Hitler-like language and plans to put the country’s “internal enemies” and “vermin” (which here means President Biden and other leading Democrats, special counsel Jack Smith, Attorney General Merrick Garland, journalists and reporters, non-white migrants and immigrants, Muslims, and anyone else who believes in the rule of law and democracy) in prison or worse. On this latest example of Trump’s evil and deployment of stochastic terrorism, Mike Tomasky writes at the New Republic:

His use—twice; once on social media, and then repeated in a speech—of the word “vermin” to describe his political enemies cannot be an accident. That’s an unusual word choice. It’s not a smear that one just grabs out of the air. And it appears in history chiefly in one context, and one context only….

This is straight-up Nazi talk, in a way he’s never done quite before. To announce that the real enemy is domestic and then to speak of that enemy in subhuman terms is Fascism 101. Especially that particular word….

No, Trump’s rats are a much broader category, and in that sense an even more dangerous one—he means whoever manages to offend him while exercising their constitutionally guaranteed right to register dissent and to criticize him.

And no, he’s not going to be throwing anybody in a gas chamber. But that’s a pretty low bar for un-American behavior; that is, fascism was not so bad until it started exterminating people? The Nazis did a lot of things from 1933 to 1941 (when the Final Solution commenced) that would shock Americans today, and Trump and his followers are capable of every one of them:

Shutting down critical voices in the press; banning books, and even burning some, just to drive the point home; banning opposition organizations or even parties; making political arrests of opponents without telling them the charges; purging university faculties; doing the same with the civil service… If you doubt that President Trump and the Republican Party are capable of all these things and several more, you need to read some history pronto.

The sum effect of these seemingly never-ending and simultaneous crises is an American people who are uncertain, discontent, and feeling weathered. And in a type of tragic feedback loop, it is these negative feelings that are fueling Trump and the Republican fascists and other malign right-wing actors who will only make matters worse if they take power in 2025. One must never forget that fascism is pain; Trump and the Republican fascists and the larger “conservative” movement are expert political sadists.


In an attempt to make better a sense of our collective emotions and how to (perhaps) orient ourselves in this time of great troubles and challenges, and where we are in the Age of Trump and what comes next, I asked a range of experts for their thoughts and suggestions.

These answers have been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Jonathan M. Metzl is the Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Psychiatry and the director of the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society, at Vanderbilt University. The award-winning author of “Dying of Whiteness”. His forthcoming book is “What We’ve Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms.”

I feel completely upside down to be honest. There have been some real moments of despair about alliances made and sustained over the course of a long time. But I am very hopeful that we are coming back together. It’s just such an urgent moment. But these past weeks have not been easy for many reasons. I am terrified. I think repeatedly about Jason Stanley’s work, suggesting that a divided opposition is one of the key opening points for the rise of fascism. I believe we’re going to need to come back together in common cause but part of that involves first, seeing how we are all being pulled apart right now, and who that serves.

I thought we were at the end. But perhaps we’re closer to the beginning. I am imagining someone in year three of the hundred years war from many years ago turning to his neighbor and saying, can you believe we’ve put up with three years of this crap? It just feels like an incredibly violent moment right now in so many ways and in so many places. With little reward for empathy, peace, or resolution. So, the stakes of everything feel incredibly high and the institutions that usually protect us feel incredibly embattled and in peril.

Jill Lawrence is an opinion writer and the author of "The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock."

A friend long involved in politics told me the other day that while walking his dog, he became overwhelmed by the crush of terrible events—in particular, the Middle East crisis that he feared was dividing Democrats to the point of ensuring another Donald Trump presidency. But then he came upon two fathers teaching their young sons how to hold a bat and swing at a baseball, and he teared up and thought, maybe this is the way. Maybe moments like these should be the focus. And I have to admit, even as a political journalist steeped in America’s traumas over many years, this pileup has me looking for escape. In addition to my usual retreat into mysteries and crime novels, I’m also trying to find upbeat topics to write about. And there are some, such as my belated recognition of Taylor Swift as a force for good, and a moment that crystallized the idea that Joe Biden is trying to build for a future he (and I) won’t be here to see.

The crises are always percolating and occasionally exploding into the foreground, of course. Not to be fatalistic, but it seems like each and every one of them—Israel-Hamas, Ukraine-Russia, the violence, threats and polarization of our politics, the latest mass shooting by someone who never should have had a gun much less an assault rifle, and Trump looming over it all—starkly illuminates the failings of our system. It is not, as many have said and other nations have shown in real time, what our Founders or anyone else would invent today. And yet we don’t change it, feel powerless to change it, structurally or even legislatively. And so there’s minority domination in many arenas, and a break-glass tool like impeachment—which should have definitively ended the Trump era of American politics—is now reduced to a partisan weapon of vengeance.

In terms of the Trump saga, we are finally in the chapter of courts, judges and juries, hoping they will hold him accountable when all else has failed. But there’s no guarantee there will be legal reckonings. Right now, the most definitive statement you can make about Trump is that his grip on the Republican Party has never been stronger. He’s crushing his GOP primary challengers by a combined average of nearly 46 percentage points. He’s raising money off his legal martyrdom. And he just installed his pick as House speaker. A Trump cutout, an architect and purveyor of the Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 election, is running the U.S. House.

My greatest fear is that 2023 and 2024 will show to the world that the United States cannot get its act together. That it is an unreliable ally, both in war and in the global economy. That it can’t be trusted to deliver without drama, angst and brinksmanship, if it delivers at all. That a lot of people in America and all over the world will be hurt by the inability of too many in one of our major political parties to understand the meaning of the words “urgency” and “compromise” and “greater good” and “get it done”

As far as hope, believe it or not, I found some in “The American Buffalo,” Ken Burns’ new documentary. It is at core a brutal tale of American cruelty, greed, racism, opportunism and plain stupidity, as you’d expect. Yet it is sprinkled with the occasional pang of guilt and, ultimately, the realization by flawed people that an enormous mistake had been made. It took near extinction to galvanize Americans and the U.S. government, but it happened, and the buffalo still roam. My hope is that our democracy can right itself before one minute to midnight.

Nate Powell is a graphic novelist and the first cartoonist to win the National Book Award. Powell has also won four Eisner Awards.His forthcoming graphic novel, Fall Through, will be released in February 2024, followed by a comic adaptation of James Loewen’s influential "Lies My Teacher Told Me" in June.

I’m currently able to stay informed and aware from day-to-day by making careful, consistent choices about how much media I consume and interact with. Most importantly, I’m almost entirely jettisoned from Twitter, which has been immensely helpful in staying better oriented and mentally healthy. My professional need to hype two upcoming books does require me to engage with social media regularly, but I feel I’ve been able to escape the poisonous cycles of perceived pressure to produce extra noise on these platforms. I listen and read, and try to stay more attuned to local, in-person events and actions. We’re going to look back in horror at the ways in which the last decade of social media rewired our minds to accept as normal a virtually impossible level of personal bandwidth as round-the-clock participants. We are their products, not their users.

Generally, I get the sense that many of us simply memory-holed most of the important and difficult learning experiences of the past 9 years or so. People choose to fall back into easy ruts (accepting false binaries; not following through with their own fact checking; retweeting and amplifying misinformation, fascists, and bad actors; forgetting what the pandemic taught us about the necessity of considering more vulnerable community members when we share public space, or even to err on the side of caution and compassion when we don’t know what someone else is experiencing).

However, I am encouraged both by the clear sense that most people are simply less rattled by the noise, and that people under 35 have grown to develop more resilient bullshit detectors. I do not hold a sense of doom or inevitability about our major crisis of democracy as we move into 2024—but its counterweight is that I know that these outcomes are truly up in the air, and acknowledging that we simply cannot read magical signs to determine democracy’s survival is crucial.

In reality, I think it’s always the middle of this saga—a rolling, evolving middle with constantly moving chapter markers. I don’t think we’ll reach something resembling an end point until Trump dies, and even then, it’s merely one end point of many which will distract lots of people from the strengthened legacies of consequence-free grifting, exploitation, and weakened societal and institutional defenses against billionaires and fascists.

What gives me the most hope is that people everywhere have established it’s very possible to stay focused on resisting fear, false divisions, and misinformation to protect what we have left—and that I’ve been able to kind of write off those whom I know will never develop the empathy and critical thinking skills necessary to suddenly see these crises for what they are, or that there is no final victory to be won. Protecting the unfulfilled promise of multiracial democracy must simply become an enlarged factor in how we each spend our lives in the coming decades.

I’m most filled with fear at the clear understanding that many white Americans across multiple demographic lines are absolutely uninterested in understanding the imminent, present dangers facing us all— in understanding that yes, our fates are all interconnected here—and the death-cult resignation of many who fall back on their fading lifespans, their illusory heaven, the lie that any of us may individually be exempt from the coming decades’ impact.

Steven Beschloss is a journalist and author of several books, including "The Gunman and His Mother." His website is America, America.

This is a time of not only multiple crises, but also particular peril. This concerns the intensifying climate of violence and rise in hate crimes, as well as the expansion of voices on the left who are willing to abandon Joe Biden because of their resentment toward his commitment to Israel and its survival. The intensity of their pro-Palestinian—and in some cases, pro-Hamas—anger has led to their insistence that there is no way they will vote for him next year. This comes at a moment when Donald Trump is surrounded by networks of acolytes energetically working to institutionalize autocracy. Their goal: To expand his ability to pursue retribution without legal pushback if he were to regain the White House.

If the dangers facing democracy appeared to be the dominant issue that Democrats would coalesce around before, this most recent shift away from Biden is troubling. That said, I believe the anti-democratic effort to empower the disgraced ex-president with ultimate freedom and surround him with lawyers ready to manipulate the law and the Justice Department doesn’t depend on Trump’s election.

With him or without him, there’s a growing number of operatives on the right seeking to pursue this fascistic direction in any case. The structure, psyche and commitment is evolving to end democracy even if Trump keels over or ends up in the slammer. The ascendance to House speaker of Christian nationalist Mike Johnson—with his self-professed belief in “18th Century values”—only increases the likelihood that a GOP majority would help accelerate this downward spiral. Ironically, these dangers also represent the greatest opportunity for a positive outcome. The Republicans are not pretending to be other than what they are. They are proud of their extremist agenda, and they have made it crystal clear to anyone paying attention to what is at stake.

As I see it, Americans have a year to sort out what kind of country, what kind of society, they want. The 2024 election will determine whether they are ready to toss away the American experiment, usher in autocracy and government fueled by violence and bigotry—or they will choose for a government committed to making lives better.

Biden voters say more motivated to stop Trump than to support president-Reuters/Ipsos

Jason Lange and James Oliphant
Updated Wed, November 15, 2023 

 U.S. President Biden delivers remarks on his economic objectives iin Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Americans inclined to vote for Democratic President Joe Biden in the 2024 election say they are more motivated by stopping Donald Trump from returning to the Oval Office than they are by supporting the incumbent, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

The two-day poll, which closed on Tuesday, showed Biden and Trump locked in a tight race, with Republican Trump leading Biden 51% to 49% when respondents were asked to pick between the two, within the poll's credibility interval of about four percentage points.

Biden's supporters were more likely than those backing Trump to say they would cast their vote to keep the other candidate from winning, a possible indicator of low enthusiasm for Biden as well as a deep disdain for Trump among many Democrats.

Some 50% of Biden supporters in the poll described their vote as being "against Donald Trump and his policies," compared to 38% who said they would be voting "to support Joe Biden and his policies." Twelve percent of Biden's supporters said they were unsure which reason better explained their pick.

Among Trump's supporters, 40% said they would be voting against Biden and 42% said they would vote for Trump to support the Republican and his policies. The rest - or 18% - were unsure which reason applied.

Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to challenge Biden in 2024, though neither has been formally nominated by his party.

ENTHUSIASM GAP

Democratic strategists said the poll results bolster the view that Biden needs to make an affirmative case for his re-election, particularly in fiercely competitive states such as Georgia and North Carolina.

Many Americans remain unfamiliar with Biden's economic policies, which have led to Congress approving significant new investments in U.S. infrastructure.

"Biden 100% needs to be clearly articulating his economic vision," said Michael Ceraso, a Democratic strategist who worked on former President Barack Obama's 2008 and 2012 election campaigns. "I don't think you can win Georgia this election cycle with it just being an anti-Trump message."

Jesse Ferguson, a strategist who worked for Democratic Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential bid, said Biden's team should use the data to draw comparisons with Trump rather than simply attack him.

Biden's campaign declined to comment on the poll results and referred instead to a Nov. 8 campaign memo that argued Biden's agenda was widely embraced and that Trump was holding Republicans back because of his extremism.

A majority of Americans do back Biden's side of some key national debates, perhaps most critically when it comes abortion rights, with a Reuters/Ipsos poll in September showing Americans prefer Democrats to Republicans by two-to-one on protecting abortion access.

But Biden's presidency has nonetheless been defined in part by his own unpopularity, with his approval rating stuck around 40% for much of the last year and a half, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling. Inflation has been historically high and many Americans, including many Democrats, have expressed concern about his advanced age. At 80, Biden is already the oldest president ever to occupy the White House.

Trump, 77, looms large as a bogeyman for the U.S. left - and for some conservatives as well - given his history of inflammatory remarks against immigrants and women as well as his efforts to overthrow his loss to Biden in the 2020 election.

Many Americans are fed up with both Biden and Trump. The new Reuters/Ipsos poll showed significant support for independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr, an anti-vaccine activist and scion of a storied political family.

In a hypothetical three-way contest, 30% of poll respondents picked Biden, 32% picked Trump and 20% selected Kennedy. The rest said were unsure or wouldn't vote.

The poll was conducted online, gathering responses from 1,006 adults nationwide.

(Reporting by Jason Lange and James Oliphant, Additional reporting by Nandita Bose; Editing by Scott Malone and Daniel Wallis)

Trump edges Biden, but half of voters want new candidates in 2024 field: poll

Lauren Sforza
Wed, November 15, 2023 


While a new poll shows former President Trump narrowly beating President Biden in a hypothetical 2024 match-up, half of the voters surveyed are not satisfied with the current candidates and want to see new faces join the race.

Quinnipiac University’s latest poll released Wednesday showed Trump with 48 percent support for his White House bid — a slight edge over Biden’s 46 percent support. This marked the first time since February that Trump received a higher percentage of support than Biden, Quinnipiac noted. The polling center also added that nearly all polls it has conducted about the 2024 general election have showed close races.

The poll found that more than half of voters, 52 percent, said they would like to see other candidates throw their hats in the ring for the 2024 presidential race. There are at least a dozen candidates making a run for the White House in next year’s election, but just 42 percent said they are satisfied with the current field.

Independents and Democrats are more likely to say they would like to see other candidates enter the field, with 72 and 58 percent, respectively, saying so in the poll. Republicans are more satisfied with their choices, with just 29 percent saying they would like to see more candidates jump in the race.

There are seven Republican candidates, including front-runner Trump, who are vying for the GOP nomination. Trump remains in the lead among Republican primary voters, with 64 percent backing Trump in the new poll.

The poll found that 16 percent of Republican voters support Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, 9 percent support former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and 4 percent back entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie received 2 percent support, while 1 percent backed North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.

The survey was conducted among 1,574 registered voters Nov. 9-13 and has a margin error of 2.5 percentage points.