G20

Biden becomes first US president to visit Amazon as Trump signals climate policy shift


Joe Biden became the first US president to visit the Amazon on Sunday, flying over drought-hit regions and fire-damaged rainforests, in a bid to highlight climate change's toll on the vital ecosystem. His visit to Latin America comes as the incoming Trump administration signals reduced US climate commitments.


Issued on: 18/11/2024 
By: NEWS WIRES
Video by: FRANCE 24

00:54

US President Joe Biden walks with Henrique Pereira, Director of the National Institute for Research in the Amazon, as he tours the Museu da Amazonia in Manaus, Brazil on November 17, 2024. © Leah Millis, Reuters




Joe Biden toured the drought-shrunken waters of the Amazon River’s greatest tributary Sunday as the first sitting American president to set foot in the legendary rainforest, while the incoming Trump administration seems poised to scale back the US commitment to combating climate change.

The massive Amazon region, which is about the size of Australia, stores huge amounts of the world’s carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that drives climate change when it's released into the atmosphere. But development is rapidly depleting the world's largest tropical rainforest, and rivers are drying up.

Flying over a stretch of the Amazon in a helicopter, Biden saw severe erosion, ships grounded in the Negro River tributary, and fire damage. He also passed over a wildlife refuge and the expansive waters where the Negro River joins the Amazon. He was joined by Carlos Nobre, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and expert on how climate change is harming the Amazon.

Biden met indigenous leaders — introducing his daughter and granddaughter to them — and visited a museum at the gateway to the Amazon as he looks to highlight his commitment to the preservation of the region. Three indigenous women shook maracas as part of a welcoming ceremony.

Read more  Macron and Lula announce €1 billion investment plan for the Amazon

“I’m proud to become the first sitting president to visit the Amazon,” Biden said before he signing a US proclamation designating Nov. 17 as International Conservation Day.

His administration announced plans last year for a $500 million contribution to the Amazon Fund, the most significant international cooperation effort to preserve the rainforest, primarily financed by Norway.

So far, the US government said it has provided $50 million, and the White House announced Sunday an additional $50 million contribution to the fund.

“It’s significant for a sitting president to visit the Amazon. ... This shows a personal commitment from the president,” said Suely Araújo, former head of the Brazilian environmental protection agency and public policy coordinator with the nonprofit Climate Observatory. “That said, we can’t expect concrete results from this visit."

She doubts that a “single penny” will go to the Amazon Fund once Donald Trump is back in the White House.

The incoming Trump administration is highly unlikely to prioritize the Amazon or anything related to climate change. The Republican president-elect already said he would again pull out of the Paris agreement, a global pact forged to avert the threat of catastrophic climate change, after Biden recommitted to the accord.

Deforestation fell in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest by 30.6 percent in the year-to-year period beginning in August 2023, according to the National Institute for Space Research (INPE). © Mauro Pimentel, AFP

Trump has cast climate change as a “hoax” and said he will eliminate energy efficiency regulations by the Biden administration.

Still, the Biden White House on Sunday announced a series of new efforts aimed at bolstering the Amazon and stemming the impact of climate change.

Among the actions is the launch of a finance coalition that looks to spur at least $10 billion in public and private investment for land restoration and eco-friendly economic projects by 2030, and a $37.5 million loan to an organization to support the large-scale planting of native tree species on degraded grasslands in Brazil.

Biden also plans to highlight that the US is on track to reach $11 billion in spending on international climate financing in 2024, a sixfold increase from when he started his term.

The Amazon is home to Indigenous communities and 10% of Earth’s biodiversity. It also regulates moisture across South America. About two-thirds of the Amazon lies within Brazil, and scientists say its devastation poses a catastrophic threat to the planet.

The forest has been suffering two years of historic drought that have dried up waterways, isolated thousands of riverine communities and hindered riverine dwellers’ ability to fish. It's also made way for wildfires that have burned an area larger than Switzerland and choked cities near and far with smoke.

When Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office last year, he signaled a shift in environmental policy from his predecessor, far-right Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro prioritised agribusiness expansion over forest protection and weakened environmental agencies, prompting deforestation to surge to a 15-year high.

Lula has pledged “zero deforestation” by 2030, though his term runs through the end of 2026. Forest loss in Brazil’s Amazon dropped by 30.6% in the 12 months through July from a year earlier, bringing deforestation to its lowest level in nine years, according to official data released last week.

In that 12-month span, the Amazon lost 6,288 square kilometers (2,428 square miles), roughly the size of the US state of Delaware. But that data fails to capture the surge of destruction this year, which will only be included in next year’s reading.

Despite the success in curbing Amazon deforestation, Lula’s government has been criticized by environmentalists for backing projects that could harm the region, such as paving a highway that cuts from an old-growth area and could encourage logging, oil drilling near the mouth of the Amazon River and building a railway to transport soy to Amazonian ports.

While Biden is the first sitting president in the Amazon, former President Theodore Roosevelt traveled to the region with the help of the American Museum of Natural History following his 1912 loss to Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt, joined by his son and naturalists, traversed roughly 15,000 miles, when the former president fell ill with malaria and suffered a serious leg infection after a boat accident.

Biden is making the Amazon visit as part of a six-day trip to South America, the first to the continent of his presidency. He traveled from Lima, Peru, where he took part in the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

After his stop in Manaus, he was heading to Rio de Janeiro for this year's Group of 20 leaders summit.

(AP)

Drill Baby Drill Returns as G20 Drops Fossil Fuel Phase-Out from Final Draft

By Julianne Geiger - Nov 19, 2024 

The G20 just fumbled the fossil fuel debate. Or did it?

Rio’s final G20 statement dropped any explicit call to phase out oil, gas, and coal. Instead, it offered vague applause for the UAE Consensus from COP28. This wasn’t an oversight. It was a decision.

At COP28, 200 countries agreed to phase out fossil fuels by 2050. The G7 doubled down earlier this year. COP29 in Baku was supposed to build on this. Then Rio happened.

Now, G20 leaders are dodging the hard part. No one should be shocked. The idea that “inexperienced aides” missed the memo on the importance of banning fossil fuels? Please. They knew exactly what they were doing.

Here’s the dynamic: COP talks big. G20 delivers (or doesn’t). COP says, “let’s save the planet.” G20 says, “who’s paying for it?” This time, they didn’t even fake enthusiasm.

Some are calling Rio a win, pointing to the G20’s promise to scale up climate finance “from billions to trillions.” But this comes wrapped in vague promises, with no details on timelines or mechanisms. Critics are already calling it hollow rhetoric, masking the absence of real action on fossil fuels.

Trump’s reelection played its part. His pro-oil stance and “drill, baby, drill” battle cry have reshaped global climate diplomacy—all without being armed with more than mere words and a healthy show of voter support. G20 leaders were always going to tread lightly. The political reality now favors fossil fuels, and that was reflected in Rio’s final language—or lack of it.

The implications are huge. Without G20 backing, COP29 is hanging by a thread. Negotiators in Baku are scrambling. Pro-oil nations like Azerbaijan are seizing the moment. Argentina didn’t even bother to show up.

Blame is flying everywhere. Some point fingers at Brazil’s leadership for mishandling the language. Others blame a fractured G7. But blaming bureaucratic missteps misses the point. This was never about incompetence. It was about priorities.

The G20 has spoken—just not in words. Fossil fuels aren’t going anywhere fast. The tide hasn’t just turned; it’s gone out completely. Anyone surprised by this wasn’t paying attention.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

Why Big Oil Is Scaling Back Renewables Investment

By Tsvetana Paraskova 

- Nov 19, 2024

Big Oil’s returns in the renewables business were slim, at best, even before the 2022 energy and inflation shocks.

To shore up share prices and close that gap with the U.S. giants, BP and Shell changed tack and returned to their roots.

While the majors aren’t abandoning all the renewable projects they embarked on in 2020 and 2021, they have started to scale back investments.



Europe’s biggest oil and gas companies have changed their approach to energy supply twice over the past five years.

First came the ambitions to become major players in the renewables sector and goals to reduce oil and gas production by the end of the decade. That was in 2019 and early 2020 when Big Oil firms were racing to announce major shifts in strategy toward conventional and green energy.

This strategy held for about two years until the energy market shocks from the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the financial shocks of soaring inflation and rising interest rates upended everything again.

Poor Returns, Soaring Costs

Big Oil’s returns in the renewables business were slim, at best, even before the 2022 energy and inflation shocks. Following these shocks, the soaring costs made investments unprofitable, and the European majors Shell, BP, and Equinor took millions of U.S. dollars in impairments on European and U.S. projects in 2023.

Meanwhile, oil and gas production and trading were reaping high returns, and the majors’ profits skyrocketed to all-time highs. European oil and gas giants saw their valuation gap widen to the U.S. peers, ExxonMobil and Chevron.

To shore up share prices and close that gap with the U.S. giants, BP and Shell changed tack and returned to their roots—the core business of pumping and trading conventional energy, which they see (again) as crucial to delivering to consumers while the world moves forward with the energy transition.

Scaling Back Renewables

While the majors aren’t abandoning all the renewable projects they embarked on in 2020 and 2021, they have started to scale back investments and are streamlining these on developments and energy solutions that they see as profitable.

France’s TotalEnergies is the outlier in the group, as it has continued to focus on growing renewable energy capacity and power generation through acquisitions and joint ventures globally.

But the others—Shell, BP, and Equinor—have all reviewed or are reviewing their involvement in clean energy solutions.

BP, for example, said in June that it was scaling back plans for the development of new sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and renewable diesel biofuels projects at its existing sites, pausing planning for two potential projects while continuing to assess three for progression.

“This is aligned with bp’s drive to simplify its portfolio, focusing on value and returns,” the UK-based supermajor said.

Weeks later, the other UK-based giant, Shell, said it was pausing on-site construction work at a biofuels plant in Rotterdam amid weak market conditions, taking a $780-million impairment charge for the second quarter for this.


The pause at the 820,000 tons-a-year biofuels facility at the Shell Energy and Chemicals Park Rotterdam in the Netherlands was needed “to address project delivery and ensure future competitiveness given current market conditions,” the company said.

Shell has also sold its retail home energy businesses in the UK and Germany.

In the summer of 2023, the supermajor unveiled its new strategy to continue investing in oil and gas production and selectively pour capital into renewable energy solutions, angering climate activists and some institutional investors.

Shell’s CEO Wael Sawan has said that reducing global oil and gas production would be “dangerous and irresponsible” as the world still needs those hydrocarbons.

Earlier this year, Shell reaffirmed its ambitions to be a net-zero energy business by 2050 but eased its carbon intensity target for 2030 as it has shifted away from clean power sales to retail customers.

Most recently, on the Q3 2024 earnings call, CEO Sawan said, commenting on the company’s focus on its core business, “We start from the perspective of believing that oil and gas have a critical role in the energy transition for a long time to come.”

“We fundamentally believe that this energy transition is going to be a multi-decadal journey,” Sawan added.

“We fundamentally believe that you’re going to require multiple energy forms to be able to navigate the energy transition and we do see that the energy system will start to see more uncertainty and more volatility in the context of geopolitical changes, demand supply cycles and the like, of course the intermittency of renewables as well.”

BP, for its part, is reportedly scrapping a previous target to reduce its oil and gas production by the end of the decade.

The company is also reportedly considering a potential sale of a minority stake in its offshore wind business in a move to reduce spending on project developments in the sector.

In the Q3 results release, CEO Murray Auchincloss said “In oil and gas, we see the potential to grow through the decade with a focus on value over volume.”

“We also have a deep belief in the opportunity afforded by the energy transition,” Auchincloss added.

Norway’s Equinor is reviewing its renewables business, although it continues to bet big on offshore wind in the long term, evident in the recent acquisition of 9.8% in Ørsted, the world’s biggest offshore wind farm developer.

Equinor has time to wait for a better investment climate in some of the offshore wind opportunities, chief financial officer Torgrim Reitan told analysts on the Q3 earnings call.

“It will come, but for the time being, we are doing some changes organizationally to focus on business development activity, to reduce our cost levels and set ourselves up for playing this in the long run as such.”

“There is very high inflation within the renewable business and there are clear bottlenecks in the supply chains,” Reitan noted.

By Tsvetana Parakova for Oilprice.com

What delusions can tell us about the cognitive nature of belief

The Conversation
November 19, 2024 

Chess Pieces Nikolay Litov/Shutterstock, CC BY-SA

Beliefs are convictions of reality that we accept as true. They provide us with the basic mental scaffolding to understand and engage meaningfully in our world. Beliefs remain fundamental to our behavior and identity, but are not well understood.

Delusions, on the other hand, are fixed, usually false, beliefs that are strongly held, but not widely shared. In previous work, we proposed that studying delusions provides unique insights into the cognitive nature of belief and its dysfunction.

Based on evidence from delusions and other psychological disciplines, we offered a tentative five-stage cognitive model of belief formation.

When faced with an unexpected sensory input or social communication, we seek to account for this based on existing beliefs, memories, and other social information. We then evaluate our account in terms of how well this explains our experiences and how consistent it is with our prior beliefs. If it passes these criteria, the belief is accepted. It then guides what we pay attention to and what other ideas we may consider.

We propose that delusions can arise at different stages in this model. Our approach highlights the importance of the individual’s search for meaning and social context in shaping delusions. It also draws attention to the impact of a delusion, once formed, on subsequent perceptions and thinking.

This model linking delusions and beliefs differs from earlier accounts that suggested delusions were distinct from belief or arise as a largely passive response to anomalous sensory input such as a hallucination. Previous research, for example, has found that some people who believed that family members were replaced by impostors (known as Capgras delusion) had deficits in processing familiar faces, which could have generated this idea.

Based on this, some have suggested that other delusions arise in a similar way, but in combination with an as yet undiscovered deficit in the cognitive process of evaluating our beliefs.

But these accounts didn’t fully consider other contributing factors, such as the individual’s prior beliefs, social context and their personal attempts to explain their experiences.

Informative case study

The study of delusions has been informed by select informative case studies. Unlike large group studies, case studies allow researchers a more detailed exploration of the origins and course of clinical features not explained by current theories.

We recently published a paper in the international journal Cortex that describes a unique case study of a woman who temporally experienced compelling delusions during a brief hospital admission for postpartum psychosis, which can give rise to hallucinations, delusions, mood swings and confusion. This is a rare complication of pregnancy, affecting around 1-2 in 1,000 women, thought to be due to hormonal changes or immunological factors.

Natalie (a pseudonym) had no previous medical or psychiatric history. She developed postpartum psychosis while in hospital after the birth of her second child.

As part of her condition, Natalie reported several delusions, including the belief that strangers were her parents-in-law in disguise (known as Fregoli delusion). Natalie recovered quickly with treatment. The combination of interviews and observations while she was experiencing the delusions and her later retrospective account offered a unique window into the onset and experience of her delusions.

Following a full recovery, Natalie confirmed that she considered her delusions to be strongly held beliefs. She likened them to her conviction that her husband was her husband. This is contrary to some views that suggested that delusions are different from normal beliefs.

Natalie was able to identify specific features that contributed to her delusions. In the case of believing that strangers were her in-laws, Natalie identified mannerisms, behaviors and speech patterns of the strangers that reminded her of her in-laws. This suggested that the delusion could have arisen from inappropriate activation of memory representations of familiar people based on these cues and other factors.


Natalie also recalled other beliefs, including that she was dead (known as Cotard delusion), which she did not share with clinicians at the time. She noted that she entertained this idea due to the failure of other explanations to account for her strange experiences and an idea from a television show.



Rational thought can be involved in delusional thinking. Pormezz/Shutterstock


Natalie said she eventually dismissed this idea as implausible, while still holding other delusional ideas. This suggests that belief evaluation may involve different thresholds for different delusions. It also highlights the private nature of some delusions.

Across all of her delusions, Natalie described her active involvement in trying to explain and manage her experiences. She reported considering different explanations and testing these by seeking further information. For example, she asked questions of the people she thought were her in-laws. This suggests a surprisingly similar approach to how we typically form beliefs.

Natalie recalled the influence of television and movies on her ideas. She also recalled how she elaborated on her delusions, once formed, based on information in her surroundings.

These features challenge theories that delusions simply arise from anomalous sensory data. They instead highlight the role of the individual’s search for meaning and social context, as well as the subsequent impact of delusions on perception and thinking.
Implications

As a case study, Natalie’s experiences are not necessarily representative of all people who experience delusions or postpartum psychosis. However, Natalie’s case presents informative features that theories of delusions need to account for.

In particular, Natalie’s personalized insights highlight the critical role of the individual in actively trying to understand their experiences and bestow meaning. This is opposed to just passively accepting beliefs in response to anomalous sensory data or neuropsychological deficits. This suggests psychological therapies may be useful in treating psychosis, in combination with other treatments, in some cases.

More generally, Natalie’s account reveals commonalities between delusions and ordinary beliefs and supports the view that delusions can be understood in terms of cognitive processes across the stages of normal belief formation that we identified.

While there remain challenges in investigating delusions, further study may offer insights into the underpinnings of everyday belief and, in turn, of ourselves.

Michael Connors, Conjoint Senior Lecturer in Psychiatry, UNSW Sydney and Peter W Halligan, Hon Professor of Neuropsychology, Cardiff University


This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

BE AFRAID, VERY AFRAID

'Cast of dangerous clowns': Columnist claims Cabinet picks reflect 'allure of Trumpism'

Kathleen Culliton
November 19, 2024 9

RAW STORY

People dressed as clowns attend the Zombie Walk, October 20, 2024. REUTERS/Pablo Sanhueza

The kind of man Stephen King would depict luring unsuspecting children into sewers is the kind President-elect Donald Trump would pick for the secretary of education, a political columnist argued Tuesday.

Salon writer Amanda Marcotte on Tuesday made the case that Trump is actively seeking out men accused of sexually assaulting women for top positions in his administration or, as she calls it, his "cast of dangerous clowns."

"It's not just that Trump doesn't care about sexual assault," wrote Marcotte. "He appears to see it as a bonus if one of his nominees or allies has faced such allegations."

Three men Trump has tapped for Cabinet have faced sexual assault accusations, reports show.

The congressional Ethics committee investigated whether former Rep. Matt Gaetz sexually assaulted an underage girl, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been accused of sexually assaulting his children's babysitter and Fox News personality Pete Hegseth has been accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a hotel room, reports show.

The three men have publicly denied the accusations.

Marcotte argued Tuesday that the denials — and the accusations — don't matter to Trump or his voters.

"He expects his base voters to see these ... like they see him, as an aspirational figure," Marcotte wrote. "And not because they believe they're innocent men done wrong, either. The ability to commit crimes — even sex crimes — and get away with it is part of the allure of Trumpism."

Marcotte argued Trumpism came as response to the #MeToo movement that sought to hold men such as film mogul Harvey Weinstein — the convicted rapist Trump recently complained had been "schlonged" — accountable for attacking women.

"Defending a man's 'right' to have sex with underage girls would be making good on a campaign promise," she wrote. "It's tempting to hope this will anger the public and result in consequences for Trump, but frankly, that's unlikely."

'Apparently not a joke': Critics stunned as WWE co-founder reportedly expected for Cabinet as Education Secretary
Matthew Chapman
November 19, 2024 8:01PM ET

Donald Trump is reportedly expected to appoint Linda McMahon, the former co-founder of WWE and the chief of the Small Business Administration in his previous presidency, to head up the Department of Education.

The appointment, which swiftly followed Trump's announcement of TV personality and former Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz to head up the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, prompted an instant reaction from commenters on social media.

"Linda McMahon being tipped for Trump’s education secretary," wrote Telegraph editor Gareth Davies on X, attaching a clip of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin's famous "Stunner" finishing move. "Another senior US politician who has been Stunnered."

"Cause nothing says educating our children like being an ex-professional wrestling performer and running the @WWE, which has allegedly failed to protect employees from workplace harassment and sexual misconduct," wrote Kendra Barkoff Lamy, a former spokesperson to President Joe Biden while he served as vice president.

In addition to the reaction on X, others commented on the site's growing competitor, Bluesky.

"And, in further 'apparently not a joke' news, Linda McMahon of the WWE for Secretary of Education. LULZ PWNED as a theory of governance, I guess," wrote McGill University professor and Niskanen Center fellow Jacob T. Levy.

"Sort of like Oz at CMS, it’s not clear to me that McMahon would have an agenda of her own, but that might not be a problem for an administration that wants to shrink and eliminate much of DOE," wrote Yahoo Finance's Jordan Weissmann.

"I wonder if Linda McMahon will allow Jim Jordan and @timgill924.bsky.social [to] settle education policy disagreements in the ring?" wrote Michigan State University professor Brendan Cantwell.

'Betsy DeVos 2.0': Trump education pick raises alarms

Jake Johnson
Common Dreams

November 20, 2024

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced late Tuesday that he intends to nominate Linda McMahon, the billionaire former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, to lead the Department of Education, a key agency that Republicans—including Trump and the authors of Project 2025—have said they want to abolish.

McMahon served as head of the Small Business Administration during Trump's first White House term and later chaired both America First Action—a pro-Trump super PAC—and the America First Policy Institute, a far-right think tank that has expressed support for cutting federal education funding and expanding school privatization.

Trump touted McMahon's work to expand school "choice"—a euphemism for taxpayer-funded private school vouchers—and said she would continue those efforts on a national scale as head of the Education Department.

"We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort," Trump said in a statement posted to his social media platform, Truth Social. (McMahon is listed as an independent director of Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs Truth Social.)

The National Education Association (NEA), a union that represents millions of teachers across the U.S., said in response to the president-elect's announcement that McMahon is "grossly unqualified" to lead the Education Department, noting that she has "lied about having a degree in education," presided over an organization "with a history of shady labor practices," and "pushed for an extreme agenda that would harm students, defund public schools, and privatize public schools through voucher schemes."

"During his first term, Donald Trump appointed Betsy DeVos to undermine and ultimately privatize public schools through vouchers," NEA president Becky Pringle said in a statement. "Now, he and Linda McMahon are back at it with their extreme Project 2025 proposal to eliminate the Department of Education, steal resources for our most vulnerable students, increase class sizes, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle-class families, take away special education services for disabled students, and put student civil rights protections at risk."

"The Department of Education plays such a critical role in the success of each and every student in this country," Pringle continued. "The Senate must stand up for our students and reject Donald Trump's unqualified nominee, Linda McMahon. Our students and our nation deserve so much better than Betsy DeVos 2.0."

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, took a more diplomatic approach, saying in a statement that "we look forward to learning more about" McMahon and that, if she's confirmed, "we will reach out to her as we did with Betsy DeVos at the beginning of her tenure."

"While we expect that we will disagree with Linda McMahon on many issues, our devotion to kids requires us to work together on policies that can improve the lives of students, their families, their educators, and their communities," Weingarten added.

McMahon is one of several billionaires Trump has selected for major posts in his incoming administration, which is teeming with conflicts of interest. During Trump's first term, McMahon and her husband, Vince McMahon, made at least $100 million from dividends, investment interest, and stock and bond sales.

The Guardian noted Tuesday that "in October, [Linda] McMahon was named in a new lawsuit involving WWE."

"The suit alleges that she and other leaders of the company allowed the sexual abuse of young boys at the hands of a ringside announcer, former WWE ring crew chief Melvin Phillips Jr," the newspaper reported. "The complaint specifically alleges that the McMahons knew about the abuse and failed to stop it."

'Declaration of war on expertise': Experts explain danger of Trump 'MAGA zealot' nominees

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump is interviewed by Fox and Friends co-host Pete Hegseth at the White House in Washington, U.S. April 6, 2017. 

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

David Badash

November 20, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump has surprised and even alarmed many across the country, and “puzzled” and “baffled” some within his own party, with his Cabinet and other top White House nominations. Critics on the left have denounced his picks for their apparent lack of experience or qualifications for the roles they are expected to take on, noting some hold controversial or even false positions in the fields they may soon direct policy on. Meanwhile, experts in the fields of government, fascism, and democracy, are raising serious concerns about the potential “danger” some nominees represent, drawing comparisons to the “professional propagandists” often found in authoritarian regimes.

Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an NYU professor of history and a recognized expert on fascism and authoritarianism, on Wednesday pointed to this report on one of Trump’s most-recent nominations, Linda McMahon:





McMahon was Trump’s former administrator of the Small Business Administration, and is a former CEO of WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), a major GOP donor, and has recently been the chair of a pro-Trump Super PAC, the board chair of a pro-Trump think tank, and the co-chair of Trump’s second transition team.

“Trump’s cabinet picks are a declaration of war on expertise and facts (that’s why there are several Fox hosts in the mix). The con artists, fraudsters, and professional propagandists that populate authoritarian governments see facts and laws as impediments to their goals,” Dr. Ben-Ghiat wrote.

READ MORE: JD Vance Accidentally Reveals FBI Director Wray Is Likely Being Replaced

Trump, announcing McMahon’s nomination, claimed, “Linda will use her decades of Leadership experience, and deep understanding of both Education and Business, to empower the next Generation of American Students and Workers, and make America Number One in Education in the World.”

McMahon’s only brush with the field of education came about 15 years ago, when she served on the Connecticut State Board of Education. She resigned after 15 months. At the time, her appointment was controversial, with one lawmaker lamenting, “her depth of knowledge regarding education is lacking.”




McMahon is far from the only controversial nominee.

On Tuesday, the vice chair of the powerful House Rules Committee Jim McGovern (D-MA) blasted Trump’s nominees as “beyond insane.”

“Someone who is credibly accused of having sex with an underage girl. Someone who sucks up to foreign dictators and has attracted major concern that they can’t be trusted to protect America’s secrets from our adversaries. Someone who paid hush money to cover up a sexual assault accusation, you know, to lead our military, he’s picked because Donald Trump likes him on Fox News? Someone who says that tap water turns kids gay? I mean, this is the dream team? This is the dream team? Really?”

He appeared to be referring to Attorney General presumptive nominee Matt Gaetz, Director of National Intelligence presumptive nominee Tulsi Gabbard, Defense Secretary presumptive nominee Pete Hegseth, and HHS Secretary presumptive nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State posted video calling Trump’s nominees “a trainwreck.”

“Gaetz, Gabbard, RFK – none of them have the experience or qualifications for the positions they’re seeking, in addition to the fact they’re all dangerous MAGA zealots,” the organization declared. They posted a video clip (below) from MSNBC with a chyron that noted opposition from the right to Trump’s Attorney General nominee, Matt Gaetz.

MSNBC’s justice and legal affairs analyst Anthony Coley told viewers that Gaetz, the recently resigned U.S. Congressman, “has no national security experience—not anything meaningful—little anti-trust experience, and he certainly has no experience with criminal law, except for being the target of a federal criminal investigation looking into inappropriate sexual contact, allegedly, with a minor.”

Trump has also just appointed his former acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, a strong Trump loyalist, to be the U.S. Ambassador to NATO.

“Whitaker has little evident foreign policy or national security experience, making him an unknown to many in U.S. security circles,” The Associated Press reports. “Previous ambassadors to NATO have generally had years of diplomatic, political or military experience.”

“Before serving Trump,” Mother Jones notes, “he helped a company hawk bizarre products like a ‘masculine toilet’ to help ‘well-endowed men’ avoid unwanted contact with water.”

But The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, a former U.S. Naval War College professor and an expert on Russia and nuclear weapons, served up this warning: “This is just hilarious, but the danger here is that it makes him Senate-confirmed and available for other stuff later.”

In other words, assuming Whitaker is confirmed, Trump could nominate him to another, even more critical role, declaring he’s qualified because he’s already been Senate-confirmed.

Last week, Nichols declared that Trump’s “nominations for intelligence, defense, and justice were revenge on people he thinks are his enemies. This is just endangering millions of innocent people.”

On Monday on MSNBC, Nichols went much further, delivered a scathing analysis of Trump’s nominees, calling them “an all-fronts assault on American democracy,” in another warning.

Trump, he said, is “trying to break the institutions of American government and American society, and what you’ve been seeing for the past few weeks is an all-fronts assault on American democracy, especially with these nominations.”

“I think the most dangerous of these nominations is actually [Pete] Hegseth,” Nichols explained. “And I’m kind of startled that we’re not sitting here talking more about taking a morning Fox [News] host and sticking him in the nuclear chain of command, to lead the largest—one of the largest—bureaucracies in the United States, in the world, including the person that’s supposed to look after the most powerful fighting force on the planet.”

And he concluded, “it’s also important to recognize that we could be in the first phases of a major constitutional crisis, even before Trump is sworn in.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

Dr. Oz nomination seen as potential boon for Medicare privatization

Donald Trump looks on as Pennsylvania Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz speaks at a pre-election rally to support Republican candidates in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, U.S., November 5, 2022. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo
Donald Trump looks on as Pennsylvania Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz speaks at a pre-election rally to support Republican candidates in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, U.S., November 5, 2022. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo

Eloise Goldsmith, 

Common Dreams

November 21, 2024

Dr. Mehmet Oz, whose unsuccessful 2022 Pennsylvania Senate bid included pitching voters on a plan to expand the privatized Medicare Advantage program, is now in a position to potentially actualize that plan.

President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that Oz, also known by his TV personality name Dr. Oz, is his pick to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

"Dr. Oz—a massive investor in Pharma—told the voters of Pennsylvania his plans to privatize Medicare… and they rejected him. Now Trump is giving him the authority to see his industry-approved plan carried through," wrote the progressive-leaning outlet The Lever, which covered Oz's support for Medicare Advantage back in 2022.

Through Medicare Advantage, which has been promoted by Trump and other congressional Republicans, seniors can opt out of traditional government-run Medicare health plans and instead choose plans administered by private insurers, such as UnitedHealthcare and Cigna.

According to The Lever's 2022 reporting, Oz pushed Medicare Advantage plans on his show The Dr. Oz Show and co-wrote a 2020 column for Forbes with a former healthcare executive in which they argued that a "Medicare Advantage For All" plan can "save" our healthcare system. In the column, Oz and his co-author articulated a plan to expand Medicare Advantage by imposing a 20% payroll tax.

Oz "is not a good pick for a very powerful position in charge of a trillion dollars of healthcare spending," wrote Matt Stoller of the American Economic Liberties Project on X, in reference to The Lever's investigation.

The Lever also reported that Oz's plan to expand private plans under Medicare Advantage could "boost companies in which he invests." For example, Oz and his wife owned up to $550,000 worth of stock in UnitedHealth Group, at the time of reporting. UnitedHealthcare and Humana account for nearly half, or 47%, of Medicare Advantage enrollees nationwide, according to the health policy organization KFF.

Additionally, a 2022 investigation by The New York Timesfound that major health insurers have exploited Medicare Advantage to boost their profits by billions of dollars.

Project 2025, a list of right-wing policy proposals led by the Heritage Foundation that Trump has tried to distance himself from, calls for making Medicare Advantage the default option for Medicare beneficiaries, which, if enacted, "would be a multibillion-dollar annual giveaway to corporations at the expense of Medicare enrollees and taxpayers," according to the liberal research and advocacy organization the Center for American Progress.

Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, offered a related critique of Oz: Americans "need someone who will crack down on insurers who want to deny care to the sick, providers who skimp on quality healthcare, corporations that want to privatize Medicare, and Big Pharma profiteers and ideologues who want to slash Medicaid and refuse care to low-income people. What they do not need is a healthcare huckster, which unfortunately Dr. Mehmet Oz appears to have become, having spent much of his recent career hawking products of dubious medical value."

In addition to the potential boon for private insurers, some researchers, news outlets, and members of Congress have also raised concerns about the quality of care administered under Medicare Advantage.

A 2022 government report found that "[Medicare Advantage Organizations] sometimes delayed or denied Medicare Advantage beneficiaries' access to services, even though the requests met Medicare coverage rules" and also "denied payments to providers for some services that met both Medicare coverage rules and [Medicare Advantage Organization] billing rules."

In October, a group of three Democratic lawmakers wrote to the current CMS administrator about increasingly widespread abuses and care denials by for-profit Medicare Advantage insurers.

"We are concerned that in many instances MA plans are failing to deliver, compromising timely access to care, and undermining the ability of seniors and Americans with disabilities to purchase the coverage that’s right for them," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), and Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) wrote in a letter.

"We continue to hear alarming reports from seniors and their families, beneficiary advocates, and healthcare providers that MA plans are falling short, and finding a good plan is too difficult," they wrote.


In particular, they pointed to Medicare Advantage plans' growing reliance on prior authorization, a complex, barrier-ridden process whereby doctors must demonstrate a proposed treatment is medically necessary before the insurer will cover it.

"Overuse of prior authorization is not only harmful to patients, it hinders healthcare providers' ability to offer best-in-class service," they added.

Social Security Works, a progressive advocacy group, warned in a social media post Tuesday that "Dr. Oz wants to fully privatize Medicare."

"That's why Donald Trump put him in charge of Medicare," the group added. "We will fight to stop this charlatan from getting anywhere near our Medicare system."

Trump nomination of crypto banker Howard Lutnick another 'win for the billionaire class'

Howard Lutnick, Chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, gestures as he speaks during a rally for Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden, in New York, U.S., October 27, 2024. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo

Julia Conley

Common Dreams

November 20, 2024

Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen feigned surprise on Wednesday over President-elect Donald Trump's nomination of Wall Street CEO Howard Lutnick to lead the U.S. Department of Commerce.

"Oh look, another billionaire has made his way into Trump's Cabinet," said the group, noting Lutnick is also a promoter of cryptocurrency and a Trump megadonor. "The conflicts of interest are almost too many to count."

Among the conflicts are Lutnick's involvement in the crypto industry and federal and state cases against Cantor Fitzgerald.

In addition to running the Wall Street firm, Lutnick is a banker for the "stablecoin" company Tether; purchasers receive a Tether token for $1, with the proceeds invested in reserves and Treasury bonds managed by Lutnick's Cantor Fitzgerald.

As Public Citizen noted, New York Attorney General Letitia James found in 2021 that Tether and another crypto firm "recklessly and unlawfully covered up massive financial losses to keep their scheme going and protect their bottom lines."

The company is also reportedly under federal investigation over alleged criminal violations of anti-money laundering rules and sanctions.

Public Citizen also said that while co-chairing Trump's transition team, Lutnick "may also have helped arrange a meeting between Trump and Coinbase chief Brian Armstrong," who "helped steer a record amount of political spending from the crypto industry into the 2024 election."

Crypto firms poured over $119 million into directly influencing the 2024 federal elections, Public Citizen found in August, making the industry's spending second only to that of fossil fuel companies.

As Politico reported in October, even other members of Trump's inner circle have accused Lutnick of using his transition team co-chair position to take meetings on Capitol Hill and "talk about matters impacting his investment firm, Cantor Fitzgerald—including high-stakes regulatory matters involving its cryptocurrency business."

Lutnick's nomination, said former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, serves as a reminder that "Trump serves the oligarchy, not the people."

"Debris from crypto's political spending tsunami will jam up more halls in Washington than ever before if Lutnick is confirmed as secretary of commerce," said Bartlett Naylor, a financial policy advocate for Public Citizen. "The president-elect, who once correctly called bitcoin a scam, now surrounds himself with even more crypto enablers. Cryptocurrency won't return good jobs to the heartland or reduce food prices; it will only thin the wallets of those vulnerable to a now government-legitimized con."

Government watchdog Accountable.US pointed to more than $19 million in political donations Lutnick has made since 2009, nearly all of which went to GOP candidates and political action committees. He contributed $6 million to Trump's super PAC, Make America Great Again, Inc., in 2024 alone.


"Howard Lutnick's questionable qualifications to lead the Department of Commerce begin and end with his loyalty to the president-elect," said Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk.

Tether isn't the only Lutnick-linked company that's been investigated for wrongdoing. The Securities and Exchange Commission fined Cantor Fitzgerald $1.4 million in 2023, saying the company repeatedly failed "to identify and report customers who qualified as large traders." The company also agreed to pay $16 million in fines to the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2022 for using unauthorized communication channels.

Should Lutnick be confirmed as commerce secretary, Accountable.US said a "major regulatory conflict" could arise due to a dispute between the BGC Group, a spin-off brokerage of Cantor Fitzegerald, and futures and commodities exchange CME Group, over a competing trading platform BGC Group is launching.

"Lutnick's company's violations resulting in financial regulator fines and millions in right-wing political donations shows that political devotion takes precedence over actual experience to do the job in Trump's Cabinet," said Carrk.

Trump campaigned as a champion of working people as he railed against high grocery prices. As The New Republicreported on Tuesday, Lutnick has showered Trump's plan for across-the-board tariffs with effusive praise—even as leading economists warn the plan to impose tariffs on foreign imports will pass higher costs onto consumers, not foreign countries.

"In September, Lutnick told CNBC that 'tariffs are an amazing tool for the president to use—we need to protect the American worker,'" wrote Edith Olmsted. "Lutnick also gushed about tariffs at Trump's fascistic rally in Madison Square Garden last month, claiming that America was better off 100 years ago, when it had 'no income tax and all we had was tariffs.' His high praise for tariffs came even as he admitted Americans would face higher prices as a direct result."

Lutnick's nomination, said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), "is a win for the billionaire class at the expense of working people.


"The across-the-board tariff plan," she said, "is a distraction from the MAGA scam to extend tax giveaways for giant corporations and billionaires like Howard Lutnick."

Trump's Cabinet of horrors exposes his totalitarian drift

John Stoehr
November 19, 2024 

Former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard attends a campaign rally of Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump in Greensboro, North Carolina, U.S. October 22, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

Donald Trump nominated an alleged rapist and sex trafficker to be attorney general. He picked a Russian asset to be director of national intelligence. He chose a religious fanatic and Kremlin stooge to be secretary of defense. And for secretary of health and human resources, he selected an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who once had a literal brain worm, and who habitually takes (“legal”) steroids to maintain, at the age of 70, the appearance of a physique of a man half his age.

There are the obvious things to say about this motley crew. Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr are , respectively, not qualified to lead the agencies they have been chosen to lead. None has managed anything larger than an office. None has the expertise required. Gaetz has never worked in law enforcement, Gabbard in intelligence, Hegseth in military leadership or Kennedy in public health. Their only qualification is their loyalty to the man who picked them, and how they look to him when they are on television.

Right now, the discussion seems to be concentrated on the Senate Republicans, who will have majority control of that chamber in January. They will be responsible ultimately for vetting Trump’s cabinet picks. The question is whether they will find the courage to restrain the President-elect or roll over, either by approving them or by letting Trump have what he wants through recess appointments.

Among liberals, the discussion seems to be limited to the absurdities each of these people brings to governance as well as the dangers they pose. “Yes, shake your head at the seeming absurdity of these picks,” wrote MSNBC’s Jen Psaki. “But don’t stop there. These choices aren’t just controversial; they require us to stay vigilant about how each potential new Cabinet member could negatively affect our lives.”

But I think we’re missing the bigger picture. These nominations signal the totalitarian drift that’s coming to Washington and the country. Yes, that’s right. No, I’m not exaggerating. It’s time to start using that word.

Totalitarianism seeks dominion over the individual to the point where individuality is erased. That’s what happened to the Republican Party. Individuals have looked the same, talked the same, acted the same and thought the same for a long time. (The men sometimes literally dress the same as Donald Trump, with a blue suit and a long red tie.) After the election, however, Republican behavior has finally been totalized.

As one GOP congressman said, Trump “is the leader of our party. … His goals and objectives, whatever that is, we need to embrace it. All of it. Every single word. If Donald Trump says jump three feet high and scratch your head, we all jump three feet high and scratch our heads.”

The objective is forcing the rest of America to conform the way the Republican Party has conformed. This can be seen in the anger expressed by some MAGAs. It wasn’t enough to win. Losers must now shut up and get in line, too. As a Trump attorney said recently: “You’ve got to own when you lose and say: this is America. We have to stand behind President Trump.” Senate Republicans are likely to approve his picks, no matter how bad, because the losers must be taught a lesson.

Totalitarianism also seeks to dominate the individual’s mind by going to war against facts, reason, science and any useful meaning of the word “proof.” In normal times, pre-Trump, we could expect the Senate to have a spirited debate over a President-elect's cabinet nominations, beginning with whether they’re qualified. Such debate is going to be impossible now, because “being qualified” is a meaningless term.

It is a stone-cold fact that Kennedy’s views on vaccines are not only insane, but in direct opposition to the moral principles of public health. But that fact won’t be accepted as fact. It will be taken as evidence of Trump’s enemies trying to sabotage his presidency. And there’s no way to break through this "conspiracist mindset," as Lindsay Beyerstein calls it. It is impervious, she said. “When scientists or the government or journalists come forward with evidence that vaccines save millions of lives and prevent untold suffering, the conspiracist answer is: Well, that’s what conspirators to kill our children would say.”

Because there’s no empirical anchor to conspiratorial thinking, totalitarians can make reality into whatever they want. Up is down, left is right – or in the words of the totalitarian regime in George Orwell’s 1984: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

Therefore, the Republicans are likely to see nothing wrong with his picks. His nominee for the law is anti-law. His nominee for national intelligence is anti-intelligence. His nominee for national defense is anti-defense. His nominee for science is anti-science. But there’s no dissonance in the world of conspiratorial thinking. Up is the new down, and the only measure of morality is whether it pleases the dear leader.

The drift toward conformity and away from individualism isn’t limited to the GOP. Thanks to the right-wing media apparatus, which is global in scale, totalizing groupthink has also been growing in the culture at large. The trick is that it comes disguised as subversive individualism.

During his interview with Trump, popular podcaster Joe Rogan said, “the rebels are Republicans now. They’re like, you want to be a rebel? You want to be punk rock? You want to, like, buck the system? You’re a conservative now. That's how crazy. And then the liberals are now pro-silencing criticism. They’re pro-censorship online. They’re talking about regulating free speech and regulating the First Amendment.”

If you are listening to liberals directly, you know there are no such efforts. But if you are listening to the right-wing media apparatus, or if you just feel the conspiratorial ambiance that it generates, it’s possible to cast yourself as a person who’s bucking the system, as if the party of billionaires is the party of the common people, as if people who look the same, talk the same, act the same and think the same are punk rock.

But the strongest evidence of totalitarian drift is the plain awfulness of Trump’s cabinet picks. They have not earned the right to be called on. They haven’t studied or mastered their disciplines. They haven’t built reputations among leaders, peers and professionals in their fields. They haven’t overcome adversity and hardship. They haven’t reached high and achieved. They certainly haven’t followed the road toward the American dream, which asks us to work hard and play by the rules.

And that’s the point. Totalitarians fear individual excellence, first because they can’t understand it, and second because excellence threatens their goal of totalizing conformity. They are not humble enough to admit that they are mediocre people but they are arrogant enough to believe they can force the rest of us down to their level.


With this cabinet, Trump can pick up where his second campaign left off, which is a movement toward “the consistent persecution of every higher form of intellectual activity …” as Hannah Arendt once wrote.

“Total domination does not allow for free initiative in any field of life, for any activity that is not entirely predictable,” she said. “Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty” (my italics).

WALL ST.  DEMOC-RAT

Rahm Emanuel made alarming stock trades as ambassador to Japan: report

Jessica Corbett,

 Common Dreams
November 20, 2024

Rahm Emanuel (AFP Photo/Chip Somodevilla)

"Siri, what is insider trading?"

That's how one reader responded to Tuesday reporting by The American Prospect's Daniel Boguslaw that Rahm Emanuel, who is supposedly mulling a bid for Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair, made some concerning financial moves while in his current government job.

Emanuel is the U.S. ambassador to Japan. He was previously the mayor of Chicago, a Democratic Illinois congressman, and a key adviser to former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. While in the House of Representatives, he chaired the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and then the party's caucus in the chamber. He's also been an investment banker

As Boguslaw detailed Tuesday:
Periodic transaction reports filed with the Office of Governmental Ethics over the past two years suggest that Chicago's golden boy may be better served returning to his roots on Wall Street, given the six-figure trades he executed at highly opportune moments in U.S.-Japanese trade relations.

Among the millions of dollars of stock trades Emanuel conducted between 2021 and 2024 while serving as ambassador, one purchase jumps out. On September 29, 2023, Emanuel bought between $250,000 and $500,000 worth of stocks in CoreWeave, a leading AI cloud computing service.

Emanuel's purchase took place one day before the Japanese government announced a $320 million subsidy to Micron Technology to manufacture storage components that are essential to the Nvidia chips which CoreWeave relies on for its AI computation services.

Emanuel "purchased between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of Ocient stock on March 8, 2024, before the close of the firm's series B raise," after the Illinois "data analytics company's CEO Chris Gladwin traveled to Japan in October on a trade delegation mission," Boguslaw noted. "At the end of July, Rahm also purchased between $50,000 and $100,000 worth of stock in Monroe Capital, a Chicago-based middle-market lender that specializes in collateralized debt obligations, the Frankenstein financial product that crashed global markets in 2008."

While Emanuel did not respond to the Prospect's request for comment, Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, declared on social media that it was a "MASSIVE STORY!"


Hauser told Common Dreams that "being ambassador to Japan is a big job, but normally owing to its importance to America's relationship with a key ally in a critical area of the globe, and not because of the access it apparently provides to actionable stock tips."

"Ambassador Emanuel's brain ought to have been focused on improving America's lot in East Asia, not maximizing his retirement account," he said. "We at Revolving Door Project have long argued that senior government officials should be limited to investing in diversified mutual funds rather than stock by stock. That Emanuel was making exotic investments in businesses he may have learned about on the government's dime only underscores the need for such reforms."

"If Democrats are to ever put a full and final end to Trumpism, they are going to need to develop a clear and consistent critique of why corruption by public officials is a bad thing. That would make Rahm Emanuel among the worst possible choices for DNC chair, especially since Sen. Menendez seems likely to be unavailable for the position," Hauser added, referring to Bob Menendez, a former Democratic senator from New Jersey who in July was convicted of taking bribes.

As Common Dreams reported last week, progressive critics of Emanuel have called his potential leadership of the DNC—after various devastating losses for the party on Election Day earlier this month—a "sick joke" and "the worst idea in the world."

Noting Emanuel's consideration of the job in an email to supporters on Tuesday, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said that "there is a disease in Washington of Democrats who spend more time listening to the donor class than working people. If you want to know the seed of the party's political crisis—that's it."

"The DNC needs an organizer who gets people," she asserted. "Not someone who sends fish heads in the mail."

Martin O'Malley, a former Democratic presidential candidate and Maryland governor, and Ken Martin, the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party chair and a DNC vice chair, have both formally launched their campaigns for the position.

Other potential contenders for the DNC post include Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler and Chuck Rocha, a political strategist for the latest campaign of Sen.-elect Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats, said after the elections earlier this month that "it should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them."

According toCBS News:

Rocha said he's still waiting to see how the field develops before jumping in, and "if there's a better candidate that really stands for what I want to see done with the party."

But Rocha has set several action items he would take as chair: eliminate education requirements for senior DNC positions, mandating that state parties "be more inclusive" and diverse with consultant hiring, and to focus on building party infrastructure in all 50 states.

Asked about Martin's and O'Malley's campaigns, Rocha called them "names that are from the institution."

"I think we need somebody from the outside and a strategist to come in and rebuild the party," said Rocha, who noted that his non-college background and upbringing in East Texas could be an advantage as the party looks to reconnect with working-class voters.

Politico reported Tuesday that another Sanders ally, James Zogby, "expects to formally launch his campaign in the coming days."


A longtime DNC member and president of the Arab American Institute, Zogby told Politico that he was motivated to run by his anger over Republican President-elect Donald Trump's defeat of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

Zogby criticized Harris for campaigning with former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Okla.), said the Democratic Party was too "focused on suburban women and not on white working-class people," and called the decision to not invite a Palestinian American to speak at the national convention "unimaginative, overly cautious, and completely out of touch with where voters are."