DACA
No longer young, ‘dreamers’ uneasily watch a legal challenge

By AMANCAI BIRABEN and ADRIAN SAINZ

September 3, 2022

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Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, 36, a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program recipient who moved to the U.S. from Brazil when she was 14, poses for a portrait, Friday, Sept. 2, 2022, outside her apartment in Washington. Immigrants who signed up for an Obama-era program shielding them from deportation, long a symbol of youth, are increasingly easing into middle age. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)


LOS ANGELES (AP) — When Juliana Macedo do Nascimento signed up for an Obama-era program to shield immigrants who came to the country as young children from deportation, she enrolled at California State University, Los Angeles, transitioning from jobs in housekeeping, child care, auto repair and a construction company.

Now, a decade later at age 36, graduate studies at Princeton University are behind her and she works in Washington as deputy director of advocacy for United We Dream, a national group.

“Dreamers” like Macedo do Nascimento, long a symbol of immigrant youth, are increasingly easing into middle age as eligibility requirements have been frozen since 2012, when the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was introduced.

The oldest recipients were in their early 30s when DACA began and are in their early 40s today. At the same time, fewer people turning 16 can meet a requirement to have been in the United States continuously since June 2007.

The average age of a DACA recipient was 28.2 years in March, up from 23.8 in September 2017, according to the Migration Policy Institute. About 40% are 30 or older, according to fwd.us, a group that supports DACA.

As fewer are eligible and new enrollments have been closed since July 2021 under court order, the number of DACA recipients fell to just above 600,000 at the end of March, according to government figures.

Beneficiaries have become homeowners and married. Many have U.S. citizen children.

“DACA is not for young people,” Macedo do Nascimento said. “They’re not even eligible for it anymore. We are well into middle age.”

Born out of President Barack Obama’s frustration with Congress’ failure to reach an agreement on immigration reform, DACA was meant to be a temporary solution and many saw it as imperfect from the start. Immigration advocates were disappointed the policy didn’t include a pathway to citizenship and warned the program’s need to be renewed every two years would leave many feeling in limbo. Opponents, including many Republicans, saw the policy a legal overreach on Obama’s part and criticized it as rewarding people who hadn’t followed immigration law.

In a move intended to insulate DACA from legal challenge, the Biden administration released a 453-page rule on Aug. 24 that sticks closely to DACA as it was introduced in 2012. It codified DACA as a regulation by subjecting it to potential changes after extensive public comment.

DACA advocates welcomed the regulation but were disappointed that age eligibility was unchanged.

The rule was “a missed opportunity,” said Karen Tumlin, an attorney and director of Justice Action Center. DACA, she said, was “locked in time, like a fossil preserved in amber.”

The administration weighed expanding age eligibility but decided against it, said Ur Jaddou, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which administers the program.

“The president told us, ‘How do we preserve and fortify DACA? How do we ensure the security of the program and how best to do that?’ and this was the determination that was made after a lot of thought and careful consideration,” Jaddou said Monday in Los Angeles.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is considering a challenge to DACA from Texas and eight other states, asked both sides to explain how the new rule affects the program’s legal standing.

Texas, in a court filing Thursday, said the rule can’t save DACA. The states conceded that it’s similar to the 2012 memo that created the program but that they “share many of the same defects.”

The executive branch has “neither the authority to decide the major questions that DACA addresses, nor the power to confer substantive immigration benefits,” the states wrote.

The Justice Department argued the new rule — “substantively identical” to the original program — renders moot the argument that the administration failed to follow federal rule-making procedures.

DACA has been closed to new enrollees since July 2021 while the case winds its way through the New Orleans-bsed appeals court but two-year renewals are allowed.

Uncertainty surrounding DACA has caused anxiety and frustration among aging recipients.

Pamela Chomba, 32, arrived with her family from Peru at age 11 and settled in New Jersey. She worries about losing her job and missing mortgage payments if DACA is ruled illegal. She put off becoming a mother because she doesn’t know if she can stay in the U.S. and doesn’t want to be a “burden” on her children.

“We’re people with lives and plans, and we really just want to make sure that we can feel safe,” said Chomba, director of state immigration campaigns for fwd.us.

Macedo do Nascimento was 14 when she arrived with her family from Brazil in 2001. She has not seen a brother who returned to Brazil just before DACA was announced in 10 years. International travel under DACA is highly restricted.

Like Biden and many DACA advocates, she believes legislation is the answer.

“Congress is the ultimate solution here,” she said. “(Both parties) keep passing the ball between each other.

The uncertainty has affected her, the eldest of three siblings.

“The fear of being deported has come back,” Macedo do Nascimento said, because “you never know when this policy is going to end.”

___

Sainz reported from Memphis, Tennessee.

Editorial: Biden is right to fortify DACA, but America needs a legislative solution

2022/08/26

Zoe Lofgren, D- Calif., left, join DACA recipients and other lawmakers at an event celebrating the 10th anniversary of DACA, at the U.S. Capitol on June 15, 2022, in Washington, D.C.. - Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images North America/TNS

There’s hardly been a more consequential law for immigration policy over the past several years than the Administrative Procedure Act, which has been used against both the Trump and Biden administrations to great effect by those charging that the federal government is making decisions capriciously.

Among the policies in the crosshairs has been Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era executive program that since 2012 has offered hundreds of thousands of young people brought illegally into the country as children the opportunity to secure work authorization and be shielded from deportation.

In its more than 10 years of existence, DACA has been the subject of constant litigation and barely held on until, last July, Trump-appointed Texas federal Judge Andrew Hanen — quickly becoming a go-to hatchet man for conservatives hoping to nix Biden priorities — ruled it unconstitutional, allowing current enrollees to renew applications but blocking additional enrollments, and setting up the eventual termination of the policy.

Hanen decided that, when Obama’s Department of Homeland Security first issued the memo establishing DACA, it did so without observing proper rule-making procedures. Biden has now neutralized this argument by putting a new, formal federal rule reestablishing the DACA program through an extensive notice-and-comment period, crossing all the t’s and dotting all the i’s. Its structure is the exact same as the existing DACA policy, but it now has the much more solid backing of being part of the nation’s official regulatory framework.

This should help the program clear legal obstacles, but it’s not enough. The administration must be prepared to keep defending it all the way up to the Supreme Court while continuing to put pressure on lawmakers to finally codify a version of the DREAM Act into law, offering not just DACA’s temporary protections but a full path to citizenship for people for whom the United States is and will always be home, including for the many children who have arrived since the original supposed stopgap program went into effect. That’s the answer truest to our common values: treating hardworking, law-abiding immigrants as fellow Americans.

———

© New York Daily News

 DACA Rule Release Aims to Bolster

 Program for ‘ Dreamers’ 

DACA recipients and their supporters rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on June 18, 2020.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Aug. 24, 2022, \

Administration aims to fortify program’s legal standing

Fifth Circuit considering arguments on policy’s legality

The Biden administration on Wednesday released the final version of regulations intended to fortify the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program against legal challenges.

The program, launched in a 2012 memo by the Obama administration, offers protection from deportation and the ability to work legally to some 600,000 undocumented young people who came to the US as children. The regulation replaces the Obama-era memo and takes effect Oct. 31.

The Biden administration crafted the regulation in response to legal challenges that have plagued DACA since its inception. The rule doesn’t make the program bulletproof, however, as some litigants and judges question whether the Department of Homeland Security has authority to issue broad deportation protections at all.

“Today, we are taking another step to do everything in our power to preserve and fortify DACA, an extraordinary program that has transformed the lives of so many Dreamers,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.

Mayorkas called on Congress to pass legislation to create a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients, often known as Dreamers. Many lawmakers quickly echoed that sentiment, pushing the Senate to take up House-passed legislation (H.R. 6) protecting Dreamers and other undocumented immigrants.

“This step forward does not take away from the urgency for 10 Senate Republicans to join all Democrats to pass the House-passed bipartisan Dream and Promise Act and provide certainty and a pathway to citizenship for our hardworking Dreamers across the country,” Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) said in a statement.

The legislation would need the support of 10 Republicans and all Democrats to meet the Senate’s 60-vote threshold—an uphill battle amid increasing Capitol Hill polarization on immigration policy ahead of midterm elections.

Inside the Rule

The DHS’s final regulation maintains existing criteria for DACA status and the process for seeking work authorization. The rule will apply only to DACA renewal requests, not to new applications, while a federal court order remains in place barring DHS from granting new requests for status.

DACA has faced challenges in court from Republican-led states even after a Trump administration effort to rescind the program was overturned by the US Supreme Court in 2020.

Last year, Houston-based US District Judge Andrew Hanen ruled the program was unlawful because it was created through a secretarial memo and not a formal rulemaking process. The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit heard arguments in an appeal of that ruling in July.

“DHS has carefully and respectfully considered all aspects of the analysis in that decision, including that decision’s conclusions about DACA’s substantive legality,” the agency said in the final regulation Wednesday, adding that it “respectfully disagrees.”

The Department of Homeland Security received more than 16,000 comments in response to a draft rule released in September. The proposed rule largely codified the 2012 memo that created the program.

However, the draft regulations allowed recipients to apply for deferred action and work eligibility separately, to the chagrin of immigration advocates and business groups who feared that could ultimately undermine employment authorization. The final version retains the existing process.

(Updated with additional reporting throughout.)

Poland investigating large fish die-off in river; officials removed


Soldiers and firefighters remove dead fish from the Oder River near Slubice, Poland, on Friday.

 Photo by Lech Muszynski/EPA-EFE

Aug. 13 (UPI) -- Local Polish officials have called for an investigation into a large fish die-off along the Oder River that flows through the country, Germany and the Czech Republic.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said 150 troops have been placed along the 522-mile stretch of the river to help clean up the tons of fish dying off from what some suspect is caused by chemical waste dumped into the waterway.

Morawiecki said he sacked the head of the Polish Waters Co., Przemysław Daca, and the head of the General Environmental Inspectorate, Michał Mistrzak, because of the disaster.

"It is likely that enormous amounts of chemical waste have been dumped into the river," Morawiecki said, according to Polskie Radio. "The problem is enormous. The wave of pollution runs from Wrocław to Szczecin. Those are hundreds of kilometers of river. The pollution is gigantic."

While authorities are still investigating the source of the spill, local media reported that elevated levels of mercury were detected in German water samples from the region. Scientists are also factoring in climate change in the die-off.

Environmental groups have accused the Polish government of moving too slowly to contain the death of fish, which local fishermen first reported in late July

"An environmental catastrophe is looming," German Environment Minister Steffi Lemke said, according to The Washington Post. "All sides are working flat out to find the reasons for this mass [killing of fish] and minimize potential further damage."

SEE 

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/08/oder-river-speculation-over.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/08/high-salinity-found-in-european-river.html

What Do We Really Know About The National Sheriffs Association?

The Association’s funding sources and political affiliations are suspect. That hasn’t stopped them from lobbying Congress and tanking police reforms.

BY JESSICA PISHKO

FEB 11, 2022
JURISPRUDENCE

Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb speaks at the Rally to Protect Our Elections sponsored by Turning Point Action at the Arizona Federal Theatre in Phoenix, July 24, 2021. 

USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect

This week, the National Sheriffs Association held their Winter Conference in Washington, D.C. The meeting is held in the nation’s capital every year, but this year a new event was added to the agenda: a “Hill Day,”in which the NSA arranged meetings between county sheriffs and their congressional representatives to discuss issues that are “meaningful to Sheriffs,” ranging from policing issues to medical care.

Since the summer of 2020, when the nation erupted into protest over police violence, police unions have been hard at work using their immense political power to thwart reform efforts. While police unions generally operate locally, there are state-wide and nation-wide organizations that purport to represent the interests of various law enforcement groups: police chiefs, police captains, and sheriffs. Sheriffs, in particular, have displayed immense resistance to efforts to change policing. Yet the national association that ostensibly represents their interests, and lobbies Congress on their behalf, remains under-examined and under-studied.

Last fall, for example, after every major national law enforcement lobbying group agreed to a set of modest, bipartisan policing reforms hashed out by Sens. Tim Scott and Corey Booker, the sheriffs refused to budge from their hardline position, especially when it came to reforming qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that makes it near-impossible to hold rogue and criminal law enforcement officers liable in civil suits.

Since then, sheriffs, under the leadership of the National Sheriffs Association (NSA), have gone on the warpath, pushing false narratives about a “war on cops” and whipping up unsubstantiated panic about increasing crime. In one instance, Louisiana Sheriff Vernon Stanforth, the President of the NSA, went on a local news station to call for federal support in arresting alleged shoplifters because they were “terrorizing their communities.” His request was backed up by a general NSA call for an action by the Biden administration on retail theft (which isn’t a federal crime).

The next day, Executive Director and CEO of the NSA Jonathan Thompson – who is a paid employee of the organization and not an elected sheriff – went on Fox News to complain about the NFL’s discretionary donations to groups engaged in criminal system reform through the “Inspire Change” initiative. Thompson topped his complaints with a veiled threat that players should “spend one night in a cruiser or a jail to see the horrendous effects of runaway crime.”

The sheriffs even went so far as to slam a leaked draft executive order, purportedly from the Biden administration, that appeared to address a variety of federal law enforcement reforms and provide additional funding for certain programs. (Biden seems to be walking back this plan based on recent meetings with law enforcement.)

How did the sheriffs come to be such a unified front against policing reform? Through the work of the National Sheriffs Association, a big-tent organization that nominally represents the interests of county sheriffs. Part of that representation requires the creation and reiteration of a mythology about sheriffs that serves to secure their place in the American pantheon of law enforcement organizations. This objective is even written into their “constitutional charter.” They mean it. When the county commissioners of Loudoun County, Virginia, considered reducing the role of the county sheriff by creating a police force (that would be under the control of the mostly Democrat county government), the NSA was there to argue forcefully against it. They claimed that sheriffs were more cost-efficient and better at patrol and policing than county-run police forces, and called the county government “political hacks.”

While the NSA claims to be nonpartisan, its leadership has proven to be less so, with the most recent slate of leaders leaning further to the right than past leadership. At least one member of the Executive Committee – Sheriff Chris West of Oklahoma — was at the Capitol on Jan. 6. At least three others are members of Protect America Now, a far-right sheriff’s organization, or the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, a group that believes sheriffs are the ultimate arbiters of the constitution. The current chair of the Government Affairs Committee is Collin County, Texas, Sheriff Jim Skinner, who was responsible for the high-profile jail death of Marvin Scott III, whom deputies killed by restraining him, placing a hood over his head, and dousing him with pepper spray. As part of the committee, Skinner is tasked with developing the NSA’s policy positions on law enforcement and homeland security in addition to representing the Association before Congress and the White House. The NSA has also consistently lobbied in favor of civil asset forfeiture, which, despite bipartisan opposition, remains the law in Texas.

These political affiliations have only become more tangled with the rise of the constitutional sheriffs movement. The NSA has yet to disavow the growing number of sheriffs who have refused to enforce vaccination orders, expressed anti-government rhetoric, or spread disinformation about election fraud. In fact, spokesperson for the NSA praised Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, who formed a far-right sheriffs group and has ties to Donald Trump and Michael Flynn, the ex-government official who we now know was pushing a plan for the military to seize voting machines to overturn the 2020 election. The spokesperson praised Lamb as a “unicorn” during an interview in October of 2021, adding that Lamb was simply standing up for the office of the sheriff.

While the NSA officially disavows connections between corporate sponsors and their policies, the degree of corporate funding is shadowy and belies their alleged neutrality. The Association is a 501(c)(4) organization, which is not required to disclose its donor and lobbying expenditures publicly. What we do know is that the NSA manages to raise in the neighborhood of $8 million in “dark money” every year. (A spokesperson from the NSA says the money is a mix of member dues, government grants, and corporate sponsorships). The available public information about funding indicates that the NSA is beholden to the corporations that have built the prison industrial complex and produce billions of dollars in profits off the backs of people in cages. Such for-profit industries, which include telecommunications companies like Verizon, GTL, PayTel and correctional health care companies as well as more anodyne corporations like Airbnb and The Home Depot can purchase access to sheriffs. For top donors their purchase includes a “reception” with NSA leadership as well as a “Private Dinner with Members of NSA’s Executive Committee and Headquarters’ Leadership.”

These sponsorships are really the tip of the iceberg of the many troubling alliances that betray the nominally nonpartisan spirit of the NSA.

For example, this year, ex-police officer named Matthew Griffin, who wrote a book about mental health for law enforcement, gave the keynote speech and was made an “honorary sheriff.” Griffin, who has never been a sheriff, served as a police officer in New Hampshire, but left after he was added not once, but twice, to a statewide list of officers who committed misconduct. According to one news source, Griffin at one point claimed to be a “reserve officer” for an unincorporated New Hampshire town and worked as a police trainer. His speech was sponsored by Axon,the company that makes body cameras and Tasers, and, according to a 2021 Washington Post article, was also a police trainer .

There is further evidence that the NSA courts corporate sponsorship in exchange for sheriff sponsorship. In 2016, the NSA took $350,000 from Purdue Pharma, which it used to distribute naloxone overdose kits and train deputies to reverse overdoses. The Association also took an undisclosed amount from Alkermes, Inc, the manufacturer of Vivitrol, an overdose prevention drug, to “raise awareness among law enforcement of the alarming opioid epidemic.” (ProPublica reported that Alkermes has heavily marketed Vivitrol to law enforcement and judges because, while less effective than methadone and Suboxone, the shot blocks the ability of people to feel the pleasurable high of opiates.) The NSA also spent over $500,000 to air televisions ads featuring sheriffs voicing their opposition to imported prescription drugs, which was the subject of a bipartisan proposal to bring down the costs of medicines in the U.S.

In the past few years, the NSA has pushed surveillance technology by channeling federal grants and promoting private industry, making them a major player in the public-private partnerships that have promoted surveillance cameras and AI-driven technologies. One such push is eye scanning technology from a corporation called B12 Technologies that has been implemented in some jails with federal funding. Another includes a partnership with Clearview AI, a corporation that markets facial recognition technology used by law enforcement, which has increased its contracts under the Biden administration.

A final plank of the NSA’s political strategy involves the filing of numerous amicus briefs in various cases across the country in which they take troubling positions that oppose the Constitutional rights of individuals. Many in the public are already familiar with the entanglement between the National Rifle Association and sheriffs; the NSA has joined other gun organizations in amici that argue in favor of invalidating gun restrictions. In 2015, the NSA filed a brief opposing DACA alongside FAIR and Center for Immigration Studies, another Tanton group. The NSA has also filed amici briefs supporting the seizure of hotel guests lists without a warrant, qualified immunity in a case where sheriffs’ deputies killed a suspect during arrest while city officers watched, warrantless searches even where there has been an error on the part of law enforcement, and application of a negligence standards for liability in jail deaths.

But the troubling fusion of private industry money, lobbying activities, and mass surveillance makes the public comments and inaction of the NSA more suspect when considering the overall landscape for police reform. It’s true that the structure of the NSA is legal and one used by groups on the left and the right. But, communities have a right to know about the corporate (and individual) funders who profit from additional policing, especially organizations that appear to tolerate wrong-doing. The NSA should be seen as part of the network of dark money groups who are influencing legislation and grants rather than a nonpartisan general interest group.

Another path is possible. In California, district attorneys have split away from the state prosecutor’s association because of its retrograde positions, which is a first step towards disentangling dark money, corporate interests, and an industry that has profited from caging people. It’s time for sheriffs to do the same.

The witch isn't dead: New book explores witchcraft's rebellious history -- and modern transformation

Published 31st October 2021

Credit: Courtesy of TASCHEN

The witch isn't dead: New book explores witchcraft's rebellious history -- and modern transformation

Written by Marianna Cerini, CNN

Look up "witches" and you might see any of a number of depictions: ugly old ladies and young, sensual temptresses; antiheroes and aspiring role models; evil creatures mixing deadly potions and righteous sorceresses helping girls find their way (a la Glinda the Good Witch in "The Wizard of Oz").

A new title from Taschen's Library of Esoterica aims to explore this wealth of complex identities in a visually vibrant volume that isn't so much a book as it is a spellbinding tribute to a figure and a practice that are as old as time.

'Last Night in Soho' costume designer on creating Edgar Wright's frightful fashion flick
"Witchcraft" offers a deep dive into the many facets of a centuries-old tradition in the Western world, weaving more than 400 classic and contemporary artworks with essays and interviews by what editor Jessica Hundley describes as "a diverse coven of writers, scholars and modern-day practitioners, each embracing the practice in their own individual ways."

In "Witches' Sabbath," artist Jacques de Gheyn II depicts the sabbath with a pen-and-ink drawing of a swirling cauldron. Credit: Courtesy of TASCHEN

"I wanted to present witchcraft through symbolism and art but also fresh, personal perspectives," Hundley explained in a phone interview. "So much of the esoteric is often shrouded in secrecy and weighed down by stigma. With 'Witchcraft,' we worked collaboratively on introducing the subject in a way that felt inclusive and less intimidating."

Clocking in at 500-plus pages, the compendium spans the history of witchcraft and the representation of witches in literature and fairy tales; the tools of the craft and the rituals that have long been part of it. There are also sections dedicated to fashion, creative media and the witch in films and pop culture.

A history of feminine energy and rebellion

While the word "witch" has its etymological roots (wicce) in Old English, the lineage of the 'Western witch' can be traced back to Greek mythology and the earliest folk traditions of Egypt, northern Europe and the Celts.

Each culture represented the mystical figure differently, yet some of her traits recurred across geographically widespread countries: a witch was a powerful goddess, often associated with home and love, but also death and magic. Above all, she was a signifier of complex femininity.

William Holbrook Beard, "Lightning Struck a Flock of Witches," United States, Date Unknown. Beard depicts a fantastical view of stormbound witches in flight -- the coven sent reeling from a flash of close lightning.

 Credit: Gene Young/Smithsonian American Art Museum/Courtesy of TASCHEN

"The iconography of the witch, while shifting over the centuries, has always revolved around the idea of feminine power, and reflected society's changing attitudes towards it," said the book's co-editor, Pam Grossman, in a phone interview.

In the 11th century, as male-centered Christianity spread across Europe, perceptions of femininity changed.

So-called witches (often any woman who strayed from the prescriptions of monotheistic religion) began to be considered outliers within their communities, feared and isolated for their supposed connection with the devil.

By the 14th century, the collective imagination had recast witches into heretical outcasts. For the next three centuries, witch hunts and executions -- including the Salem trials of 1692 -- would sweep both the Old and New Worlds.

In Kiki Smith's work "Pyre Woman Kneeling," a bronze female figure tops a pyre. The statue commemorates women who were burned for witchcraft. 

Credit: Martin Argyroglo/Courtesy of TASCHEN

"The image of the witch that's been crystallized in our minds -- that of a diabolical, frightening woman -- was born out of this exact period," said Grossman, who is also a writer, curator and teacher of magical practice. "The advent of the printing press, in particular, really helped popularize it. What she really was, of course, was even scarier: a threatening woman."

Indeed, what emerges from "Witchcraft" is that witches and their practice have long been a metaphor for women who want authority over their own lives (the coven, essentially a female-run community, is part of this metaphor, too). Browsing the book, which features works by names as diverse as Auguste Rodin, Paul Klee and Kiki Smith, it's hard not to notice how so many of them represented witches as fierce, powerful creatures even as they were being shunned by society.

Whether aging hags or hypersexual young beauties, they're the embodiment of a rebellious spirit that "wants to subvert the status quo," Grossman said.

A resurgence of witches

In the 18th and early 19th century, as the persecution of witches ended (at least in the Western world) and witchcraft started to be recognized as the last vestige of pagan worship, the magical figure was recast once again. This time, she was made into a fantastical subject as well as a symbol of female rage, independence, freedom and feminism.
Behind the latter "rebranding" was the suffragette movement, which used the archetype of the witch as the persecuted "other," an example of patriarchal oppression.
Witchcraft gained popularity again in the 1960s as second-wave feminism saw witches and their covens as expressions of feminine power and matriarchy (on the activism side, there was even a group of women who, in 1968, founded an organization called W.I.T.C.H).

The Boston-based group, W.I.T.C.H Boston, gather September 19, 2017, on Boston Common for a rally opposing the end of the DACA program.

 Credit: Lauren Lancaster/Courtesy of TASCHEN

The practice made another comeback during the 1990s, following the Anita Hill hearings and the rise of third-wave feminism; and then again in the wake of Donald Trump's 2016 election and the #MeToo movement.

Over the past four years, the practice has gone mainstream, spurring articles, podcasts and Instagram accounts.

"I think that for a lot of women and, increasingly, queer and nonbinary people, the witch has come to represent an alternative to institutional power, as well as a way to tap into their spirituality in a way that isn't mediated by someone else," Grossman said.

"Witchcraft is a means by which you can feel like you have some agency in the world. And because so much of it is about creating your own rituals, it allows individuals from different backgrounds to take part in it on their own terms."

Anthony "Bones" Johnson, "Lilith," England/Ibiza 2018. In his last series, Anthony "Bones" Johnson painted scenes that honor the alchemical forces of nature and the power of women. 

Credit: Courtesy of TASCHEN

The witchy narrative has evolved on screen, too, and "Witchcraft" dedicates its last pages to that.
From the scary Wicked Witch of the West in "The Wizard of Oz" to the beautiful Samantha of "Bewitched" and the tenacious Sabrina of the "Chilling Adventures of Sabrina" (which couldn't be more far removed from the original show starring Melissa Joan Hart), the witch has shifted from villain to protagonist, and from someone you would be afraid of to someone you might aspire to be.

Women have been overlooked in the history of alcohol. This author set out to change that
"Whether they instill fear, seduce, use violence or act for the greater good, the way visual arts portray witches is always reflective of the cultural moment they're part of,'' Hundley said. What has remained unchanged through the centuries, she noted, is that the very nature of the witch is to contain all of these archetypes within her at all times.

"The witch is in a state of constant evolution," she said. "She's a shapeshifter."

"Witchcraft" is available in Europe now and will be released next month in the US.

Add to queue: Empowering witches

READ: "The Once and Future Witches" (2020)
Witchcraft and activism are woven together in this Gothic fantasy novel by Alix E. Harrow, set in an alternate America where witches once existed but no longer do The year is 1893, and the estranged Eastwood sisters -- James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth and Beatrice Belladonna -- join the suffragists of New Salem while beginning to awaken their own magic, transforming the women's movement into the witches' movement.

BROWSE: "Major Arcana: Portraits of Witches in America" (2020)
Frances F. Denny's photographic project "Major Arcana: Witches in America" is an ambitious visual document of the modern face of witchcraft. Denny spent three years meeting and photographing a diverse group of witches around the US, capturing the various ways "witch-ness" expresses itself.

WATCH: "Motherland: Fort Salem" (2020)
Witches become superheroes in this action-packed series, currently in its second season. Three young sorceresses conscripted into the US Army -- Raelle Collar, Abigail Bellweather and Tally Craven -- use their supernatural tactics and spells to defend the country against a terrorist organization known as the Spree, a witch resistance group.

LISTEN: "Between the Worlds" (2018-present)

Host Amanda Yates Garcia discusses tarot, psychology, mythology, pop culture, witchcraft, magic, art and history alongside a series of special guests, in a podcast that aims to explore the many expressions of the practice.

WATCH: "American Horror Story: Coven" (2013)
Set in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, the third season of the FX horror anthology series "American Horror Story" centers on a coven of witches descended from the survivors of the Salem trials as they fight for survival against the outside world. The show deals with femininity and race, as well as issues around modern feminist theories and practice.

Top image: Titled "Ritual," this 2019 work by photographer Psyché Ophiuchus shows a ceremonial circle taking place in Fairy Glen on the Isle of Skye at dusk.

‘Joyously subversive sex goddesses’: the artists who gave witches a spellbinding makeover

Not one you’ll see this Halloween … a highly symbolically decorated witch by Oh, featured in the book Witchcraft. Photograph: © Vic Oh


Thousands of women were slain after being accused of witchcraft. Don’t they deserve more than the evil cackling hag stereotype? A powerful new book blows away the satanic baby-eating myths

Jonathan Jones
Wed 27 Oct 2021 13.34 BST

We all know what a witch looks like. A gnarled old face full of warts with teeth missing and bright green skin. Then there’s the long black coat, the tall black hat and let’s not forget the sizable crooked nose, sniffing the fumes rising from a bubbling cauldron in a room festooned with cobwebs.

But that’s not what witches look like at all, or at least not according a hefty new art book being published in time for Halloween. In this compendium of witchy women, from Renaissance paintings to modern Wicca, the caricature of the evil hag is turned upside down. Witchcraft, the latest volume in Taschen’s Library of Esoterica, finds evidence from artists as diverse as Auguste Rodin and Kiki Smith for its revisionist view that witches are typically young, glamorous practitioners of highly sexualised magick. The cover painting, by Victorian artist JW Waterhouse, depicts the ancient enchantress Circe in pale, red-lipped pre-Raphaelite ecstasy – and the fun just keeps coming. The witches here are powerful feminist sex goddesses whose rites and incantations are joyously subversive.

There’s nothing respectably academic about Witchcraft. One of its editors is herself a witch and it includes photographs of 1960s and 70s Wiccans – practitioners of modern pagan magick. Consecration of Wine, Stewart Farrar’s misty monochrome 1971 photograph, portrays his wife, Janet, bare-breasted, filling a raised chalice in a modern ritual “meant to invoke the sacred union of male and female – the alchemical wedding”. Another photo shows a group known as the “Farrar coven” lying on their backs to form a pentagram in a British back garden in 1981.

Pyre Woman Kneeling by Kiki Smith commemorates women who were burned for witchcraft. Photograph: Martin Argyroglo/La Monnaie de Paris

Witchcraft’s thesis is completely convincing. In scouring the history of art to back up their modern-pagan perspective, the editors point to something remarkable. Artists over the centuries have created images of the witch far removed from the cackling stereotype established by witch trials and remembered in popular culture today without any respect for the women (and some men) who were killed in these mockeries of justice.

A work by Kiki Smith tries to show reverence to the victims of the witch-hunters. Her sculpture of a naked witch kneels on an unlit pyre, spreading her arms in triumph: a woman resurrected from this history of misogyny. Typically – at the height of the “witch craze”, which lasted from around 1570 to 1660 – people accused of witchcraft were older women who lived in poverty at the margins of rural communities. Better-off neighbours feared their supposed magical vengeance. Investigators such as England’s infamous Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins, believed the witches met at a midnight sabbath and ate babies, exchanged animal familiars or “imps”, and had sex with Satan.

This stereotype was just as unrelated to reality as medieval Europe’s murderous caricature of Jewish people. Yet leafing through this book, you quickly see that even as elderly rural women were being demonised and burned alive, Renaissance artists saw witchcraft in a very different way. They associated it with desire, enchantment and female power.

One spread in the volume features Satisfaction – a 1984 painting by Shimon Okshteyn of a triumphant post-coital “modern siren” as the caption has it – exulting in presumably witchy erotic power. It is juxtaposed with a 15th-century German painting by an unknown artist of a naked woman performing a spell in her room. A man appears at the door, spying on the nude witch. He’s in big trouble, you can’t help feeling. He’s going to get a magical punishment simply for seeing this witch dancing at her private rituals. But warts, ugly nose, a familiar? No, this is one of the most sensual nudes in early Renaissance art.

The Four Witches by Albrecht Dürer, 1497. 

Photograph: © National Gallery of Art, Rosenwald Collection

That stress on the allure and attraction of witches is even more explicit in the work of the great German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer. In 1497, Dürer made The Four Witches, an engraving that depicts fleshy nudes dancing in a round. They are delineated with a boldness he learned on a trip across the Alps to Venice. There he encountered not just the city’s sex workers who also worked as artist’s models, but the new classically influenced Italian art with its cult of the human body. But Dürer’s own desires make him anxious. Even as he draws these women naked – as if picturing respectable Nuremberg frauen with their clothes off – he seems to sense they are witches. At the back of the room, an open door reveals the devil, his fanged mouth hanging open as he watches his minions from a cellar that has become a portal of hell.

Even when he does portray an aged witch riding backwards on a goat, an image much more closely connected to the witch-hunt stereotype, Dürer gives her a retinue of Renaissance cupids to complicate things. He is not really interested in persecuting old peasants but in exploring the artistic and moral tensions between his love of the flesh and his fear of sin.

A painting by his pupil Hans Baldung Grien gives two witches an even more gracious youth and beauty. They pose glamorously, more like models than agents of the macabre. Another great German 16th-century artist, Lucas Cranach, was most paradoxical of all. He painted fetishistically gloved or bonily nude women as charismatic beings of sexualised power – while, as a magistrate, he would have been personally involved in executing “witches”. In the sado-masochist fantasy world of his art, he desires everything that in real life he persecuted.

If artists could enjoy the witch as much as this – while women accused of witchcraft were being burned for the threat they were thought to pose to Christian society – itis little wonder art became ever more enchanted by the subject once the persecution ceased. By the 18th century, burning witches seemed like cruel superstitious nonsense. Instead, they became fuel for fantasy. Erotic drawings by Rodin and his kinky Belgian contemporary Félicien Rops imagine other uses for broomsticks than flying. In a Rodin sketch from about 1890, a witch faces us with her naked legs apart, rubbing her broom against her body with pleasure. Rops, too, depicts a young witch with a broomstick between her legs while she reads from her spell book wearing only her stockings.

Boston WITCH by Lauren Lancaster, 2017. WITCH was a 1960s anti-war group resurrected in 2016 to protest against US immigration practices. Photograph: Lauren Lancaster
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In modern art by women, however, the witch has been reclaimed as a figure of power and freedom. Francesca Woodman poses eerily in a ruinous room in Providence, Rhode Island, almost floating, weaving the air with her arms, as if performing a spell. She seems to be conjuring up the inhabitants of this haunted house. Maybe she’s summoning the victims of New England’s bygone witch-hunts. Betye Saar’s installation Window of Ancient Sirens uses mirrors and fire to invoke her demon sisters. Her art openly embraces African and Caribbean magical traditions to animate objects and re-enchant modern life.

The cover of Witchcraft, featuring JW Waterhouse’s Circe Invidiosa. Photograph: Taschen

Even the stereotype of the evil black-clad old witch is transformed by feminist art. Members of the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (WITCH) – originally founded by anti-war protesters in 1968 and recreated in 2016 – hide their identities under their pointy hats in a photograph by Lauren Lancaster.

But the fun of Witchcraft is its enthusiastic embrace of every side of its subject, from the sublime to the silly. You don’t have to buy a stuffed goat, set up an altar in your garage and invite the neighbours to a swinging sabbath to agree that witches get a rough ride three centuries after the European witch-hunt ended. At Halloween, most of the monsters we delight in have no connection to reality. Vampires, ghosts and Frankenstein’s monster are creatures of the imagination. But tens of thousands of real human beings were put to death in the name of the witch stereotype that is touted around for fun at this time of year. And that could well be the most horrifying thing about Halloween.

The Library of Esoterica: Witchcraft, edited by Jessica Hundley and Pam Grossman, is published by Taschen on 31 October (£30).

TASCHEN IS AN ART BOOK PUBLISHER

AOC Warns Pelosi and Schumer: 'We Can't Negotiate Reconciliation Bill Down to Nothing'

"The Build Back Better reconciliation package is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build a sustainable and prosperous future for our country."



Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks at a rally in New York City on June 5, 2021.

 (Photo: Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

JAKE JOHNSON

COMMON DREAMS

October 12, 2021

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined seven of her fellow New York Democrats on Tuesday in issuing a warning to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer: Don't cut funding for housing, transportation, or immigration reform from the emerging reconciliation bill in an attempt to appease right-wing lawmakers.

"We can't let corporate interests, Big Pharma, and a few conservative Democrats stand in our way of delivering."

"We can't negotiate the reconciliation bill down to nothing," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

In their letter, the New York Democrats argued that "the Build Back Better reconciliation package is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build a sustainable and prosperous future for our country—affordable housing; quality, sustainable, and accessible public transportation; and sound immigration reform must remain priorities in the debate."

Specifically, the House Democrats urged Pelosi and Schumer to ensure that the final reconciliation package includes $80 billion in funding for public housing, a $10 billion investment in public transportation, and $107 billion to "expand safety-net protections and create a pathway to citizenship for millions of DACA recipients, people with temporary protected status, essential workers, and farm workers."

"It is vital that we preserve the entirety of this funding allocation, not only because these communities have been the backbone of our national economy throughout this pandemic and beyond, but also because the U.S. is their only home and refuge from the political, economic, and climate disasters they are fleeing," the lawmakers wrote.


The message from Ocasio-Cortez and other members of the New York congressional delegation was made public hours after Pelosi circulated a "Dear Colleague" letter indicating that the Democratic leadership could be considering cutting programs from the reconciliation bill in order to lower its $3.5 trillion price tag—an effort aimed at securing the votes of Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), and other corporate-backed holdouts.

"Overwhelmingly," Pelosi wrote, "the guidance I am receiving from members is to do fewer things well so that we can still have a transformative impact on families in the workplace and responsibly address the climate crisis."

That approach could spark backlash from progressive lawmakers such as Ocasio-Cortez, who has argued that Democrats should shorten the duration of programs to reduce costs, not cut out key priorities. Pelosi did not specify which programs are at risk of being removed from the reconciliation package, which is a centerpiece of President Joe Biden's domestic policy agenda.

"One of the ideas that's out there is: fully fund what we can fully fund, but maybe instead of doing it for 10 years, we fully fund it for five years," Ocasio-Cortez said during an interview with CBS earlier this month. "I think it's unfortunate that we have to even, as Democrats, have a discussion about not having a child tax credit. I think it's unfortunate that we have to compromise with ourselves for an ambitious agenda for working people."

Speaking to the press Tuesday morning, Pelosi suggested that Democrats could go the route suggested by Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives—a message that conflicts with the sentiment of her "Dear Colleague" letter. The House Speaker voiced "hope" that Democrats ultimately won't have to drop any programs from the reconciliation measure.

The push by right-wing Democrats to slash the reconciliation bill's price tag has set off a scramble among lawmakers to ensure that programs they support—from Medicare expansion to the expanded child tax credit to paid family leave—aren't left on the cutting room floor. Progressive lawmakers in the House and Senate have argued that there is no need to pit priorities against one another in the name of fiscal restraint.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told reporters Tuesday that "$3.5 trillion is already a major compromise."

"The time is now long overdue for Sen. Manchin and Sen. Sinema to tell us… where do they want to cut?" Sanders added.

Referring to progressives' effort to expand Medicare benefits to cover dental, hearing, and vision, the Vermont senator said: "This to me is not negotiable. This is what the American people want."



During a recent closed-door Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) meeting, according to the Washington Post, "members stood up one by one to vouch for establishing universal pre-K, making the child tax credit permanent, and guaranteeing 12 weeks of paid family leave."

"Others mentioned the need to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and vision, which would get them one step closer to the progressive goal of Medicare for All," the Post noted.

In a tweet on Tuesday, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—chair of the 96-member CPC—declared that "the agenda that Progressives are fighting for IS the president's agenda."

"We must pass the full Build Back Better Act—and we can't let corporate interests, Big Pharma, and a few conservative Democrats stand in our way of delivering," Jayapal added.

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Sanders, Jayapal Say Medicare Expansion in Reconciliation Package 'Not Negotiable'

"This is what the American people want," the socialist senator from Vermont insisted.


Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) appear at a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on June 24, 2019. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

BRETT WILKINS

COMMON DREAMS

October 12, 2021

As congressional progressives push back against right-wing Democrats seeking to shrink the size and scope of the Build Back Better Act, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Tuesday insisted that expanded Medicare benefits must remain part of the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package.

"I do understand that the healthcare industry does not like this idea, but maybe, just maybe, we stand with the American people."

In a call with journalists reported by The Hill, Sanders (I-Vt.), who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, adamantly declared that dental, hearing, and vision benefits must be added to Medicare as part of the Democrats' flagship package.

"This to me is not negotiable," he said. "This is what the American people want."

Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, backed Sanders—the group's only Senate member—saying his stance is also "the position of the House Progressive Caucus."

Sanders, in recent tweets, has pointed to polling showing that expanding Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and vision is overwhelmingly popular, with 84% of U.S. voters supporting the proposal. A new survey published Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation also found that 83% of respondents favor empowering Medicare to leverage its prodigious purchasing power to secure lower prescription drug prices.

Sanders noted industry opposition to Medicare expansion during Tuesday's call.

"I do understand that the healthcare industry does not like this idea, but maybe, just maybe, we stand with the American people," he said. "There are millions of seniors who have rotting teeth in their mouths or are unable to hear what their grandchildren are saying."

Echoing her progressive colleagues, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tweeted: "We are fighting for roads and bridges, universal child care, Medicare expansion, and climate investments. We know what we need and progressives in Congress will continue to hold strong."

Earlier Tuesday, Common Dreams reported that eight House Democrats representing New York City—including progressive Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman—sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) warning them against slashing funding for public housing, transportation, and immigration reform from the Build Back Better Act.

"We can't negotiate the reconciliation bill down to nothing," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

However, Pelosi indicated in a Monday letter to House colleagues that Democratic leaders are open to considering scaling back the proposed legislation to reduce its $3.5 trillion cost in a bid to win the support of right-wing Democrats including Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who have balked at the bill's price tag.

Responding to the letter, Sanders said that "$3.5 trillion is already a major compromise."

Tweeting Tuesday against potential cuts in the bill, Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) said that "we cannot pit child care against Medicare expansion, or pre-K against free community college."

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The Media Keeps Getting It Wrong: The Democrats Are Not Divided

Just a few members out of the hundreds of Democrats elected to the House and Senate are stalling the President's agenda.

(L-R) Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE), Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) and other Congressional Democrats hold a rally and news conference ahead of a House vote on health care and prescription drug legislation in the Rayburn Room at the U.S. Capitol May 15, 2019 in Washington, D.C. 

(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

PETER DREIER

October 12, 2021

 by Talking Points Memo (TPM)

Historians describe Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1936 presidential victory (with 60.8% of the popular vote), Lyndon Johnson's 1964 triumph (61.1%), and Ronald Reagan's 1984 win (58.8%) as "landslide" elections. Likewise, in 2018, the San Diego Union-Tribune and many other news outlets described Democrat Gavin Newsom's defeat of Republican John Cox for the California governorship by a 62% to 32% margin as a "landslide." When a recent poll found that 65% of Americans support vote-by-mail during the COVID pandemic, a USA Today headline proclaimed that the support was "overwhelming." Reporting on a survey showing that 73% of American voters supported President Biden's plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, another news outlet, The Hill, described it as an "overwhelming majority." A news story reporting that 94% of American voters embrace universal background checks for gun-buyers called that support "near unanimous." A few years ago, another news story used the same phrase—"near unanimous"—when 61 of 64 coaches (95.3%) ranked the University of Alabama football team as the best in the country.

Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona, typically described as "moderates" or "centrists," are the only hold-outs.

Currently, 96% of Democrats in Congress support President Biden's social safety net and clean energy reconciliation package, but the the media have consistently described the Democrats as "deeply divided," "fractious," "feuding," and even "in disarray" over the plan. "The Democrats are at war with each other," said Washington Post reporter Robert Costa on a recent episode of the Bill Maher show.

In the Senate, 48 of the 50 Democrats (96%) embrace the Biden legislation. Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona, typically described as "moderates" or "centrists," are the only hold-outs.

In the House, 210 out of 220 Democrats (again, 96%) have indicated that they will vote for Biden's plan, which would invest $3.5 trillion over ten years in child care, education, health care, and climate change. Only 10 House Democrats (also described as "moderates" or "centrists")—Carolyn Bourdeaux (Georgia), Ed Case (Hawaii), Scott Peters and Jim Costa (California), Henry Cuellar, Filemon Vela, and Victor Gonzalez (Texas), Jared Golden (Maine), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), and Kurt Schrader (Oregon)—are not yet on board the Biden plan.

The 95-member House Progressive Caucus initially embraced Senator Bernie Sanders' plan for a $6 trillion (over ten years) package, but agreed to support Biden's much trimmed-down $3.5 trillion alternative. As a result, almost every Democrat in Congress—all the progressives and liberals and even most of the so-called moderates—agree on the Biden plan.

In other words, the Democrats are quite unified. But they are being held hostage by a handful of corporate-friendly Democrats. The problem is that the Democrats' margins in both chambers are so slim that they can't afford defections. The Democrats are clinging to an eight-seat majority in the House. The Senate is split between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, requiring Vice President Kamala Harris to break ties votes. As a result, even a small number of defectors can derail the Democrats' agenda—forcing Biden to make huge cuts or killing the plan altogether—which gives the tiny handful of hold-outs undue influence.

This doesn't mean that 96% of elected Democrats who support the Biden plan agree on every policy issue, from abortion to bank regulation to military spending. Some disagree with parts of the president's plans, but are willing to swallow their concerns for the sake of unity. By embracing Biden's Build Back Better plan, they recognize the importance of restoring Americans' faith in the ability of the federal government to address fundamental problems and to help the country recover from the existential crisis we faced, and that still persists, because of Trump and Trumpism.

Soon after Biden took office in January, he, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer agreed to draft two bills that reflected key parts of the president's campaign promises. One involved a $1 trillion (over ten years) public-works infrastructure plan, about $550 billion of which would be new spending not previously allocated by Congress. The other focused on expanding the nation's social safety net and addressing climate change, and would cost $3.5 trillion over ten years—though that figure is misleadingly high, as explained below.

In August, the Senate approved a $1 trillion physical infrastructure plan to rebuild roads, replace water pipes that have toxic lead, expand broadband internet, shore up coastlines against climate change, modernize the electric grid, protect public utility systems from cyber attacks, pay for new public transportation, and upgrade airports and railroads. Speaker Pelosi has postponed a vote on that bill; Biden, Schumer and Pelosi have all insisted that both bills should move in unison.

The safety net and climate change plan is stuck primarily because Manchin and Sinema won't go along. Manchin has demanded that at least $2 trillion be lopped off Biden's plan, which would result in a $1.5 trillion bill—an amount that Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) dismissed as "crumbs." Sinema won't even say what her ideal figure is.

The Build Back Better plan would expand Medicare and, for the first time, provide dental, vision, and hearing coverage to the 60 million elderly and disabled Americans who rely on it. It would expand health care for roughly four million low-income people in the states (most of which are run by Republicans) that have refused to expand Medicaid on their own. The provision to expand the Child Tax Credit to $300 a month per child under six and $250 a month per child age 6 to 17 would cut child poverty by half, according to some estimates. The Biden plan would also offer free public pre-kindergarten and two years of free community college and provides 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, which would guarantee that all Americans have the time to care for themselves and their families and loved ones.

The plan also includes provisions to deal with climate change and cut greenhouse gas emissions, including a clean-electricity program designed to significantly reduce fossil fuel emissions from U.S. power plants by 2035. It would invest billions of dollars to build 500,000 electric-vehicle charging stations and update the electrical grid to make it more effective during extreme weather events.

The Republicans and the handful of Democratic dissenters typically describe the plan as "massive," "big government," and "unprecedented."

In fact, the plan would only amount to roughly 1.5% of the country's gross domestic product. This is a smaller increase than that of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal (which included Social Security and unemployment insurance) and President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs (which included Medicare and Medicaid).

Even the $3.5 trillion figure is misleading. It would stretch over ten years, a fact that many news reports ignore or downplay. One expert estimated that the total cost is less than three dollars (actually $2.88) a day.

Moreover, the $3.5 trillion would be offset by $2.9 trillion in new revenue, according to recent estimates. So the actual cost is just $0.6 trillion.

To pay for the plan, Biden proposed raising the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 26.5 percent on companies' annual income over $5 million. He's also proposed restoring the top tax rate to 39.6 percent on individuals earning more than $400,000—or $450,000 for couples—plus a 3 percent surtax on wealthier Americans with adjusted income over $5 million a year. As such, the plan would partially reverse the trillions that the Trump administration and the Republican Congress gave away to the wealthy and big business in tax cuts through their signature legislative achievement of the Trump era. Moreover, Biden's plan would reduce federal taxes for eight out of 10 households.

One thing is certain. Those Democratic dissenters are out of sync with what Americans—and not just Democratic voters—think.

The Democrats' plan is very popular among Americans.

A Quinnipiac poll conducted July 27-Aug. 2 asked, "Do you support or oppose a $3.5 trillion spending bill on social programs such as child care, education, family tax breaks and expanding Medicare for seniors?" and found 62% support, 32% opposition.

Support is even higher for some key provisions of the plan. For example, over two-thirds of voters (69%) support raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations. A whopping 84 percent of likely voters (including 74 percent of Republicans) support paid family leave programs. According to recent polls, 84% of voters want to expand Medicare coverage to include dental, vision and hearing; 88% want Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to reduced prescription drug prices. Data for Progress polling earlier this year found that nearly two thirds of likely voters support government action moving the country away from fossil fuels to a fully clean energy grid by 2035, including 86% of Democrats, 60% of independents, and 40% of Republicans.

So why are those two Democratic senators and 10 Democratic House members trying to subvert legislation that most Americans and 96% of their own colleagues support?

Most of the 10 House Democrats who are still waffling over the Biden plan are from swing congressional districts that they won by small margins, although other Democrats from battleground districts are on board with the plan. But in each of their districts, the Build Back Better plan would significantly improve the lives of their constituents as well as lower their taxes.

The opposition of the handful of Democrats can be explained in part by their close ties to big business and wealthy donors. They are doing the bidding of corporate America, which wants the physical infrastructure projects that is part of the separate $1 trillion bill, but doesn't want the higher taxes or stiffer regulations to reign in corporate greed that is part of the $3.5 trillion safety net and clean energy bill.

For example, Rep. Scott Peters of California is leading the opposition to the drug pricing provisions. Last month, he voted to block it from advancing out of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Since he was elected from his San Diego area district in 2012, the pharmaceutical industry has showered him with $860,465 in campaign donations. So far this year alone, he's received $88,550 from the drug lobby—the most of any member of Congress, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political spending on the website OpenSecrets.org.

Manchin and Sinema insist that their stances reflect the concerns of voters in their home states. Last November, 68 percent of West Virginians voted for Trump, though Arizona narrowly went to Biden by a 49.4% to 49.1% margin.

But both West Virginia and Arizona are states with high levels of poverty and poorly funded schools and health centers, so there's no question that their residents would benefit from the plan's key provisions regarding health care, education, and other programs—indeed, more than residents of most other states. Manchin's insistence that the bill incorporate means tests and eligibility caps, and Sinema's fierce opposition to allowing Medicare to negotiate with drug companies to lower the price of medicine, will only hurt their constituents.

Manchin also has opposed many of the plan's provisions to deal with the climate crisis—provisions that could hurt both his political fundraising and his pocketbook. He's pocketed more contributions from coal, oil, and gas companies this campaign cycle than any senator, according to OpenSecrets. And his ties run deeper than the campaign donations he's received from these corporate interests. Last year, Manchin made half a million dollars in stock dividends from a coal company that is now controlled by his son, according to the New York Times. The Intercept reported that since joining the Senate, he has earned more than $4.5 million from that coal company and another, both of which he founded in the 1980s.

For her part, Sinema promised to push to lower prescription drug prices when she ran for the Senate in 2018. Now she's changed her tune, having taken in over $750, 000 from the pharmaceutical and medical device lobbies since then. In late September, Sinema held a fund-raiser with five business lobby groups that oppose the Biden bill.

Since Biden took office, America's corporations have significantly ramped up their campaign donations and lobbying efforts. According to OpenSecrets, corporations have deployed more than 4,000 lobbyists to scuttle core provisions of the Biden bill. During the first six months of this year, business groups spent $1.5 billion lobbying Congress, much of it directed at undermining the Build Back Better legislation. In addition, business lobby groups have significantly increased their campaign contributions to key members of Congress, including Manchin and Sinema.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers, and other business lobby groups are investing big bucks to kill the proposed tax increases on big corporations and the rich. The oil and coal companies don't want to wean the country off fossil fuels and are working overtime to kill Biden's clean energy provisions. During just one week last month, oil giant Exxon Mobil spent $275,000 on Facebook ads against the Biden plan.

Prescription drug prices in the U.S. are about three times higher than in other affluent democratic countries, according to a RAND Corporation study. But the pharmaceutical companies don't want to negotiate with Medicare to lower drug prices and are swarming Congress with big donations and lobbying efforts. The industry spent $171 million and deployed almost 1,500 lobbyists through the first half of the year, more than any other industry. Even the American Dental Association is mobilizing its 162,000 members to fight a proposal to include dental coverage for all Medicare recipients

On behalf of their corporate benefactors, Manchin and Sinema may be sabotaging the potential success of Biden's presidency and the odds that the Democrats will have legislation to tout as they seek to maintain even their slim hold on Congress in next year's midterm elections. They may also be undermining the last best chance to address America's most pressing problems.

Democrats' support for the Biden plan is—pick your adjective—overwhelming or near unanimous.

If Biden's bill doesn't make it through Congress, don't blame "the Democrats." Blame every Republican, and the tiny faction of Democrats, who have put their personal ambitions over the public good.


Peter Dreier is the E.P. Clapp distinguished professor of politics at Occidental College. He is the author of "The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame" (2012) and an editor (with Kate Aronoff and Michael Kazin) of "We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism, American Style" (2020). He is co-author of the forthcoming "Baseball Rebels: The Reformers and Radicals Who Shook Up the Game and Changed America" (2021).