Citizen Cartwright

Conservative mobilization around transgender issues

When the Supreme Court declared a constitutional right to same-sex marriage nearly eight years ago, social conservatives lost an issue they'd used to galvanize rank-and-file supporters and big donors, says The New York Times. 

 

"Today, the effort to restrict transgender rights has supplanted same-sex marriage as an animating issue for social conservatives at a pace that has stunned political leaders across the spectrum. It has reinvigorated a network of conservative groups, increased fund-raising and set the agenda in school boards and state legislatures,” the Times says.

 

It may be easier for Republicans to talk about transgender issues than about abortion, the Times says. The Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion created a backlash among Democrats and independents that's left many Republicans unsure of how — or whether — to address the issue.

 

An Associated Press article makes the same point:

 

"Privately, at least, strategists involved with Republican presidential campaigns concede that the GOP is on the wrong side of the debate as it currently stands,” AP says. "While popular with Republican primary voters, public polling consistently shows that the broader collection of voters who decide general elections believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.”

 

A separate Times article says that before this year, just three state legislatures had enacted full or partial bans on the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and transition surgery for people under 18.

 

Ten more states in the past three months have passed such prohibitions. 

 

And bans have passed at least one chamber of seven more state legislatures on the way toward enactment this year, the Times says.

 

GOP state legislators have called gender-affirming care experimental and harmful and say children aren't mature enough to make permanent decisions.

 

Major medical organizations in the United States support the care, however. And opponents of the prohibitions say they infringe on the rights of young people, parents and doctors, and pose significant mental health risks to a vulnerable population.  

Which America did you see in the State of the Union speech, GOP response?

As you know, we humans like information that reflects what we already think. And as you also know, I believe we’re better off focusing on what we share as humans instead of what divides us.

 

So, of course, I prefer what The Washington Post calls President Biden’s "political message of empathy and help for ordinary Americans“ to Arkansas Gov. Sarah Sanders’ Republican response that the choice between Republicans and Democrats is "between normal or crazy.”

 

On Tuesday night, "In the first State of the Union address of a new era of divided government that at times turned strikingly rowdy, Mr. Biden vowed to cooperate with the other party but offered no concessions to it,” says The New York Times. "Instead, he called on Republicans to embrace his program of raising taxes on the wealthy and extending social aid to the needy, citing bipartisan legislation passed when Democrats were in charge."

 

He said, “To my Republican friends, if we could work together in the last Congress, there’s no reason we can’t work together and find consensus on important things in this Congress as well.” 

 

"The president’s first major encounter with the newly empowered House Republicans featured stark moments of unscripted drama the likes of which were rarely seen during State of the Union addresses of the past,” says the Times.

 

When he mentioned the fentanyl crisis, introducing a father who lost a daughter to an overdose, some Republicans heckled him over drugs coming into the country, shouting, “The border! The border! It’s your fault!”

 

"The 80-year-old president seemed to draw energy from the feisty exchanges, speaking for 73 minutes to an audience watching to see how he met the test,” says the Times.

 

Even when he was promoting bipartisanship, Biden "relished jabbing Republicans,” says the Times. At one point, he noted that many Republicans voted against his infrastructure package yet still asked for money from it for their districts.

“Don’t worry,” he told them. “I promised I’d be a president for all Americans. We’ll fund these projects. And I’ll see you at the groundbreaking.”

 

Here is a fact check of Biden’s speech, from The Washington Post.

 

And here is a transcript of his speech, from AP.

 

Here is Sanders' response, on YouTube.

Will DOJ pursue House panel’s charges against Trump, allies?

It’s unclear how closely the special counsel’s office in charge of the Justice Department’s own investigation will follow the path mapped out by the House Jan. 6 committee — or whether Trump and others will face any criminal charges at all, says The New York Times.

 

The panel on Monday urged the Justice Department to consider prosecuting Trump for four different crimes involving his efforts to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election and his behavior during the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

 

There's been some overlap between criminal statutes cited by the department and the charges the committee recommended, according to search warrants and subpoenas that have surfaced during the federal inquiry, the Times says.

 

The laws the committee cited:

 

— Obstruction of an official proceeding 

Both the committee and prosecutors have placed this at the center of their work, says the Times. DOJ mentioned that charge in a warrant used in June to seize the cellphone of Jeffrey Clark, a former department official whom the committee referred for criminal charges on Monday.

 

And prosecutors already have used the obstruction charge in nearly 300 criminal cases to describe how the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 disrupted the certification of the election that was taking place there during a joint session of Congress.

 

— Conspiracy to defraud the United States

This charge has been used in several Justice Department cases against both far-right extremists and ordinary rioters who appeared to have planned in advance to storm the Capitol.

This conspiracy charge may better describe the evidence against Trump, says the Times. According to the committee, he defrauded the public by making constant false claims that the election had been rigged against him.

 

— Conspiracy to make a false statement

The committee says this charge is warranted because Trump took part in a scheme to send to Congress and the National Archives fake slates of electors declaring that he was the victor in several key states that were actually won by Joe Biden.

 

— Inciting or aiding an insurrection

This is the most serious charge the panel has recommended against Trump and likely would be the hardest to prove, says the Times. 

 

While the Justice Department has won a conviction on a related charge, seditious conspiracy, against Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers militia, and is set to try five members of another far-right group, the Proud Boys, for sedition, it hasn't charged anyone with insurrection in more than 900 criminal cases, the Times says.

 

On the other hand, a federal judge in Washington laid the ground for a potential insurrection case against Trump in a ruling in February that permitted a series of Jan. 6-related civil cases filed against the former president to move forward, says the Times.

 

Here is the text of the Jan. 6 panel’s summary of its report, from NBC News.

Another option when thinking about an ‘enemy’

On our calendars this month are an election and Thanksgiving dinner — both potentially involving people whose views are the opposite of ours.

 

So what can help us digest whatever happens?

 

I appreciate the Dalai Lama’s approach:

 

"Realizing that the other person is also just like me is the basis on which we can develop compassion, not only toward those around us but also toward our enemy. Normally, when we think about our enemy, we think about harming him. Instead, try to remember that the enemy is also a human being, just like you.”

 

Here are suggested thoughts, from spiritual teachers Ram Dass and Mirabai Bush in their book “Walking Each Other Home”:

 

"This person has a body and a mind, just like me.
This person has feelings, emotions, and thoughts, just like me.
This person has experienced physical and emotional pain and suffering, just like me.
This person has at some time been sad, disappointed, angry, or hurt, just like me.
This person has felt unworthy or inadequate, just like me.
This person worries and is frightened sometimes, just like me.
This person will die, just like me.
This person has longed for friendship, just like me.
This person is learning about life, just like me.
This person wants to be caring and kind to others, just like me.
This person wants to be content with what life has given them, just like me.
This person wishes to be free from pain and suffering, just like me.
This person wishes to be safe and healthy, just like me.
This person wishes to be happy, just like me.
This person wishes to be loved, just like me.

Now, allow wishes for well-being to arise:
I wish this person to have the strength, resources, and social support they need to navigate the difficulties in life with ease.
I wish this person to be free from pain and suffering.
I wish this person to be peaceful and happy.
I wish this person to be loved . . . because this person is a fellow human being, just like me."

House to vote on overhaul of Electoral Count Act

President Trump and his allies tried to exploit the law’s vague language in the weeks after the 2020 election as they strategized how to keep Joe Biden out of office, including by lobbying Vice President Pence to object to the certification of Biden’s victory when Congress counted the votes on Jan. 6.

 

Pence refused to do so, but it became clear afterward that there was no real legal framework, or recourse, to respond under the 1887 law if the vice president had tried to block the count. 

 

The House bill and its Senate counterpart would better define the vice president’s role and make clear that he or she has no say in the final outcome.

 

Both versions also would make it harder for lawmakers to object if they don’t like the results of an election, clarify laws that could allow a state’s vote to be delayed, and ensure that there's just one slate of legal electors from each state. One strategy by Trump and his allies was to create alternate slates of electors in key states Biden won, with the ultimately unsuccessful goal that they could be voted on during the congressional certification on Jan. 6 and result in throwing the election to Trump.

 

The House vote is expected to fall mostly along party lines. The Senate bill currently has the support of nine Republican senators, and its backers are hopeful they'll get the 10 votes they need to break a filibuster and pass it in the 50-50 Senate.

 

The House vote is expected Wednesday, according to The Associated Press.

Margaret Sullivan’s final column: Threats to democracy a test for media

Journalists must do more to address threats to democracy, says The Washington Post’s media columnist, as she wraps up her 42-year newspaper career.

 

"The media has come a long, long way in figuring out how to cover the democracy-threatening ways of Donald Trump and his allies, including his stalwart helpers in right-wing media,” says Sullivan, who previously was a highly regarded public editor at The New York Times, examining the paper's journalistic integrity.

 

"It is now common to see headlines and stories that plainly refer to some politicians as 'election deniers,’ and journalists are far less hesitant to use the blunt and clarifying word ‘lie' to describe Trump’s false statements," says Sullivan.

 

“The media seems finally to have absorbed what should have been blindingly obvious from the beginning: Trump is by no means a normal political figure, and he will never reform into some kind of responsible statesman,” she says.

 

"Another encouraging development is the decision by a number of major media organizations, including The Post, to form democracy teams or beats, concentrating on efforts to limit voting access, the politicization of election systems and the insidious efforts to instill doubt in the public about legitimate voting results,” Sullivan says.

 

But “for the sake of democracy,” news organizations need to "break free of their hidebound practices — the love of political conflict, the addiction to elections as a horse race.”

 

Journalists "will need to lean less on knee-jerk live coverage and more on reporting that relentlessly provides meaningful context,” she says.

 

Yet “even if the reality-based press does a perfect job with coverage focused nonstop on the truth — and that’s unlikely — it will be no match for the duplicitous right-wing media, particularly Fox News with its all-in audience and constant work on behalf of Trump and his allies,” says Sullivan. "Prime-time commentators like Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity will do the heavy lifting. A candidate can’t buy that kind of help.”

 

"I hope that newsroom leaders are thinking hard about moving outside their long-standing practices as the presidential campaign approaches,” Sullivan says. "This will not be a traditional contest, and the stakes are high. We simply have to get it right."

One dog barking

By John Dineen

We’re witnessing a spirited discussion over some Democratic campaign organizations “paying to play” in Republican primaries — governors and House seats, primarily. 

Democrats have poured money into specific Republican races to advance the fortunes of the more radical and — in Democratic eyes, at least — beatable candidates in the general election. 

The discussion revolves around two questions: 

Is it right? 

Is it smart?

The consensus of articles I’ve read is pretty clear: not right, not smart. Public officials, both Democrats and, not surprisingly, Republicans, denounce the scheme on both ethical and tactical grounds. But they don’t explore why Democratic campaign operations might be doing something, well, wrong and dumb. 

Politico quotes both Republicans and Democrats, who are “seething” and “aghast.” 

Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn.: “It’s dishonorable, and it’s dangerous, and it’s just damn wrong.”

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.: “While I think a certain number of Democrats truly understand that democracy is threatened, don’t come to me after having spent money supporting an election denier in a primary, and then come to me and say, where are all the good Republicans?”

Even the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has engaged in the tactic, treads lightly. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y., said on MSNBC, “I think you might see us do that,” while pointing out, “We have a high bar for that.”

“We have a high bar for that” doesn’t have that Churchillian “We will fight them on the beaches” ring to it.

In The New Yorker, Amy Davidson Sorkin is critical of the ethics and the tactics, but she also raises a longer-term, strategic concern. 

“But the tactic of manipulating Republicans into nominating proto-authoritarian election deniers is damaging even if it works, in the short term, exactly as intended — that is, even if it helps the Democrats win some seats. For one thing, it habituates Republicans — voters, activists, local officials — in the practice of uniting behind extremists after the primary. It cajoles them into discarding whatever taboos might be left at this point. And making the most conspiratorial voices the loudest changes the tone of the political conversation. Candidates of the sort who might vote to impeach Trump the next time — and it’s all too plausible that there could be a next time — will be driven from politics.”

Given all those negatives — wrong and dumb, and possibly dumber — why do it?

A hard-line position of “the end justifies the means” is the rallying cry for most of the world’s worst atrocities. 

On the other hand, some critics appear to adopt the other extreme — that it’s wrong to try to influence the other party’s primary under any circumstances; that is, you should adhere to the rules of the game as you believe they should be, not necessarily what they are, and regardless of what the other party does. “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail,” as former Secretary of State Henry Stimson said of U.S. code-breaking in 1929.

To be sure, “the end justifies the means” can lead us to a dark place. But “the means justify the end” suggests that a dark place is acceptable as long as we end up there playing by the rules.

Extremes make good foils. A middle ground — and this is where journalists are most comfortable — ought to take into account some critical considerations — considerations that matter if your job is, say, winning elections.

This is not a drill

Having worked in political campaigns, I can attest to the imperative of winning that attends them — within ethical guardrails — under ordinary circumstances. If you’re a Democratic operative in 2022, you likely believe that GOP success in the fall and in 2024 would be a calamity for democracy and the nation. That has to be part of your calculation of the politics of this. You have to win. This is not a drill.

Yes, many Republicans feel the same way about Democrats, but that’s now part of the GOP DNA: in large part the fruit of years of investment in a closed GOP information system. Most Republicans believe, without evidence, that the 2020 election was fraudulent. Democratic calculations need to take into account any Republican reaction, but it shouldn’t shake their own conviction.

What is an establishment Republican in 2022?

The litmus test for critics of the Democratic tactic has been GOP candidates’ position on the 2020 election. Fair enough. And in gubernatorial races, that presents a high risk. 

But, rhetorical heat aside — and I recognize the potency of Sorkin’s argument — how different in substance are the so-called extremists from the so-called moderate, or establishment, GOP candidates?

It’s reasonable to ask if terms like “moderate” and “establishment” are talismans to which journalists cling, with little evidence of their existence anymore. Most House Republicans voted against accepting the electoral count at the fateful Jan. 6 session. Not one Republican in the House or Senate voted in favor of the recent climate change-health care bill — and as Elizabeth Kolbert points out in The New Yorker, climate had been at one time a bipartisan issue. Senate Republicans have openly rejected the idea that any Democratic governance is legitimate; as a matter of course, they aim to thwart it on principle.

There have been crucial exceptions to that characterization, but not many. In legislative terms, then, how different are the GOP candidates? In which case, let’s promote the candidate we think we can beat, would seem to be the Democratic reasoning.

What about the money?

It’s worth noting that these kinds of decisions are possible now that our politics are awash in money in a way they never were before the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010. Political decisions are now weighed in an environment in which you always have to fear a large sack of opposition money from out of nowhere landing on the head of your candidate or your cause. Kolbert points to the Citizens United ruling as the end of bipartisan cooperation on climate.

…

None of these considerations makes an airtight case either for or against the Democratic strategy. Indeed, the high stakes involved reinforce how excruciating a choice it is.

Aaron Blake of The Washington Post points to past races where the practice has worked for Democrats, but adds, “Whether that holds in 2022, we’ll have to see. And if it doesn’t, there will be plenty of I-told-you-sos.”

As Sorkin points out, elevating extremists within the GOP accustoms rank and file Republicans to, well, extremists — making the strategy dubious even if Democrats are successful. 

Regardless, no strategy appears likely to head off the new American political norm of growing intolerance eliding into sporadic violence and threats of violence.

Ultimately, the two parties operate with different visions of governance in 2022 — they are no longer center-right and center-left competitors. Whichever party carries the day, in November and in 2024, we face divergent paths as a nation. Whether the Democrats are acting wisely or not, there should be no misunderstanding the path they’re trying to avoid.

(One Dog Barking is an occasional column by my husband, John Dineen. He is a former senior congressional staffer and media executive and founder of briefing.center, a news and information service.)

Big Pharma’s lobbying on drug prices in climate, tax, health bill

As lawmakers prepared to vote on the legislation, Stephen Ubl, president and CEO of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, told Politico: "Those members who vote for this bill will not get a free pass. We’ll do whatever we can to hold them accountable. ... Few associations have all the tools of modern political advocacy at their disposal in the way that PhRMA does.”

 

In the past 12 months, PhRMA and closely allied groups have spent at least $57 million — $19 million of it since July — on television, cable, radio, and social media ads opposing drug pricing negotiation provisions of the bill, according to monitoring by the advocacy group Patients for Affordable Drugs. Big Pharma has spent more than $180 million this year on a team of 1,500 lobbyists, says Open Secrets, a nonprofit that tracks campaign finance and lobbying.

 

The final bill is weaker than earlier versions, which would have extended negotiations to more drugs and included private insurance plans, says KHN. The bill would enable Medicare to negotiate prices beginning in 2026, initially for 10 drugs.

 

It would save the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services about $102 billion over a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. 

 

In 2021, the top U.S. pharmaceutical companies’ revenue included $94 billion for Johnson & Johnson, $81 billion for Pfizer, $49 billion for Merck and $46 billion for Bristol Myers Squibb, says KHN.

 

The drug negotiation program the bill creates sets in motion a system of cost-benefit evaluations like those used in Europe to guide price negotiations with industry, says KHN. 

 

"Americans pay, on average, four times what many Europeans do — and sometimes far, far more — for the same drugs,” KHN says.

 

In an August 4 letter, PhRMA said the bill was an “attack on medical innovation.”

 

Such warnings “constitute the pharma response in literally every instance since 1906,” the year the first drug regulation agency was created, says Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, who leads the Program on Regulation, Therapeutics, and Law at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. But, he says, regulatory changes rarely choked out investment in new drugs.

'If you probe people’s stories, it’s harder to hate'

David Axelrod lives by the journalistic maxim that “if you probe people’s stories, it’s harder to hate,” he says in a New York Times interview.

 

The long-time reporter, Democratic political consultant and Obama administration official now is celebrating the 500th episode of his podcast, "The Axe Files,” interviews of “key figures in the political world,” according to its website.

 

"Sometimes you talk to people who you think you don’t admire, right?” he says. “And then, there are elements of them that you learn that you do.”

 

Often, he finds ways to connect across the political divide, as when he discovered that he and Karl Rove, a Republican political consultant and George W. Bush administration official, shared a common tragedy. They both had a parent who died by suicide.

 

"When people have struggles like that, I try to talk [with] them about it, in part because if people are listening who are having those struggles, or have lost someone, they understand that they’re not alone,” Axelrod says. "Karl has a very hard bark and a reputation for that. But I see him differently. Because of that, we actually have gone on and done things together on suicide prevention.”

 

Axelrod interviewed Kellyanne Conway, a Republican political consultant and Trump administration official, on “The Axe Files.”

 

“The father abandoned the family when she was three. Turns out he had another family, and he moved in with that other family and had a child just about the same age. So he leaves her and her mother and moves in with another woman and another kid who is a contemporary of hers and lives two towns down. She doesn’t see him again until she’s 12.

“She was resistant to delving too deeply into it. But finally, she said, ‘You know, I do remember coming home from school one day crying hysterically because I was one of only two kids in school who didn’t have a father.’ The other person’s father was lost in Vietnam.”

What media need to do to get people to read the news

The United States has one of the highest rates of “news avoidance” in the world. About 4 in 10 Americans sometimes or often avoid the news — a higher rate than at least 30 other countries, according to Reuters.

 

Amanda Ripley says she’s been a journalist for two decades but even she stopped reading the news, and so did journalist friends of hers.

 

"I’ve spent the past year trying to figure out what news designed for 21st-century humans might look like — interviewing physicians who specialize in communicating bad news to patients, behavioral scientists who understand what humans need to live full, informed lives and psychologists who have been treating patients for “headline stress disorder,” Ripley writes in a Washington Post opinion article.

 

She says there are three things missing from the news: hope, agency (the feeling that you can do something to “convert anger into action, frustration into invention”) and dignity (listening to people and inviting them to talk to us, with civility).

 

Ripley’s points make sense to me, and I hope it’s apparent to you that I’ve been trying to pursue them. I’ve been writing this citizen-centered blog for 13 years, and longtime readers may have noticed that as the challenges to democracy and media have increased, I’ve been focusing more on ways we can cope and contribute.  

 

We humans have a negativity bias (if we have 100 positive interactions with a dog and then one bites us, we tend to be more cautious around dogs). And if the news is negative on top of our natural bias, it isn’t surprising that downward emotional spiraling can follow.

 

In this blog, I’ve been focusing increasingly on positive news. As some friends of mine like to point out, an outcome is often as likely to be positive as negative.

 

Do we have reason for hope, on issues even as difficult as climate change? 

 

Of course! 

 

In 1970, when the first Earth Day occurred, many people feared that pollution had gone too far and the environment couldn’t recover.

 

“The oceans are dying” was the headline of a New York Times opinion article by famed oceanographer Jacques Cousteau in 1971.

 

Here is a rundown of the air and water pollution at that time, from the University of Michigan.

 

I started working in environmental issues in 1983 and witnessed the remarkable recovery of the environment. We haven’t gone too far on climate yet, according to experts whose analyses I’ve run in this blog.

 

And change, personally or societally, comes when the pain of doing what we’re doing exceeds the fear and cost of change.

 

As climate effects increase, more climate “skeptics” will find themselves less skeptical.

 

Ripley says people need to feel agency. I worked in Congress for 14 years and ran a publishing company focusing on environmental action in Congress for an additional decade. My experience tells me that if enough people insist that U.S. climate polices improve, they will improve. 

 

I’ve often thought that it would be ideal if news articles pointing out problems included possible solutions to those problems. Why doesn’t it happen more? For one thing, it’s not so easy when one is on deadline. 

 

Ripley quotes David Bornstein, co-founder of the nonprofit Solutions Journalism Network: “The world will get better when people understand problems, threats and challenges, and what their best options are to make progress.” He and his colleagues have trained more than 25,000 journalists to do high-quality solutions articles all over the world.

 

Ripley talks about dignity. I’ve told you about the efforts I’ve made in my extended family over the years to focus on the good in people behind their angry and aggressive assertions of beliefs that are the opposite of mine. I’m trying to extend that to everyone, in this blog and elsewhere.