Stephan: I have mentioned before the comparison of Donald Trump and Al Gore, and I think Chris Cillizza is spot on with his essay expanding on this. Patriotism is about more than yourself.
The President speaking on 6th January
“You can’t love your country only when you win.”That’s President Joe Biden during a speech he gave Thursday morning to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the US Capitol riot. It’s not only a memorable line — it’s likely to be the one that gets repeated the most today and in the days to come — but also a hugely important one if we hope to fully come to grips with what happened last January 6 and everything that led to that moment.At the heart of the line is the idea of patriotism. Remember that Donald Trump ran for president in 2016 expressly on the idea of putting “America first.” The idea that animated both his campaign and his four years in the White House was that the United States was exceptional in the world and that, for too long, American leaders had been afraid to loudly and proudly proclaim that fact, choosing instead to make America subservient to lesser countries around the world.
“The future doesn’t belong to globalists,” Trump said […]
Stephan: Homeland Security, as this report describes has become a deeply compromised agency with too much money, and not enough oversight and regulation. Another area of government where Merrick Garland's DOJ has failed to protect our democracy.
Attorney General Merrick Garland Credit:AFP
Freedom of the press and the ability of journalists to hold governments to account is regarded as a critical pillar of democracy. In the United States, it’s supposed to be safeguarded by the First Amendment.
However, especially in recent years, the US government stands accused, maybe more than ever, of allowing increasing attacks on press freedom and the abuse of state power to trample on any notion of journalists being truly able to do their job if they wish to hold the powerful to account – and go against the government line.
There are many examples to choose from, which ought to elicit concern, while the problem also clearly transcends party politics – and, by no means, is the problem new. The starkest examples might be US treatment of Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden.
But ever since its inception following 9/11, the US Department for Homeland Security has descended into little more than a rogue agency that stands accused of spying not just on journalists but also activists and minority communities, too, […]
Biden condemned the attack on the U.S. Capitol, undertaken by Trump supporters one year ago, and said Trump himself spun a “web of lies” about the 2020 presidential election that fueled the violence.
Madam Vice President, my fellow Americans: to state the obvious, one year ago today, in this sacred place, Democracy was attacked. Simply attacked. The will of the people was under assault. The Constitution, our constitution faced the gravest of threats. Outnumbered in the face of a brutal attack, the Capitol Police, the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, the National Guard and other brave law enforcement officials saved the rule of law. Our democracy held. We the people endured. We the people prevail.
For the first time in our history, a president had not just […]
María Paula Rubiano A. , Environmental Justice Fellow - Grist
Stephan: Here is some good news from New Jersey laying out a commitment to eliminate diesel trucks from their highways in three years. Now if other states would just take note and move in this same direction.
Air pollution has been linked with high rates of asthma and other respiratory issues. Credit: Spencer Platt / Getty Images
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection earlier this week adopted a rule to phase out diesel-powered trucks – meaning anything bigger than a delivery van – starting in 2025. Based on California’s Advanced Clean Trucks rule, or ACT, New Jersey’s policy will require between 40 to 75 percent of new truck sales in the state be pollution-free, zero-emission by 2035.
“New Jersey is already experiencing the adverse impacts of climate change, but we have the power and obligation to reduce its worsening in the years ahead by acting now to limit our emissions of climate pollutants,” Shawn LaTourette, the state’s commissioner for the Department of Environmental Protection, said in a press release about the new rule.
Contributing to about 40 percent of New Jersey’s total carbon emissions, the transportation sector is the largest greenhouse gas source in the state. In turn, the almost 423,000 […]
Stephan: If America is going to continue as a democracy, it is going to come down to what each of us does. The MAGAt Republicans want democracy to end; they want power, and will do whatever is required to destroy democrcy if it enables them to come into power and to retain it, regardless of what the majority of Americans want. History makes it clear that they are following a path to fascism. Are you a fellow traveler or are you doing whatever you can to protect democracy?
Illustration: Anthony Gerace/The Guardian
The right has recognized that the system is in collapse, and it has a plan: violence and solidarity with treasonous far-right factions
Nobody wants what’s coming, so nobody wants to see what’s coming.
On the eve of the first civil war, the most intelligent, the most informed, the most dedicated people in the United States could not see it coming. Even when Confederate soldiers began their bombardment of Fort Sumter, nobody believed that conflict was inevitable. The north was so unprepared for the war they had no weapons.
In Washington, in the winter of 1861, Henry Adams, the grandson of John Quincy Adams, declared that “not one man in America wanted the civil war or expected or intended it”. South Carolina senator James Chestnut, who did more than most to bring on the advent of the catastrophe, promised to drink all the blood spilled in the entire conflict. The common wisdom at the time was that he would have to drink “not a thimble”
