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23 August 21
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“You are not a horse. You are not a cow,” the Food and Drug Administration said about using the drug that hosts on Fox News have been pushing
ou are not a horse. You are not a cow,” the Food and Drug Administration tweeted on Saturday alongside a link to a page on their website explaining “Why you should not use Ivermectin to treat or prevent Covid-19.”
Why? Because Ivermectin, a medication usually reserved for deworming livestock, is responsible for a spike in poison control calls in Mississippi as people duped by conspiracy theories have purchased the drug and ingested it, hoping it will treat or prevent Covid-19 — something the drug is not proven to do.
According to an alert issued by the Mississippi Department of Health on Friday, 70 percent of all recent calls to poison control in the state “have been related to ingestion of livestock or animal formulations of ivermectin purchased at livestock supply centers.” Although most callers (85 percent) only reported mild symptoms, one person was advised to seek additional treatment.
“Animal drugs are highly concentrated for large animals and can be highly toxic in humans,” the alert said. Ivermectin is sometimes used in humans to treat parasites or scabies, but in much smaller doses than are given to livestock.
The calls have clearly baffled health officials in the state. “I think some people are trying to use it as a preventative which is really kindof crazy,” Dr. Thomas Dobbs, Mississippi’s state health officer, said. “So please don’t do that.”
“You wouldn’t get your chemotherapy at a feed store,” Dobbs added. “You wouldn’t treat your pneumonia with your animal’s medication. It can be dangerous to get the wrong doses of medication, especially with something meant for a horse or a cow.”
But the obvious risks of humans ingesting Ivermectin haven’t stopped people at Fox News — including hosts Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson — from dangerously suggesting that it is a safe and effective treatment for Covid-19, as Rachel Maddow pointed out on her Friday night show where she showed clips of Fox personalities pushing the drug consistently over the last six months.
“Fox News is busy saying, ‘Don’t take the vaccine, but do take this horse deworming medication, trust us, it is proven,’ ” Maddow said.
Except, Ivermectin’s efficacy in treating or preventing Covid is everything but proven. Both the FDA and World Health Organization have warned against it. Mississippi especially cannot afford an influx of patients who took Ivermectin, as the state is experiencing a Covid-19 surge that has already overwhelmed many hospitals.
President George W. Bush walks towards microphones to speak to the press, Dec. 22, 2005 at the White House. (photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)
If it hasn’t been forever, it’s certainly felt like it. Almost 20 years after George W. Bush and crew invaded and occupied Afghanistan, the American-installed government there collapsed, its leader fled the country, and its American-trained military (already well staffed with plenty of “ghost” troops) evaporated. Many of the government soldiers and police who remained officially on duty hadn’t been paid for months, amid massive corruption and a staggering expenditure of American taxpayer dollars. Four administrations had spent at least $2.26 trillion fighting the war itself and more than $88 billion arming and supplying a military that, in the end, wouldn’t fight. It should be the ultimate lesson in forever disaster, but don’t count on the U.S. military learning much from it.
After all, the very generals who, year after endless year, oversaw such disasters, while lauding “progress” in Afghanistan and Iraq, were almost inevitably promoted or sent via golden parachute into the other half of the military-industrial complex. Lessons? Us? If anyone in Washington was into such lessons, the Pentagon might have learned something from the 2014 collapse of the Iraqi military that it also funded, organized, and trained in the face of the relatively modest forces of the Islamic State. But no such luck, as recent events in Afghanistan suggest.
Yes, the blame game is now on here at home and the insults are being hurled, but a serious reconsideration of the last 20 years of forever wars? Don’t count on it. Unfortunately, as TomDispatch regular Karen Greenberg, whose new book Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of Democracy from the War on Terror to Donald Trump is being published this week, suggests: if you think it’s been forever and a day so far, just wait.
True, no one talks about the “war on terror” anymore. Even its proprietors now tend to refer to it by what was once a phrase used by its critics, “the forever war.” As Greenberg makes clear, however, whatever they may or may not be called, don’t be surprised when, in some fashion, they prove ongoing. No less sadly, the world of power and privilege they created in this country won’t be ending either. As former Yankee catcher and manager Yogi Berra might have put it, “It’s like déjà vu all over again.” When it comes to forever disaster and this country in the twenty-first century, it’s a reasonable bet that you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet. (If you don’t believe me, just ask Donald Trump.)
-Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch
t ended in chaos and disaster. Kabul has fallen and Joe Biden is being blamed (by congressional Republicans in particular) for America’s now almost-20-year disaster in Afghanistan. But is the war on terror itself over? Apparently not.
It seems like centuries ago, but do you remember when, in May 2003, President George W. Bush declared “Mission accomplished” as he spoke proudly of his invasion of Iraq? Three months later, Attorney General John Ashcroft proclaimed, “We are winning the war on terror.” Despite such declarations and the “corners” endlessly turned as America’s military commanders announced impending successes year after year in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, the war on terror, abroad and on the home front, has been never-ending, as the now-codified term “forever wars” suggests.
By 2011, following the death of Osama bin Laden, President Barack Obama admitted that the killing of the head of al-Qaeda would not bring that war to a close. In May 2011, he informed the nation that bin Laden’s “death does not mark the end of our effort” as “the cause of securing our country is not complete.” As President Biden signals his intention to bring the war on terror as we know it to an end, the question is: What will remain of it both abroad and at home, no matter what he tries to do?
The Pivot Abroad
As the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks looms, the Biden administration is making it crystal clear that it intends to finally bring the most obvious aspects of that war to a close, no matter the consequences. “It is time,” Biden, the fourth war-on-terror president, said in April, “to end the Forever War.” Although mired in controversy, turmoil, and bloodshed, the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan did indeed take place, even if several thousand were then sent back to Kabul Airport to guard the panicky removal of the vast American embassy staff and others from that city. That was, as the administration announced, only a temporary measure as Taliban troops entered the Afghan capital and took over the government there.
Eighteen years after the invasion of Iraq, a shifting definition of the role of the 2,500 or so U.S. troops still stationed there is also underway and should be complete by the end of the year. Instead of more combat missions, the American role will now be logistics and advisory support.
Putting a fine point on both the Afghan withdrawal and the Iraqi change of direction, many in Congress have acknowledged the need to remove the authorizations passed so long ago for those forever wars. In June, the House of Representatives voted to repeal the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Force (AUMF) in Iraq that paved the way for the invasion of that country. And this month, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee followed suit — 18 years after George W. Bush deposed Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein and disaster followed.
The removal of that 2002 AUMF remains, of course, painfully overdue. After all, it has been used through these many years to cover this country’s disastrous occupation of and attempts at “nation-building” in Iraq. Eventually, during Donald Trump’s last year in office, it was even cited to authorize the drone assassination of a top Iranian general at Baghdad International Airport. Like so many war-on-terror policies, once put in place, successive administrations showed no urge to let that AUMF go. In that way, what had once been a regime-change directive (based on a set of lies about weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq) morphed into a long-term nation-building scheme, without any new congressional authorizations at all.
Plans are also now on the table for the repeal of the even more impactful 2001 AUMF, passed by Congress one week after 9/11. Like the Iraq War authorization, its use has been expanded in ways well beyond its original intent — namely, the rooting out of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Under the 2001 AUMF’s auspices, in the last nearly two decades, the United States has conducted military operations in ever more countries across the Greater Middle East and Africa. But in Congress, what’s now being discussed is not just repealing that act, but replacing it altogether.
Traditionally, when a war ends, there’s a resolution, perhaps codified in a treaty or an agreement of some sort acknowledging victory or defeat, and a nod to the peace that will follow. Not so with this war.
However unsuccessful, the war on terror, experts tell us, will instead continue. The only difference: it won’t be called a war anymore. Instead, there will be a variety of militarized counterterrorism efforts around the globe. With or without the moniker of “war,” the U.S. remains at war in numerous places, only recently, for instance, launching airstrikes on Somalia to counter the terrorist group al-Shabaab.
In Africa, Syria, and Indonesia, experts warn, the continued spread of ISIS, the reinvigoration of al-Qaeda, and the persistence of groups like Jemaah Islamiyah demand a continued American military counterterrorism effort. All of this was, in a strange way, foreseeable in the drafting of the 2001 AUMF in which no enemy was actually named, nor were temporal or geographical limits or conditions laid down for the resolution of the conflict to come. As the war on terror’s spread to country after country has demonstrated, once unleashed, such a war paradigm takes on a life of its own.
After 20 years of various kinds of failure in which the goals of the war on terror were never truly attained, the U.S. military, the intelligence community, and the Biden administration are now focused elsewhere. According to the latest government threat assessment issued in April by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), terrorism is far from the most serious threat the nation faces today. As Emily Harding of the Center for Strategic and International Studies sums it up, reflecting on the DNI’s report, the intelligence community’s priorities “are shifting… from a focus on counterterrorism to addressing near-peer competitors.”
“The United States is transitioning,” Harding explains, “from mostly low-tech, low-resourced adversaries (e.g., the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and their subsidiaries) to a focus on great power competition, in particular with China and Russia, both of whom have invested in sophisticated technical tools and are armed with robust conventional and nuclear forces.”
Still, however much the Biden administration may be pivoting to a new cold war with China in particular, just how long such a pivot lasts remains an open question, especially given the recent Afghan disaster. And despite the coming 20th anniversary of 9/11, no matter what Congress does or doesn’t rescind when it comes to those AUMFs, the U.S. forever war with terrorism will persist, even if, for a while, the threat of Islamic terrorism takes a back seat to other potential dangers in official Washington.
The Pivot at Home
On the home front, there’s a similarly disturbing persistence when it comes to the war on terror. Like that set of conflicts abroad, counterterrorism efforts against Islamist terrorists at home have given way to other issues. Mirroring the reduced importance of international terrorism in the report of the director of national intelligence, for instance, Attorney General Merrick Garland recently highlighted a domestic shift away from Islamic terrorism in a memorandum to Department of Justice (DOJ) personnel.
Outlining the “broad scope” of the Department’s responsibilities, his priorities couldn’t have been clearer. His first commitment, he insisted, was to restoring the integrity of the Department, a clear reference to the DOJ’s rejection of independence from the White House during the Trump years. Meanwhile, he explained, the Justice Department will focus on its primary mission — protecting Americans “from environmental degradation and the abuse of market power, from fraud and corruption, from violent crime and cyber-crime, and from drug trafficking and child exploitation.” Only as a seeming afterthought did he add, “And it must do all of this without ever taking its eye off of the risk of another devastating attack by foreign terrorists.”
But his words hid a more subtle reality. Much of the domestic architecture created in the name of the war on terror persists at home as well as abroad. At its height, the counterterrorism movement at home involved an expansive and aggressive use of law enforcement and intelligence tools that readily — often with the assent of Congress and the courts — tossed aside constitutional protections and reinterpreted laws in ways that privileged American security over rights.
Passed in October 2001, the Patriot Act, for example, downgraded Fourth Amendment protections, enabling law enforcement to conduct mass warrantless surveillance on Americans. Muslims as a group — rather than based on individual suspicion — were detained without charge, targeted in stings and terror investigations, and threatened with imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay.
During President Obama’s term in office, some of these measures were revised for the better in the Freedom Act. Meant to replace the Patriot Act, while leaving many broad authorities in place, it banned the bulk intelligence collection of American telephone records and Internet metadata. For the most part, however, law enforcement’s counterterrorism powers, created to defeat al-Qaeda, have remained robust and are there for use against others.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), created in the wake of 9/11, has also turned its attention elsewhere. Almost from its inception, the agency used the powers granted to it in the name of counterterrorism in other ways entirely. It soon turned its attention to dealing with drug crimes, the control of the border, and immigration matters, all outside the realm of post-9/11 terrorist threats.
Under President Trump, in particular, DHS (by then, remarkably enough, the country’s largest law enforcement agency) refocused its resources on matters that had little or nothing to do with counterterrorism. During the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, for instance, its officials deployed helicopters, drones, and other forms of group surveillance to monitor protests and, in Portland, Oregon, even to quell them with force. In other words, the agency built for counterterrorism had, by then, become whatever a president wanted it to be.
A Call for Review
The future of such powers and policies at home and abroad is now in a strange kind of limbo. Addressing the Trump administration’s misuse of the Department of Justice, for instance, Attorney General Garland did indeed signal his intent to limit any use of it for political purposes. In the process, he issued a clear directive against any possible White House politicization of the department. But not a mention has yet been made of authorizing a much-needed thorough review of the powers the DOJ gained in the forever-war years in the name of counterterrorism.
When it comes to the Department of Homeland Security, the path to reform is even less clear as, in its repurposed mission, counterterrorism aimed at foreign groups may be among the least of its tasks. As a recent report from the Center for American Progress points out “What America needs from DHS today… is different from when it was founded… [W]e need a DHS that prioritizes the rule of law, and one that protects all Americans as well as everyone who comes to live, study, work, travel, and seek safety here.”
In fact, in these years, both at home and abroad, counterterrorism agencies and the military were granted vast new powers. While they may now all be pivoting elsewhere in the name of new threats, they are certainly not focused on limiting those powers in any significant way.
And yet such limits couldn’t be more important. It would, in fact, be wise for this country to pause, review the uses of the post-9/11 powers granted to such domestic institutions, and revise the policies that allowed for their seemingly endless expansion at home and abroad in the name of the war on terror. It would be no less wise to place more confidence in the country’s ability to keep itself safe by embracing its foundational principles. At home, that would mean honoring fairness and restraint in the application of the law, while insisting on limits to the use of force abroad.
If only.
At present, it looks as if those forever wars have created a new form of forever law, forever policy, forever power, and a forever-changed America. And count on one thing: if changes aren’t made, we in this country will find ourselves living forever in the shadow of those forever wars.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands (the final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.
Karen J. Greenberg, a TomDispatch regular, is the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law and author of the newly published Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of Democracy from the War on Terror to Donald Trump (Princeton University Press). Julia Tedesco helped with research for this piece.
In this March 2, 2021, file photo, pharmacy technician Hollie Maloney loads a syringe with Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine at the Portland Expo in Portland, Maine. The U.S. gave full approval to Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine on Monday, Aug. 23, 2021. (photo: Robert F. Bukaty/AP)
A rally for unemployment benefits. (photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
ix academics, including Arin Dube and Suresh Naidu, released a paper last week estimating the impact of the massive unemployment benefit cuts that occurred in twenty-two states in June. The team was able to use bank transaction data and comparisons to unemployment benefit recipients in states that did not cut benefits to get precise estimates of both the employment and income effects of the policy change.
Overall, individuals subject to benefit cuts had only slightly higher employment rates than individuals who were not subject to cuts but had massively lower incomes.
The researchers focused on a cohort of UI recipients who were receiving benefits in April of this year. They found that states that cut unemployment benefits (Withdrawal States) saw a 46 percent reduction in benefit recipiency among this group relative to states that did not cut those benefits (Retain States).
From there, they looked to see how employment differed between the Withdrawal State cohort and Retain State cohort over this period. What they found is that, 21.5 percent of people in the Retain State cohort got employment over this period. In the Withdrawal State cohort, it was only slightly higher at 24.9 percent.
It’s important to underscore here that these figures represent employment differences among the cohort of people who were unemployed at the end of April. This is different from analyzing overall employment differences among the labor force in each state. Some or all of the 4.4 percentage points of extra people who got a job in the Withdrawal States may have done so at the expense of other job seekers, making the net effect on overall employment even lower than this figure suggests.
Cutting unemployment benefits in this way has two countervailing income effects. It directly reduces income from UI benefits while indirectly increasing income from the earnings of those who obtain employment as a result of the cut. The researchers estimate that earnings rose among the Withdrawal cohort by an average of $14 per week while benefits declined by $278 per week. Thus, the net income change was a decline of $264 per week, or $13,728 on an annualized basis.
Spending also decreased by $145 per week ($7,540 annually) in the Withdrawal cohort relative to the Retain cohort. This reduction in consumer spending will of course make it harder for businesses to hire people.
So far, only 26 states have implemented these steep benefit cuts and those states are generally less populous than the states that have not implemented the cuts. But the pandemic UI benefits will expire in all states on September 6 unless Congress acts.
Yesterday, President Biden sent a letter to Congress saying that he believes it is appropriate to allow these benefits to expire on September 6, but this and other research clearly shows that it is not appropriate, at least if your goal is to avoid needless economic devastation that dramatically cuts income and consumer spending while having virtually no impact on employment.
At the start of the pandemic, 152.5 million people were employed. That number is currently 146.8 million people. If employment continues to increase at around 900,000 per month, the gap between current employment and pre-pandemic employment will be closed in 6 months. Cutting off benefits now is clearly premature and almost certainly counterproductive to the macroeconomic recovery.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom pauses during a news conference after touring Barron Park Elementary School on March 2, 2021 in Palo Alto, California. (photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
There’s an odd asymmetry in what Gov. Gavin Newsom needs to stay in office, versus what his replacement would need to win.
f you haven’t been following California’s recall election battle, you might scoff at the idea that Gov. Gavin Newsom is fighting for his political life — and perhaps even to safeguard Democratic control of the US Senate. California is a deep-blue state, after all; could a Republican really win?
But the strange design of California’s recall system, and Newsom’s strategy for navigating it, make a Republican win more plausible than might be expected. That’s one reason the conservative activists who started the recall effort are pushing to remove Newsom from office this year rather than waiting until the 2022 election: They believe they have a better shot of winning now.
The first question voters will see on the ballot: Should Governor Newsom be recalled? Voters get to answer yes or no.
The second question: If Newsom is recalled, who should be his replacement? Here voters are presented with 46 candidates (Republicans, Democrats, and others) — but not Newsom. Mail-in voting has already begun, and in-person voting will take place September 14.
Here’s where it gets bizarre. Newsom needs to win a majority of the vote to stay in office. If he fails to get that majority, his replacement can win merely by being the top-vote getter in a crowded field. Two recent polls have shown conservative talk radio host Larry Elder (R) in first place with 23 percent of the vote — a small plurality that could still make him governor if Newsom loses the recall question.
It gets weirder. Newsom and top Democrats are specifically urging their voters to leave the replacement question blank. That makes sense as a political strategy: Newsom wants to frame the choice as between him and a Republican. But if Newsom loses the recall vote and many Democrats follow this advice, it will make it easier for a conservative Republican to get into office as his replacement, rather than a moderate Republican or one of the nine little-known Democrats in the field. Replacement candidates include 2018 GOP nominee John Cox (R), former San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer (R), celebrity Caitlyn Jenner (R), and developer/YouTuber Kevin Paffrath (D).
A Republican win would have major implications for the state’s pandemic response policies over the next year (the governorship will be up for election again in November 2022). But the biggest consequence could be national: The United States Senate is divided 50-50, and the oldest senator is 88-year-old Dianne Feinstein (D) of California. If she were to die in office, as octogenarians occasionally do, California’s governor would choose her replacement — and a Republican governor could flip control of the Senate to Mitch McConnell’s GOP.
Democrats are optimistic that all of these challenges will be overcome, and that the fundamental partisan dynamics of California will reassert themselves and save Newsom. Most polls show Newsom narrowly leading on the recall question. But that outcome can hardly be taken for granted. In oddly-timed elections, weird things can happen, as Democrats learned when Scott Brown won a Massachusetts Senate seat in January 2010, or as Republicans learned from Doug Jones’s Alabama Senate seat victory in December 2017.
So there is a possible slow-motion disaster unfolding in California for Democrats — but there’s also still time for them to avert it, if they can communicate the stakes to their base voters.
The weirdness of California’s recall system
The recall effort was launched by conservative activists who were generally dissatisfied with Newsom’s governance. The incident that got the most attention was Newsom flouting his own pandemic guidelines by dining maskless at the French Laundry restaurant last November, but conservatives also point to Newsom’s handling of the pandemic generally, the state’s serious homelessness problem, and a high level of unemployment benefits fraud. The motivation for the timing of this push, though, is likely that they think they have a better shot at winning in the recall than in next year’s ordinary election.
Now, in theory, the recall process is all about giving more power to the people so they can boot out politicians they think need to go. Who could be against that? But the devil’s in the details about just who “the people” happen to be, and how that choice is structured.
For one, to get the recall on the ballot, activists needed to meet a relatively low signature threshold: 12 percent of the voters who turned out in the last governor’s election. Even in a deep-blue state like California, 38 percent of voters backed Newsom’s GOP opponent last time around, so with the proper shoe leather and funding, that wasn’t a very hard threshold to meet.
Turnout is another issue. The nature of a recall means it’s an election that happens at an odd time, and oddly-timed elections can have a different electorate, in which those who are more fired up are more likely to turn out. So in practice, what the recall can do is give an impassioned minority of voters a chance at scoring an unexpected victory, due to low turnout from the less-engaged majority. (Though it doesn’t always work that way — turnout ended up being higher in the 2003 recall than in the governor’s election the previous year.)
The handling of the replacement candidates is also unusual because, unlike in typical elections, there are no primaries beforehand in which the field is sorted. So this time around there are 24 Republican candidates, 9 Democrats, and 13 others from third parties or with no party preference. With only a plurality necessary to win if Newsom loses the recall question, and no runoff, this poses the possibility that someone with a small slice of the vote would end up governor. This thrills conservatives, since a conservative candidate would have little chance of winning a typical two-candidate California election.
Another feature of the system takes away one possible choice from voters: Newsom is prohibited from appearing as a replacement candidate. That creates the strange asymmetry where Newsom needs a majority on the recall question to stay in office, but his replacement does not need a majority to be elected.
Put another way: If Newsom loses the recall question 51-49, and his replacement wins with 30 percent of the vote in a split field, would that really be what “the people” wanted? In that scenario, more Californians would have wanted Newsom than any one other candidate. Of course, it’s inherently tougher for a replacement candidate to get a majority since they have so much competition, but that only drives home how odd it is that these two differently-designed election systems are juxtaposed.
Why does California do things this way?
Like the other notable “direct democracy” feature of California politics — the state’s frequently-used ballot initiative and referendum system — California’s recall system was created in 1911, during the Progressive Era. Contrary to the modern-day use of “progressive” as a term for those on the left, these capital-P Progressives were “an anti-party, anti-partisan, anti-special interest movement of reformers” in both parties, says Raphe Sonenshein, a political scientist at Cal State LA.
In California, Progressives were mainly concerned with corruption — specifically, the enormous influence of the Southern Pacific Railroad over state politics. But to build a “big tent” coalition to win power, these anti-corruption reformers sought allies. And one valuable ally was John Randolph Haynes, a wealthy doctor and investor who had an idiosyncratic interest in issues of direct democracy.
Haynes had studied direct democracy examples from around the world and from history, and he was taken with the idea that giving the people more power over politicians and lawmaking would improve society, according to an article by historian John Allswang. So he founded a group called the Direct Legislation League, and had already helped make Los Angeles the nation’s first city to give its voters the recall power back in 1903. (Voters approved it overwhelmingly, along with the ballot initiative and referendum reforms.)
So when a faction of California Progressives later launched an effort to take over the state’s Republican Party, they found Haynes’s money and organization helpful, and incorporated his proposals into their platform with little debate. Haynes “often seemed the only person in California who really cared about the initiative, referendum, and recall,” Allswang writes.
Progressive Republicans took over the state party and won the governorship, and they set about enacting their agenda in 1911. The legislature approved Haynes’s reforms and other sweeping changes, including women’s suffrage. Those reforms were put to a statewide vote later that year, and again won overwhelmingly. Haynes had put the idea on the agenda, but it was clear voters quite liked the idea of giving themselves more power.
The reasons for the specific design of California’s recall system are murkier. For instance, historian Tom Sitton says that the recall system Los Angeles created a few years prior allowed the incumbent to run as a replacement candidate. But when the state-level reform was drafted, a provision prohibiting that was included, and it’s not clear why the change was made.
The other notable choice was not requiring a runoff for the replacement candidate — letting a new candidate win with just a plurality. One possible motivation here is to save on money: A statewide election is expensive; a recall already adds one new costly election, and a runoff would add another. Another possibility, Sonenshein speculates, is that drafters may have wanted the recall process to be “as simple and quick as possible,” limiting “shenanigans” of any kind from the recalled incumbent.
Newsom’s risky strategy
The recall did not revolutionize state politics immediately. A few state legislators faced recall attempts in the 1910s, but then nobody successfully got a recall on the ballot again for another 80 years, when ideological conservatives embraced the tool to try and oust state legislators who’d taken positions they disliked.
But the person who first put a gubernatorial recall on the ballot was Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who funded a push to oust the unpopular Gov. Davis in 2003. Issa’s key insight was that, with modern communication technology, the signature-gathering requirement was trivial as long as you were willing to spend the money to pay organizers. So he spent big, intending to run for the office himself. In a Hollywood twist, though, Schwarzenegger jumped in the race, and, knowing he couldn’t compete with Arnold’s celebrity, Issa tearfully quit.
In the end, 55 percent of voters opted to recall Davis. Among a crowded field to replace him, with over 100 candidates, Schwarzenegger won 48 percent of the vote. That wasn’t quite a majority, but another Republican candidate got 13 percent of the vote, so together well over half of voters wanted a Republican. And Schwarzenegger governed as a moderate, winning an easy reelection in 2006.
Newsom’s situation is different in many respects. He is more popular than Davis was at the time, and there is no formidable celebrity like Schwarzenegger in the race. (Caitlyn Jenner is running, but she has not been doing well in polls.)
But he still faces the inherently difficult challenge of winning a vote between “Newsom or not Newsom” — which is much more difficult than a typical election, when the choice is between one politician or another politician.
As a result, Democrats have tried to reframe that choice as being really about “Newsom or Republicans.” They made sure no credible Democrats entered the race as a replacement candidate (unlike in 2003, when Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante jumped in). The nine Democrats who did make the ballot this time are all little-known, with 29-year-old developer and YouTuber Kevin Paffrath being the only one who’s gotten some attention.
Democrats are going even further in trying to draw a contrast. They’re outright urging voters to leave the replacement question blank, even though voting on it would not hurt Newsom in any way.
The calculation seems to be that Democrats don’t want anyone thinking about a second choice or a backup plan. They want the election to be a choice between Newsom and Republicans, and they think this message will most effectively communicate that choice.
But it’s not advice that actually makes sense for individual voters, who are being asked to voluntarily forfeit their say over who the next governor would be if Newsom loses. Do they really want to hand the state over to Larry Elder, a far-right conservative, rather than Paffrath, who is at least a Democrat, or Kevin Faulconer, the former San Diego mayor who is a moderate Republican and at least has governing experience?
And if large numbers of Democrats do abstain from the replacement question, the math for a Republican victory gets even easier — again, since only a plurality win is necessary.
It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that state Democratic leaders might prefer, if Newsom loses, to have a deeply conservative Republican in the governor’s office, who would be easier to beat in 2022.
But Democratic voters who care about the state’s governance over the next year — or about whether the US Senate remains in Democratic hands — might think it best to fill out the whole ballot, to have a backup plan. Just in case.
Palestinian protesters clash with Israeli forces during a protest at the Israel-Gaza border, east of Gaza City, on August 21, 2021. (photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flahs90)
So far, Gaza's Health Ministry had reported 41 injured people, including a 13-year-old child who was shot in the head.
srael's fighter jets attacked several positions in the Gaza Strip after the Hebrew army cracked down on a peacful demonstration by hundreds of Palestinians, who were protesting near the border wall the strip.
The bombings hit the regions of Nuseirat, the Al-Shati camp, the Hamas-affiliated base of Arin, and the Al-Firuz towers neighboring areas, but according to witnesses, no one has been injured or killed during the airstrikes.
However, the crackdown on protesters near the border wall has been one of the most aggressive since 2019.
Palestinians were marching to commemorate the 52nd anniversary of Al-Aqsa Mosque fire in 1969, when an Israeli citizen caused a fire that destroyed the oldest parts of the temple.
The meme reads: "Dear world: Israel has been continuously bombing the Gaza Strip for over an hour."
So far, Gaza's Health Ministry had reported 41 injured people, including a 13-year-old child who was shot in the head by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops.
Last May 21, Israel was forced to suspend bombing raids on Gaza due to increased international pressure. On that occasion, the airstrikes lasted 11 days and caused 232 casualties, including 65 children.
Despite the truce signed between Israel and Hamas, the attacks on Gaza and the West Bank civil population have not stopped. On the contrary, bombings and crackdowns on peaceful demonstrations continue to be part of Palestinians' daily life.
Sharon Smith at her home in Cahokia Heights, Ill. (photo: Michael B. Thomas/NBC News)
obby and Sharon Smith haven't flushed their toilet normally in more than a year.
On heavy rainfall days, floodwaters encroach on the modest home they've owned since the 1980s in southwestern Illinois. Even during dry weather, raw sewage can clog the pipes, leaving a foul, lingering stench and requiring perpetual repairs with which the couple, in their 60s, can barely keep up.
"It's horrible," Sharon Smith, a local school district employee who also shares the home with her two children, said recently. "My floors, they buckled up. In my kitchen, the bottom of my sink is rotted out, and it's starting to sink in."
The Smiths' struggle to live free from chronic sewage pollution is common across their section of Cahokia Heights, a small, predominantly Black suburb located across the Mississippi River from St. Louis and formed earlier this year from the merger of three communities strained by population loss and aging infrastructure.
The environmental challenges have spiraled into what the group Centreville Citizens for Change says is a crisis, prompting the federal government to step in twice this month and more than two dozen residents, including the Smiths, to file a federal lawsuit in July alleging that "decades of government failure to ensure basic sewage and stormwater services ... have created an environmental injustice for this Black community."
The "negligence" by the city and local public water district to maintain the sewage and stormwater systems in turn has created a revolting scenario in which "raw sewage pools in yards, bubbles out of manholes, runs down neighborhood roadside ditches, and backs up into tubs, toilets, and sinks," according to the suit. "On one residential street, North 82nd Street, a fountain of raw sewage spews from Defendant Commonfields of Cahokia Public Water District's ... sewage system on a nearly daily basis, even during dry weather conditions."
Longtime residents who have been living in the community pre-merger, when it was the independent city of Centreville, say they don't trust the water or drink from the tap. For the past two years, a nonprofit organization, the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, has helped to collect bottled water donations.
"This really is a story about indifference and neglect," said Kalila Jackson, a staff attorney with the Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing and Opportunity Council, which is representing residents in their suit along with the nonprofit law organization Equity Legal Services in Belleville, Illinois. Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law group, is representing Centreville Citizens for Change in the complaint.
The effort to mobilize in a quest for improved living conditions comes at a pivotal moment of renewed attention on America's infrastructure under the Biden administration and as Washington's elected officials debate how to heap billions of dollars on projects to upgrade roads, public transportation, water and broadband.
For people in Cahokia Heights, desperation has set in. Some liken the lack of a functioning sanitary system to "third-world conditions."
The black mold that formed in the Smiths' bedroom from all the water was so nauseating, they resorted to sleeping on a couch.
"Who can fix the problem?" Sharon Smith asked.
Decades of disinvestment
Centreville, whose population of about 5,000 is 93 percent Black, had been one of the poorest towns in Illinois and the United States, with about half of its residents living below the poverty level, according to census data.
Residents voted last year to form a new municipality by merging with the communities of Alorton and Cahokia, creating Cahokia Heights in May. Officials said they hoped that by consolidating governments, Cahokia Heights can make better use of federal funding for rehabbing infrastructure.
Citizens say that as more white families began moving out beginning in the late 1970s, upkeep of the sanitary sewer system began to wane. Now, parts of Centreville look abandoned, and many residents, some retired and on fixed incomes, simply don't have the financial resources or access to traditional loans to pay for repairs caused by flash flooding and sewage backups.
"They live in one of the wealthiest nations in the world, but these residents exist outside of the social safety net," Jackson said. "No one is coming to rebuild their homes."
Nicole Nelson, the executive director of Equity Legal Services, became involved in Centreville in March 2018 when a resident named Walter Byrd sought help with an exorbitant utility bill. Offhand, he mentioned to her that whenever he flushed his toilet, human waste would flow out from his yard. Struck by that statement, Nelson followed him to his home and saw the putrid conditions and stagnant waste for herself.
She learned that during the summer, Byrd's family kept all of the windows closed to keep out mosquitoes, which led them to constantly use their air conditioner and run up the electricity bill.
But the problem wasn't relegated to only Byrd's property. Nelson enlisted the help of Jackson, whom she knew from doing work related to racial justice protests in St. Louis, and discovered about 80 families similarly affected.
Jackson said Centreville sits in a low-lying area, where heavy rains cascade down the surrounding bluffs and cause flooding that may not recede for several days. Industrial companies that once operated in the area also contributed to the problem, pumping out groundwater as part of their activities — which, in actuality, artificially lowered the water level and masked the hazardous conditions, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
The residents' lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, contends that the sewage system has long been failing; has "severe inflow and infiltration problems"; suffers from malfunctioning lift stations — pumps designed to move sewage through the system; and leaking manholes that allow sewage to discharge.
The suit also alleges that sewage is allowed to flow into waterways in Centreville, including tributaries to the Mississippi River, which would violate the federal Clean Water Act.
An engineer told residents last month that the work needed to get the system in order would be extensive: Some 70 pump stations need repair or replacement, while 13 miles of repairs are required for existing lines and 8 miles of new sewer must be installed.
Jim Nold, a senior project manager for engineering firm Hurst-Rosche Inc., said at a news conference that hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent annually on temporary fixes, but millions of dollars are needed for a true overhaul.
The local government "put Band-Aids on this system to make spot repairs, but it isn't enough to keep up with the damage that occurs," he added.
Starting again
The city and the Commonfields of Cahokia Public Water District have asked the courts for an extension to respond to the allegations in the residents' complaint. Cahokia Heights voters agreed in April to dissolve Commonfields, and officials are working on how to replace the agency.
Neither Cahokia Heights Mayor Curtis McCall Sr., who was previously the township supervisor of Centreville, nor water and sewer department officials returned requests for comment.
The suit seeks damages on behalf of residents to be determined at trial and for Commonfields to take action to "prevent or minimize threats to public health and the environment."
McCall, at the news conference last month, pledged to spend about $2.8 million in federal coronavirus relief aid toward fixing the sewer system, which is permissible under President Joe Biden's 2021 American Rescue Plan Act. The city was denied a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant.
"If we can't qualify for a grant, then who in the hell can?" McCall asked.
After residents' plight reached the attention of some of the state's top elected officials — including Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who called the situation a "textbook example of environmental racism" — the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued two orders this month for action. One requires Cahokia Heights to ensure constant monitoring of drinking water pressure and testing for bacteria (the agency noted there has been no evidence of drinking water contamination), and separately, the city must submit plans to identify and address sanitary sewer overflows.
"This order will assist the city in focusing on identifying the most urgent needs for repair of the sewer system in order to protect the public's health," Cheryl Newton, the acting administrator for the EPA region that includes Illinois, said in a statement.
Debbie Chizewer, the managing attorney for Earthjustice's Midwest office in Chicago, said local officials' inaction over the decades only allowed the problem to fester, and residents have had to fight for the city to do even routine maintenance and inspections.
"They literally have to start from the beginning," Chizewer said of the requirements placed on the city.
Earlie Fuse, who purchased his Centreville home in 1992, said he remains wary because some of the same people who had the opportunity to take action in past years are still in charge.
His basement walls have collapsed four times after dark brown floodwaters poured in over the decades, and he's relied on plywood as a solution. Much like what the city has been doing, it's a temporary fix.
Residents "should never have had to been the ones to clean all this up themselves," Fuse, 80, said. "It should have been cleaned up from the beginning."
Jackson agrees.
"Communities of color often have to be creative and resilient and strong," she added. "These people here, they've managed to survive in conditions that would simply be unfathomable and unacceptable to most."
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