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18 January 22
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We mustn’t dismiss these possibilities just because they seem ludicrous or too horrible to imagine. In 2014, the suggestion that Donald Trump would become president would also have struck nearly everyone as absurd. But today we live in a world where the absurd regularly becomes real and the horrible commonplace.
Leading American academics are now actively addressing the prospect of a fatal weakening of U.S. democracy.
This past November, more than 150 professors of politics, government, political economy and international relations appealed to Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, which would protect the integrity of US elections but is now stalled in the Senate. This is a moment of “great peril and risk,” they wrote. “Time is ticking away, and midnight is approaching.”
I’m a scholar of violent conflict. For more than 40 years, I’ve studied and published on the causes of war, social breakdown, revolution, ethnic violence and genocide, and for nearly two decades I led a centre on peace and conflict studies at the University of Toronto.
Today, as I watch the unfolding crisis in the United States, I see a political and social landscape flashing with warning signals.
I’m not surprised by what’s happening there – not at all. During my graduate work in the United States in the 1980s, I sometimes listened to Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio talk show host and later television personality. I remarked to friends at the time that, with each broadcast, it was if Mr. Limbaugh were wedging the sharp end of a chisel into a faint crack in the moral authority of U.S. political institutions, and then slamming the other end of that chisel with a hammer.
In the decades since, week after week, year after year, Mr. Limbaugh and his fellow travellers have hammered away – their blows’ power lately amplified through social media and outlets such as Fox News and Newsmax. The cracks have steadily widened, ramified, connected and propagated deeply into America’s once-esteemed institutions, profoundly compromising their structural integrity. The country is becoming increasingly ungovernable, and some experts believe it could descend into civil war.
How should Canada prepare?
In 2020, president Donald Trump awarded Mr. Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The act signalled that Mr. Limbaugh’s brand of bullying, populist white ethnocentrism – a rancid blend of aggrieved attacks on liberal elites, racist dog-whistling, bragging about American exceptionalism and appeals to authoritarian leadership – had become an integral part of mainstream political ideology in the U.S.
But one can’t blame only Mr. Limbaugh, who died in early 2021, and his ilk for America’s dysfunction. These people and their actions are as much symptoms of that dysfunction as its root causes, and those causes are many. Some can be traced to the country’s founding – to an abiding distrust in government baked into the country’s political culture during the Revolution, to slavery, to the political compromise of the Electoral College that slavery spawned, to the overrepresentation of rural voting power in the Senate, and to the failure of Reconstruction after the Civil War. But successful polities around the world have overcome flaws just as fundamental.
What seems to have pushed the United States to the brink of losing its democracy today is a multiplication effect between its underlying flaws and recent shifts in the society’s “material” characteristics. These shifts include stagnating middle-class incomes, chronic economic insecurity, and rising inequality as the country’s economy – transformed by technological change and globalization – has transitioned from muscle power, heavy industry, and manufacturing as the main sources of its wealth to idea power, information technology, symbolic production and finance. As returns to labour have stagnated and returns to capital have soared, much of the U.S. population has fallen behind. Inflation-adjusted wages for the median male worker in the fourth quarter of 2019 (prior to the infusion of economic support owing to the COVID-19 pandemic) were lower than in 1979; meanwhile, between 1978 and 2016, CEO incomes in the biggest companies rose from 30 times that of the average worker to 271 times. Economic insecurity is widespread in broad swaths of the country’s interior, while growth is increasingly concentrated in a dozen or so metropolitan centres.
Two other material factors are key. The first is demographic: as immigration, aging, intermarriage and a decline in church-going have reduced the percentage of non-Hispanic white Christians in America, right-wing ideologues have inflamed fears that traditional U.S. culture is being erased and whites are being “replaced.” The second is pervasive elite selfishness: The wealthy and powerful in America are broadly unwilling to pay the taxes, invest in the public services, or create the avenues for vertical mobility that would lessen their country’s economic, educational, racial and geographic gaps. The more an under-resourced government can’t solve everyday problems, the more people give up on it, and the more they turn to their own resources and their narrow identity groups for safety.
America’s economic, racial and social gaps have helped cause ideological polarization between the political right and left, and the worsening polarization has paralyzed government while aggravating the gaps. The political right and left are isolated from, and increasingly despise, each other. Both believe the stakes are existential – that the other is out to destroy the country they love. The moderate political centre is fast vanishing.
And, oh yes, the population is armed to the teeth, with somewhere around 400 million firearms in the hands of civilians.
Some diagnoses of America’s crisis that highlight “toxic polarization” imply the two sides are equally responsible for that crisis. They aren’t. While both wings of U.S. politics have fanned polarization’s flames, blame lies disproportionately on the political right.
According to Harvard’s renowned sociologist and political scientist Theda Skocpol, in the early 2000s fringe elements of the Republican party used disciplined tactics and enormous streams of money (from billionaires like the Koch brothers) to turn extreme laissez-faire ideology into orthodox Republican dogma. Then, in 2008, Barack Obama’s election as president increased anxieties about immigration and cultural change among older, often economically insecure members of the white middle-class, who then coalesced into the populist Tea Party movement. Under Mr. Trump, the two forces were joined. The GOP became, Dr. Skocpol writes, a radicalized “marriage of convenience between anti-government free-market plutocrats and racially anxious ethno-nationalist activists and voters.”
Now, adopting Mr. Limbaugh’s tried-and-true methods, demagogues on the right are pushing the radicalization process further than ever before. By weaponizing people’s fear and anger, Mr. Trump and a host of acolytes and wannabees such as Fox’s Tucker Carlson and Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene have captured the storied GOP and transformed it into a near-fascist personality cult that’s a perfect instrument for wrecking democracy.
And it’s not inaccurate to use the F word. As conservative commentator David Frum argues, Trumpism increasingly resembles European fascism in its contempt for the rule of law and glorification of violence. Evidence is as close as the latest right-wing Twitter meme: widely circulated holiday photos show Republican politicians and their family members, including young children, sitting in front of their Christmas trees, all smiling gleefully while cradling pistols, shotguns and assault rifles.
Those guns are more than symbols. The Trump cult presents itself as the only truly patriotic party able to defend U.S. values and history against traitorous Democrats beholden to cosmopolitan elites and minorities who neither understand nor support “true” American values. The Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. capitol must be understood in these terms. The people involved didn’t think they were attacking U.S. democracy – although they unquestionably were. Instead, they believed their “patriotic” actions were needed to save it.
Democracy is an institution, but underpinning that institution is a vital set of beliefs and values. If a substantial enough fraction of a population no longer holds those beliefs and values, then democracy can’t survive. Probably the most important is recognition of the equality of the polity’s citizens in deciding its future; a close runner up is willingness to concede power to one’s political opponents, should those equal citizens decide that’s what they want. At the heart of the ideological narrative of U.S. right-wing demagogues, from Mr. Trump on down, is the implication that large segments of the country’s population – mainly the non-white, non-Christian, and educated urban ones – aren’t really equal citizens. They aren’t quite full Americans, or even real Americans.
This is why Mr. Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him – a falsehood that nearly 70 per cent of Republicans now accept as true – is such potent anti-democratic poison. If the other side is willing to steal an election, then they don’t play by the rules. They’ve placed themselves outside the American moral community, which means they don’t deserve to be treated as equals. There’s certainly no reason to concede power to them, ever.
Willingness to publicly endorse the Big Lie has become a litmus test of Republican loyalty to Mr. Trump. This isn’t just an ideological move to promote Republican solidarity against Democrats. It puts its adherents one step away from the psychological dynamic of extreme dehumanization that has led to some of the worst violence in human history. And it has refashioned – into a moral crusade against evil – Republican efforts to gerrymander Congressional districts into pretzel-like shapes, to restrict voting rights, and to take control of state-level electoral apparatuses.
When the situation is framed in such a Manichean way, righteous ends justify any means. One of the two American parties is now devoted to victory at any cost.
Many of those with guns are waiting for a signal to use them. Polls show that between 20 and 30 million American adults believe both that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump and that violence is justified to return him to the presidency.
In the weeks before the November, 2016, U.S. election, I talked to several experts to gauge the danger of a Trump presidency. I recently consulted them again. While in 2016 they were alarmed, this last month most were utterly dismayed. All told me the U.S. political situation has deteriorated sharply since last year’s attack on Capitol Hill.
Jack Goldstone, a political sociologist at George Mason University in Washington, D.C., and a leading authority on the causes of state breakdown and revolution, told me that since 2016 we’ve learned that early optimism about the resilience of U.S. democracy was based on two false assumptions: “First, that American institutions would be strong enough to easily withstand efforts to subvert them; and second, that the vast majority of people will act rationally and be drawn to the political centre, so that it’s impossible for extremist groups to take over.”
But especially after the 2020 election, Dr. Goldstone said, we’ve seen that core institutions – from the Justice Department to county election boards – are susceptible to pressure. They’ve barely held firm. “We’ve also learned that the reasonable majority can be frightened and silenced if caught between extremes, while many others can be captured by mass delusions.” And to his surprise “moderate GOP leaders have either been forced out of the party or acquiesced to a party leadership that embraces lies and anti-democratic actions.”
Mr. Trump’s electoral loss has energized the Republican base and further radicalized young party members. Even without their concerted efforts to torque the machinery of the electoral system, Republicans will probably take control of both the House of Representatives and Senate this coming November, because the incumbent party generally fares poorly in mid-term elections. Republicans could easily score a massive victory, with voters ground down by the pandemic, angry about inflation, and tired of President Joe Biden bumbling from one crisis to another. Voters who identify as Independents are already migrating toward Republican candidates.
Once Republicans control Congress, Democrats will lose control of the national political agenda, giving Mr. Trump a clear shot at recapturing the presidency in 2024. And once in office, he will have only two objectives: vindication and vengeance.
A U.S. civil-military expert and senior federal appointee I consulted noted that a re-elected president Trump could be totally unconstrained, nationally and internationally.
A crucial factor determining how much constraint he faces will be the response of the U.S. military, a bulwark institution ardently committed to defending the Constitution. During the first Trump administration, members of the military repeatedly resisted the president’s authoritarian impulses and tried to anticipate and corral his rogue behaviour – most notably when Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley, shortly after the Capitol insurrection, ordered military officials to include him in any decision process involving the use of military force.
But in a second Trump administration, this expert suggested, the bulwark could crumble. By replacing the civilian leadership of the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs with lackeys and sycophants, he could so infiltrate the Department with his people that he’ll be able to bend it to his will.
After four years of Mr. Trump’s bedlam, the U.S. under Mr. Biden has been comparatively calm. Politics in the U.S. seems to have stabilized.
But absolutely nothing has stabilized in America. The country’s problems are systemic and deeply entrenched – and events could soon spiral out of control.
The experts I consulted described a range of possible outcomes if Mr. Trump returns to power, none benign. They cited particular countries and political regimes to illustrate where he might take the U.S.: Viktor Orban’s Hungary, with its coercive legal apparatus of “illiberal democracy”; Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil, with its chronic social distemper and administrative dysfunction; or Vladimir Putin’s Russia, with its harsh one-man hyper-nationalist autocracy. All agreed that under a second Trump administration, liberalism will be marginalized and right-wing Christian groups super-empowered, while violence by vigilante, paramilitary groups will rise sharply.
Looking further down the road, some think that authority in American federalism is so disjointed and diffuse that Mr. Trump, especially given his manifest managerial incompetence, will never be able to achieve full authoritarian control. Others believe the pendulum will ultimately swing back to the Democrats when Republican mistakes accumulate, or that the radicalized Republican base – so fanatically loyal to Mr. Trump – can’t grow larger and will dissipate when its hero leaves the stage.
One can hope for these outcomes, because there are far worse scenarios. Something resembling civil war is one. Many pathways could take the country there – some described in Stephen Marche’s new book The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future. The most plausible start with a disputed 2024 presidential election. Perhaps Democrats squeak out a victory, and Republican states refuse to recognize the result. Or conversely, perhaps Republicans win, but only because Republican state legislatures override voting results; then Democratic protestors attack those legislatures. In either circumstance, much will depend on whether the country’s military splits along partisan lines.
But there’s another political regime, a historical one, that may portend an even more dire future for the U.S.: the Weimar Republic. The situation in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s was of course sui generis; in particular, the country had experienced staggering traumas – defeat in war, internal revolution and hyperinflation – while the country’s commitment to liberal democracy was weakly rooted in its culture. But as I read a history of the doomed republic this past summer, I tallied no fewer than five unnerving parallels with the current U.S. situation.
First, in both cases, a charismatic leader was able to unify right-wing extremists around a political program to seize the state. Second, a bald falsehood about how enemies inside the polity had betrayed the country – for the Nazis, the “stab in the back,” and for Trumpists, the Big Lie – was a vital psychological tool for radicalizing and mobilizing followers. Third, conventional conservatives believed they could control and channel the charismatic leader and rising extremism but were ultimately routed by the forces they helped unleash. Fourth, ideological opponents of this rising extremism squabbled among themselves; they didn’t take the threat seriously enough, even though it was growing in plain sight; and they focused on marginal issues that were too often red meat for the extremists. (Today, think toppling statues.)
To my mind, though, the fifth parallel is the most disconcerting: the propagation of a “hardline security doctrine.” Here I’ve been influenced by the research of Jonathan Leader Maynard, a young English scholar who is emerging as one of the world’s most brilliant thinkers on the links between ideology, extremism and violence. In a forthcoming book, Ideology and Mass Killing, Dr. Leader Maynard argues that extremist right-wing ideologies generally don’t arise from explicit efforts to forge an authoritarian society, but from the radicalization of a society’s existing understandings of how it can stay safe and secure in the face of alleged threats.
Hardline conceptions of security are “radicalized versions of familiar claims about threat, self-defence, punishment, war, and duty,” he writes. They are the foundation on which regimes organize campaigns of violent persecution and terror. People he calls “hardliners” believe the world contains many “dangerous enemies that frequently operate in and through purported ‘civilian’ groups.” Hardliners increasingly dominate Trumpist circles now.
Dr. Leader Maynard then makes a complementary argument: Once a hardline doctrine is widely accepted within a political movement, it becomes an “infrastructure” of ideas and incentives that can pressure even those who don’t really accept the doctrine into following its dictates. Fear of “true believers” shifts the behaviour of the movement’s moderates toward extremism. Sure enough, the experts I recently consulted all spoke about how fear of crossing Mr. Trump’s base – including fear for their families’ physical safety – was forcing otherwise sensible Republicans to fall into line.
The rapid propagation of hardline security doctrines through a society, Dr. Leader Maynard says, typically occurs in times of political and economic crisis. Even in the Weimar Republic, the vote for the National Socialists was closely correlated with the unemployment rate. The Nazis were in trouble (with their share of the vote falling and the party beset by internal disputes) as late as 1927, before the German economy started to contract. Then, of course, the Depression hit. The United States today is in the midst of crisis – caused by the pandemic, obviously – but it could experience far worse before long: perhaps a war with Russia, Iran or China, or a financial crisis when economic bubbles caused by excessive liquidity burst.
Beyond a certain threshold, other new research shows, political extremism feeds on itself, pushing polarization toward an irreversible tipping point. This suggests a sixth potential parallel with Weimar: democratic collapse followed by the consolidation of dictatorship. Mr. Trump may be just a warm-up act – someone ideal to bring about the first stage, but not the second. Returning to office, he’ll be the wrecking ball that demolishes democracy, but the process will produce a political and social shambles. Still, through targeted harassment and dismissal, he’ll be able to thin the ranks of his movement’s opponents within the state – the bureaucrats, officials and technocrats who oversee the non-partisan functioning of core institutions and abide by the rule of law. Then the stage will be set for a more managerially competent ruler, after Mr. Trump, to bring order to the chaos he’s created.
A terrible storm is coming from the south, and Canada is woefully unprepared. Over the past year we’ve turned our attention inward, distracted by the challenges of COVID-19, reconciliation, and the accelerating effects of climate change. But now we must focus on the urgent problem of what to do about the likely unravelling of democracy in the United States.
We need to start by fully recognizing the magnitude of the danger. If Mr. Trump is re-elected, even under the more-optimistic scenarios the economic and political risks to our country will be innumerable. Driven by aggressive, reactive nationalism, Mr. Trump “could isolate Canada continentally,” as one of my interlocutors put it euphemistically.
Under the less-optimistic scenarios, the risks to our country in their cumulative effect could easily be existential, far greater than any in our federation’s history. What happens, for instance, if high-profile political refugees fleeing persecution arrive in our country, and the U.S. regime demands them back. Do we comply?
In this context, it’s worth noting the words of Dmitry Muratov, the courageous Russian journalist who remains one of the few independent voices standing up to Mr. Putin and who just received the Nobel Prize for Peace. At a news conference after the awards ceremony in Oslo, as Russian troops and armour were massing on Ukraine’s borders, Mr. Muratov spoke of the iron link between authoritarianism and war. “Disbelief in democracy means that the countries that have abandoned it will get a dictator,” he said. “And where there is a dictatorship, there is a war. If we refuse democracy, we agree to war.”
Canada is not powerless in the face of these forces, at least not yet. Among other things, over three-quarters of a million Canadian emigrants live in the United States – many highly placed and influential – and together they’re a mass of people who could appreciably tilt the outcome of coming elections and the broader dynamics of the country’s political process.
But here’s my key recommendation: The Prime Minister should immediately convene a standing, non-partisan Parliamentary committee with representatives from the five sitting parties, all with full security clearances. It should be understood that this committee will continue to operate in coming years, regardless of changes in federal government. It should receive regular intelligence analyses and briefings by Canadian experts on political and social developments in the United States and their implications for democratic failure there. And it should be charged with providing the federal government with continuing, specific guidance as to how to prepare for and respond to that failure, should it occur.
If hope is to be a motivator and not a crutch, it needs to be honest and not false. It needs to be anchored in a realistic, evidence-based understanding of the dangers we face and a clear vision of how to get past those dangers to a good future. Canada is itself flawed, but it’s still one of the most remarkably just and prosperous societies in human history. It must rise to this challenge.
Thomas Homer-Dixon is executive director of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University. His latest book is Commanding Hope: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril.
The Rev. William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign, addresses a crowd outside St. John's Episcopal Church on June 14. (photo: Jack Jenkins/RNS)
Senate Democratic leadership insists they will debate two critical voting rights bills even though Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have publicly denounced their party’s plan to make changes to Senate filibuster rules that would give Democrats the votes needed to pass the landmark legislation. Meanwhile, thousands marched in support of the legislation and the necessary filibuster rule changes in Washington, D.C., on Monday, the federal holiday marking Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We speak with movement leader William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, who criticizes the Democrats for bifurcating the Build Back Better economic legislation from voting rights and says movements must plan sustained, nonviolent direct action to ensure politicians pass legislation that benefits poor and low-wealth people.
On Monday, the family of Dr. Martin Luther King marched with thousands of others in Washington, D.C., to demand the Democratic Senators Manchin and Sinema drop their support for the Senate filibuster. This is Martin Luther King III.
MARTIN LUTHER KING III: Senators Sinema and Manchin also say if the bill doesn’t get bipartisan support, it shouldn’t pass. Well, the 14th Amendment, which granted citizenships to slaves in 1868, that didn’t have bipartisan support. Should formerly enslaved people have been denied citizenship, Senator Sinema? The 15th Amendment, that gave formerly enslaved people the right to vote in 1870, that didn’t have bipartisan support. Should former slaves have been denied the right to vote, Senator Manchin? In 1922, ’23 and ’24, some senators filibustered an anti-lynching bill that had passed in the House. Would Senator Manchin and Senator Sinema have supported blocking those bills, too?
I’m just applying their logic here and showing that it’s not logical at all. To them, the filibuster is sacred — except for when it’s not. In 2010, Senator Sinema supported the idea of using reconciliation to get around the filibuster and pass healthcare reform. Just last month, they both supported an exception to the filibuster to raise the debt ceiling. But they draw the line at protecting the rights of millions of voters. History will not remember them kindly.
AMY GOODMAN: This comes as Republicans are leading voter disenfranchisement efforts nationwide, with GOP-led state legislatures passing more than 30 laws restricting ballot access, and introducing at least 400 more.
For more, we go to Washington, D.C., to join Dr. William Barber, Bishop William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, president of Repairers of the Breach. On Saturday, Bishop Barber was awarded The King Center’s 2022 Beloved Community Award for Civic Leadership.
Bishop Barber, welcome back to Democracy Now! I also wanted to start off by asking how you’re feeling, as you announced you tested positive for coronavirus.
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Well, I’m doing much better. Thank you for asking. I’m quite bothered, though, by all of the people that can’t get free tests. And we still have not given people free insurance even in the midst of COVID. So, while I’m well, the nation is not well, the world is not well. And I want to thank you for having me on this morning.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, thank you so much for joining us. This is a pivotal moment. If you can talk about the standoff in the U.S. Senate right now, not exactly between Republicans and Democrats, though you could ask why many Republicans are not supporting the voting rights legislation as they have in the past over and over again, but within the Democratic Party, with Senators Manchin and Sinema refusing to support a filibuster waiver, a carveout?
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Well, Amy, let me take a moment. You know, this past Friday, the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival announced that we were going to, regardless of what happened, have a mass poor people’s, low-wage workers’ assembly, moral march on Washington and to the polls on June 18th, 2022. We are launching a tour, actually, announcement tomorrow, regardless of what happens. We’re going to engage in mass action, direct action, nonviolent action, not just for a day but for a declaration, to declare that there must be a moral shift in this country, that there must be a change in power. As Dr. King said, the real problem that we’ve always had with these issues of voting is the fear of the aristocracy of the masses of poor and low-wealth people, Black and white, coming together to vote in a way that fundamentally shifts the economic architecture of the nation. In fact, in 1967, Dr. King said, “We must also realize that the problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power.”
So, first of all, we should have never decided to separate voting rights from economic justice. I was listening to your report a minute ago about what just came out about poverty. That was a fundamental mistake, I believe, on many activists’ part and on many Democrats’ part, to separate these out. We should have started saying we demand infrastructure of our democracy, which is voting, and infrastructure of investment in the lives of poor and low-wealth people.
The next thing is, we are intensifying that, but if we’re going to win this, we’ve got to, number one, say we can’t allow the government to set false deadlines. Our deadline is victory. We could have done this since 2013, when the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in the middle of the Obama administration. We have to ask the question: Why hasn’t some of the intensity been before now? We have to ask the question: Yes, Manchin and Sinema, but why haven’t some groups, even some civil rights groups, pushed them hard in their own states before now? Who made the decision that we wait until now?
Yes, you challenge Sinema and Manchin, but there are other Democrats, moderates, that Dr. King once called the worst enemies to the civil rights movement, who also have been weak when it comes to ending the filibuster. Certainly the Republicans, and some Democrats, have not wanted to move the filibuster, other than Sinema. Why didn’t we make the connection, the fact that 45% of the electorate in battleground states are poor and low-wealth, 30% across the nation? So, regardless of what happens today, we have a lot of work to do. Sinema and Manchin are acting like James Calhoun in the 1850s, who said you had to protect minority rule. They’re not acting like Robert Byrd, because Robert Byrd actually hated this kind of filibuster.
We must, lastly, raise the question: Where’s the U.S. Chamber of Commerce? Why aren’t we criticizing them — all groups, civil rights organizations, everybody — because they are the ones that both are against living wages and against voting rights? And if we’re going to have a criticism and be like Dr. King, we have to go deep. What about the Koch brothers? What about the Americans for Prosperity?
And then, lastly, what do these bills actually do? I know they want to sell it as an end-all and be-all, but the new Freedom to Vote Act, which Manchin compromised down, what does it do? What doesn’t it do? One thing it does is it codifies voter ID for the first time in the history of the country — not saying it doesn’t do some good things. The other one, the Voting Rights Advancement Act, does it really cover states? How many states will be covered under preclearance? What’s the formula? One formula said that you had to have 15 cases adjudicated all the way through the Supreme Court. Well, how many states can even meet that formula right now? And will it grandfather and stop the gerrymandering that’s already happened? Was part of the game of Manchin and Sinema to delay all the way this year until bills got passed, so even now if they change, they would have actually won what they promised the Chamber of Commerce and others? These are heavy questions. And it’s great to come out today and yesterday and others, and we should, but we cannot allow the politicians to do politics by ceremonial day.
And lastly, the president — we’ve been begging the president and his handlers to meet with moral leaders, white and Black and Brown and Latino, and impacted people in the White House. To make this a Black issue is dangerous. It’s not just a Black issue. Fifty-five million people will lose their access to the polls they used in 2020, if we see — allow what’s going on to continue. It’s a democracy issue. Dr. King never framed this issue as just a Black issue. He always framed it as an economic issue and a race issue, and we should be doing the same.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Bishop Barber, I wanted to ask you — many would agree with you that even the current bills before — that will be voted on before the Senate have problems or weaknesses in terms of their defense of the Voting Rights Act, but it seems pretty certain that even these will be voted down. And the question is: What will then be the approach that the movement for voting rights should take? Clearly, it’s into the streets, but would you support some kind of a legislation that would take portions of these bills and at least get something passed before the next elections?
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Well, see, that’s the politicians’ decision. The movement’s decision is to demand what is right all the way, not part of our rights, some of our rights. It’s amazing to me that when it came to the corporations, they got everything they asked for. They wanted $4 or $5 trillion, they got $4 or $5 trillion. Billionaires made $2 trillion in the first 20 months of COVID and are growing. When it comes to issues like poverty and voting rights, number one, we bifurcate them in a way that the forces of oppression never bifurcate them. And then we keep compromising down, down, down, down, rather than fighting. And eventually, if we’re not careful, it would be tantamount to Frederick Douglass accepting a long weekend as an answer to slavery rather than emancipation and freedom.
So, what the movement is saying is, not only we’re going to the streets, but direct action, mobilization, and not for a day but for a season, until we’re going to massively engage in registering voters and pushing out voters in poor and low-wealth communities who can fundamentally shift the economic — I mean, the political realities of this country. We are going to put together a full agenda. We call it the Third Reconstruction agenda. We now have 45 coordinating committees, 2,500 clergy, 200 partners. We’ve been mobilizing and planning because we never were going to just accept what the politicians throw at us. The tail can’t wag the dog. It doesn’t work like that.
The reality is that when we talk about even the Build Back Better plan, Democrats should have never called that the most transformative. They should have said it was a step to attempt to respond to the fact that poor and low-wealth people were the ones hurt the most during COVID. These bills, once they get compromised, call it what it is. Think about it. We have allowed Manchin, Sinema and the Republicans to basically throw the memory of John Lewis away, throw the For the People Act, that he actually wrote, away. And Democrats should never have done that. We didn’t fight hard enough on the front end. Many groups agreed with this delay. Well, the movement is saying there’s going to be a moral reset.
And let’s do history. In 1852, the Dred Scott decision was passed. Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, they didn’t quit. They said they emboldened and intensified their agitation. When the 1957 Civil Rights Act was passed, the movement didn’t quit because it was so compromised; they began to push even the more. Right after the ’64 Civil Rights Act, then we began moving toward the ’65 Voting Rights Act. John Lewis, in fact, criticized the ’64 Voting Rights Act and exposed the weaknesses of it.
I don’t know where in the world we have come to in this country, particularly in activism, where we think that the politicians set the agenda; we just have to go along with it; we don’t criticize, or we don’t show the weaknesses of it; we don’t talk — that is wrong. You know, we cannot let the politicians — I don’t care what party — just say, “Here’s what you need, and this is the greatest thing you can have.” No, we want all our freedom, all our voting rights, all our economic prosperity, and we want it now. And we don’t know what can happen until we see the greatest, largest mass movement of poor and low-wealth people in this country ever in history. And that is what we’re moving towards, putting together and pushing out now.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Bishop Barber, I wanted to ask you — the point that you raised that it was a mistake to frame the voting rights legislation as a largely Black and Brown issue, yet you have millions and millions of white Americans who are not only still rallying behind Donald Trump but believing his false claims that the last election was stolen. How do you reach out to the masses of white working-class and poor people who really should have a strategic and interest — for their own interest, in the passage of voting rights?
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Well, let’s stop lying on poor and low-wealth people. Most of the people at January 6th were not poor and low-wealth. They were middle-class and up. The data shows that. The majority of poor and low-wealth people, 55%, voted for Biden-Harris. The majority of poor and low-wealth people don’t vote. And we did a study with Columbia University, and they asked why didn’t they vote. They said, “Because nobody talks about poverty and the issues that are really facing us, and even voter suppression.” So, the majority of poor and low-wealth people have not voted. We did a study that showed, in 15 states, if between 1% and 24% of poor and low-wealth voters who were already registered were to vote, who haven’t been voting, would vote around an agenda for their uplift, it would fundamentally shift the electorate. As you heard me say earlier, poor and low-wealth people represent 45% of the electorate in states where the decision for president or Senate was less than 3%.
There is — Dr. King knew it, that these masses are always out there. I’m tired of folks saying that they’re not there. Dr. King said it’s the aristocracy that knew they were out there, knew they could be unified, and that’s why billions of dollars has been spent to divide us. And every time we get up and we try to frame this as just a Black issue, like voting rights is a special interest issue for Black people rather than an attack on the democracy that includes racism, that includes classism, that has impact based on region. And when we don’t connect the fact that the same person that’s suppressing the vote — also, Joe Manchin suppressed, for instance, passing the living wage in February, raising it to $15. He should have been called out then — we did; many others didn’t, they should have — that that was a racist vote, because when he blocked $15 and a union, not only did he block 31 million Americans from moving out of poverty and low wealth, he blocked 41% of African Americans from moving out of poverty and low wealth.
Dr. King never separated these issues. He said triune: poverty, militarism and racism. Today we say systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy and the false moral narrative of religious nationalism and the denial of healthcare, which is why we have to have massive public education of what’s really going on, because we’ve been lied to so much. We have to have a unified coalition of Black and Brown and white and young and old and gay and straight and Native and Asian. And it’s possible, that we do not have a scarcity of resources or a scarcity of ideas; we have a scarcity of moral consciousness. We have to see the religious community come together.
And they are ready. I’m telling you, when we made the announcement on Friday, they said, regardless of what happened — we’ve been building for three years underneath, putting things together — it is time for that body of people to come together that the greedy, profit-driven aristocracy fears the most, and that is the masses of poor and low-wealth people and moral leaders coming together to reset — and not just for a day. June 22 is not just a day, it’s a declaration; not just a moment, it’s a movement. It’s going to be a season, not a day. We need a season, if it takes a whole year or two years, of action and conscience changing and in the streets and nonviolent direct action and major public education and movement to the people to the polls. That’s what has to happen. And people can’t tell me what can’t happen, because they haven’t tried that. We’ve been too bifurcated, too separated. We’ve allowed politicians to do policies by ceremony and ceremonial days. That is not movement. And we must not allow that to be the end.
And so, I want to, finally, quote what Frederick Douglass said when he was asked one month after the Dred Scott decision and he was told the abolition movement was over, nothing they could do. He said, “What I do know is that the Supreme Court of man can never overrule the Supreme Court of God. What I do know is that this decision, as monstrous as it is, may just be the necessary link in the chain of events to the downfall of the whole system of slavery, because what I know is every attempt to allay and stop the abolition movement has only served to embolden and intensify its agitation.” That’s what we must have now, and it must be Black and white and Brown and Asian and Native and young and old and gay and straight and Jewish and Christian and Muslim and people of faith and people not of faith and Appalachia and Delta of this country, in California to Carolinas, working together.
AMY GOODMAN: Bishop William Barber, we want to thank you for being with us, and we will certainly continue to follow this movement. Bishop Barber is co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, president of Repairers of the Breach. Reverend Barber was just awarded The King Center’s 2022 Beloved Community Award for Civic Leadership this weekend.
A man walks in front of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. (photo: Jonathan Bachman/AP)
The move by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals effectively prolongs the litigation over the unusual anti-abortion statute, leaving in place a law that has led to a dramatic reduction in the number of abortions performed in the state since the measure took effect in September.
The 2-1 court decision held that there was too much ambiguity around the meaning of the Texas law to allow federal courts to continue to act on the legal challenge without definitive guidance from Texas’s top court.
“The unresolved questions of state law must be certified to the Texas Supreme Court,” wrote Judge Edith Jones, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, in an opinion joined by Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, who was appointed by President Donald Trump.
Jones stressed in her ruling that the case was not about abortion or the merits of Texas’ six-week ban, but strictly a matter of judicial procedure. She rejected arguments from lawyers for abortion providers that the U.S.Supreme Court had essentially foreclosed such a detour for the litigation. Justices in December declined to block the law but allowed some challenges brought by clinics to proceed.
“With no limit placed by the Supreme Court’s remand, this court may utilize the ordinary appellate tools at our disposal to address the case—consistent with the Court’s opinion,” Jones wrote.
However, in a dissenting opinion, Judge Stephen Higginson argued that diverting the case to the Texas Supreme Court compounds the harm being wrought by the abortion ban and flew in the face of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last month.
“By certifying this question and, worse, by simultaneously carrying a motion for further briefing to us with the case, we are only causing further delay, indeed delay without specified end,” wrote Higginson, an appointee of President Barack Obama." This further, second-guessing redundancy, without time limit, deepens my concern that justice delayed is justice denied, here impeding relief ordered by the Supreme Court."
Higginson compared the Texas law to measures many Southern states used to undermine federal civil rights guarantees in the 1950s. "Then, like now, it is undisputed that the Constitution, necessarily expounded by the Supreme Court, had been subverted by a state legislature," he wrote.
Higginson’s two conservative colleagues countered that because the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the Texas law was split on several key issues about the Texas abortion ban, the state's Supreme Court should be permitted to step in and offer guidance.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last month disappointed abortion rights advocates because it granted no immediate relief against the Texas law, which allows private individuals to sue abortion providers and collect what critics have described as “bounties” of $10,000 or more.
However, the justices did not completely reject the federal court challenge and ruled that it could proceed if focused on the role that Texas medical licensing officials could play in enforcing the statute.
The abortion providers who brought suit over the law returned to the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month with a motion to force the 5th Circuit to immediately send the case back to the district court for further action. That motion remains pending without a ruling.
Attorney Marc Hearron with the Center for Reproductive Rights gave POLITICO a bleak assessment of the path forward for abortion rights advocates in a conversation following the early January arguments at the appeals court.
“The Supreme Court gave the green light to this vigilante scheme and said if a state wants to pass a law that infringes on a constitutional right and delegate enforcement to the general public, federal courts can’t do anything to stop that. That’s the core of the case,” said Hearron, after he took part in the 5th Circuit argument session in New Orleans.
“There’s a part of our case left against these licensing officials, and it’s an important part of the case, but people need to understand that even what’s left is being delayed and strung out while patients across Texas are denied their constitutional rights,” he said.
Exxon, headquartered in Houston, argues that lawsuits filed by out-of-state politicians infringe on the sovereignty of Texas. (photo: Reginald Mathalone/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock)
America’s largest oil firm claims its history of publicly denying the climate crisis is protected by the first amendment
The US’s largest oil firm is asking the Texas supreme court to allow it to use the law, known as rule 202, to pursue legal action against more than a dozen California municipal officials. Exxon claims that in filing lawsuits against the company over its role in the climate crisis, the officials are orchestrating a conspiracy against the firm’s first amendment rights.
The oil giant also makes the curious claim that legal action in the California courts is an infringement of the sovereignty of Texas, where the company is headquartered.
Eight California cities and counties have accused Exxon and other oil firms of breaking state laws by misrepresenting and burying evidence, including from its own scientists, of the threat posed by rising temperatures. The municipalities are seeking billions of dollars in compensation for damage caused by wildfires, flooding and other extreme weather events, and to meet the cost of building new infrastructure to prepare for the consequences of rising global temperatures.
Rule 202 in effect allows corporations to go on a fishing expedition for incriminating evidence. They are able to question individuals under oath and demand access to documents even before any legal action is filed against them.
Exxon wants to use the provision to force the California officials to travel to Texas to be questioned by the firm’s lawyers about what the company describes as “lawfare” – the misuse of the legal system for political ends.
Exxon claims in a petition to the Texas supreme court that it is entitled to question the officials in order to collect evidence of “potential violations of ExxonMobil’s rights in Texas to exercise its first amendment privileges” to say what it likes about climate science.
“The potential defendants’ lawfare is aimed at chilling the speech of not just ExxonMobil, but of other prominent members of the Texas energy sector on issues of public debate, in this case, climate change,” the company claims in its petition.
The oil giant’s critics say Exxon’s attempt to use claims of free speech to curtail the first amendment rights of others follows a pattern of harassment toward those who challenge the company’s claims about the climate crisis.
Patrick Parenteau, a law professor and former director of the Environmental Law Center at Vermont law school, has described the company’s move as “intimidation” intended to make “it cost a lot and be painful to take on Exxon” whether or not the company wins its case.
In a highly unusual move, Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, has written to the all-Republican court – half of whose members he appointed – in support of Exxon. He accused the California litigants of attempting “to suppress the speech of eighteen Texas-based energy companies on the subject of climate and energy policies”.
“When out-of-state officials try to project their power across our border, as respondents have done by broadly targeting the speech of an industry crucial to Texas, they cannot use personal jurisdiction to scamper out of our courts and retreat across state lines,” Abbott wrote.
In backing its claim, Exxon’s petition to the Texas supreme court gives the example of the Oakland city attorney, Barbara Parker, who in 2017 “issued a press release seeking to stifle the speech of the Texas energy sector or, as she likes to refer to it, ‘BIG OIL’”.
The press release said: “It is past time to debate or question the reality of global warming … Just like BIG TOBACCO, BIG OIL knew the truth long ago and peddled misinformation to con their customers and the American public.”
The company also names the then San Francisco city attorney, Dennis Herrera, because he accused fossil fuel companies of launching a “disinformation campaign to deny and discredit” the reality of global heating, and pledged to hold the companies responsible “to account”.
Exxon has, in addition, targeted an environmental lawyer in Boston, Matthew Pawa, who represents some of the California municipalities. The firm describes him as “an outspoken advocate of misusing government power to limit free speech” and alleges that Pawa “recruited” the California cities and counties to sue Exxon.
“Those lawsuits are an affront to the first amendment,” the company claims.
Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard professor and co-author of Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, said Exxon had a long history of attempting to bully its critics into silence.
“Now that the arguments have moved into the legal sphere, this feels to me like an extension of the sort of harassment, bullying and intimidation that we’ve seen in the scientific sphere for the last two decades,” she said.
Oreskes said that the legal strategy is also part of a broader public relations campaign to paint the company as a victim of radical environmentalists and opportunistic politicians when Exxon argues that it should be heralded for its efforts to combat the climate crisis.
“Exxon Mobil has for a long time now tried to make themselves out to be the victim, as if somehow they’re the innocent innocent party here,” she said.
The Texas supreme court is considering the case after a lower court backed Exxon’s attempts to use rule 202 against the California officials. The ruling was later overturned on appeal.
The appeal court sympathised with Exxon by acknowledging “an impulse to safeguard an industry that is vital to Texas’s economic well-being” and saying that “lawfare is an ugly tool by which to seek the environmental policy changes” pursued by California municipalities. But the appeal court said the defendants did not have sufficient direct connection to Texas for the case to be heard in the state.
Exxon has tried to head off climate litigation before with lawsuits claiming that the attorney generals of Massachusetts and New York were violating the company’s rights by investigating it. Those moves were blocked by the Massachusetts supreme court and by a federal court.
If the Texas supreme court allows its rule 202 bid to proceed, Exxon might expect a more sympathetic hearing for its claims in a state court system that has shown deference to big oil.
Exxon is facing a barrage of other lawsuits across the US. A number accuse the company and other fossil fuel firms of breaching consumer protection laws by propagating misinformation about climate science.
Oreskes said Exxon went further than most other oil companies in seeking to hide the evidence of its own scientists collected about global heating and in running a disinformation campaign.
“They’re pushing their freedom of speech as an issue because more than any other company, it’s been proven by people like me and others that they have a track record of promoting half truths, misrepresentations and in some cases outright lies in the public sphere,” she said.
“This is so well documented that unless they can come up with some strategy to defend it, they’re in potentially pretty serious trouble.”
Jessica Cisneros and Greg Casar. (photo: Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty Images)
A high-profile rematch and newly drawn districts in the Austin area are giving progressives hope their message will win come March 1.
Both Jessica Cisneros and Greg Casar are supported by Justice Democrats—an organizing group known for backing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s successful bid to oust incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in 2018.
“Progressive ideas have always proven to be extremely popular across the country,” Justice Democrats candidate communications manager Usamah Andrabi told The Daily Beast, citing positions like Medicare for All and access to reproductive health services. “The first primary will be a testing ground for some of that.”
It’s the second time Justice Democrats has backed Cisneros, a 28-year-old immigration attorney who came within 3.6 points of unseating longtime Texas incumbent Rep. Henry Cuellar in the 2020 Democratic primary.
Now, with name recognition and campaign experience in hand, Cisneros is running against Cuellar again with hopes that her district has warmed up to her progressive chops.
“Cuellar had been running on this myth that South Texas is conservative and he’s the only kind of Democrat that’s able to win. Again, we kind of showed how weak, you know, that actual myth is,” Cisneros told The Daily Beast, referencing her sizable portion of the vote last primary election.
And not unlike 2020, some of Cuellar’s own congressional colleagues are backing his opponent this cycle. Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) have already endorsed her. Groups including Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Emily’s List, and Sunrise Movement, among others, are lining up behind Cisneros as well.
Cuellar is one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress and the only House Democrat to vote against codifying abortion rights into law last September. In 2019, he was given an A by the National Rifle Association.
Their race is the latest illustration of the moderate versus progressive wings of the party facing off, an occurrence that has happened with increasing frequency around the country over the past few election cycles. In 2020, longtime New York Rep. Elliot Engel fell to Bowman. That same cycle in Illinois, Rep. Dan Lipinski, who like Cuellar opposed abortion rights, lost his primary to Rep. Marie Newman.
“Jessica’s race especially provides a microcosm for the progressive movement writ large and kind of what we’re up against when we’re talking about right-wing corporate Democrats,” Andrabi said.
Joshua Blank, research director for the Texas Politics Project, said it’s unclear whether there’s a broad, new-age appetite for progressive candidates in Texas. If Cisneros wins, he said it’s because Cuellar is out of line with the broader Democratic Party.
“If [Cuellar] goes down, it’s not because, you know, her progressive vision necessarily won out, it’s because his position on issues on what it means to be a Democrat are high out of step,” Blank said.
But, a new cluster of districts in Austin could also open up the possibility for more successful progressive runs, Blank said. Casar, an Austin City Council member, is running in an open seat left vacant after its longtime congressman, Rep. Lloyd Doggett, opted to run in a newly created district next door.
“When you consolidate some of these districts into some urban areas, especially places like Austin that’s highly educated and very white, it certainly does raise the probability that you’re going to get a more progressive candidate,” Blank said.
Democrats for years have tried flipping Texas blue, investing time and cash galore. Those efforts have come to limited statewide avail, as Republicans have a stronghold on both Senate seats and the governor’s mansion. Texas ultimately went to Donald Trump by 5.6 points in 2020 (versus 9 points in 2016).
But Casar says those breakthroughs are happening at the local level, including in Austin. “Where people are at politically in Texas is shifting, and then the electeds start catching up,” he told The Daily Beast.
Casar has received endorsements from Reps. Bowman, Sylvia Garcia (D-TX), and Mondaire Jones (D-NY). The Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC also issued an endorsement of Casar, with Co-Chair Mark Pocan (D-WI), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Jamie Raskin (D-MD) saying in a joint statement they “look forward to helping him win on March 1.”
(The CPC PAC does not endorse candidates running primary challenges against incumbents, like Cisneros.)
Casar faces three other Democrats in his race. While he’s not the only one running in the district who calls themselves a progressive, he’s widely regarded as the most progressive of the bunch.
In the days and weeks following Texas’ first-in-the-nation primary night, scores of progressives nationwide will make similar attempts as Casar and Cisneros to win a ticket to Congress. Some candidates more viable than others, of course, and all with more time to persuade voters than the Texas group.
The seriousness of going first is not lost on Cisneros, who said with early voting starting on Feb 14, she’ll be spending the next few weeks ensuring folks “understand what’s at stake.”
“We need to do a good job because we are setting the tone for the rest of the election cycle,” she said.
Benjamin Netanyahu at a hearing in Jerusalem in November. The talks are the latest twist in a legal process that began in 2016 after claims that Mr. Netanyahu had accepted gifts in exchange for political favors. (photo: Maya Alleruzzo/NYT)
The military-grade software developed by the private Israeli company NSO was also used to target a number of people who were not suspected of involvement in a crime, including mayors, former government employees and at least one person close to a senior politician, according to the report.
“As a general policy, we do not comment on current or potential clients,” the NSO Group said in a statement published by Israeli media. “We would like to clarify that the company does not operate the systems in its customers’ possession and is not involved in their operation. The company sells its products under license and supervision for the use of security bodies and state law enforcement agencies, to prevent crime and terrorism legally, and according to court orders and local law in each country.”
Israeli police denied the allegations, saying that “all police activity in this field is done in accordance with the law, on the basis of court orders and strict work procedures.”
Public Security Minister Omer Bar-Lev said he was looking into the issue but that an initial check found “no practice of secretive wiretapping, or intrusion into devices, by the Israeli police without the approval of a judge.”
“At the same time, I intend to ensure that no corners are cut on the subject of NSO and that everything will be checked thoroughly and unequivocally by a judge,” he added.
The Calcalist investigation said police began using the software in 2020 to remotely surveil the phones of prominent activists of the “Black Flag” protest, whichcalled for the ouster of Netanyahu, who was then prime minister, amid a surge of coronavirus cases, an economic crisis and an ongoing corruption trial.
Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, left office in June 2021 but remains embroiled in a corruption trial.
The report said NSO spyware was used to collect data on citizens to be used as leverage if they became subjects of an interrogation at a later date.
In July, an investigation by The Washington Post and a consortium of 16 media partners revealed that Pegasus has been licensed by NSO to governments around the world for the purpose of tracking terrorists and criminals. But it found that the program was used to hack 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, business executives and two women close to the slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The targets’ phones were among more than 50,000 numbers compiled by countries known to engage in surveillance of their citizens and to have been NSO clients.
In an interview with The Post in July, NSO founder Shalev Hulio said some of NSO’s government customers had misused its software in the past, describing such misuse as a “violation of trust.” He said NSO closed five clients’ access in the past several years after conducting a human rights audit and ended ties with two in the past year alone.
“There is one thing I want to say: We built this company to save life. Period,” he said.
According to those familiar with the company’s clientele, NSO had agreements with countries with which Netanyahu had sought to forge alliances, including the United Arab Emirates, which signed a normalization agreement in September 2020, and Saudi Arabia, which Netanyahu for years attempted to court.
In Israel, the police first acquired Pegasus from NSO in 2013 and began operating it in 2015, under Netanyahu’s term as prime minister. It cost police tens of millions of shekels throughout the years, according to the Calcalist report.
As the protest movement against Netanyahu intensified, a diverse group of opposition parties reached agreement in May 2021 to form a unity government and remove him from office.
A mother with her newborn. (photo: Sharon McCutcheon/Unsplas)
“Even moderate levels of heat can affect the developing foetus, pregnancy complications, and children and adolescents.”
Six studies, published in the journal Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology, have indicated that climate change is linked to weight gain in babies, premature birth and increased hospital admissions of young children.
The evidence also points out that air pollution from fossil fuel burning increases the risk of fertility issues and exposure to wildfire smoke increases the risk of severe birth defects.
The findings add weight to a similar report published by United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which states that one billion children – almost 50% of their global population – are at ‘extreme’ risk from the impacts of global warming.
The report adds that millions of children are at risk of coastal flooding, heatwaves, vector-borne diseases, and water scarcity. However, most importantly, a billion are at risk of exposure to high levels of air pollution.
‘Climate change affects everybody, everywhere’
Prof Gregory Wellenius from Boston University school of public health told The Guardian: “From the very beginning, from preconception, through early childhood into adolescence, we’re starting to see important impacts of climate hazards on health.
“This is a problem that affects everybody, everywhere. These extreme events are going to become even more likely and more severe with continued climate change [and this research shows] why they’re important to us, not in the future, but today.”
Study findings
A study by scientists from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel found that high birth weight and rapid weight gain in the first year of life are linked to exposure to high ambient air temperatures during prenatal life.
They studied 200,000 births to conclude that babies exposed to the highest 20% of night-time temperatures had a 5% higher risk of gaining weight faster.
According to the Guardian report, 18% of children are now overweight or obese across the globe. The phenomenon is being attributed to the fact that when ambient temperatures are higher, less fat is burned to maintain body temperature, which in turn leads to rapid infant weight gain.
Another study conducted in California found that a mother, who was exposed to wildfires in the month before conceiving, had twice the risk of her child developing gastroschisis – a birth defect where a baby’s organs protrude out of the body.
There are about 2,000 cases a year in the US. But scientists claim cases are rising worldwide.
An Australian study assessed nearly one million pregnancies between 2005 and 2014 to examine the link between high temperature and premature births. It found that nearly 3% of these births were premature.
A similar study analysed 200,000 births between 2007 and 2011 in Harris County, Texas. It found that the risk of any premature birth was 15% higher the day after very hot days. The risk was even more pronounced for early births and tripled for babies born before 28 weeks.
While it is unknown how heat triggers premature births, scientists believe it may be because of the release of labour-inducing hormones.
“Even moderate levels of heat can affect the developing foetus, pregnancy complications, and children and adolescents,” Wellenius said.
A study carried out in New York City indicated that higher temperatures increased hospital admissions of children under-fives. The researchers explained that young children lose more fluids than adults when temperatures soar – leading to dehydration.
In China, researchers found that air pollution significantly increased the risk of infertility. A similar study conducted in Denmark assessed the impact of dirty air on 10,000 couples trying to conceive naturally. It found that a few units of increment in air pollution during a menstrual cycle decreased the chances of conceiving by about 8%.
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