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The filibuster is not about democratic checks or minority rights. The filibuster is about giving corporations veto power over the economy — which is why Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema defend it.
Amid the high-concept discourse about voting rights, historical precedent, and The Greatest Deliberative Body In The World™, big business has been telegraphing what the filibuster actually is. It is not about democracy or minority rights or any other maudlin subplot from a West Wing episode — it is about something much more raw and ugly. It is about giving capital veto power over the economy, as the most powerful corporate lobby group in Washington effectively admits.
Indeed, the US Chamber of Commerce has publicly opposed filibuster reform for this very reason. Last year, the organization gloated to its members that the rule would prevent Democrats from passing a minimum wage hike or legislation to make it easier for workers to form a union.
“Because of the filibuster, neither can become law as currently written,” the Chamber effused. In a letter to lawmakers, the Chamber expressed concern that without the filibuster, voters could have the power to (gasp!) elect new lawmakers who could actually change public policy.
“Imagine if major portions of federal policy constantly changed on a purely partisan basis every time one or the other party finds itself in unified control of the government,” the group lamented in March 2021 in talking points that have been echoed by Manchin.
And yet, even as Manchin and Sinema parrot Chamber spin — and even as they selectively vote to waive the filibuster when it doesn’t offend corporate power — the two are routinely portrayed as mavericky iconoclasts operating on principle, rather than hucksters lip-synching lyrics from their business boosters.
That is the real story here — and yet it is verboten. Corporate media refuses to tell the story of the money behind the filibuster — even though it is out in the open for everyone to see.
Democratic leaders could spotlight this grift, but instead they are showing their real loyalties when they continue refusing to force Manchin and Sinema to actually vote on the party’s health care, climate, and anti-poverty legislation that their corporate donors oppose.
And at least one of their most prominent defenders, Democratic consultant Paul Begala, is already on national television screaming the quiet part out loud and saying “the problem for the Democrats right now is not that they have bad leaders, they have bad followers” — as if voters’ job is to serve the party, not the other way around.
“Without the Filibuster, Both Might Be the Law of the Land”
The easiest way to follow the filibuster money is to do what corporate media outlets refuse to do: just read the website of the Chamber — a group whose name evokes images of local Elks Club dinners and Main Street businesses, but which is actually a $170 million-a-year lobbying behemoth representing the largest corporations in the world.
The Chamber published a memo last year explaining why the filibuster is so important for businesses.
“For example, within two months, the House of Representatives has passed a $15 national minimum wage and a radical rewrite of U.S. labor law known as the PRO Act,” the organization wrote. “Because of the filibuster, neither can become law as currently written. In a world without the filibuster, both might be the law of the land . . . that is until a Republican unified government repealed them.”
Last March, the Chamber issued a warning to lawmakers that its annual scorecard — which the organization uses to determine its political endorsements — would penalize any senators who vote to reform the filibuster, which currently allows a minority of senators to extend debate on a bill indefinitely unless the majority party can find sixty votes to end cloture.
The organization said it would additionally punish any senators who vote to overrule the advice provided by the senate parliamentarian — an unelected adviser who, under the so-called Byrd rule, can recommend that lawmakers remove certain provisions from budget reconciliation bills if they deal with policy, rather than spending.
The Chamber delivered this threat one day before eight Democratic senators — including Manchin and Sinema — joined with Republicans in voting down an amendment to overrule the parliamentarian’s advice and include $15 minimum wage legislation in Democrats’ COVID-19 spending bill.
Sinema and Manchin’s actions have won them plaudits and campaign cash from the Chamber.
The Chamber shared a Reuters story reporting that the organization has been “backing Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema with campaign contributions, rewarding them for their opposition to some of President Joe Biden’s legislative initiatives and for trying to work with Republicans.”
A few months later, the Chamber bestowed Sinema and Manchin with awards for bipartisanship, giving them 100 percent and 98 percent scores, respectively, for working across party lines to boost corporate priorities.
Parroting Chamber Talking Points
While Beltway journalists suspect there may be a few more holdouts in private, Manchin and Sinema are the only two Democrats who have publicly opposed party leaders’ push to reform the filibuster in order to pass a voting rights bill.
To justify their stance, both senators have been closely echoing the Chamber’s talking points.
Take that aforementioned March 2021 Chamber letter asking lawmakers to “imagine if major portions of federal policy constantly changed” on the basis of election results, as if that might be a bad thing.
Just weeks after that diatribe, Manchin made a similar point in a closed-door meeting with the National Restaurant Association, a lobbying group representing corporate restaurant chains.
“You get rid of the filibuster and we will not be the country we are for this reason: You’ll have the violent swings, extreme swings, every time there’s an election, whichever party is in power,” said Manchin. “It’ll be no different than a lot of European countries are, no different than a lot of developing countries. It’s whoever’s in power, and basically it swings. Everything’s thrown out and started over. We have been a country and we have grown as a country with a consistency that people could depend on.”
Manchin reiterated that sentiment in a statement last week. “The filibuster plays an important role in protecting our democracy from the transitory passions of the majority and respecting the input of the minority in the Senate,” he said. “Contrary to what some have said — protecting the role of the minority, Democrat or Republican, has protected us from the volatile political swings we have endured over the last 233 years.”
Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) made more or less the same argument on the senate floor last week. “Tax and spending priorities would change, safety net programs would change, national security policy could change,” the private equity kingpin lamented.
Sinema has been hewing even more closely to the Chamber’s talking points, employing very similar language.
The Chamber wrote last March that “cloture rules serve a critical role in ensuring that legislative proposals are considered in a deliberative manner that involves discussion between members of the majority and minority parties. Removing these requirements and attempting to pass legislation on a partisan, majoritarian basis is likely to result in rushed, ill-considered legislation that lacks the buy-in necessary to create durable, long-term policy. Such changes would also further erode what is already very diminished trust in our democratic institutions.”
The organization added that it “looks forward to working with members of Congress from both parties to find ways to achieve real and lasting solutions to the problems confronting America.”
In a Washington Post op-ed defending the filibuster last year, Sinema wrote: “Arizonans expect me to do what I promised when I ran for the House and the Senate: to be independent — like Arizona — and to work with anyone to achieve lasting results,” she wrote. “Lasting results — rather than temporary victories, destined to be reversed, undermining the certainty that America’s families and employers depend on. The best way to achieve durable, lasting results? Bipartisan cooperation.”
Sinema also made similar comments in her own appearance before the National Restaurant Association.
“I believe that achieving lasting results on the issues that matter to everyday Americans really requires bipartisan solutions,” Sinema said. “So what I’m telling my colleagues is that we cannot accept a new standard by which important legislation only passes on party line votes. If we were to accept that, it would set the stage for permanent partisan dysfunction, it would deepen the divisions that exist within our country, and it would further erode Americans’ confidence in their government, which we know is a challenge we face already.”
In her senate floor speech last week opposing filibuster reforms, which Sinema made just before Biden was set to meet with senators to lobby for changing the rules to pass a voting rights bill, she once again emphasized the need to “achieve lasting results for Arizona and this country.”
Corporate Media Is Repeating the Spin
Manchin and Sinema’s behavior is only nonconformist, rogue, confusing, and erratic if you somehow ignore the obvious through line: unyielding fealty to the corporate cash flooding into their campaign coffers.
First, the pair helped block the $15 minimum wage measure — and together, they have stalled and substantially whittled down Biden’s Build Back Better social spending bill. That includes convincing Democrats to scrap their plans to include dental and vision benefits in Medicare. Sinema separately helped significantly pare back the party’s plan to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices.
The filibuster fight is more of the same: the two are protecting Corporate America’s fail-safe bulwark against the government ever giving voters the economic policies they want. And yet, rather than telling that story, corporate media has opted to treat Manchin and Sinema as honest brokers and repeat whatever they say.
In recent days, several prominent Beltway journalists have been quite smarmy about the fact that Sinema and Manchin have said for much of the past year that they don’t want to reform the filibuster.
“Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema have been abundantly clear for some time they would not support any sort of exception to allow this to pass and change the filibuster rules to do just that,” CNN chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju said of Democrats’ voting rights push. “But inexplicably to some Democrats and a lot of Republicans, the administration and Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, have made this front and center and their agenda knowing full well that the votes simply are not there.”
Jake Sherman, founder of the corporate-soaked tip sheet Punchbowl News, tweeted: “So, to review, Manchin and Sinema are where they have been for several months: unwilling to get rid of the filibuster because they support the filibuster, as they have said — but some around town choose to not believe.”
“Kyrsten Sinema preempts Biden, dashing Democrats’ illogical hopes she would move on the filibuster,” declared the Washington Post’s Paul Kane, who added that Sinema “has repeatedly taken stands in defense of the 60-vote supermajority for most legislation to pass the Senate.”
This is meant to be smart analysis — saying that politicians have said certain things. It would be a much more valuable use of time to ask why Manchin and Sinema are actively blocking Democrats from passing virtually any legislation, and to assess their arguments for doing so.
Unfortunately, corporate journalists are instead treating anything Sinema and Manchin say as a law of nature — a thing that cannot be questioned, interrogated, or scrutinized.
News outlets like CNN keep saying that Manchin and Sinema have “long expressed opposition” to eliminating the filibuster, neglecting to mention that Manchin cosponsored and voted in favor of two bills to modify filibuster rules in 2011 — information that remains on the senator’s website.
The New York Times decided to relay the traditionalist argument, writing that Manchin and Sinema “had stated repeatedly that they would not use the bare 50-vote Democratic majority to weaken the filibuster, the procedural weapon that effectively requires 60 votes to move forward on major legislation, which they argue is fundamental to the nature of the Senate.”
And journalists are also accepting the fallacy that lawmakers can at once support popular policies while pledging to uphold the filibuster that blocks those same policies.
“Sinema made crystal-clear during her speech that while she supports voting and election reform bills, she ‘will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country,’” Politico wrote.
Kane at the Post similarly noted that Manchin and Sinema “support the two election bills that Democrats have passed multiple times in the House, designed to guarantee access to the polls and to curb partisan practices like gerrymandering, but only if Democrats round up at least 10 Republicans to clear the 60-vote hurdle to end a filibuster and move to a final vote.”
The Associated Press wrote that “Both Manchin and Sinema say they support the [voting rights] package, which has passed the House, but they are unwilling to change the Senate rules to muscle it through that chamber over Republican objections.”
This is all nonsense. By refusing to reform the filibuster, Manchin and Sinema have made clear that they don’t want those voting rights bills to become law. Protecting their corporate allies is far more important.
Sanders told reporters that he thinks "there is a very good chance" that Manchin and Sinema could face challenges in their states' Democratic primaries. (photo: Jim West/Zuma Press)
Sanders told reporters that he thinks “there is a very good chance” that Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, and Sinema, a Democrat from Arizona, could face challenges in their states’ Democratic primaries. He said home-state voters would be disappointed that the pair have refused to support changing Senate rules to overcome a Republican filibuster against major voting legislation while also balking at a massive, Biden-backed spending and social plan known as Build Back Better.
Asked if he’d consider supporting such primary challengers, Sanders responded, “Well, yeah.”
Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Senate Democrats, didn’t elaborate on his comment, but it’s unusual for senators to suggest they’d be willing to campaign against colleagues from their own party. The move recalls more of the bare-knuckled politics of former President Donald Trump, who has gleefully targeted fellow Republicans in Congress he sees as disloyal.
Sanders’ sentiments also lay bare progressives’ growing frustrations with the more moderate Manchin and Sinema, whom the left has blamed for stalling many of Biden’s top legislative priorities.
Manchin countered that he wouldn’t be bothered by a primary challenger.
“I’ve been primaried my entire life. That would not be anything new for me,” he said Tuesday, when asked about fellow Democrats urging voters not to back him in a primary. “I’ve never run an election I wasn’t primaried. This is West Virginia, it’s rough and tumble. We’re used to that. So bring it on.”
Sanders remains one of the nation’s leading progressive voices after strong Democratic presidential primary bids in 2016 and 2020 — and is still popular enough nationally to potentially affect Senate primaries around the country.
Manchin and Sinema aren’t up for reelection until 2024, but both could face serious primary challengers then. Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, who has sharply criticized Sinema for not supporting the voting rights legislation, hasn’t ruled out launching a challenge against her.
Earlier Tuesday, Emily’s List, a group that works to elect women nationwide and has deep ties to Democrats, said it would no longer endorse Sinema if she failed to support changing Senate rules to advance the voting legislation. NARAL Pro-Choice America, which supports abortion rights and is also influential in top Democratic circles, released its own statement suggesting it would no longer support or endorse Manchin or Sinema because of their stances on the legislation.
The legislation in question is The Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, which civil rights activists say is vital to safeguarding American democracy as Republican-led states pass new restrictive voting laws. It would make Election Day a national holiday while ensuring access to early voting and mail-in ballots — both of which have become especially popular during the COVID-19 pandemic. The package also seeks to let the Justice Department intervene in states with a history of voter interference, among other changes.
Manchin and Sinema say they support the legislation but are unwilling to change Senate rules to muscle the legislation through the chamber over Republican objections. With a 50-50 split, Democrats lack the 60 votes needed to overcome the GOP filibuster.
People are burying victims of COVID-19 at a cemetery on the outskirts of Lima, Peru on May 27, 2020. (photo: Rodrigo Abd/AP)
The past two years have unleashed unprecedented economic violence.
When the pandemic first struck, rich and poor united in fear. Mighty politicians decried nationalistic selfishness, chided “greedy as hell” corporate conduct, and promised a vaccine would be a public good.
It felt like there was solidarity. But only at first.
As we grieve all those killed by virus – over 5.5 million deaths have been officially reported, but the pandemic’s true death toll is estimated at over 19 million lives lost – we see that greed has been busy at work.
We enter 2022 witnessing the biggest increase in billionaire wealth since records began. A billionaire was created every 26 hours during this pandemic. The wealth of the world’s 10 richest men alone has doubled, rising at a rate of $15,000 per second. But COVID-19 has left 99 percent of humanity worse off.
Our malaise is inequality. Inequality of income is now a stronger indicator of whether you will die from COVID-19 than age. In 2021, millions of people died in poorer countries with scant access to vaccines as pharmaceutical monopolies, protected by rich countries, throttled their supply. We minted new vaccine billionaires on the backs of denying billions of people access to vaccines.
Because inequality harms us all, we are all put at risk from the variants that inevitably emerge from man-made vaccine apartheid. In the same way, we all lose in our democracy from elite power and from a climate crisis driven by the over-consumption of the top 1 percent, who are responsible for double the emissions of the bottom 50 percent.
This is not rich versus poor anymore: It is the super-rich versus us all.
New Oxfam estimates show that inequality contributes to the death of at least one person every four seconds. And that is a conservative figure. This economic violence exists not in spite of extreme wealth, but because of it.
It would be tempting to view this all as simply business-as-usual rich-doing-well once again. But these data, compiled and calculated in Oxfam’s new paper “Inequality Kills”, are off the charts. Billionaire wealth, for example, has risen more since the pandemic began than in the previous 14 years combined. The IMF, World Bank, Crédit Suisse, and World Economic Forum (WEF) all project a spike in inequality within countries.
The super-rich are having a great pandemic. So much of the trillions of dollars, pumped by central banks into financial markets to save economies, have ended up in the pockets of billionaires riding a stock market boom, while the surge in monopoly power, growing privatisation, the erosion of workers’ rights and wealth and corporate tax rate and labour market liberalisation have continued in full speed.
In parallel, billions of people face the impact of deepening inequality. In some countries, the poorest people have been nearly four times more likely to die from COVID-19 than the richest. Some 3.4 million Black Americans would be alive today if their life expectancy was the same as white Americans’, which is up from an already shocking 2.1 million pre-pandemic. Gender parity is set back by a generation, while women in many countries face a second pandemic of increased gender-based violence.
Vaccine apartheid fuels every inequality. And now the prospect of IMF-backed austerity in more than 80 countries threatens to make matters much worse.
We are making history for all the wrong reasons. Inequality is now as great as it was at the pinnacle of Western imperialism in the early 20th century. The Gilded Age of the late 19th century has been surpassed.
Hoping that change can come from the failed, narrow straitjacket of neoliberalism is the definition of insanity. The unprecedented nature of today’s crisis demands extraordinary, systemic action – and a shift in imagination of the politics of the possible.
Every government needs a 21st century plan to pursue far greater economic equality and combat gender and racial inequality. That is what social movements demand. That is the lesson of progressive governments after World War II and the wave of liberation from colonialism.
We can start by redirecting trillions of dollars to the real economy to save lives. It is achievable and necessary for governments to immediately begin to claw back huge gains made by the super-rich during the pandemic through one-off solidarity taxes, taking the example of countries like Argentina.
That is a start. To address wealth inequality on a more fundamental level, we need permanent progressive taxes on capital and wealth. History offers inspiration: US President Franklin D Roosevelt set a top marginal income tax rate of 94 percent in the wake of World War II (until 1981, that rate would average 81 percent).
Governments can invest revenues raised from progressive taxation in the proven, powerful means to create more equal, healthier and freer societies, such as universal healthcare – as Costa Rica has done – and universal social protection. Nobody should pay a health user fee again. We can invest in ending gender-based violence and creating a fossil-fuel free world. Imagine the lives saved, the opportunities created.
But redistribution alone is not enough. We must change the rules of the market, the private sector, and globalisation so they do not produce such huge inequality in the first place. This means shifting power: strengthening workers’ rights and protecting them; abolishing the sexist laws that legally prevent nearly 3 billion women from having the same choice of jobs as men; and addressing monopolies that menace democracies.
At this moment, the most urgent task is for rich governments to break the pharmaceutical monopolies held over COVID-19 vaccines, so we can get vaccines to the world and end this pandemic.
How we exit this global emergency is up to us. It could be more of the same: violent economies in which billionaire wealth booms, inequality is ever-deadlier and self-defeating greed reigns.
Or, if we demand it, there could be profound change: economies centred on equality in which nobody lives in poverty, nor with unimaginable billionaire wealth, in which inequality no longer kills… in which hope reigns.
It is up to us.
An amplified repeat of last year's anti-LGBTQ bills, particularly aimed at trans youth, is unfolding in state houses-alongside bills around bathroom bans and "religious freedom." (photo: Erik McGregor/Getty)
An amplified repeat of last year’s anti-LGBTQ bills, particularly aimed at trans youth, is unfolding in state houses—alongside bills around bathroom bans and “religious freedom.”
All of these bills—either introduced or soon to make their way through Republican-controlled state legislatures—seek to prohibit health care for trans minors and criminalize any health-care practitioners who provide it, including the prescribing of puberty blockers which trans youth advocates say can be vital for trans teens’ well-being.
In Tennessee, violations of the act are defined as “child abuse.” There are similar bills up for consideration in Arizona, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Ohio, Oklahoma, and South Carolina. Underscored in many of the health-care bills is the notion that “the minor’s genetic sex at birth” is the gender identity that the state recognizes as legitimate.
West Virginia’s HB 2171, the “Vulnerable Child Protection Act,” prohibits “certain medical treatments and procedures upon a minor, including an emancipated minor, for the purpose of attempting to change or affirm the minor’s perception of the minor’s sex, if that perception is inconsistent with the minor’s genetic sex at birth and making such medical treatments and procedures a felony unless specific exceptions.”
The Daily Beast reached out to a number of lawmakers proposing the bills to ask what underpinned their reasoning for doing so. Only one responded.
“A child should be 18 years old before they make a permanent, life-altering medical decision,” Florida state Rep. Anthony Sabatini (District 32) said. He did not respond to questions about how young trans people might be supported in their health-care decisions, or why the bill he had proposed would criminalize health-care providers.
An amplified repeat of last year’s wave of anti-trans bills, predominantly aimed at youth, is unfolding in state houses across the country. So-called bathroom bans, so in vogue a few years ago but targeted at trans adults, have re-emerged as bills proposed for schools, now aimed at minors.
Oklahoma’s SB 1164 requires a student “to use the restroom or athletic changing facility that corresponds with the student’s biological sex.” South Dakota’s HB 1005 enshrines the same principle, emphasizing that sex “means a person's immutable, biological sex, as determined by the person’s genetics and anatomy existing at the time of the person’s birth.”
Chase Strangio, deputy director for Transgender Justice at the ACLU’s LGBT … HIV Project, told The Daily Beast that the anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ “drumbeat” was as strong in Republican-controlled state legislatures this year as it was last. “If anything, the bills are moving more quickly. Our sense is that this is not dwindling, it’s escalating. If that escalation pattern holds, we can expect it to be a very bad year.”
As 2021 showed, right-wing lawmakers have a particular thirst for seeing such laws enshrined. The Human Rights Campaign says more than 268 anti-LGBTQ+ bills and 147 specifically anti-trans bills were introduced last year, with a record 26 anti-LGBTQ+ bills enacted into law across ten states.
A recent poll by LGBTQ youth advocacy organization the Trevor Project revealed that 85 percent of trans and non-binary youth surveyed said that news stories about the trans community had “impacted their mental health negatively.”
Strangio said that in 2022 some legislative sessions may be shorter as it is an election year. “That may count in our favor, if they gavel out so they can get out to campaign,” he said. “But it may count against us, if they want to motivate their bases to vote, which could mean a focus on trans bills, voter suppression, and anti-abortion bills. Bathroom bills had largely died down after 2016, but they’re coming back.”
As well as the health-care and bathroom bills, there is—just like last year—a proliferation of bills seeking to stop trans kids from playing on sports teams at school according to their chosen gender identity.
Indiana’s HB1041 requires “for purposes of interscholastic athletic events, school corporations, public schools, nonpublic schools, state educational institutions, private postsecondary educational institutions, and certain athletic associations to expressly designate an athletic team or sport as one of the following: (1) A male, men’s, or boys’ team or sport. (2) A female, women’s, or girls’ team or sport. (3) A coeducational or mixed team or sport. Prohibits a male, based on the student’s biological sex at birth in accordance with the student’s genetics and reproductive biology, from participating on an athletic team or sport designated as being a female, women’s, or girls’ athletic team or sport.”
There are other school sports bills—worded similarly, and sometimes named “Save Women’s Sports Act,” or “Save Girls’ Sports Act”—in South Carolina, Arizona, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah, Wisconsin, and West Virginia. In Oklahoma, one such bill is classified as an “emergency.”
Strangio acknowledged that the recent relentless focus on trans athletes like University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas by right-wing media had animated their viewers and listeners.
This negative coverage, said Strangio, far outweighed supportive coverage in liberal outlets, “building a sense of controversy and impending doom.” “It doesn’t matter that none of it is true. The real situation is that women’s sports are underfunded, and the issue of sexual violence has not been taken seriously enough within it,” Strangio added. “Making out trans people are the threat is a total distraction, as well as being hugely painful and hurtful for young trans people, and trans people who want to play sports.”
South Dakota’s sports bill progressed on Friday, having been approved by the state’s Senate State Affairs Committee. As the Daily Beast previously reported last June, the Department of Justice stated it will challenge the anti-trans legislation passed to date.
The Department of Justice says the sports bills violate Title IX’s prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sex, and that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment protects trans students’ participation in school athletics. A DOJ spokesperson last year told The Daily Beast that it would “fully enforce our civil rights statutes to protect transgender individuals.”
However, Republican-controlled states continue to introduce anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ legislation undeterred.
Ohio’s sports bill, HB 61 explicitly states that a teen’s body will be medically examined until the state is satisfied their true gender has been established. The bill states: “If a participant's sex is disputed, the participant shall establish the participant’s sex by presenting a signed physician's statement indicating the participant’s sex based upon only the following: (1) The participant’s internal and external reproductive anatomy; (2) The participant’s normal endogenously produced levels of testosterone; (3) An analysis of the participant’s genetic makeup.”
The Ohio bill also outlaws any legal challenges to the new law. “No agency or political subdivision of the state and no accrediting organization or athletic association that operates or has business activities in this state shall process a complaint, begin an investigation, or take any other adverse action against a school or school district for maintaining separate single-sex interscholastic athletic teams or sports.”
“Whatever these lawmakers say, decisions around health care for trans minors are not quick or easy,” said Strangio. “They are done in conjunction with health-care providers, family members, specialists like pediatric endocrinologists, and young people themselves in order to find some kind of happiness and stability. It’s painful to watch such misinformation so successfully leveraged against people who need support to survive.”
Strangio noted that Republican lawmakers are focused on people who transitioned and regretted it, “but what about hearing from the people who do not regret it, and had great care? If we took every example of someone who regretted some care and then decided to ban that care, we wouldn’t have any medical care. These are disingenuous arguments.”
The anti-LGBTQ bills in state legislatures this year do not end at restricting access to health care and sports. Some bills also criminalize teachers or other school advisers from withholding information from parents about anything their child or children may ask about being trans, or as Arizona’s SB 1045 puts it, that “the minor child’s perception that his or her gender or sex is inconsistent with his or her biological sex.”
Bills which seek to restrict what school curricula may include have been proposed in Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Missouri. In Arizona, HB 2285 states “all sex education materials and instruction shall promote honor and respect for monogamous marriage.” In Florida, SB 1834 proposes that school districts do not “encourage discussion about sexual orientation and gender identity” in primary grade. A bill in Iowa would prohibit teaching around gender identity from grades one through six.
Strangio noted that the school bills encompassed both content of lessons, and also the requirement on teachers to divulge information, possibly relayed to them in confidence, to a student’s parents or guardian.
“Many of the lawmakers have no ideological or individual investment in these bills,” Strangio said. “Many don’t think they are a good idea. Many run contrary to their libertarian impulses. But introducing them, or supporting them, is about politics. This is part of a continued backlash from the Christian right to marriage equality. This fixation on trans people is part of a larger goal to restrict any familial or individual identity or structure that diverges from the white Christian heterosexual family, and its supporters and backers are using vulnerable kids to exploit misinformation.”
South Carolina’s “Parent Bill of Rights Act” gives parents the ultimate right to “direct the upbringing, education, health care, and mental health care of their children,” while the state’s HB 4605 seeks to ban the provision to under-18s of “instruction, presentations, discussions, counseling, or materials” when it comes to what the state terms “controversial and age-inappropriate topics, which are reserved for parents and legal guardians to discuss with and explain to their children in accordance with their family values.” Those subjects: “sexual lifestyles, acts, or practices; gender identity or lifestyles; or pornographic, lewd, explicit, profane, or similarly age-inappropriate materials.”
Strangio said the ACLU had heard from parents living in states where anti-trans bills had passed or are proposed, who are confronting either having to move “to keep their children safe and healthy,” or who are unable financially to do so, and must face whatever restrictions or bans are placed in law.
“They are feeling terrible and scared,” said Strangio. “Many of these people have lived in these states all their lives. Their roots are in these states. Their wider family and friend network is there. The level of disruption if you are forced to leave a state is profound on many familial and community levels.”
Some states have even larger anti-trans legislative intentions. A bill in Iowa seeks to strike down gender identity as a protected class under the Iowa Civil Rights Act, while in New Hampshire HB 1180 is focused on “the state recognition of biological sex.”
New versions of the “religious freedom” bills of a few years ago—in which “religious freedom” and “religious liberty” were invoked as legitimate reasons to not serve, provide services to, or treat LGBTQ people equally—have returned in force.
There are “religious freedom restoration acts” being proposed in Iowa and West Virginia. Bills allowing doctors and nurses to cite their religious freedom when it comes to providing medical care have been proposed in Florida and South Carolina; and for adoption care and fostering providers in Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, and West Virginia. In Iowa and Massachusetts more over-arching religious freedom bills seek to enshrine the concept as a general principle in state law.
Strangio said trans and LGBTQ people and their allies should lobby legislators in all the states where anti-LGBTQ and anti-trans bills are being proposed. “Our opponents are good at mobilizing their base. We need to be good at mobilizing ours. We all have a part to play in correcting the lies and misinformation about trans people, especially now as trans rights and lives are under such direct attack,” Strangio said.
A woman walks past a mural of a flying white dove dropping Covid-19 vaccine vials in Rome, Italy, in April 2021. (photo: Gregorio Borgia/AP)
People wait for hours to receive food provided by international humanitarian organizations in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Dec. 7, 2021. (photo: Bilal Guler/Gett)
NGOs looking to provide emergency aid to Afghanistan despite failing banks and U.S. sanctions are turning to cryptocurrency.
Months later, the picture is much different — and worse — from what Forough imagined. The school survived, becoming mostly virtual, but has transformed from a coding boot camp into a relief organization. The biggest risk for Forough’s students wasn’t lack of education, it was hunger. Forough looked for a way to provide emergency checks to the women but was stymied by banks that don’t want to risk violating severe U.S. sanctions.
JPMorgan Chase repeatedly blocked her attempts to transfer money, she said, and she grew increasingly alarmed by students who said they couldn’t access cash at local Afghan banks — many of which have closed or imposed strict withdrawal limits. In response, she turned to cryptocurrency to provide monthly emergency payments to help students afford enough food to survive.
“Since September, we’ve been sending cash assistance, about $200 per month, for each family, because the majority of our students have said their family lost their jobs. They are the sole breadwinner of the family,” explained Forough, whose family fled Afghanistan in the early 1980s, during the Soviet occupation, and now lives in New Hampshire. Code to Inspire pays its recipients in BUSD, a so-called stablecoin whose value is tied to the U.S. dollar, and then the women convert it to afghanis, the local currency, at money exchanges. “We created a safe way for our girls to cash out their crypto and pay for expenses, so they can pay for medical expenses and food and everything that’s needed.”
There are several advantages to using crypto: Afghans fleeing the Taliban can take their assets with them without risk. Humanitarian agencies seeking to bypass banks and discreetly avoid the Taliban can provide cash directly to those in need. Smugglers and intermediaries who may steal or try to resell aid packages can be circumvented if aid is given directly through a digital transaction.
“I am still in disbelief that I could receive money without any fear of [it] being confiscated in such a transparent way,” said T.N., a 21-year-old graphic design student in Herat enrolled in Code to Inspire, in a statement to The Intercept. “Creating a BUSD wallet was very easy and it was a delightful experience knowing how fast and in such a private way you can receive money even in Afghanistan.”
While Code to Inspire is in a uniquely tech-savvy position compared with most Afghan organizations, Forough isn’t alone in thinking that blockchain-based solutions may help Afghans in need in the midst of an unprecedented economic crisis.
Several other NGOs and humanitarian organizations — facing a choice between failed banks still hampered by sanctions and hawala networks of informal money traders that many fear are tied to the drug trade or controlled by the Taliban — are considering the use of cryptocurrency as an alternative.
One American attorney advising international groups in Afghanistan said that his clients are moving closer to experimenting with crypto payments, though he was not at liberty to identify the NGOs and asked for anonymity to protect their identities. Others are stepping up in a more visible way to harness the power of cryptocurrency to deliver assistance.
Sanzar Kakar, an Afghan American raised in Seattle who has worked on commercial projects in Afghanistan, including a local ride-hailing company akin to Uber, created an app. “We’re trying to solve this problem, that 22.8 million Afghans are marching toward starvation, including 1 million children this winter who might die of starvation,” said Kakar. HesabPay, launched in 2019, helps Afghans transfer money using crypto.
“We can’t get money through banks, but 88 percent of Afghan families have at least one smartphone,” said Kakar, who hopes to facilitate money transfers of afghanis, along with USDC, another stablecoin. He is in the process of setting up money-exchanging shops at which Afghans can obtain QR codes or trade crypto for hard currency.
“You can trade back and forth, send it overseas or receive it overseas, without ever touching banks, without touching the Afghan government or Taliban,” said Kakar. “It’s all on the blockchain network.”
A liquidity crisis is at the heart of the growing catastrophe in Afghanistan. Following the pullout of U.S. forces last August, the country was isolated overnight. The U.S. seized assets from the Afghan central bank and ended transfers of U.S. currency. Companies in Poland and France contracted to print the afghani ended shipments. Almost immediately, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, known as the SWIFT system, which underpins international financial transactions, suspended services in Afghanistan. Commercial banks couldn’t lend money, and retail customers couldn’t take their own money out of banks.
The departure of the international community, fearing that any transaction within Afghanistan would violate sanctions on the Taliban, ground the economy to a halt. Nearly four-fifths of the Afghan budget was foreign-funded before the U.S. left.
The Biden administration has issued exemptions to the sanctions for humanitarian aid. These Treasury Department licenses, however, have done little to mitigate the spiraling crisis, as The Intercept has reported. Taliban leaders listed by the sanctions are in charge of senior Afghan government positions, leading many banks to continue to block routine transactions because they conclude that any tax or duty paid to the government could risk violating sanctions. Overcompliance and compliance costs associated with the sanctions have damaged the ability to conduct ordinary commerce in the country, leading to mass unemployment and skyrocketing food and fuel costs.
So though humanitarian aid is technically allowed, restrictions by banks have made it functionally impossible. Several U.S. banks contacted by The Intercept declined to comment on the record about the shut-off of transactions with Afghanistan. “We comply with all economic sanctions laws and regulations and process NGO-related payments accordingly. We have no further information to share,” said a spokesperson for Wells Fargo.
New reports continue to show ghastly consequences of the economic collapse in the country. Parents have sold children into arranged marriages in order to purchase enough food to survive. In Kandahar, a high school teacher recently died of starvation after at least four days of not eating, according to a local human rights watchdog. UNICEF estimates that 3.2 million children face malnutrition and over 1 million face the immediate risk of death by starvation. The United Nations reports that only 2 percent of Afghanistan’s population of 40 million is getting enough to eat.
The Biden administration, while choking off the Afghan economy, has approved $782 million in aid since October. The funds include shelter, emergency food and hygiene services, and 1 million Covid-19 vaccine doses.
The challenges to introducing cryptocurrency payments and transactions, however, are steep. “We explored this option, but it is not for us,” said Kevin Schumacher, deputy executive director of Women for Afghan Women. “How do you pay 1,100 staff in 16 provinces, many of whom can’t read or write, with crypto?”
“Even the smallest fluctuations in crypto rate can erase thousands of dollars off your books,” added Schumacher. He also feared that the Treasury Department and IRS would look down upon audits that included cryptocurrency payments. “Lastly, very, very, very few vendors in Afghanistan understand and use crypto.”
The fluctuations in value can be mitigated, said Kakar and Forough, by using stablecoins that are pegged to the dollar and are not subject to the wild fluctuations in valuation that occur with popular cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum or Bitcoin. Many Afghans use Binance, the international trading platform, which allows users to buy and sell stablecoins along with more speculative coins.
Kakar explained that many steps are in place on his app to ensure that users are authenticated. HesabPay, Kakar’s company, is running commercials on Afghan television and radio stations to explain the product, which uses biometric technology (such as facial recognition) to identify users.
“It’s all in the blockchain, all on a permanent ledger outside of the whole banking system, but under the purview of the Treasury, so they know that money is not being used for terrorism finance,” said Kakar.
Cashless digital transactions that sidestep traditional banks still pose risks, especially for U.S. citizens or financial institutions facilitating or investing in platforms for Afghans.
Rahilla Zafar, a former U.S. aid worker in Afghanistan, now works with cryptocurrency donors to raise charitable funds for the region. “Even though these are decentralized technologies, you don’t want to have any involvement with the Taliban, you want to directly help the people,” said Zafar, who noted that U.S. donors are concerned about accidentally violating sanctions.
Zafar works with Crypto for Afghanistan, a charity that helps donors raise money for humanitarian projects. One such project is ASEEL, an app that originally served as an Etsy-style marketplace, helping Afghan artisans sell handmade goods. Now the company has transformed into a relief organization, distributing packages of food and medicine.
ASEEL accepts Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and other major cryptocurrencies, which are used to purchase supplies. But as Nasrat Khalid, the founder of ASEEL, explained, it can’t provide direct cash payments in Afghanistan because of the sanctions.
“We’ve helped 55,000 people, a lot of traction in the last six months. But we can only do aid packages because of the OFAC status,” said Khalid, referencing the Treasury Department’s sanctions enforcement office.
Despite the steep learning curve and several barriers to entry, within Afghanistan using crypto is seen as an unqualified improvement on the status quo. Zafar recalled working in Afghanistan years ago, when militants would raid vans transporting cash around the country. Forough said that her sister’s bank account was seized by the Taliban after the U.S. withdrawal because of her work with Western groups. There are more and more new reports of banks closing.
With crypto, Forough’s tiny pocket of Afghanistan is surviving. “A group of our students just finished our academy scholarship, 77 of them,” said Forough. “Including, I believe, the very first female blockchain coders in Afghanistan. It’s very exciting even though the situation on the ground is not very pleasant.”
Three scientists from New Zealand, including a former lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, argued that the world's climate experts should take action - by not taking action. (photo: Vuk Valcic/Getty)
The bizarre logic of scientists putting a moratorium on science.
In an article published in the academic news outlet The Conversation last week (and in the academic journal Climate and Development last month), three scientists from New Zealand, including a former lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, argued that the world’s climate experts should take action — by not taking action.
No more reports from the IPCC, no more warnings of damage to oceans, the atmosphere, or forests. No more analyses of atmospheric dynamics or predictions of how high sea level will rise.
“We call for a moratorium on climate change research until governments are willing to fulfill their responsibilities in good faith,” they wrote. This, they argued, “offers the only real prospect for restoring the science-society contract.” The researchers call it a “moratorium,” but perhaps it’s better described as a strike — a refusal to persist in basic scientific research until governments of the world get their act together.
Their demand is somewhat understandable. For four decades, scientists from across the globe have tried to warn humanity about the unmitigated burning of fossil fuels. They’ve predicted debilitating heat waves, crushing droughts, and rising seas. They’ve courted the media and practically begged policymakers to cut the use of coal, oil, and gas. But for the most part, scientists have been ignored.
Since 1990, when the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its first report on global warming, carbon dioxide emissions have climbed by about 67 percent. Earlier this week, a European climate monitoring service announced that the last seven years were the hottest ever recorded. In the face of that reality, scientists are grasping for anything that could change the course of the planet.
“We’ve been wrestling with what our role is as scientists on the climate change front,” said Bruce Glavovic, one of the authors of the paper and a professor of environment and planning at Massey University. “If you look at some of the pivotal moments in social history where a course of action has shifted, it’s taken symbolic stands by people who aren’t necessarily famous or important.”
But the logic of their suggestion seems backwards. The most successful strikes and protests manage to withhold something necessary from those in power: labor, goods, smoothly operating infrastructure. Climate science, for all its critical importance, isn’t a field like meteorology, where timely predictions are needed daily to save lives. And while some strikes and protests — Greta Thunberg’s sit-in outside the Swedish Parliament, for example, Standing Rock, or the Extinction Rebellion movement in the U.K. — have garnered attention and media focus, the world’s governments remain far off-track of their stated climate goals. If nations currently aren’t listening to scientists, why would staying silent suddenly force governments to pay attention?
“I don’t think a vacuum of knowledge will work when a fountain of knowledge hasn’t been the answer,” said Kim Cobb, a professor of climate science at the University of Georgia and a lead author for the IPCC.
Moreover, not everyone agrees on the existence of a straightforward “science-society contract.” Some scientists seem to believe that if they only communicate their work clearly and accurately, the public and the world’s governments will fall into line. Bruce Glavovic cites New Zealand’s COVID-19 response as an example of a functioning contract: Epidemiologists and infectious disease experts advised the government on what to do about the novel coronavirus, the government responded with strict lockdowns and border controls, and the country managed to avoid the worst impacts of the pandemic.
But in most cases there isn’t a direct line between science and policy action — and there never has been. Scientific information is always viewed through a vortex of ideology, politics, and power. Science can tell us that we need to stop burning fossil fuels, but it can’t tell us exactly how we should transition our economy to clean energy. Science can warn us about the risks of leaving our homes unmasked, but it can’t tell us whether we should accept the dangers of visiting family over the holidays or dining indoors at a restaurant.
“The social contract between the scientific community and policymakers/society is this: They pay us to do research and we provide them with the results,” Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric science at Texas A…M University, wrote on Twitter. “That’s it. That’s the contract.”
Other scientists also reacted with frustration to the idea of a moratorium or strike, arguing that they have a responsibility to continue their work as long as there are questions that need to be answered about the extent of sea level rise, how global warming will affect different ecosystems, and which areas of the planet will need to adapt most quickly. Moreover, there are already significant barriers to research in the Global South, and scientific “weak spots” in areas that will be most impacted by dangerous warming.
“Imagine if six months ago respiratory scientists and epidemiologists had said, ‘Our work is not being effectively deployed as a public policy, and therefore we’re done,’” said Sarah Myhre, a climate scientist and senior fellow for oceans at the nonprofit organization Project Drawdown. “It’s ridiculous.”
The core problem with the idea of a climate science strike is that raising the stakes hasn’t worked in the past. Scientists have spent decades trying to bring greater urgency to the climate crisis — with little success. Their failure is not due to a lack of trying, or poor communication skills; their failure is because scientists, alone, cannot solve climate change. They have, in a large part, done their work. The rest is up to us.
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