I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. We are living through the most difficult period in our lifetimes. If you are feeling anxious, depressed, overwhelmed, confused, angry — you’re not alone. Millions of others feel exactly the same way.
This pandemic has had a devastating impact upon our country. Over 900,000 people have died from COVID, and tens of millions have been made ill. Many thousands of workers have lost their lives simply because they went about doing their jobs, while millions of other workers have chosen to find new employment paths. The education of young people, from child care to graduate school, has been severely disrupted. Elderly people have become increasingly isolated, fearful of catching the virus from grandchildren, friends or family. Mental illness is on the rise, as is drug addiction, alcoholism and domestic violence.
But that’s not all.
Poll after poll shows Americans are not only giving up on democracy and establishment politics, but they have less and less faith in the media, the scientific community and other foundations of civil society. Conspiracy theories, with the aid of the internet, are on the rise. With Trump and many Republicans continuing to deny Biden’s victory and actively suppressing the vote in many states, the likelihood of the United States moving toward authoritarianism is growing more and more. This is accompanied by increased racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia.
Oligarchy and massive income and wealth inequality are getting worse. While the billionaire has class seen its wealth explode during the pandemic, a handful of giant Wall Street firms now control over $20 trillion in assets and many hundreds of companies. In recent years these Masters of the Universe have significantly increased their influence over media, banking, health care, housing and many other sectors of our economy. Never before have so few owned and controlled so much. Meanwhile, half of our people continue to live paycheck to paycheck and the high inflation rate is making life for the working class even more difficult.
And you know about the existential threat of climate change. The scientists tell us that we have only a few years to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy if we’re going to avoid massive and irreversible damage to the planet. And yet our government, and governments throughout the world, are doing far too little to address the crisis.
And, oh yes, Putin has put 140,000 troops on Ukraine’s border and we may be looking at the most devastating war in Europe since WWII, which could well have global consequences.
So. If you’re feeling a little under the weather, there are some pretty good reasons for that.
But the answer to all that is not to bury our heads in the sand or wallow in despair. It is to fight back. It is to figure out how, in these enormously difficult and complicated times, we can save our country, save democracy and save the planet. Not easy to do. But we don’t have much of a choice. And we have to go forward together.
In that regard, I would very much appreciate hearing your ideas. In this unprecedented moment in American history, what is the best way forward? What should the President be doing? What should Congress be doing? What should the progressive community be doing? Please make your remarks as short as possible because I would like to publish as many thoughtful statements as we can in an upcoming email.
One year ago today, a violent mob stormed the United States Capitol with the hope of overturning the results of the presidential election. The images Americans saw that day made visibly clear what many of us have realized for a long time:
Our democracy is under severe attack.
But the truth is that the attack on our democracy goes far deeper than the violence of January 6, 2021.
Our democracy is under attack from Republicans in Congress and in state legislatures across the country who are doing everything in their power to suppress the vote and make it harder for people of color and young people to vote. These political cowards are also engaging in extreme gerrymandering and are drawing the lines of their districts so they pick their voters instead of voters picking their representatives. They are intent on establishing permanent majorities.
Our democracy is under attack when many Republicans, at all levels of government, promote the Big Lie that the presidential election was stolen and increasingly call into question the results of any election they lose.
Our democracy is under attack when election officials are being harassed and threatened and when efforts are being made to allow partisan legislatures to determine election winners and losers.
But let’s be clear. It is not just the subversion of democratic norms and voting rights that is undermining our democracy.
Our democracy is also under attack because all across this country people increasingly believe democracy itself, and our government, does not work for them.
For the vast majority of Americans there is a huge disconnect between the reality of their lives and what goes on in Washington, D.C. The people see the politicians talking, talking and talking, they watch the 30 second TV ads and they hear the promises that are made — but never kept. They remember what Lincoln said about "government of the people, by the people and for the people," and they know how far removed we are from that today.
They see the very rich become much richer while politicians and the corporate media ignore the collapse of the middle class and the painful realities facing working families — low wages, dead end jobs, debt, homelessness, lack of health care or educational opportunity, declining life expectancy, substance abuse, impoverished retirement.
Democrat or Republican. Who cares? Nothing changes or, if it does, it's usually for the worse.
Millions of Americans are unable to make it on starvation wages and many of them struggle to put food on the table, but Congress is unable to raise the minimum wage to a living wage.
Over 80 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured, with millions going into bankruptcy because of unpaid medical bills, but Congress is unable to do what every other major country does — guarantee health care as a human right.
One out of four Americans are unable to afford the prescription drugs they need but Congress is unable to take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry which charges us, by far, the highest prices in the world.
Almost 43 million Americans are struggling with student debt but Congress, busy giving tax breaks to the rich and well-connected, is unable to forgive that burden which is crushing the dreams of so many.
In homes across this country seniors are being forced to live out their later years without teeth in their mouths or the ability to see or hear properly, but Congress is unable to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing and vision.
And, while climate change ravages our country and the world, Congress is unable to confront the fossil fuel industry, cut carbon emissions and leave future generations a planet that will be healthy and habitable.
So it is no great surprise that people look at the process that produces these outcomes and say, “Nope. Not for me. I don’t know what these guys are doing but it's not relevant to my life.”
So yes, Congress must hold responsible those who engaged in insurrection at the Capitol and make sure there is never again any doubt about the peaceful transition of power in this country.
Yes, Congress must take action immediately to end voter suppression and make it easier for people in every state in this country to participate in the political process.
But, if we are really going to save democracy and make it relevant to people's lives, Congress must boldly address the long-neglected crises facing the working people of this country. In other words, dare I say, Congress must represent the needs of ordinary Americans and not just wealthy campaign contributors.
The choice before us is whether we move into oligarchy, where our economic and political life is dominated by a handful of billionaires, or whether we create a vibrant democracy where the voices of the people are heard, and where their needs are addressed.
As we enter the new year I look forward to working with you to create a country in which our children and parents are not living in poverty, in which young people can afford to go to college and in which working families have the health care and prescription drugs they need. I will fight for policies which will save the planet for future generations. Will we succeed? I can’t guarantee you that.
But I can tell you there is no chance unless we are in this together.
Not me. Us.
So I am asking:
Please add your name to say you are with me in the fight to convince Congress to ACT to save our democracy: to reform our voting rights laws AND to combat oligarchy by addressing the very real needs of the working class of this country.
The struggle to create a nation and world of economic and social justice and environmental sanity is not an easy one. The struggle to try and create a more peaceful world will be extremely difficult. But this I know: despair is not an option if we care about our kids and grandchildren. Giving up is not an option if we want to prevent irreparable harm to our planet.
We must stand up and fight back. We must continue our commitment to a political revolution which engages millions of Americans from all walks of life in the struggle for real change.
This country belongs to all of us, not just the billionaire class. And that is what our work is about.
This article is adapted from the new edition of Norman Solomon’s book “Made Love, Got War,” just published as a free e-book.
The final big legislative achievement of 2021 was a bill authorizing $768 billion in military spending for the next fiscal year. President Biden signed it two days after the Christmas holiday glorifying the Prince of Peace.
Dollar figures can look abstract on a screen, but they indicate the extent of the mania. Biden had asked for “only” $12 billion more than President Trump’s bloated military budget of the previous year -- but that wasn’t enough for the bipartisan hawkery in the House and Senate, which provided a boost of $37 billion instead.
Overall, military spending accounts for about half of the federal government’s total discretionary spending -- while programs for helping instead of killing are on short rations at many local, state, and national government agencies. It’s a nonstop trend of reinforcing the warfare state in sync with warped neoliberal priorities. While outsized profits keep benefiting the upper class and enriching the already obscenely rich, the cascading effects of extreme income inequality are drowning the hopes of the many.
Corporate power constrains just about everything, whether healthcare or education or housing or jobs or measures for responding to the climate emergency. What prevails is the political structure of the economy.
Class war in the United States has established what amounts to oligarchy. A zero-sum economic system, aka corporate capitalism, is constantly exercising its power to reward and deprive. The dominant forces of class warfare -- disproportionately afflicting people of color while also steadily harming many millions of whites -- continue to undermine basic human rights including equal justice and economic security. In the real world, financial power is political power. A system that runs on money is adept at running over people without it.
The words “I can’t breathe,” repeated nearly a dozen times by Eric Garner in a deadly police chokehold, resonated for countless people whose names we’ll never know. The intersections of racial injustice and predatory capitalism are especially virulent zones, where many lives gradually or suddenly lose what is essential for life. Discussions of terms like “racism” and “poverty” too easily become facile, abstracted from human consequences, while unknown lives suffocate at the hands of routine injustice, systematic cruelties, the way things predictably are.
An all-out war on democracy is now underway in the United States. More than ever, the Republican Party is the electoral arm of unabashed white supremacy as well as such toxicities as xenophobia, nativism, anti-gay bigotry, patriarchy, and misogyny. The party’s rigid climate denial is nothing short of deranged. Its approach to the Covid pandemic has amounted to an embrace of death in the name of rancid individualism. With its Supreme Court justices in place, the “Grand Old Party” has methodically slashed voting rights and abortion rights. Overall, on domestic matters, the partisan matchup is between neoliberalism and neofascism. While the abhorrent roles of the Democratic leadership are extensive, to put it mildly, the two parties now represent hugely different constituencies and agendas at home. Not so on matters of war and peace.
Both parties continue to champion what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism.” When King described the profligate spending for a distant war as “some demonic, destructive suction tube,” he was condemning dynamics that endure with a vengeance. Today, the madness and the denial are no less entrenched. A militaristic core serves as a sacred touchstone for faith in America as the world’s one and only indispensable nation. Gargantuan Pentagon budgets are taken for granted, as is the assumed prerogative to bomb other countries at will.
Every budget has continued to include massive outlays for nuclear weapons, including gigantic expenditures for so-called “modernization” of the nuclear arsenal. A fact that this book cited when it was first published -- that the United States had ten thousand nuclear warheads and Russia had a comparable number -- is no longer true; most estimates say those stockpiles are now about half as large. But the current situation is actually much more dangerous. In 2007, the Doomsday Clock maintained by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists pegged the world’s proximity to annihilation at five minutes to apocalyptic Midnight. As 2022 began, the symbolic hands were at one hundred seconds to Midnight. Such is the momentum of the nuclear arms race, fueled by profit-driven military contractors. Lofty rhetoric about seeking peace is never a real brake on the nationalistic thrust of militarism.
With the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the third decade of this century is shaping up to unfold new wrinkles in American hegemonic conceits. Along the way, Joe Biden has echoed a central precept of doublethink in George Orwell’s most famous novel, 1984: “War is Peace.” Speaking at the United Nations as the autumn of 2021 began, Biden proclaimed: “I stand here today, for the first time in twenty years, with the United States not at war. We’ve turned the page.” But the turned page was bound into a volume of killing with no foreseeable end. The United States remained at war, bombing in the Middle East and elsewhere, with much information withheld from the public. And increases in U.S. belligerence toward both Russia and China escalated the risks of a military confrontation that could lead to nuclear war.
A rosy view of the USA’s future is only possible when ignoring history in real time. After four years of the poisonous Trump presidency, the Biden strain of corporate liberalism offers a mix of antidotes and ongoing toxins. The Republican Party, now neofascist, is in a strong position to gain control of the U.S. government by mid-decade. Preventing such a cataclysm seems beyond the grasp of the same Democratic Party elites that paved the way for Donald Trump to become president in the first place. Realism about the current situation -- clarity about how we got here and where we are now -- is necessary to mitigate impending disasters and help create a better future. Vital truths must be told. And acted upon.
Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. Solomon is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.
This article is adapted from the new edition of Norman Solomon’s book “Made Love, Got War,” just published as a free e-book.
The final big legislative achievement of 2021 was a bill authorizing $768 billion in military spending for the next fiscal year. President Biden signed it two days after the Christmas holiday glorifying the Prince of Peace.
Dollar figures can look abstract on a screen, but they indicate the extent of the mania. Biden had asked for “only” $12 billion more than President Trump’s bloated military budget of the previous year -- but that wasn’t enough for the bipartisan hawkery in the House and Senate, which provided a boost of $37 billion instead.
Overall, military spending accounts for about half of the federal government’s total discretionary spending -- while programs for helping instead of killing are on short rations at many local, state, and national government agencies. It’s a nonstop trend of reinforcing the warfare state in sync with warped neoliberal priorities. While outsized profits keep benefiting the upper class and enriching the already obscenely rich, the cascading effects of extreme income inequality are drowning the hopes of the many.
Corporate power constrains just about everything, whether healthcare or education or housing or jobs or measures for responding to the climate emergency. What prevails is the political structure of the economy.
Class war in the United States has established what amounts to oligarchy. A zero-sum economic system, aka corporate capitalism, is constantly exercising its power to reward and deprive. The dominant forces of class warfare -- disproportionately afflicting people of color while also steadily harming many millions of whites -- continue to undermine basic human rights including equal justice and economic security. In the real world, financial power is political power. A system that runs on money is adept at running over people without it.
The words “I can’t breathe,” repeated nearly a dozen times by Eric Garner in a deadly police chokehold, resonated for countless people whose names we’ll never know. The intersections of racial injustice and predatory capitalism are especially virulent zones, where many lives gradually or suddenly lose what is essential for life. Discussions of terms like “racism” and “poverty” too easily become facile, abstracted from human consequences, while unknown lives suffocate at the hands of routine injustice, systematic cruelties, the way things predictably are.
An all-out war on democracy is now underway in the United States. More than ever, the Republican Party is the electoral arm of unabashed white supremacy as well as such toxicities as xenophobia, nativism, anti-gay bigotry, patriarchy, and misogyny. The party’s rigid climate denial is nothing short of deranged. Its approach to the Covid pandemic has amounted to an embrace of death in the name of rancid individualism. With its Supreme Court justices in place, the “Grand Old Party” has methodically slashed voting rights and abortion rights. Overall, on domestic matters, the partisan matchup is between neoliberalism and neofascism. While the abhorrent roles of the Democratic leadership are extensive, to put it mildly, the two parties now represent hugely different constituencies and agendas at home. Not so on matters of war and peace.
Both parties continue to champion what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism.” When King described the profligate spending for a distant war as “some demonic, destructive suction tube,” he was condemning dynamics that endure with a vengeance. Today, the madness and the denial are no less entrenched. A militaristic core serves as a sacred touchstone for faith in America as the world’s one and only indispensable nation. Gargantuan Pentagon budgets are taken for granted, as is the assumed prerogative to bomb other countries at will.
Every budget has continued to include massive outlays for nuclear weapons, including gigantic expenditures for so-called “modernization” of the nuclear arsenal. A fact that this book cited when it was first published -- that the United States had ten thousand nuclear warheads and Russia had a comparable number -- is no longer true; most estimates say those stockpiles are now about half as large. But the current situation is actually much more dangerous. In 2007, the Doomsday Clock maintained by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists pegged the world’s proximity to annihilation at five minutes to apocalyptic Midnight. As 2022 began, the symbolic hands were at one hundred seconds to Midnight. Such is the momentum of the nuclear arms race, fueled by profit-driven military contractors. Lofty rhetoric about seeking peace is never a real brake on the nationalistic thrust of militarism.
With the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the third decade of this century is shaping up to unfold new wrinkles in American hegemonic conceits. Along the way, Joe Biden has echoed a central precept of doublethink in George Orwell’s most famous novel, 1984: “War is Peace.” Speaking at the United Nations as the autumn of 2021 began, Biden proclaimed: “I stand here today, for the first time in twenty years, with the United States not at war. We’ve turned the page.” But the turned page was bound into a volume of killing with no foreseeable end. The United States remained at war, bombing in the Middle East and elsewhere, with much information withheld from the public. And increases in U.S. belligerence toward both Russia and China escalated the risks of a military confrontation that could lead to nuclear war.
A rosy view of the USA’s future is only possible when ignoring history in real time. After four years of the poisonous Trump presidency, the Biden strain of corporate liberalism offers a mix of antidotes and ongoing toxins. The Republican Party, now neofascist, is in a strong position to gain control of the U.S. government by mid-decade. Preventing such a cataclysm seems beyond the grasp of the same Democratic Party elites that paved the way for Donald Trump to become president in the first place. Realism about the current situation -- clarity about how we got here and where we are now -- is necessary to mitigate impending disasters and help create a better future. Vital truths must be told. And acted upon.
Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. Solomon is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.
The struggles for democracy, social and economic justice, and a sustainable planet are necessary and noble.
Friends,
The reason I write this newsletter is not just to inform (and occasionally amuse) you, but also to arm you with the truth so you can fight more effectively for the common good.
The forces undermining our democracy, polluting our planet, and stoking hatred and inequality have many weapons at their disposal — lobbyists, media megaphones, and money to bribe lawmakers. But their most powerful weapon is cynicism. They’re betting that if they can get us to feel like we can’t make a difference, we will give up — and then they can declare total victory.
Which is why we have to keep up the fight even when feeling deeply discouraged.
I’m not going to pretend. There’s a lot to be discouraged about right now — from Manchin’s torpedoing of “Build Back Better” to the surging Omicron variant of COVID-19 and the politicization of public health, from the Republicans’ assault on voting rights to environmental disasters all over the world. My message to any of you who feel overwhelmed, disappointed, or ready to drop out: I get it.
I’ve been in the trenches for five decades and sometimes I despair as well. Again and again over the years I’ve seen hard-fought dreams go up in smoke. Or been sidelined. Or ridiculed. Or I’ve watched them succumb to bribery and corruption. Two of the leaders I counted on most in my lifetime were assassinated.
But notwithstanding all this, we are better today than we were fifty years ago, twenty years ago, even a year ago. I can point out so many examples in our own country, or all across the world, where movements that were once small and stacked against seemingly impossible odds, ended up winning and making America and our earth a better place to live. From Martin Luther King, Jr., to Mahatma Gandhi, to more recent examples like Stacey Abrams and Greta Thunberg, people have repeatedly changed the course of history by refusing to believe that they couldn’t make a difference.
It’s not only the famous leaders who are agents of change. Movements are fueled by individuals giving their time, energy, and hope. Small actions and victories lead to bigger ones, and the improbable becomes possible.
Nothing strikes fear in the hearts of those who want to prevent progress more than a resistance that is undeterred.
This fight, this struggle, all these big problems, can be exhausting. No one can go all in, all the time. That’s why we need to build communities and movements for action, where people can give what effort they can, and can be buoyed in solidarity with others. That’s what we’re doing in a small way in this forum. Building community. Strengthening our resolve. Sharing information and analyses. Fortifying ourselves.
Over the next few years the fight will become even more intense. We are even battling for the way we tell the story of America. There are those who want to go back to a simplistic and inaccurate narrative, where we were basically perfect from our founding, where we don’t need to tell the unpleasant truths about slavery, racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and all the other injustices.
But there is another story of America, one of imperfection but progress. In this story, which is far more accurate, reformers have changed this nation many, many times for the better. We got labor rights, civil rights, women's rights, and LGBTQ rights. We got clean water laws and clean air laws, and health insurance for most Americans. We’ve torn down Confederate statues and expanded clean energy. We’ve got a new generation of young, progressive politicians determined to make the nation better. The list goes on and on.
The outcome of the fight ahead will not be determined by force, fear, or violence. It will be decided on the basis of commitment, tenacity, and unvarnished truth.
Here’s my deal. I’ll continue to give you the facts and arguments, even sprinkle in drawings and videos. I’ll do whatever I can to help strengthen your understanding and your resolve. Please use the facts, arguments, drawings and videos to continue the fight. To fight harder. To enlist others.
If at any time you feel helpless or despairing, remember that the struggle is long, that progress is often hard to see in the short term, and that for every step forward regressive forces are determined to push us backwards. Also remind yourself that the fights for democracy, social justice, and a sustainable planet are necessary and noble, that the stakes could not be greater or more important, and that we will — we must — win.
I wish you a restful, enjoyable, restorative Christmas holiday.
PS: Here’s a video I just did with my wonderfully talented young colleagues at Inequality Media (who fuel my optimism every day). Feel free to share!
Never forget this: The forces undermining our democracy, polluting our planet, and stoking hatred are counting on you to give up. Cynicism is how they win.
Happy new year. I hope it’s a safe and healthy one for you and your family.
Over the last few days I’ve shared with you some facts and thoughts about Trump’s continuing attempted coup. I’ve also suggested that an answer to it (and to Trumpism in general) can be found in Frank Capra’s 1946 iconic movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” and the central question it posed: Do we join together, or let the Mr. Potters of America own and run everything?
Today, the first of 2022, struck me as an appropriate one to focus on how and why America came to be Potterized.
It’s not possible to change the future without understanding the past. The American system isn’t just politics or “the market” as we now experience it. It’s an evolving set of laws, rules, and norms that reflect a shifting structure of power. If we want to alter the road we’re on (and we must), we need to see how we got on it. If we want to alter the current structure of power (and we must), we have to realize how it came to be.
Most importantly, we need to see why we made a giant U-turn from the road we were on during the first three decades after World War II — when America was on the way to building a robust democracy and the biggest middle class the world had ever seen, expanding civil rights and voting rights and creating a more inclusive society — to the road that led us to Trump.
If we figure out how we got from “It’s a Wonderful Life” of 1946 to the Pottersvilles that so many Americans are inhabiting in 2022, we have a fighting chance of getting back on the right road.
My personal journey — and the questions that have dogged me for years — parallels this larger one. I was born in 1946, the same year “It’s a Wonderful Life” was released. I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s during civil rights, voting rights, women’s rights, and a burgeoning if not wild-eyed youthful optimism about the future.
I witnessed the U-turn. I saw the system change, but didn’t know why.
In the 1970s, I represented the United States before the Supreme Court, and then I ran the policy team in the Federal Trade Commission. In the 1980s, I watched and chronicled what I saw happening under Reagan and Bush I, and I taught brilliant students what I thought they needed to know about the system. In the 1990s, I advised Bill Clinton when he was a candidate for president, then headed his economic transition team and became his Secretary of Labor. Afterwards, I taught another group of terrific students. I advised Barack Obama. When Trump was elected, I became a staunch critic.
Through it all, I kept asking myself: why is this happening? How did we get on the wrong road? What can be done?
I have some preliminary answers that I’ll be sharing with you over the next weeks and months.
For now, here’s video that was my first attempt to answer these questions as simply as I could. Please have a look. I’m interested in your thoughts and comments.
The Big Picture: How We Got Into This Mess, And How We Get Out of It | Robert Reich I’ve been in or around politics for over a half-century now. I’ve watched as corporations ransacked our system. In 1952, the corporate share of federal tax revenue was 32%. In 2020, it was down to 7%.
Here’s how we break the corporate oligarchy and return power to the people.
If you’re discouraged by what’s happening in the country, that is by design.
The forces undermining our democracy, polluting our planet, and stoking hatred are counting on you to give up. But we must not let them.
They use their allies in political office to grind the gears of government to a halt, so people see government as the problem, not the solution. But if there’s one thing we learned from this wretched pandemic, it’s that government intervention can reduce poverty and suffering, and we can afford to pay for it.
They want us to become so discouraged that we stop showing up to vote. Another victory for them. Those who want you to believe that change is not possible are counting on you to forget that history and give up. Don’t.
The House select committee investigating January 6 has stood down on its requests for some documents from the Trump White House, after the Biden administration convinced the panel to scale back its pursuits.
As a result, the committee won't be getting hundreds of pages of National Security Council records. But the documents may not have been all that helpful, anyway.
The revelation comes in a new round of letters about the status of Trump-era documents held by the National Archives. It's the first time the Biden administration appears to have pushed back significantly against the House select committee, as the National Archives works through thousands of pages of records from the Trump administration at the request of the House committee.
At least some of the House's document requests appear to have gone too far, even for the Biden administration. Such a development isn't out of the ordinary during a congressional inquiry into West Wing affairs, but it hadn't emerged yet for the House select committee, which had been essentially aligned with the Biden White House on questions of access.
The curtailing of the House panel's request, however, may not affect its core mission of understanding then-President Donald Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential vote and the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6. That's because this latest round of documents over which Congress and the executive branch negotiated "appear to have no content that might be material to the Select Committee's investigation," the Biden White House said in a letter this month.
It said it wants to keep these records secret to preserve the confidentiality of discussions and advice around the presidency.
"President Biden recognizes that Congress has a compelling need, in service of its legislative functions, to understand the circumstances that led to the insurrection," wrote Jonathan Su, a lawyer for the Biden White House. "The documents for which the Select Committee has agreed to withdraw or defer its request do not appear to bear on the White House's preparations for or response to the events of January 6, or on efforts to overturn the election or otherwise obstruct the peaceful transfer of power."
The House is still seeking -- and the Biden administration is willing to release -- more than 700 pages of crucial Trump White House records documenting Trump's and top advisers' discussions, phone calls and visits up to and on January 6.
But Trump filed a lawsuit to block their release and continues to claim that several hundred pages should be kept private, under his assertions of executive privilege. He is asking the Supreme Court to hear his case, after losing at two lower courts.
Before this month, the National Archives had processed and weighed the positions of Trump and of the current White House on at least four separate collections of documents. As the review of records continued at the archives, the Biden administration in recent weeks looked at 511 pages from the National Security Council during Trump's presidency, as the House committee has been seeking a broad swath of documents from the former President's time in office.
"The Select Committee has agreed to withdraw or defer its request for a significant portion of those records," White House counsel Dana Remus wrote to the archives on December 17.
The committee issued a statement later Tuesday, making clear that it wasn't dropping parts of its pursuit.
"The Select Committee welcomes President Biden's decision to clear the way for the production of another set of records," a committee spokesperson said in the statement. "The committee has agreed to defer action on certain records as part of the accommodations process, as was the case with an earlier tranche of records. The Select Committee has not withdrawn its request for these records and will continue to engage with the executive branch to ensure the committee gets access to all the information relevant to our probe."
Even so, the committee could face a drawn-out negotiation with the Biden administration if it does still push for access to national security records, either because of potential standoffs over executive privilege or issues related to classified or law-enforcement sensitive material, the White House suggested in its letter.
Senator Harry Reid in 2014. In his three-decade Senate tenure he oversaw the passage of landmark legislation, including a sweeping economic stimulus, a new set of rules for Wall Street and the Affordable Care Act. (photo: Stephen Crowley/NYT)
Harry M. Reid, a Nevada Democrat who rose from a hardscrabble mining town to become one of the longest-serving Senate majority leaders in history and a political force during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, died Dec. 28 at his home in Henderson, Nev. He was 82.
The death was confirmed by David Krone, a former chief of staff. Mr. Reid was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2018.
A combative but soft-spoken former amateur boxer, Mr. Reid displayed an economy of personal magnetism and embraced the art of the scrappy insult. Columnist Molly Ivins called him “charismatically challenged.” Obama, a friend and political ally, euphemistically remarked on his “curmudgeonly charm.”
Mr. Reid was never a commanding presence before a crowd or on television. Sometimes he was barely audible, and he tended to litter his speeches with awkward pauses. But he was the consummate inside player, exercising his political and legislative skills behind the scenes.
He was Senate majority leader from 2007 through 2014. Since the position’s creation in the 1920s, only two senators have held it longer: Democrats Mike Mansfield of Montana, from 1961 through 1976, and Alben W. Barkley of Kentucky, from 1937 through 1946.
After overcoming long odds to achieve political leadership, Mr. Reid was not one to apologize for being who he was.
“I didn’t make it in life because of my athletic prowess,” he said in his 2016 retirement speech, at the end of five terms in the Senate. “I didn’t make it because of my good looks. I didn’t make it because I’m a genius. I made it because I worked hard.”
Acknowledged even by Republican adversaries as a wily tactician and master of the Senate’s arcane rules, Mr. Reid notched his greatest legislative achievement in 2009, when he steered a landmark health-care bill through the Senate over solid GOP opposition.
In an effort to secure a filibuster-proof 60 votes, Mr. Reid spent hours behind closed doors, massaging the complex legislation and cutting deals with moderate Democrats. To ease the concerns of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), for example, Mr. Reid agreed to a generous Medicaid reimbursement provision, specifically for Nebraska — a deal critics labeled the “Cornhusker kickback.”
Washington Post columnist David Broder called Mr. Reid’s dealmaking “crass and parochial,” but it worked. On Dec. 24, 2009, the Senate’s 58 Democrats and two independents voted to approve the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare. After it passed the House of Representatives, Obama signed the bill into law in 2010.
As Senate minority leader under Bush, Mr. Reid was instrumental in blocking one of the president’s major second-term domestic initiatives, the partial privatization of Social Security. Although his animosity toward Bush was undisguised — he once called him a “loser,” for which he later apologized, and a “liar,” for which he did not — Mr. Reid as majority leader worked with the administration in 2008 to pass the $700 billion Emergency Economic Stabilization Act to shore up banks and other financial institutions threatened by the subprime mortgage crisis.
In the first two years of the Obama presidency, Mr. Reid shepherded a raft of major legislation through the Senate, including the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, to stimulate spending and job growth in the aftermath of the recession, and the Dodd-Frank law, to strengthen regulation of Wall Street and bolster consumer protection.
Mr. Reid’s legislative achievements tended to be overshadowed by the partisan rancor that increasingly gripped Congress during his time as majority leader. But despite the acrimony and gridlock, Post congressional reporter Paul Kane wrote in 2015, “His legacy will be defined just as much by his deft parliamentary maneuvers to push forward sweeping laws that might not have passed under different leadership.”
A trial lawyer, lieutenant governor and two-term member of the U.S. House before winning his Senate seat in 1986, he was certainly a competitor. But the trim, slightly stooped Mr. Reid was low-key in demeanor, and he professed a desire for bipartisan collaboration.
He liked to refer to his days in the ring, where he fought more than a dozen amateur middleweight matches while in college. “I know how to dance. I know how to fight,” he said when he was elected Democratic leader in 2004. “I’d rather dance than fight.”
But there was more Rocky Marciano than Fred Astaire in his political methods. As majority leader, he kept an increasingly tight rein on Senate proceedings, and his tactics drew angry criticism from Republicans that he abused his authority and smothered the rights of the minority.
One complaint was that instead of allowing Senate committees to write legislation, Mr. Reid too often oversaw the drafting process in his office and brought a measure to the floor as a take-it-or-leave-it package, using a parliamentary maneuver to prevent unwanted amendments.
He defended his tightly controlled approach as necessary to counter what he described as Republicans’ “mindless, knee-jerk obstruction” of the Obama agenda. His tactics also enabled Democrats to avoid casting votes on controversial measures that could be troublesome at election time.
“I was never running to be popular with Republicans,” he told reporters at the end of his Senate tenure. “I’ve had a job to do with President Obama. I’ve done the best that I can.”
In a letter Obama wrote to Reid before his death and released Tuesday evening, the former president said: “I wouldn’t have been president had it not been for your encouragement and support, and I wouldn’t have got most of what I got done without your skill and determination.”
Former Senate historian Donald Ritchie said Mr. Reid exercised as much influence as he could under Senate rules, a strategy aided by an increasing concentration of power in the majority leader’s office that began in the 1990s.
Mr. Reid’s most controversial — and arguably most consequential — move came in 2013, after Republicans filibustered a series of Obama nominees. Under his guidance, Democrats pushed through a rules change lowering the threshold for confirmation (except for Supreme Court nominees) from 60 votes to a simple majority. Republicans railed against what Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) called a “complete and total power grab,” but Mr. Reid insisted that GOP intransigence left no other option.
Whatever the merits, Mr. Reid’s use of the “nuclear option” shifted power from the minority to the majority — and four years later allowed the Trump administration to move contested Cabinet and judicial picks through the GOP-controlled Senate. While Mr. Reid exempted Supreme Court nominees from the lowered threshold, the Republican majority, citing his rule change as precedent, extended the simple-majority requirement to the high court, leaving Democrats powerless to block the nominations of Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. “God bless Harry M. Reid,” the late conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, a Gorsuch supporter, wrote in 2017.
Adding Mr. Reid’s two stints as minority leader (2005 through 2006 and 2015 through 2016) to his eight years as majority leader, he led Senate Democrats for a dozen years. Some members of his party bristled at his strict management style. But he got high marks for keeping his fractious caucus united, and his hold on the leadership of the Democratic caucus was never seriously challenged.
To outsiders, he may not have been an obvious choice for the position. He lacked the smooth manner that plays well on Sunday TV talk shows, and although he moved leftward during his leadership years, he stood to the right of many in his party, especially on social issues. He opposed the 1994 assault weapons ban, favored outlawing so-called partial-birth abortions and voted to authorize the 1991 and 2003 U.S. wars against Iraq.
But in six years as whip under Senate party leader Thomas A. Daschle of South Dakota, he had forged strong ties with fellow Democrats. After Daschle lost his 2004 reelection race, Mr. Reid moved quickly to succeed him as leader, nailing down enough support that his only potential competitor, Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, dropped out before the balloting.
A bleak upbringing
Harry Mason Reid was born Dec. 2, 1939, in Searchlight, Nev., about 60 miles south of Las Vegas. The town was once a thriving gold-mining center but later depended on prostitution as its main industry.
His father, who had not finished eighth grade, took mining jobs wherever he could find them. His mother did laundry for the brothels. They lived in a house built of railroad ties, with no indoor toilet, and went without medical care no matter how severe the need. His father — described by Mr. Reid as a brooding, reclusive binge drinker — fatally shot himself in 1972.
The town’s only school had one teacher and ended in the eighth grade. Mr. Reid’s class had six students, and “I graduated in the top third,” he quipped. For high school, he hitchhiked 45 miles to the city of Henderson, outside Las Vegas, living with relatives during the week and returning home on weekends.
In high school he met Landra Gould, a student one class behind him. To the chagrin of her parents, who were observant Jews, Landra and the “goy with no religion” fell in love, as Mr. Reid recounted in his 2008 memoir, “The Good Fight: Hard Lessons From Searchlight to Washington,” written with Mark Warren.
Mr. Reid was just shy of his 20th birthday when he and Landra eloped. In Utah, where they lived while he finished college, the couple converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but they also observed Jewish holidays in deference to her parents.
The Reids had a daughter, Lana Barringer, and four sons, Rory, Leif, Josh and Key Reid. Rory Reid, a past chairman of the powerful governing body of Clark County, Nev., which includes Las Vegas, was the Democratic nominee for Nevada governor in 2010. In addition to his wife and children, survivors include a brother; 19 grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.
Mr. Reid forged another important relationship in high school, with social studies teacher Mike O’Callaghan, who taught him to box and became his political mentor. O’Callaghan, a Democrat, later served two terms as governor of Nevada.
Mr. Reid received an associate’s degree in 1959 from what is now Southern Utah University, and he graduated from Utah State University two years later with a bachelor’s degree in history and political science. While in law school at George Washington University, he supported his growing family by working full time as a U.S. Capitol Police officer.
After graduating from law school in 1964, Mr. Reid returned to Nevada. In 1968 he was elected to the State Assembly, where he attracted notice with a flurry of legislative proposals. Two years later, the year O’Callaghan won the governorship, Mr. Reid was elected lieutenant governor.
In 1974 — the year of a Democratic electoral wave that followed the Watergate scandal — he ran for an open U.S. Senate seat convinced that he could not lose. He did, by 624 votes, to former governor Paul Laxalt (R). Mr. Reid then made what he later acknowledged was a foolhardy run for mayor of Las Vegas. He lost that race, too, and was now, as he put it, a “35-year-old has-been.”
In 1977, O’Callaghan appointed him to a four-year term as chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission, which regulates the state’s lucrative gambling industry. Mr. Reid, who never gambled, knew little about casinos but soon learned about the business, especially its underside.
When a Las Vegas businessman tried to bribe him to support new gambling devices, Mr. Reid participated in an FBI sting that sent the man to prison. He received frequent death threats, and one day his wife discovered the family station wagon rigged with a bomb that had failed to explode.
In 1982, congressional reapportionment gave Nevada a second U.S. House district, and Mr. Reid easily won the new Las Vegas-based seat. Four years later, when Laxalt retired, Mr. Reid moved up to the Senate, where he became an aggressive defender of the state’s gambling industry and other interests. As a member of the Appropriations Committee, he secured for his state millions of federal dollars for roads, airports, military facilities, recreation and environmental improvements. In December, the Las Vegas airport was renamed in his honor.
One of his biggest efforts was fending off a long-standing federal plan to store the nation’s spent nuclear fuel at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain — a plan backed by Bush that did much to stoke Mr. Reid’s ill will toward him. (The Obama administration, sensitive to Mr. Reid’s political needs, blocked the Yucca Mountain project, and it has not been revived in the years since.)
Given Nevada’s swing-state status, Mr. Reid’s reelection was not guaranteed. In 2010, his leadership role and close identification with the Obama administration made him especially vulnerable. His GOP opponent, former state legislator Sharron Angle, led in early polling. But her hard-right views and campaign missteps cost her support even among Republicans, and Mr. Reid ended up winning by a comfortable margin.
No 'bloody nose'
In Washington, the Reids lived in a condo at the tony Ritz-Carlton hotel, and at the end of his Senate career, the couple owned real estate, mining claims, securities and other assets worth between $3.3 million and $7.3 million, according to the senator’s 2015 financial disclosure report.
From time to time during his Senate career, news reports suggested that Mr. Reid’s public role and private interests overlapped. In 2003, for example, the Los Angeles Times disclosed that the senator had pushed legislation benefiting Nevada entities that paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying fees to his sons’ and son-in-law’s firms. He denied any impropriety, and the episode quickly faded away, his leadership position undamaged. (Mr. Reid said he was helping his home state, not his family, though he subsequently barred relatives from lobbying his office.)
The Democrats’ loss of the Senate in 2014 demoted Mr. Reid to minority leader. The following New Year’s Day, he suffered broken ribs and serious eye and facial injuries in an accident while exercising in his home. Not long afterward, he announced he would not seek reelection in 2016.
After leaving the Senate, Mr. Reid was a fellow at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas law school. He also was co-chair, with former House speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), of a public policy institute at UNLV funded by MGM Resorts International, a major player in Nevada gambling.
In his autobiography, Mr. Reid described his abilities as a boxer in words that could also serve as commentary on his public life.
“I could assess situations well, and I learned to recognize and exploit an opposing fighter’s weaknesses,” he wrote. “I could hit hard, and I could take a punch. But I never had a bloody nose.”
A view shows the damage in a container storage area, after Syrian state media reported an Israeli air strike on the Syrian port of Latakia, Syria, in this handout picture released by SANA on December 7, 2021. (photo: SANA/Reuters)
Second attack on cargo hub this month reported to have caused ‘significant material damage’
An Israeli airstrike hit Syria’s Latakia port before dawn on Tuesday, sparking a fire that lit up the Mediterranean seafront in the second such attack on the cargo hub this month, Syrian state media reported.
Since the outbreak of Syria’s civil war in 2011, Israel has routinely carried out airstrikes on its neighbour, mostly targeting Syrian government troops as well as allied Iran-backed forces and Hezbollah fighters.
But it is only the second time it has hit Latakia port, in the heartland of President Bashar al-Assad’s minority Alawite community.
“At around 3:21 am [0121 GMT], the Israeli enemy carried out an aerial aggression with several missiles from the direction of the Mediterranean ... targeting the container yard in Latakia port,” the Syrian state news agency, Sana, cited a military source as saying. The strike caused “significant material damage”, it added.
Asked about the strike, an Israeli army spokesperson said: “We don’t comment on reports in foreign media.”
Pictures released by Sana showed firefighters hosing stacks of blazing containers that lit up the night sky. The news agency said the containers were carrying “engine oil and spare parts for cars and other vehicles”.
But the British-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said the cargo was “arms and munitions” that had detonated in “powerful explosions that were felt across the city of Latakia and its suburbs”.
It said it was unclear whether the arms were from Iran or another supplier.
The Latakia governor, Ismail Hilal, said firefighters had brought the blaze under control by midday and were dousing the embers, Sana reported.
The Syrian government’s other major ally, Russia, operates a naval base in the port of Tartus, 53 miles (85km) to the south.
So far this year, Israel has targeted Syria nearly 30 times, killing 130 people including five civilians and 125 loyalist fighters, according to SOHR figures. On 7 December it carried out a strike targeting an Iranian arms shipment in Latakia, its first on the port since the start of the civil war.
While Israel rarely comments on individual strikes it carries out on its northern neighbour, it has acknowledged mounting hundreds since 2011. According to a report by the Israeli army, it hit about 50 targets in Syria in 2020.
In the deadliest operation since the strikes began, Israel killed 57 government troops and allied fighters in eastern Syria in January this year.
The Israeli military has defended the strikes as a necessary measure to prevent its arch-foe Iran from gaining a foothold on its doorstep.
Israel’s head of military intelligence, Maj Gen Aharon Haliva, has accused Iran of “continuing to promote subversion and terror” in the Middle East.
In a shadow war, Israel has targeted suspected Iranian military facilities in Syria and mounted a sabotage campaign against Iran’s nuclear programme.
Iran has been a key supporter of the Syrian government in the decade-old conflict. It finances, arms and commands a number of Syrian and foreign militia groups fighting alongside the regular armed forces, chief among them Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah.
The conflict in Syria has killed nearly 500,000 people since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of peaceful demonstrations.
In this Aug. 5, 2006, file photo, former Oakland Raiders coach John Madden gestures toward a bust of himself during his enshrinement into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. (photo: Mark Duncan/AP)
John Madden, the Hall of Fame coach-turned-broadcaster whose exuberant calls combined with simple explanations provided a weekly soundtrack to NFL games for three decades, died Tuesday morning, the NFL said. He was 85.
The league said he died unexpectedly and did not detail a cause.
Madden gained fame in a decadelong stint as the coach of the renegade Oakland Raiders, making it to seven AFC title games and winning the Super Bowl following the 1976 season. He compiled a 103-32-7 regular-season record, and his .759 winning percentage is the best among NFL coaches with more than 100 games.
"Few individuals meant as much to the growth and popularity of professional football as Coach Madden, whose impact on the game both on and off the field was immeasurable," the Raiders said in a statement, hours before team owner Mark Davis lit the Al Davis Torch in honor of Madden, the first person to ever light the torch on Oct. 16, 2011.
"Tonight I light the torch in honor of and tribute to John Madden and Al Davis, who declared that the fire that burns the brightest in the Raiders Organization is the will to win," Mark Davis said.
It was Madden's work after retiring from coaching at age 42 that made him truly a household name. He educated a football nation with his use of the telestrator on broadcasts; entertained millions with his interjections of "Boom!" and "Doink!" throughout games; was an omnipresent pitchman selling restaurants, hardware stores and beer; and became the face of Madden NFL Football, one of the most successful sports video games of all time.
"Today, we lost a hero. John Madden was synonymous with the sport of football for more than 50 years," EA Sports, the brand behind the Madden franchise, said in a statement. "His knowledge of the game was second only to his love for it, and his appreciation for everyone that stepped on the gridiron. A humble champion, a willing teacher, and forever a coach. Our hearts and sympathies go out to John's family, friends, and millions of fans. He will be greatly missed, always remembered, and never forgotten."
Madden was the preeminent television sports analyst for most of his three decades calling games, winning an unprecedented 16 Emmy Awards for outstanding sports analyst/personality and covering 11 Super Bowls for four networks from 1979 to 2009.
"People always ask, 'Are you a coach or a broadcaster or a video game guy?'" Madden said when was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2006. "I'm a coach, always been a coach."
It was a sentiment echoed by Hall of Fame president Jim Porter in his statement Tuesday night.
"He was first and foremost a coach," Porter said. "He was a coach on the field, a coach in the broadcast booth and a coach in life.
"The Hall of Fame will forever guard Coach Madden's legacy. The Hall of Fame flag will be flown at half-staff in his memory."
Madden started his broadcasting career at CBS after leaving coaching in great part because of his fear of flying. He and Pat Summerall became the network's top announcing duo. Madden then helped give Fox credibility as a major network when he moved there in 1994, and he went on to call prime-time games at ABC and NBC before retiring after the Pittsburgh Steelers' thrilling 27-23 win over the Arizona Cardinals in the 2009 Super Bowl.
"John Madden was an iconic figure, transitioning from a successful coach to one of the most impactful and distinctive broadcasters in history, across all genres. His love of football was only matched by the fans' admiration for him. He will forever be synonymous with the game," said James Pitaro, chairman of ESPN and sports content for The Walt Disney Company. Madden worked for ABC Sports from 2002 to 2005 as an analyst for Monday Night Football.
Burly and a little unkempt, Madden earned a place in America's heart with a likable, unpretentious style that was refreshing in a sports world of spiraling salaries and prima donna stars. He rode from game to game in his own bus because he was claustrophobic and had stopped flying. For a time, Madden gave out a "turducken" -- a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey -- to the outstanding player in the Thanksgiving game that he called.
"Nobody loved football more than Coach. He was football," NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement. "He was an incredible sounding board to me and so many others. There will never be another John Madden, and we will forever be indebted to him for all he did to make football and the NFL what it is today."
As Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said, "I am not aware of anyone who has made a more meaningful impact on the National Football League than John Madden, and I know of no one who loved the game more."
When Madden retired from the broadcast booth, leaving NBC's "Sunday Night Football," colleagues universally praised his passion for the sport, his preparation and his ability to explain an often-complicated game in down-to-earth terms.
Al Michaels, Madden's broadcast partner for seven years on ABC and NBC, said working with him "was like hitting the lottery."
"He was so much more than just football -- a keen observer of everything around him and a man who could carry on a smart conversation about hundreds and hundreds of topics," Michaels said. "The term 'Renaissance man' is tossed around a little too loosely these days, but John was as close as you can come."
For anyone who heard Madden exclaim "Boom!" while breaking down a play, his love of the game was obvious.
"For me, TV is really an extension of coaching," Madden, who also became a best-selling author, wrote in "Hey, Wait a Minute! (I Wrote a Book!)."
"My knowledge of football has come from coaching," he said. "And on TV, all I'm trying to do is pass on some of that knowledge to viewers."
Madden was raised in Daly City, California. He played on both the offensive line and defensive line for Cal Poly in 1957 and 1958 and earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from the school.
He was selected to the all-conference team and was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles, but a knee injury ended his hopes of a professional playing career. Instead, Madden got into coaching, first at California's Hancock Junior College then as defensive coordinator at San Diego State.
Al Davis brought him to the Raiders as a linebackers coach in 1967, and Oakland went to the Super Bowl in Madden's first year in the pros. He replaced John Rauch as head coach after the 1968 season at age 32, beginning a remarkable 10-year run.
With his demonstrative demeanor on the sideline and disheveled look, Madden was the ideal coach for the collection of castoffs and misfits that made up those Raiders teams.
"Sometimes guys were disciplinarians in things that didn't make any difference," Madden once said. "I was a disciplinarian in jumping offsides; I hated that. Being in bad position and missing tackles, those things. I wasn't, 'Your hair has to be combed.'"
The Raiders responded.
"I always thought his strong suit was his style of coaching," quarterback Ken Stabler once said. "John just had a great knack for letting us be what we wanted to be, on the field and off the field. ... How do you repay him for being that way? You win for him."
And boy, did they ever. Many years, the only problem was the playoffs.
Madden went 12-1-1 in his first season, losing the AFL title game 17-7 to the Kansas City Chiefs. That pattern repeated itself during his tenure; the Raiders won the division title in seven of his first eight seasons but went 1-6 in conference title games during that span.
Still, Madden's Raiders played in some of the sport's most memorable games of the 1970s, games that helped change rules in the NFL. There was the "Holy Roller" in 1978, when Stabler purposely fumbled forward before being sacked on the final play. The ball rolled and was batted to the end zone before Dave Casper recovered it for the winning touchdown against the San Diego Chargers.
The most famous of those games went against the Raiders in the 1972 playoffs at Pittsburgh. With the Raiders leading 7-6 and 22 seconds left, the Steelers had a fourth-and-10 from their 40. Terry Bradshaw's desperation pass deflected off either Oakland's Jack Tatum or Pittsburgh's Frenchy Fuqua to Franco Harris, who caught it at his shoe tops and ran in for a Steelers touchdown.
In those days, a pass that bounced off an offensive player directly to a teammate was illegal, and the debate continues to this day over which player it hit. The catch, of course, was dubbed the "Immaculate Reception."
Oakland finally broke through with a loaded team in 1976 that had Stabler at quarterback; Fred Biletnikoff and Cliff Branch at wide receiver; tight end Dave Casper; Hall of Fame offensive linemen Gene Upshaw and Art Shell; and a defense that included Willie Brown, Ted Hendricks, Tatum, John Matuszak, Otis Sistrunk and George Atkinson.
The Raiders went 13-1, losing only a blowout at the New England Patriots in Week 4. They paid the Patriots back with a 24-21 win in their first playoff game and got over the AFC title game hump with a 24-7 win over the hated Steelers, who were hampered by injuries.
Oakland won it all with a 32-14 Super Bowl romp against the Minnesota Vikings.
"Players loved playing for him," Shell said. "He made it fun for us in camp and fun for us in the regular season. All he asked is that we be on time and play like hell when it was time to play."
Madden battled an ulcer the following season, when the Raiders once again lost in the AFC title game. He retired from coaching at age 42 after a 9-7 season in 1978.
Madden was a longtime resident of Pleasanton, California, a Bay Area suburb.
A 90-minute documentary on his coaching and broadcasting career, "All Madden," debuted on Fox on Christmas Day. The film featured extensive interviews that Madden sat for this year. His wife, Virginia, and sons, Joseph and Michael, also were interviewed for the documentary.
John and Virginia Madden's 62nd wedding anniversary was two days before his death.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, announcing the new Taliban government of Afghanistan at a press conference in Kabul in September. (photo: Victor J. Blue/NYT)
More Afghan people may die from sanctions than from 20 years of war.
When the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan in August, ceding to the Taliban, the country’s economy began a severe contraction — what the Financial Times calls “one of the worst economic meltdowns in history.” The sprawling crisis has left nearly 23 million people in extreme hunger, and at least 1 million children under the age of 5 are now facing the immediate threat of starvation, according to the United Nations.
As commerce ground to a halt, food and fuel prices skyrocketed, in large part due to economic sanctions placed on the Taliban by the U.S. As many as 300,000 Afghans have fled to neighboring Pakistan, and many more refugees may soon leave the country. There are even reports that some Afghans have resorted to selling their children in order to feed their families.
The Biden administration defends the sanctions by pointing to a series of exemptions designed to allow humanitarian aid. The Treasury Department has touted its role as a leading humanitarian donor to the people of Afghanistan and its work to ensure that funds flow “through legitimate and transparent channels” via official sanction exemption licenses.
But those humanitarian exemptions, overseen by the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, are nowhere near enough, according to experts who spoke to The Intercept. The OFAC licenses, including new licenses released December 22, have not curbed the global chilling effect of the sanctions and are ineffective in preventing a spiraling disaster that could kill more Afghan people than nearly 20 years of U.S.-backed war and occupation.
Businesses and individuals that violate U.S. sanctions on the Taliban risk steep fines and criminal penalties. The broad sanctions imposed by the U.S. lack specificity and raise the possibility that routine commercial activities in Afghanistan could fall under sanctions policy.
“None of these OFAC licenses, none of them, addresses the issue of international banks in their dealing with Afghan banks, hesitancy to deal with Afghan taxes, banking transactions for commercial imports,” said Shah Mehrabi, a member of Afghanistan’s central bank board. “The sanctions have created a lot of fear in the minds of those who do not want to go ahead and engage in taking this particular risk.”
OFAC has issued licenses for medicine, remittances, education salaries, and other forms of humanitarian assistance. Additional licenses released last week allow exemptions for education funds and expand the scope of U.S. funds to aid organizations in Afghanistan. Mehrabi, who teaches economics at Montgomery College in Maryland, noted that much of Afghanistan’s domestic economy faces impending failure, a problem that cannot be solved by “merely allowing humanitarian aid to flow.”
The Treasury Department, added Mehrabi, has focused on piecemeal humanitarian exemptions and has not addressed the central issue of how Afghanistan can import and export goods, collect taxes, and pay salaries. “We’re talking about an economy that’s going to collapse if Treasury does not clarify what could be done to the liquidity issue,” said Mehrabi.
When the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in August, U.S. sanctions imposed since 2002 that criminalize any form of support for the Taliban as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group suddenly meant that penalties could apply to leaders of a sovereign state. As U.S. forces withdrew, American law firms quickly alerted international institutions across the globe that any business transaction in Afghanistan could risk violating sanctions. Any routine tax payment or duty paid to an Afghan bureaucrat could be construed as aiding and abetting the Taliban.
“Even if the Secretary of the Treasury does not specifically designate the entire Government of Afghanistan, it will be very difficult for contractors and grantees to know whether standard transactions with the Government of Afghanistan, such as paying taxes, permit fees, utility fees, import duties, or other routine payments will result in funds passing to the Taliban or its leaders in control of various branches of the Afghan government,” noted a client alert from the law firm Nichols Liu.
Contractors and businesses, the firm noted, can expect banks to “de-risk from Afghanistan,” meaning that fund transfers to or from Afghanistan “will be intercepted by intermediary banks and blocked until the contractor or grantee can demonstrate that the specific transfer to and the use of funds in Afghanistan will comply with U.S. sanctions.”
“The banking industry is reading [the sanctions] as, ‘The entire government is now the Taliban,’” a former U.S. Treasury Department official told the Crisis Group.
The far-reaching sanctions, along with a Biden administration decision to freeze nearly $10 billion of Afghanistan’s central bank national reserves, sent the economy into free fall. Payments to doctors and police stopped. Hospitals ran out of medicine. Residents could not withdraw bank deposits. Even a printing press in Poland contracted to print afghanis, the local currency, could not deliver its shipment.
Rajeev Agarwal, the chief financial officer of KEC International, an Indian firm tapped to build electric utility transmission lines in Afghanistan, told investors in October that its five projects in the country suddenly ceased payments in August. The “U.S. has choked all the funding lines to Afghanistan,” reported Agarwal, according to a transcript of the call.
“Sanctions are intended to have a chilling effect, in that sanctions will always go beyond the face of the text,” said Adam Weinstein, a research fellow with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “No bank or business wants to walk right up to the line when it comes to compliance with U.S. sanctions policy, given that these are risk-averse institutions.”
Last week, 40 members of the House of Representatives wrote to President Joe Biden urging him to ease sanctions and release Afghanistan central bank funds controlled by the U.S. government. “No increase in food and medical aid can compensate for the macroeconomic harm of soaring prices of basic commodities, a banking collapse, a balance-of-payments crisis, a freeze on civil servants’ salaries, and other severe consequences that are rippling throughout Afghan society, harming the most vulnerable,” noted the letter, led by Reps. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.; Sara Jacobs, D-Calif.; and Jesús G. “Chuy” García, D-Ill.
The letter also called on the administration to provide clarity to financial institutions, including what’s known as “comfort letters” from the Treasury Department to reassure banks that they may engage in commerce without risk of violating sanctions.
The Intercept asked the Treasury Department for comment about the concerns raised by the congressional letter, including whether the agency has provided comfort letters to reassure banks that they would not violate U.S. sanctions while facilitating transactions in Afghanistan. Morgan Finkelstein, a spokesperson for the Treasury Department, did not respond directly to the question about the comfort letters and pointed to the existence of the OFAC exemption licenses to respond to questions about concerns that U.S. sanctions are damaging the Afghanistan economy.
“In contrast to sanctions programs administered and enforced by OFAC with regard to North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Syria, and the Crimea region of Ukraine, there are no comprehensive sanctions on Afghanistan,” reads an FAQ on the Treasury site that Finkelstein sent. “Therefore, there are no OFAC-administered sanctions that prohibit the export or reexport of goods or services to Afghanistan, moving or sending money into and out of Afghanistan, or activities in Afghanistan, provided that such transactions or activities do not involve sanctioned individuals, entities, or property in which sanctioned individuals and entities have an interest.”
Kevin Schumacher, deputy executive director of the nonprofit Women for Afghan Women, noted that banks and other multinational firms are reluctant to pay large legal fees to review hundreds of pages of Treasury Department guidelines with each client just to engage in commerce with Afghanistan. The problem, he said, is that the U.S. government “doesn’t really understand who they are going after.”
“That fear of the unknown,” said Shumacher, “is what prompts this massive blanket sanction regime that has resulted in the tragedy that we are seeing.”
“The OFAC licenses never work, never will,” added Shumacher. “The moment that the banks see any sanction or any sort of restriction, they just walk away from doing any transactions. That’s what’s happening now with Afghanistan. The banks are not willing to take our business, and no amount of OFAC licenses is going to satisfy their needs.”
In the past, multinational corporations and banks have over-complied with U.S. sanctions, ignoring OFAC licenses. Schumacher pointed out the history with Iran: The U.S., while imposing stringent sanctions on Iran, released OFAC licenses for the delivery of medicine and other medical products. But banks, in fear of violating the U.S. sanctions, ignored OFAC licenses and routinely blocked the trade of medicine and other health care products to Iran.
The Washington Post reported in 2012 that despite OFAC licenses allowing the exports of medicine to Iran, exports of medicine quickly dwindled. “The exemption of medicine from sanctions is only in theory,” one Iranian importer told the Post. “International banks do not accept Iran’s money for fear of facing U.S. punishment.”
There is little appetite among politicians in Washington, D.C., to radically reverse course. The Biden administration, facing low public approval ratings following the exit from Afghanistan and a tough forecast for the 2022 midterm elections, may be continuing sanctions for political reasons. Releasing the sanctions could be viewed as recognition of the Taliban as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan, a symbolism that could cement negative attitudes about the administration and its Afghanistan policy. Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, and Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, have released demands that the administration go even further in sanctioning the Taliban, including any foreign governments that provide support to Afghanistan.
Earlier this month, the Intercept attempted to speak to a number of senators, Democrats and Republicans, about U.S. sanctions fueling widespread famine in Afghanistan. Many refused to talk about the issue.
“I think we need to get aid to the Afghan people, but also I think it’s the responsibility of the Taliban government to comply with what needs to be done,” said Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., without elaborating. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said any questions about Afghanistan should be posed to Democrats and the Biden administration, not Republicans.
The Intercept also reached out to the offices of Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., two vocal opponents of sanctions overreach in the past, to comment on Biden administration sanctions on Afghanistan. Neither responded.
Sanctions are often held up as a politically and morally viable alternative to war. Not many Democrats want to revisit the issue of Afghanistan, and few politicians on either side of the aisle would recommend direct military engagement with the Taliban. But the ongoing famine crisis and the destruction of what remains of the Afghan economy could result in the deaths of millions of people.
The glib attitude among many in Washington toward the destruction wrought by sanctions was captured in a memorable exchange with the Clinton administration about its heavy-handed policies against Iraq.
In 1996, CBS “60 Minutes” anchor Lesley Stahl asked then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright about the half-million children in Iraq who died from malnutrition because of U.S. sanctions against Saddam Hussein’s government. “Is the price worth it?” asked Stahl. “I think this is a very hard choice,” replied Albright. “But the price — we think the price is worth it.”
“We’ve deluded ourselves into thinking that sanctions are precise,” said the Quincy Institute’s Weinstein. “They’re not. They’re not a precision weapon. They’re a blunt force, economic weapon that essentially kills civilians.”
The lush rainforest stretches for miles across the Terra do Meio Ecological Station, in Brazil’s northern state of Pará. Near the edge of the vast protected reserve, a makeshift road slices through the thick emerald canopy. Flanking it are swaths of freshly cleared land, spanning hundreds of hectares. Further south, forest is being replaced by neat patches of pasture.
The Terra do Meio reserve is a federally protected area spanning 3.37 million hectares (8.3 million acres) across the Amazon state of Pará. It is home to hundreds of species, including some of which, such as the margay (Leopardus wiedii) – a small, nocturnal wild cat native to Central and South America – are threatened with extinction. The reserve is also part of the Xingu Basin, an ecologically rich mosaic made up of 28 conservation areas and 18 Indigenous territories.
But, despite its protected status, the Terra do Meio reserve has come under growing pressure. Between Jan. 1 and Dec. 14, some 25,943 deforestation alerts were confirmed in primary forest within it, according to satellite data from the University of Maryland visualized on Global Forest Watch. And data from Brazil’s space research agency, INPE, showed that some 2,963 hectares of forest were cleared within the reserve this year, nearly double the area deforested in 2020.
“This is a region that should be completely preserved,” said Rômulo Batista, campaigner with Greenpeace Brazil. “There should be zero deforestation there. But instead, we are seeing rampant forest destruction, which is really worrying.”
As deforestation advances within the Terra do Meio reserve, the plots being razed are becoming larger too, according to Edenise Garcia, science director at The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit monitoring deforestation in the region. The biggest patch of land deforested in the reserve totaled some 463 hectares this year, up from about 280 hectares the year before, Garcia said.
“The deforestation is becoming more and more noticeable – in other words, they’re becoming bolder,” she told Mongabay in a phone interview. “It’s a warning that these people are going in to clear larger and larger plots of land.”
Swaths of the reserve have also been burned this year, and satellite data from NASA show fire alerts coinciding with deforestation alerts. Most of these occurred in August and September, the dry season when most illegal burning takes place across the Amazon.
Environmentalists say the destruction within Terra do Meio is being driven by illegal loggers, cattle ranchers and land speculators. And they warn that much of the deforestation is spilling over from the neighboring Área de Proteção Ambiental (APA) Triunfo do Xingu, a sustainable use reserve that has become the most deforested slice of the Brazilian Amazon in recent years.
“It should be serving as a buffer shielding the areas that are under stricter protection,” said Larissa Amorim, a researcher at Imazon, an NGO monitoring the forest clearing. “But unfortunately, deforestation has already practically taken over the Triunfo do Xingu. And, now, it’s advancing beyond it.”
Advocates warn that the invasions are threatening Terra do Meio’s biodiversity, while also opening up the broader ecological mosaic to deforestation and destruction. Other protected areas that lie beyond the reserve, like the Kayapo and Kararaô Indigenous Territories, are already coming under attack.
“These are regions that have the greatest ecological importance and that must be protected to ensure the integrity of the rainforest as a whole, ” Batista said. “And this is what we are ultimately losing with this surge in deforestation.”
Destruction next door
The Terra do Meio reserve is nestled deep in Brazil’s cattle heartland, straddling the municipalities of Altamira and São Félix do Xingu. In this corner of the Amazon, the economy is fueled by ranching: São Félix do Xingu is home to some 2.3 million head of cattle, Brazil’s largest herd.
Much of this cattle ranching is clustered within the APA Triunfo do Xingu, where authorities allow land-holders to deforest and develop a fifth of their land if they promise to preserve the rest. When it was created over a decade ago, Triunfo do Xingu was intended as a shield for vulnerable areas beyond its boundaries, like the Apyterewa Indigenous Territory and the Terra do Meio Ecological Station.
“The Triunfo do Xingu APA was created to allow some kind of human activity in a sustainable way,” Amorim said. “But we see that it is not sustainable at all. And the illegal activities that are taking place there end up spilling beyond it.”
The destruction next door has had a devastating impact on the Terra do Meio reserve, environmentalists say. As forest is converted to pasture, reserves beyond the Triunfo do Xingu – including the Terra do Meio – are becoming more easily accessible to outsiders, allowing them to invade deeper into the forest.
This seems to be echoed by the pattern of deforestation seen within the Terra do Meio reserve. At least half a dozen roads have been carved into the territory so far, according to satellite images. And much of the fresh clearing this year has been clustered around one clandestine road halting at the APA’s doorstep, according to Garcia.
“What we may be seeing is an opening for selective timber extraction, which is the first step towards deforestation,” she said. “And as the forest becomes more degraded, people come in and cut the rest to put cattle there.”
As the buffer zone retreats, the ecological corridor that the Terra do Meio reserve is part of is left more vulnerable too. With the dense forest in this reserve thinning, invaders in search of new areas to exploit can more easily reach other protected areas like the Xipaya, Baú, and Cachoeira Seca do Iriri Indigenous Reserves.
“The illegal loggers and land speculators are taking advantage of this opportunity to make inroads, to make this particular area more accessible,” Amorim said.
Environmental advocates also worry that the deforestation slicing through Terra do Meio on the west could soon join a wave of forest clearing advancing from the southeast through the Iriri State Forest. That frontier of deforestation is being driven by clearing along the BR-163 highway, according to environmentalists.
Scientists warn that if the habitat corridor continues to fragment, some species may struggle to survive in the remaining slivers of rainforest, dealing a blow to biodiversity. The splintering of the forest may also make it more difficult for Indigenous and traditional people who rely on hunting in large swaths of the Amazon for their survival.
The fragmentation of the rainforest in this region will also likely lead to a shift in local climate patterns, resulting in less rainfall and dwindling water sources, said Thaise Rodrigues, a researcher with the Rede Xingu+, a network of environmental and Indigenous groups working in the Xingu Basin.
“We are already seeing that the forest is getting drier,” Rodrigues told Mongabay in a phone interview. “This will influence the water quality in the region. And this is the same water that Indigenous people and traditional communities in the forest use to bathe, to drink, to fish.”
Promise of amnesty
Environmental advocates blame the surge in invasions ravaging the Terra do Meio reserve on a series of friendly signals from the federal government, which they say has encouraged invaders to encroach on protected areas without fear of punishment.
“When you have a fragile system of command and control, you are not curbing deforestation, you’re not curbing illicit activities,” Garcia said. “On the contrary – these opportunistic groups end up realizing that it is easy to deforest within conservation areas.”
President Jair Bolsonaro has repeatedly promised to open up protected areas and Indigenous reserves to mining, ranching and agriculture. Under his watch, cumulative deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon hit its highest level since 2006 this year. Protected areas such as Terra do Meio have come under particularly heavy pressure from invasions. Forest destruction within reserves has jumped by nearly one-third.
A long-time proponent of developing the Amazon, Bolsonaro has slashed budgets for environmental policing, fired top agents at federal enforcement agencies, and moved to obstruct the system of environmental fines by allowing offenders to dispute them. Fines punishing such crimes have plunged to their lowest level in 24 years.
“On the one hand, you have a discourse that favors and encourages land-grabbing,” said Rodrigues. “And on the other hand, you have the weakening of the institutions responsible for controlling this. So, it’s only natural that deforestation in protected areas has increased really dramatically.”
Under pressure from the international community, Bolsonaro recently softened his tone and vowed to eliminate illegal deforestation in less than a decade. The federal government has pointed to a 19% drop in deforestation for the month of November as proof that it is moving in the right direction.
This month, Brazil’s environmental ministry also told Mongabay that a larger budget in 2021 allowed it to double its spending on enforcement, including the purchase of equipment, vehicles and navigation systems. It said it is “strengthening the fight against illegal deforestation” and it is in the process of hiring 739 new inspection officers at Ibama and ICMBio, Brazil’s two federal enforcement agencies.
Still, environmentalists say the government’s efforts have fallen short in curbing forest destruction, claiming that enforcement efforts have focused on ineffective large-scale crackdowns rather than consistent policing.
“Enforcement must be more rigorous in these areas,” Amorim said. “Policing is taking place in the Amazon, we cannot say it doesn’t occur. But it hasn’t been intense and persistent enough to tackle the scale of the deforestation problem.”
Between August 2019 and July 2021, the federal government spent some R$550 million ($97.7 million) on massive military operations aimed at combating deforestation in the Amazon. During its high-profile Operation Green Brazil 2, which ended this year, agents carried out 105,000 inspections, seizing 506,000 cubic meters of illegal timber and handing out 5,480 fines totaling some R$3.3 billion ($583.6 million), according to government figures.
The head of the military recently touted these operations as a major success, crediting them with reducing deforestation in the Amazon dramatically. Yet, according to official INPE data, forest destruction actually rose 22% over the course of the operations.
Meanwhile, environmentalists say a pair of legislative proposals currently moving through Brazil’s Senate have also undermined efforts to stop incursions into the forest. If approved, these two land reform bills could make it easier to legalize illegitimate land claims.
This has bolstered hopes among land speculators and cattle ranchers that they could soon receive land titles for land they have deforested and occupied illegally, Batista said, fueling invasions of reserves like Terra do Meio.
“This legislation could mean those who invaded areas illegally end up winning amnesty for it,” he said. “When they invade, this is what they are betting on.”
