Author Archives: Nicole Sanders

Finally, Joe Manchin has agreed to do the right thing and concede that we have to take on climate change no matter what.  If only it did not take concessions to elicit cooperation.  If you think about it, the need for concessions makes no sense.  Maybe concessions needed to be done; they are a necessary evil.  But it says something about the way people like Manchin think about the costs of climate change.  Whatever economic gain Manchin sees himself as giving to his state pales in comparison to the mounting costs of climate change.  To stay elected, he courts big coal, bringing a political profit for himself and financial profit for a few rich men. All because they are bent on holding onto what must become a dying industry.  Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, California, once again, burns. Hopefully, this bill will signal an end to selfishness on the part of this one man–and the misguided Americans who think we cannot afford to tackle climate change.    

Right now the mood of the country has soured; people are hurting.  I am one of them.  But while we are all painfully aware that a recession and stagflation might very well be imminent, we ought also to be aware that state and local governments are less able to help because they are saddled with the costs of fighting wildfires, massive floods, and historic droughts.  Climate change is driving up food prices.  Additionally, there are many costs of climate change that don’t necessarily make it into the news, but still add up.  Here in Iowa we haven’t had recent massive floods or droughts, but weather has been unpredictable enough that many small farmers have seen their yields go down.  Land that was once prime farmland is now not worth the risk to plant, even in a state with the richest soil in the world.

Still we have nay-sayers who go on about how much it will cost to transition to clean energy.  Add up all the costs of fires, floods, crop losses, and heat waves.  Consider the costs of having to fix the electric grid in Texas or building a seawall to stop tidal flooding in Miami.   To suggest that somehow it is in our financial interests to wait to act is not now passing a bill to our children, it is ignoring a crisis in front of us here today.  Only a fool would believe that they personally would not be affected, that somehow they are immune.  And only a fool will believe that the costs of mitigation are not going to skyrocket in the very near future.

We need to remember why we have stagflation and recession.  It is due in large part to our dependence on fossil fuels and the disruptions of climate change.  Had we acted faster the price of oil would not be high to begin with and wouldn’t matter besides.  This recession was caused by inaction; only action will be its cure.

We are all glad to hear that Garland is finally going forward investigating Trump’s role in January 6th.  But it remains to be seen if he is getting close enough quick enough.  Will action from the Justice Department prove to be too little too late?  Granted, Garland is in a very bad position.  He has to balance the fact that Trump has successfully cast himself as persecuted with the increasingly clear reality that he committed serious crimes in an attempt to stay in power.  Garland’s biggest mistake is not having started out focused on Trump from the beginning.  His next biggest mistake is not responding to pressure from the January 6th committee. 

The January 6th committee has laid out a lot of evidence, and it is hard for me to understand why Garland would not use that evidence and let the public know he is grateful for that evidence.  There is a lot to be said for being methodical, but there is also moving too slowly when an issue requires immediate attention.  Typically, you would want someone in Garland’s position to take things steadily.  But these are not typical circumstances.  Unprecedented circumstances call for unprecedented action.  Garland must move now.  This is perhaps the most serious test of American democracy since the Civil War.  Garland must meet the moment.  If he doesn’t it is incumbent on the rest of us to pressure him to do so.

If Garland is afraid of moving forward too quickly he needs to be doing things that will make more of his investigation of a matter of public record, and do a better job of speaking to the American people, especially as he moves ever closer to the president himself.  One interview is not enough.  Critically, Trump’s supporters need to hear more forcefully that their leader is not immune from prosecution, not above the law.  

 Garland is on the right track in terms of where he is looking.  Trump’s attempts to disrupt the vote count by sending alternate slates of electors, electors that he knew were “fake,” in the name of overturning a fair election and subverting the will of the people, are perhaps even more important than the insurrection itself.  It is important to establish that the Bie Lie was a Lie, that Trump knew that he had lost in those critical battleground states.  The only real way to defeat Trumpism is to demonstrate to the American public that Donald Trump was acting from claims of voter fraud even he didn’t believe, simply trying to hold onto power, this and nothing else.

Emails have come to light that reveal just how much the Trump apparatus knew they were breaking the law, that their so-called “alternate” electors were in reality “fake” and were created for the sole purpose of disrupting the peaceful transfer of power.  Garland can now go forward and tell the American people something concrete before Trump once again becomes a candidate. This is critical. 

We are all feeling the pain.  Inflation is making prices for everything rise, and everyone is affected, but the biggest problem is for those who were barely surviving in the first place.  Perhaps most troubling, low-income people are finding it harder and harder to find healthy, affordable food.  There are a lot of causes for inflation, and all of those causes need to be addressed.  Like many, I wish Biden would do more to make it clear that he is feeling it with us, and that he is getting to the bottom of what is causing it.

But in the big picture, inflationary cycles happen.  The root problem is too many people living on the edge in the first place, and an economy entirely dependent on a volatile commodity, the price of which America has little power to control.  

It is very clear from polling, and just from talking to people, that economic problems are so bad that the American people’s attention is distracted from the January 6th hearings.  This is very dangerous to American democracy.  It is also, in many cases, understandable.  America is now feeling the political effects of its growing inequality.  With more and more people at the bottom focused on just getting by, short-term economic issues take precedence over problems that would otherwise be acknowledged as an existential crises.  

Meanwhile, Washington isn’t paying too much attention to how we got here in the first place. A failure to invest in renewable energy and public transportation has come back to bite us now.  This is the moment to make the case to move away from fossil fuels and toward a greener future, and learn from the mistakes that brought us to this point.  Inflation is going to happen, and it shouldn’t be that everytime it does we have this many low-income people struggling this hard just to meet their basic transportation needs.  Addressing underlying problems–the cost of housing, food insecurity, a minimum wage that isn’t a living wage, will make the economy stronger for the next crisis.  If America continues on the path it is now taking, there will eventually be a crisis that will become impossible to manage effectively.

To a degree this inflationary cycle is a product of mistakes and poor planning on the part of the Fed, but in other ways it is a perfect storm of factors beyond America’s control.  Such things will always happen eventually.  If you want to keep a healthy democracy, you have to recognize this reality and make sure your economy is resilient enough to weather the storm.  The fundamental weaknesses of the American economy: food insecurity, lack of access to childcare, working poverty, lack of access to preventative health care, lack of public transportation and dependence on fossil fuels; have now made American democracy weak as well.  People focused on struggling to get by are ignoring the warning signs of a growing anti-democratic movement.  A fundamentally unjust economy creates a fundamentally unsound democracy.

Thanks to the House select committee, we now know to what extent the January 6th insurrection was planned and coordinated.  I went into the hearings knowing that Trump had deliberately incited the crowd to attack the capitol that day, but even at that I was surprised to learn just how deep and blatant the former president’s ties to extremist organizations like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys really are.  It rattled me, especially when there is a real possibility that the American people will re-elect this man, even after what he has done, and tried to do, to American democracy.  This is the burning question: Will the findings of the select committee be enough to end Trump’s political career and, even more importantly, counteract the Big Lie?  Will they be able to reach people like Stephen Ayres, who are ultimately the source of Trump’s power?

For those of us who accept, beyond a doubt, that the attack on the capitol was not some kind of spontaneous outpouring, but a deliberately and well-planned attempt to overturn the election and instate a leader who did not win a free and fair election, the question becomes–where next for America?  Increasingly, it looks like Trump may be charged with a crime, a necessary step.  But, let us not get convinced that that will be the end of the Big Lie.

Even without Trump, Trumpism is still out there.  All across the nation, Trump supporters are gearing up to disrupt the midterm elections.  Their actions will be just as deliberate and just as destructive, if not more, than January 6th was.  And, many state legislatures and local governments are woefully underprepared. 

What makes the Big Lie one of the most dangerous conspiracies in American history is not so much the leveling of bogus (or as Trump’s own former attorney general put it “nonsense”) claims of voter fraud; it is the organizing idea that his followers adhere to that they cannot legitimately lose.  More than anything else, what makes Trump and his followers dangerous is their unwillingness to concede under any circumstances.  The Big Lie has nothing whatsoever to do with voter fraud.  Voter fraud is a smokescreen for a movement that has declared itself above the will of the people.

If we learn anything from the January 6th hearings, let it be that Trump is a movement, not a spontaneous mob caught up in the moment.  His followers have carefully crafted a political apparatus through calculated political and legal maneuvering.  The January 6th select committee will be a springboard, but it must only be the beginning.  Those who care about American democracy will have to out-maneuver, out-mobilize and out-organize and do it today.  It will take every ounce of passion and every ounce of fight we have even as we will have to stay firmly attached to principles of nonviolence, lest we give our opponents ammunition.  Voting for Democrats is simply not enough.  We need a movement to change the soul of America.

Everyone should admire Cassidy Hutchison’s bravery in coming forward to the January 6th committee, but there is something we need to do for her to reward her brave testimony–find guilty of witness tampering the people responsible for pressuring her into not revealing what she knew, no matter who they are.   Particularly, we need to know more about a phone call that so rattled the January 6th committee that they felt forced to rush her public testimony; and what that had to do with Stefan Passantino, Miss Hutchinson original legal counsel, who has deep ties to Trump world.  Miss Hutchison is brave, but it is wrong, and illegal, for her to face the kind of pressure she has.

If we can’t prove that Trump did something illegal on January 6th, there is a clear cut case of witness tampering.  Like many other crimes of this nature across history, it may be hard to prove Trump committed the crime, but the cover up can be proved.  This is just fine with me.  In fact, I think it might be better.  The most disturbing thing about Trump is not even his insurrection, but the consistent pattern throughout his candidacy and presidency of using pressure to keep people under his control.  His ability to silence people is even more dangerous than his ties to extremist organizations.  A stop has to be put to it.   

Attorney General Garland absolutely must step in.  The only thing that can counteract Trump’s pressure campaign is for the man who started the Big Lie to be branded the criminal he is.  Without this a constitutional crisis is all but certain.  Charging Trump with a crime is the best and only way to stop him, and the millions of Americans who support him, from  relentlessly marching out of reality.  It is the only way to prevent another January 6th.  As the midterms approach, the Big Lie is everywhere.  Trump’s supporters are preparing to disrupt the vote count in races all over the country–repeating over and over the mantra that the only way they can possibly lose is fraud.  And they are prepared to use the lies of voter fraud to intimidate everyone from common citizens volunteering as poll workers to the judges on highest courts in the land.

Bringing down the Trump pressure campaign is essential to American democracy.  Let us take this moment to shut down Trump’s illegal pressure campaign once and for all, hoping that if the American people make it clear they will not tolerate bullying at the top, it will send a message to his followers.   If we act decisively in protecting Ms. Hutchison, we may find that Trump’s pressure campaign is a house of cards. If we push in the right places, it may all come crashing down.  Maybe, if we are smart and determined Ms. Hutchison will be the first but not the last or only to come forward with what they really know about Trump, and we can bring down this man once and for all.

Let’s get something straight, Joe Biden is a decent guy.  He wants what is best for his nation.  But let’s face it, his administration is proving to be a disaster.  No one can doubt how much he wants to make Washington work, but in the name of uniting people “to get things done” he has failed to try to do anything.  

With an evenly divided Senate he cannot get legislation through because of the filibuster.  But this just shows what a fundamentally flawed approach trying to reach across the aisle has proved to be.  He can’t get 10 Republicans to support him on anything.

It isn’t Biden’s fault that legislation is failing, but it is his fault that not enough has been done to communicate to the American people why it is failing.  Winning in November will mean not so much fixing all the problems that America now faces, as showing that progressives care; that we can be trusted to act in whatever way we can.  If Biden had more drive he would argue more effectively that the Republicans are responsible for gridlock, that they refused his overtures; as well as how hard the Fed is working to make sure that it handles inflation as perfectly as possible.  He could move toward renewable fuels even if it doesn’t provide immediate relief at the pump, explaining to the American people that there is hope for a future where they will not have to live at the whim of the oil market.  What Biden isn’t is impassioned.

 We shouldn’t be surprised.  He is, after all, making good on campaign promises.  He ran on being steady and trustworthy.  He contrasted himself to a chaotic president.

But this is a moment to rally the troops, not reach across the alise.  It is not that I am against bipartisanship.  I want to see conservatives and progressives come together.  But this is not about conservative and  progressive.  This is about those who wish to preserve American democracy and those who do not.  An extremeist minority has undone 20 years of ensuring abortion reamains safe and passed laws making parents giving their transgender children the medical care they need child abuse.

What is needed is condemnation of what the Republican party has become.  It is a moment to hope that truly passionate leadership will mobilize people–of any political stripe, to stand up and declare that the Republican party is un-American, and even more importantly, un-democratic. We need anger, a lot of it.  Reaching out to fence sitters by not rocking the boat may be tempting, but it is a mistake.

Biden’s age is part of the problem.  Being the elder statesman may have been an advantage when he was running for office, but once in office it became a liability.  The party needs new blood.  If Biden, by his nature, is not an impassioned leader, someone must step up and fill the void.  Now is the time for Biden to agree not to run again.

As Covid grinds on, we must ask ourselves a question: after one million plus dead have we learned enough?  It is clear that despite the death toll we have definitely not learned some things well enough.  We have not learned that we must do something to address preventative health care for all Americans, including addressing disparities in access to care for racial  and ethnic minorities.  The future doesn’t look good.  It is very possible that Covid is less like other forms of the flu and more like the common cold, meaning that people can become infected multiple times and still not develop immunity.  

More focus needs to be brought to just how much public health failed and why.  We need permanent changes and to give public health the funding it needs.  Things like more money for nursing homes and RCF’s, an overhaul of how we fund rural hospitals, increases in staffing and funding for public health facilities, and programs to ensure that people at risk of diabetes are being screened before the development of disease.  The best thing we can do to stop the high death toll for the next viral epidemic is to address epidemics like food deserts, obesity, and lack of access to primary care, now.  We have it in our power to save lives by addressing these epidemics before we are faced with the next virus.

This is especially important because these long-term epidemics were some of the main drivers of inequitable outcomes for minorities.  When people are in bad health generally or have multiple health problems to start with, they are unable to withstand disease.  Lost in the debate over vaccines and new therapies is the number of Americans who lost their lives due to underlying medical problems.  The consequences of our failure to address these issues is the most important lesson in how to advert such high death tolls in the future.  Vaccines are wonderful tools, but they take time to develop and infrastructure to distribute.  It is imperative to prevent.

We know another viral epidemic is coming.  Humans are increasingly encroaching on wildlands.  As roads open up wilderness and the bush meat and wild animal trades expand, there is more opportunity for animal viruses to make the evolutionary leap into humans, and then evolve human to human transmission.  More coronaviruses are out there.

It is time to overhaul this nation’s public health structure–ensuring next time they are funded the way they need to be and that they are funded equitably.  In this way we can be truly prepared.  So what is stopping action?  The Biden administration hasn’t really stepped up to the plate.  This is perhaps forgivable considering that he can’t even get basic funding through congress, much less propose a sweeping overhaul of our public health system.  Still, this work needs to be done, and in this election year, it ought to be a major campaign issue.  We cannot afford to lose another million the next time around.

Another senseless shooting has left yet more African-Americans dead at the hands of a white supremist with a history of unaddressed mental illness and an easily obtained illegal weapon.  Let us remind ourselves that this is not simply random.  We can stop these shootings.  We are choosing not to, in no small part, because the victims are Black.

We know the things we need to do.  It is not complicated.  It doesn’t help that the shooter was able to pay $60 for a kit that could turn a legal weapon into a military one.  There is no reason that we cannot, as Governor Hochul is promising to do, regulate online hate speech, which is not now, and never has been, and should never be, protected.  We can improve our mental health care system.  The vast majority of people with severe mental illness will never do the kinds of things Gendron did. But, getting all people with mental illness the care they need is the only way to ensure that we will find the Gendron’s before they act out violently.  What an incentive to finally do justice by our psychiatrically disabled.

Then, there is the hard part.  Something must be done about right-wing commentary legitimizing the heinous racism that motivated this man.  Sanitized versions of some of the most virulent forms of racist thought, ones connected with violence, and Gendron’s justifications, have been showing up on major news outlets.  This propaganda in sheep’s clothing masquerades as journalism.  In reality, it capitalizes on inciting Americans to hate one another, seeking to make it impossible to overcome division in an increasingly diverse nation.

What is most disturbing is just how many Americans are unable or unwilling to see through this thinly veiled racism.  Increasing numbers have turned to nativist philosophies that focus their animus on immigrants.  These philosophies are not less racist, or less dangerous.  They are  

forms of racism that have been made socially acceptable; and, when we allow pepole to make one form of animus acceptable, we lend credence to all forms of animus, including the kind that motivate people to murder.  Turning their hatred toward one group, versus another, does not mean these commentators do not have blood on their hands.  

The Anti-Defamation League had it right when it called for the ouster of Tucker Carlson.  This needs to be a national movement and needs to be a national movement now.  There is no reason American citizens should, or should have to, sit back and watch people who claim to be legitimate journalists parrot anti-Black and anti-Semitic propaganda.  The American people do not and should not have to stand for this.  The answers may test the first amendment, and they will definitely call for a revisit of the nation’s hate speech laws.  But that is a job for every generation, to find new solutions as new technologies and new threats to democracy emerge.  American democracy depends on doing what must be done to stop another preventable tragedy from occurring.

For the moment, there is a united front against Russia and for Ukraine, but worrying cracks in the alliance are beginning to form. Hungry is refusing to go along with an oil embargo.  France is wondering if the US is going too far in seeking to weaken Russia as well as protect Ukraine’s sovereignty.  For now, no one is suggesting that Ukraine is not going to get what it needs.  Both the US and Germany have put together large military aid packages.  And a sophisticated and extremely sincere public relations campaign on the part of Zelensky is motivating the world to act.

Right now, there is a newly united Europe and NATO.  However, the differences between allies demonstrate a fundamental flaw in economic sanctions.  Even if the West does manage to stick together, Putin will wait. The economic effects of sanctions on the West will be perceived by Putin as an Achilles heel; and Putin may have a point.  If, over time, it becomes increasingly difficult for the whole world to stay on message, sanctions will become less and less of a deterrent.  Even if the West can continue to stand behind Ukraine at any cost, Putin isn’t going to get the message.  He will wait and see, hoping that over time economic sanctions hurt the West more than they hurt him.   Meanwhile, Ukraine is burning, and the West is living in fear of a potential nuclear attack.

The world community is telling itself that the status quo is acceptable because sanctions will eventually work.   But “Eventually,” is too far into the future.  If we take that attitude eventually Putin will win.  He will, if not know, then at least believe he can wait us out.  “Eventually”, what we are doing now is going to stop working.    

Even more importantly, Putin is winning even as he is making few gains in Ukraine–he is being allowed to decimate the country.  Putin is gaining power by fear, which is what every dictator wants most.  This is evidenced by the desire, some might say need, of Scandinavian countries to join NATO.  Putin may be losing the battle in Ukraine for now, but he is winning the broader war in that he is forcing the entire world to live in fear of his military might.  He controls the situation, and he controls the conversation, and he will continue to do so until the world community works together to not only get Russia out of Ukraine but also to establish that he is not going to be able to bully anybody else.  I have said for a long time now that Zelensky is right. Ukraine needs a no-fly-zone.  Dancing around Russia fearing a broader conflict is not a sustainable policy.  Meeting Russia head on right now has its dangers, but there is a greater danger–that the world community will grind into a never-ending conflict with an adversary that cannot be deterred.  Eventually, we will have to face Putin, let us face him on our own terms.

As the supreme court seems poised to overturn 50 years of precedent, the era of the court as a trusted institution is over.  Justice Sotomoyor said it well when she spoke of “…the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts…”  It is ironic, and very disturbing, to see the stark contrasts on the court today.  On the one hand, the first Black woman justice will soon sit at court.  On the other hand, a white man, Justice Alito, is set to not only overturn one precedent, but radically alter the way in which all precedents are respected in the future.  There is so much on the line, not only abortion, but so many advances that this ultra-conservative court appears willing to throw away.

Always, in the past, if one got the Supreme Court to set a precedent, you knew that it would be good for generations to come.  Now there is the possibility of the court fluctuating over the course of years depending on who the justices were nominated by.  This is a truly scary proposition for polarization in America, that the court can change back and forth with the political winds in a way it has never done before.

It is Alito’s logic, not his ruling, that is so dangerous.  There might be a logical case for further limiting abortion, one that doesn’t jepordize the entire process of jurisprudence of America.  But his justifications for abandoning precedent mean the court is no longer an instrument of the law, it belongs to five justices who do not represent the will of the American people. It begs the question: has tyranny of the minority made its way into the supreme court?

People forget just how far out of step with broader American society the majority of the anti-abortion movement and five conservative justices, are.  Polls show that Americans support Roe.  Most Americans support the idea that the government doesn’t have an absolute right to interfere with a woman’s reproductive decisions and force her to bring a pregnancy to term.  It is, after all, her body, and we do, after all, live in a society based on freedom of choice.  There are a lot of people out there who think abortion is wrong but won’t enforce their morality on someone else.  Very few Americans really believe that terminating a pregnancy from rape or incest early in the life of the fetus is tantamout to infanticide.  Only a very extreme few are willing to see a return to the criminalization of women desperate enough to try to self-abort.

Yet the supreme court is poised to say that all of this is acceptable.  We are living in a world where all this and more could happen because an anti-democratic minority has managed to co-opt the highest court in the land.  Women’s bodies are now ruled by those who represent a minority willing to upend precedent and roll back the clock.  We must fight with all we have.