Richard Wolffe at The Guardian writes—The evil genius of Cambridge Analytica was to exploit those we trust most:
Now there are any numbers of factors that could have swung 40,000 votes in three states – Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – which created the catastrophic fluke of the Trump presidency in the electoral college.
But there are no factors as large and persistent as a weaponized Facebook – the trusted and entirely unregulated delivery vehicle for an astonishing amount of highly targeted disinformation. [...]
All roads lead to Facebook and the small company that plundered its vast user data: Cambridge Analytica. Together the social network looks less like a group of friends and more like the Silk Road black market of arms and drugs dealers. [...]
As the now-suspended CEO, Alexander Nix, put it so well: “It sounds a dreadful thing to say, but these are things that don’t necessarily need to be true as long as they’re believed.”
In his snooty British accent, Nix is only saying – and converting into highly effective digital marketing – what Trump has long believed: lies don’t matter as long as they’re believed.
Michael McBride is director of the advocacy campaign Live Free, part of the PICO National Network, a faith-based organizing group. He is also pastor of The Way Christian Center in Berkeley, Calif. At The Washington Post, he writes—The young voices we aren’t hearing in the gun-control debate:
The courage and the strength of the Parkland students are inspiring. Amid their personal pain, they have articulated a sense of rage, conviction and moral clarity over the lack of action on gun violence. Oprah Winfrey has likened these brave students to the Freedom Riders of the 1960s. Others have commented that such youth activism might change the political landscape and make progress possible at last.
While the heroism of these students is without question, we shouldn’t forget that the Parkland activists are part of a broader choir of youths — from Columbine to Ferguson to Baltimore — who have harmonized their voices to plead for an end to gun violence in all its forms.
Unfortunately, many of us have difficulty hearing each voice equally. The ears of our nation have still not been trained to hear the prophetic voices of poor youths of color.
Matt Ford at The New Republic writes—The Trump Administration’s Death Penalty Daydream:
In a speech Monday in Manchester, New Hampshire, President Donald Trump enthusiastically backed capital punishment as a tool to fight the opioid epidemic. “If we don’t get tough on the drug dealers, we are wasting our time,” he said. “And that toughness includes the death penalty.” Now, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is trying to put Trump’s call into practice.
In one-page memo dated Tuesday, Sessions instructed U.S. attorneys nationwide to be more aggressive when prosecuting any drug-related crimes. In addition to the usual tools available to federal prosecutors, he urged them to consider “the pursuit of capital punishment in appropriate cases.” To that end, he noted a few specific federal offenses where Congress already authorized the death penalty as a punishment. [...]
Trump’s love affair with capital punishment runs deep, and Sessions’s tenure at the Justice Department is essentially a one-man counterrevolution against the bipartisan consensus on criminal-justice reform. Both men share a similar impulse when it comes to crime and punishment: Harsher policies against defendants indicate toughness on crime, while less punitive measures indicate weakness. In that Paleolithic worldview, no policy could epitomize strength more than one that takes the defendant’s life.
Helaine Olen at The Nation writes—5 Years Later, ‘Lean In’ Seems Like a Relic from Another Time Sheryl Sandberg preached fitting into the power structure. Instead, women are challenging it:
This month marks the fifth anniversary of the publication of Sheryl Sandberg’s you-go-girl office feminist manifesto Lean In. Did you notice? I’m guessing the answer is no. The occasion is passing with little in the way of public fanfare. [...]
Surely Sandberg’s achievement deserves more notice. Yes, some feminists complained that the book sold lower-income women short, but businesswomen and other upper-middle-class professionals—its intended audience—lapped it up. Lean In debuted to a blizzard of publicity and went on to sell millions of copies worldwide.
Five years later, we can safely observe American women are refusing to quit the game. They are leaning in. They are marching with the Resistance. They are speaking out publicly about everything, from hellacious #MeToo moments to unequal pay. They are standing up for their rights in ways we’ve not seen in decades.
Take teachers, 75 percent of whom are female, at least here in the United States. Earlier this month, West Virginia teachers walked off the job and refused to go back until the state legislature and governor signed off on a 5 percent raise. Now their peers in Oklahoma, who are among the lowest-paid teachers in the country, are contemplating a similar job action.
And, that, perhaps is the rub. Professional women are taking collective—rather than just individual—action. This is not how leaning in was supposed to work.
Sarah Lazare at In These Times writes—15 Years After the Invasion of Iraq, Here Are the Dems Who Just Voted for Endless War in Yemen:
The 10 Democrats helped Republicans table S.J.Res.54, which was introduced in late February by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah). The bill invokes the 1973 War Powers Resolution to force the Senate to hold a vote on withdrawing the U.S. military from the unauthorized war.
Some peace activists argue that the legislation does not go far enough, as it stipulates an exception for forces “engaged in operations directed at al Qaeda or associated forces,” which still leaves room for U.S. military operations in the country. [...]
The following Democrats voted in favor of tabling the measure: Chris Coons (DE); Catherine Cortez Masto (NV); Joe Donnelly (IN); Heidi Heitkamp (ND); Doug Jones (AL); Joe Manchin (WV); Bob Menendez (NJ); Bill Nelson (FL); Jack Reed (RI); Sheldon Whitehouse (RI).
“The 45 Senators who voted in favor of S.J.Res.54 today made a strong statement that U.S. support to the Saudis is not unconditional,” says Shireen Al-Adeimi, who was born in Yemen and now lives in Cambridge, where she has been organizing independently to build support for the Sanders-Lee bill. “However, this is by no means a celebration, as the 55 who opposed the bill have ensured that millions more Yemenis will suffer needlessly.”
E.J, Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—Yes, we should be outraged about Facebook:
The Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal takes our paranoia to a whole new level. But paranoia, implying psychologically unhealthy delusions, is the wrong word. There is nothing disordered about the outrage created by the invasion of an estimated 50 million Facebook accounts for the ultimate benefit of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
The upshot is that private companies that traffic in the enormous amounts of personal data we voluntarily give them are not living up to their obligations both to each of us as individuals and to the common good.
[Sen. Mark] Warner, the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee investigating Russian interference in our election, has been properly cautious about connecting the Cambridge Analytica story to Russia. But as Justin Hendrix, the executive director of NYC Media Lab , argued on Slate, there is evidence giving plausibility to the idea “that Cambridge Analytica helped spur the Russian disinformation operation during the 2016 election.” And the close ties between Cambridge Analytica and the Trump campaign, beginning with Stephen K. Bannon’s role as vice president and secretary of the company, mean that inquiries into such links are inevitable.
The Post’s Philip Bump warned on Wednesday of the dangers of seeking a “Grand Theory of Russia Collusion.” Fair enough. Let’s learn more. But we should expect the social media giants to cooperate in helping us do this.
Jonathan Spyer at The New Republic writes—What a Crown Prince Wants Funds and favor for Saudi Arabia 2.0—and also to smash Iran:
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud is here to rebrand. If all goes well, his visit to the U.S. this week will wow Americans with Saudi Arabia’s new progressivism, increase U.S. investment in the Saudi economy, and align U.S. and Saudi strategies in the Middle East.
That final task is the hardest. Saudi and U.S. officials largely agree on the most urgent issues facing the region. They disagree on what is to be done—and, more specifically, who is going to do it. [...]
The crown prince needs American money for a number of flagship projects intended to spearhead the diversification of the Saudi economy. These include Neom, a planned mega city intended to rival Dubai as a business center—with a sleek, East-meets-West name generated from the prefix “neo” and the Arabic word for “future,” “mustaqbal”—and Qiddiya, an entertainment city imagined in similar dimensions to Las Vegas, to be built close to Riyadh. Whether Mohammed bin Salman will convince investors and the U.S. public of the viability of his social and economic projects, set down as they are in the deeply conservative Saudi realities, remains to be seen.
With regard to the regional political issue, the problem is deeper. Both President Trump and the crown prince are clear opponents of Iran’s efforts at empire building in the region. Both are also set in their opposition to Sunni jihadism. Trump made his first visit abroad as president to Saudi Arabia in May 2017, appearing to cast Saudi Arabia as the main U.S. ally in the pursuit of common goals.
But there are serious questions as to whether each can or wishes to play the role that the other would like to allot him in the pursuit of these goals.
Jill Filopovic at The Guardian writes—Trump has no right to buy the silence of White House staffers:
If there is one defining aspect of Donald Trump’s presidency, it is this: he does not believe himself or members of his staff to be public servants, serving the American people. He believes himself to be a hybrid between a CEO and a king, and sees White House employees as his court and his servants.
His demand that staffers sign non-disclosure agreements is the latest example, and one of the most glaring ones. These non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) extend even beyond the end of his presidency, so White House employees could find themselves on the other end of a Trump lawsuit should they speak about the details of his tenure – and reportedly on the hook for thousands or even millions.
It’s hard to overstate what an egregious violation this is, of both the constitution and democratic norms. These agreements can be toxic in a normal workplace, as the #MeToo movement has shown. By barring women from talking about the conditions of their workplaces, NDAs routinely allow employers to sweep harassment and even assault under the rug, putting more women at risk.
Benjamin Haas at The Washington Monthly writes—Trump’s Military Parade Is a Trap for Democrats:
When Democrats consider criticizing Trump’s military parade, they will similarly be forced into yet another catch-22. They could speak out against the parade, but then face the risk of being labeled as unpatriotic and disrespectful of the military. Or they could capitulate and support Trump’s parade, allowing him to cash in a political assist for Republican candidates as the midterm elections approach. It would be a win-win for Trump, and the military would be a tool to try to mitigate what looks to be an impending ballot box disaster for Republicans. It’s all too easy to envision Trump commenting on the parade, whether at campaign rallies for Republican candidates or on his unhinged Twitter feed. He may even make the repugnant and spurious claim that Democrats opposing his parade are specifically insulting the Medal of Honor recipients who apparently will be surrounding the president near the Capitol.
It might not work, but Democrats should try to thread the needle. They could, for example, criticize the parade but offer better ways to support the military, such as spending the money the parade would cost—estimated to be $10-30 million, but potentially as much as $50 million—on causes supporting veterans. And perhaps they might argue that Trump and Republican leaders in Congress could better honor the military by encouraging a frank public discussion about U.S. involvement in armed conflicts. And to bolster their credibility on the issue, Democrats might ensure that veterans such as Senator Tammy Duckworth and Representative Seth Moulton take the lead in advocating against the parade. But let’s remember that Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel rather than sit on the bench during the national anthem was a compromise with veteran and former NFL player Nate Boyer. How well did that go for Kaepernick? Trump still took advantage of the situation. At a campaign rally last year in Alabama, he called any NFL player who kneels a “son of a bitch” who “disrespects our flag,” and he will likely exploit the parade as well.
Lornet Turnbull at Yes! Magazine writes—High School Students Demanding Gun Reform Join Rich History of Teen Resistance:
Since the Feb. 14 mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, the national spotlight has been on the courageous student survivors who have been too outraged to be cast only as victims of tragedy. Rather, they have been activated, calling out lawmakers and demanding gun reforms.
This is not new. From civil rights to Standing Rock, high school students, many not yet old enough to vote, have raised their voices and become formidable allies to effect change. [...
As activists, youth have not always been visible.
There are many examples throughout the civil rights era of brave actions by high school students. While most people know the name Rosa Parks, few might know about Claudette Colvin, who in 1955 was just 15 when she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in segregated Montgomery, Alabama—nine months before Park was arrested for the same offense. [...]
More recently, one of the largest Native resistance efforts in modern U.S. history, the uprising at Standing Rock had its beginnings in actions by an indigenous youth group called the One Mind Youth Movement. Students set up a “prayer camp” on the edge of the Standing Rock reservation and organized a 2,000-mile relay-style run to Washington, D.C., to bring those concerns to federal officials and draw national attention to the issue.
Major Danny Sjursen is a U.S. Army officer and former history instructor at West Point who served tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. At Truthdig, he writes—Illegal Wars: The New American Way:
It’s all so obvious to a detached observer. Nonetheless, it remains unspoken. The United States of America is waging several wars with dubious legal sanction in domestic or international law.
The U.S. military stands astride the Greater Mideast region on behalf of an increasingly rogue-like regime in Washington, D.C. Worse still, this isn’t a Donald Trump problem, per se. No, three successive administrations—Democratic and Republican—have widened the scope of a global “war” on a tactic (terror), on the basis of two at best vague, and at worst extralegal, congressional authorizations for the use of force (AUMF). Indeed, the U.S. is veritably addicted to waging undeclared, unwinnable wars with unconvincing legal sanction.
Despite 17 years of fighting, dying and killing, there have been no specific declarations of war. Instead, one president after another, and hundreds of derelict-in-their-duty congress members, have simply decided on their ownthat a vague resolution, rubber-stamped while the rubble in New York was still smoking, authorizes each and every conflict in which America’s soldiers—and many more civilians—continue to die. This AUMF authorized the president to kill or capture those who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks, but, well, few of America’s current adversaries had anything to do with that.
Stephanie Savell at Other Words writes—15 Years After the Iraq Invasion, What Are the Costs?
First, the economic costs: According to estimates by the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the war on terror has cost Americans a staggering $5.6 trillion since 2001, when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.
$5.6 trillion. This figure includes not just the Pentagon’s war fund, but also future obligations such as social services for an ever-growing number of post-9/11 veterans.
It’s hard for most of us to even begin to grasp such an enormous number.
It means Americans spend $32 million per hour, according to a counter by the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Put another way: Since 2001, every American taxpayer has spent almost $24,000 on the wars — equal to the average down payment on a house, a new Honda Accord, or a year at a public university.
Tom Philpott at Mother Jones writes—Trump Wants to Ban Health Warnings on His Favorite Food:
US childhood obesity remains on the upswing, especially among black and Latino kids. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is quietly trying to block efforts to put health warnings on junk-food labels—and not just in the United States, but also in Canada and Mexico.
That’s according to a New York Times report about the ongoing renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which President Donald Trump triggered last year. The paper got hold of a document from the Office of the United States Trade Representative, which leads the NAFTA talks from the US side, containing a proposal that would “limit the ability of any Nafta member to require consumer warnings on the front of sugary drinks and fatty packaged foods,” theTimes reports. The article adds:
Officials in Mexico and Canada—along with governments in Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina and Colombia—are discussing options like the use of colors, shapes and other easy-to-understand symbols that warn consumers of health risks. They were inspired in large part by Chile’s introduction of stringent regulations in 2016 that include requirements for black stop-sign warnings on the front of some packages.
The provision would explicitly ban “any warning symbol, shape or color that ‘inappropriately denotes that a hazard exists from consumption of the food or nonalcoholic beverages,'” the Times states, quoting the leaked USTR document. Canada and Mexico are the two largest importers of US processed food. Both countries have seen dramatic spikes in obesity rates in recent decades, both for children (see here and here) and adults (here and here).
Eric Levitz at New York magazine writes—Donald Trump Has Never Been More Dangerous Than He Is Now:
From one angle, it’s been a comforting few weeks for those of us who fear and loathe the Trump presidency. Since early February, public support for the president and his party has declined significantly — erasing the polling gains that both had made at the start of this year.Meanwhile, Democrats have continued to over-perform in special elections, scoring their most impressive victory yet last week, when Conor Lamb bested a better-funded Republican opponent in a Pennsylvania district that had gone for Trump by 20 points. Signs suggest that the GOP’s House majority won’t survive the winter — and that our reality star–in-chief is unlikely to be brought back for a second season.
For progressives, the case for optimism about Trump’s tenure has always gone something like: If he doesn’t get us all killed, the demagogue might just rejuvenate the Democratic base, poison the GOP’s brand, trigger big “blue” wave elections in 2018 and 2020, and thus, ironically, leave U.S. politics in a better place than it had been in circa 2016.
Over the past month, each piece of this scenario has begun to seem a tad more likely — except, that is, for the “doesn’t get us all killed” bit. [...]
Assuming we avoid total catastrophe, America is poised to make a speedy recovery from its ill-advised experiment with kakistocracy. But there are (at least) four reasons why that assumption has never been less safe:
1) The “adults” in the West Wing have never had less influence over the president. [...]
2) Trump’s path to a war with North Korea has never been easier to envision. [...]
3) Trump has never had a stronger incentive to undermine rule of law in the United States. [...]
4) It’s never been clearer that Congressional Republicans are unwilling to act as a check on Trump’s worst impulses.