Rebecca Leber at Mother Jones writes—Nearly Every Democratic Presidential Candidate Is Now Backing a Debate on Climate Change:
Nineteen of the 25 Democratic presidential candidates have gone on record in favor of holding a debate devoted to climate change policy. In the past three days, four more candidates—including Kamala Harris—have told Mother Jones that they support a climate debate, raising the stakes for the Democratic National Committee, which has so far resisted allowing such an event to take place. In addition to the California senator, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, former Rep. John Delaney (Md.), and former Rep. Joe Sestak (Pa.) are now calling for a climate debate, joining big-name candidates including Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren.
Earlier this year, the DNC announced plans to hold a dozen primary debates in 2019 and 2020 and to prohibit candidates from appearing in any debates that had not been approved by the national party. In April, climate activists launched a grassroots campaign demanding that one of the debates be dedicated to climate; they noted that presidential debate moderators had a long history of giving short shrift to the issue. It’s not just because activists want to vet candidate platforms and solutions, but because even getting candidates to talk more about an issue can raise the issue’s profile.
Peter Nicholas at The Atlantic writes—Trump’s Fourth of July Takeover Was Inevitable:
If you fear that President Donald Trump has been underexposed lately—if you missed the back-to-back news conferences he gave in Asia over the weekend, or the 45 tweets he’s sent out since his return, or the footage of him speaking with reporters from the Oval Office on Monday afternoon, or the Fox News interview he gave later that night—know that, on the Fourth of July, he will come out of seclusion.
Trump is making himself the centerpiece of what traditionally has been a civic celebration on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., delivering an evening address in front of the Lincoln Memorial. He has wrangled the Pentagon into displaying heavy military hardware for the occasion. Invited guests will watch him from a reserved VIP section stretching from the stage toward the Reflecting Pool, with the White House, the Trump reelection campaign, and the Republican National Committee controlling the tickets.
The event is the latest expression of the 45th president’s creeping ubiquity. A Washington tradition that, for decades, has centered on fireworks and remembrances of the nation’s beginnings is now a camera-ready spectacle that’s decidedly about Trump. Past presidents mostly left the Fourth of July celebration alone. Trump is harnessing it for his own purposes, politicizing patriotic feeling.
Sidney Blumenthal at The Guardian writes—How Lincoln's disdain for demagogues pricks Trump's Fourth of July pomposity: “”
Donald Trump is orchestrating his Fourth of July extravaganza to be his most spectacular act of self-flattery, his first appearance on the National Mall since his inauguration but before a certifiably larger crowd and ending with a burst of fireworks.
He has always given careful thought to his staging. His introduction to The Apprentice, driven to the thumping beat of For the Love of Money, showed the master of the universe striding from a limousine at Trump Tower, riding in a Trump helicopter and climbing the ramp of a Trump airplane. Now, however, he will display himself on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. With the illuminated statue of the 16th president as his backdrop, Trump will highlight the magnitude of his own greatness by standing in reflected glory.
Or maybe Trump thinks it’s the other way around and he, not Lincoln, will be the radiant one.
Since becoming president, Trump’s estimation of Lincoln has declined even as his estimation of himself has inflated. In 2017, Trump was willing to concede that Lincoln was the greatest president, saying: “With the exception of the late, great Abraham Lincoln, I can be more presidential than any president that’s ever held this office.”
Gail Collins at The New York Times writes—Wishing for a Tank-Free Fourth. It could be worse. There’s always James Buchanan:
Besides being a military hero, George Washington set the country on its course to democracy by quashing talk about making him king after the Revolution and refusing to allow his fellow citizens to call him “Your Excellency.”
We will stop here for a second to recall that Donald Trump’s friendship with Kim Jong-un got a big boost when Kim wrote Trump a letter referring to him as “Your …” Well, you can guess.
Although Trump has taken only a few steps into North Korea, he must have seen those massive military parades in Kim’s honor and maybe gotten a little jealous. Back in 2017, when he made his first official visit to France, Trump was wowed when he got to join President Emmanuel Macron reviewing the Bastille Day parade. There was something about all those guys with guns marching past you.
David Ignatius at The Washington Post writes—Trump can try to refashion the Fourth of July, but he’ll fail:
President Trump is trying, in his gaudy, self-glorying way, to refashion Independence Day in his own image, but he’ll fail. The weight and momentum of this nation are strong enough after 243 years to survive his vain mischief.
Americans, not least Trump supporters, know that this country is about freedom. Other countries may have military parades or political rallies to celebrate the leader on their national holidays. But most of them aren’t democracies — and they certainly aren’t this American republic.
For a reminder of what this holiday is about, a good starting point is the commemorative service held last Sunday at Washington National Cathedral. The readings, gathered by the Rev. Canon Rosemarie Logan Duncan, provided a succinct summary of the American story.
The abiding lesson is that America’s power has always been rooted in its values. We’ve strayed, on issues of race, gender and other tests of our tolerance and decency. But we’ve always come back to the basic framework set by Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The Editorial Board of The New York Times concludes—Two Cheers for a Lackluster Economy:
Raise a glass to the longest economic expansion in modern American history.
A full decade has passed since the end of the last recession, in June 2009, and the economy continues to grow. As of Monday, the current expansion surpassed the previous record for uninterrupted growth, set between 1991 and 2001.
But this time around, no one is accusing Americans of irrational exuberance: These good times don’t feel particularly good. Economic growth over the past decade has been slow and fragile, and most of the benefits have been claimed by a small minority of the population.
The sense of disappointment is more than a feeling. Through the first quarter of 2019, the nation’s gross domestic product had increased by 25 percent during the current expansion. Between 1991 and 2001, economic output expanded by 42 percent. Between 1982 and 1990, output increased 38 percent. And between 1961 and 1969, output grew by 52 percent.
The distribution of the gains is even less satisfying.
Michael H. Fuchs at The Guardian writes—Trump in North Korea: history as farce first time round:
Donald Trump had to publicly beg for a meeting with Kim Jong-un and to become the first sitting US president to go to North Korea, in order to get a promise of re-starting working-level talks.
This is what substitutes for progress in Trump’s reality TV diplomacy. If progress comes of this, then the ridiculous pageantry will be forgotten. But Trump’s fawning over Kim has already squandered leverage and humiliated America.
Over the last year, we’ve all watched Trump’s made-for-TV bromance with the world’s most brutal dictator. Trump thinks Kim is his “friend” and a “great leader”. He even claims he “fell in love” with a man who runs concentration camps and has people killed for speaking their minds.
It would all be comical if it came from a Hollywood studio. But this is real life, with real lives at stake. Trump has embarrassed himself and what the US stands for by defending Kim’s human rights abuses. He even defended Kim over the murder of a US citizen, Otto Warmbier. Last year Trump wished the American people would treat him more like the North Korean people are forced, at gunpoint, to treat Kim
Adam Eichen at The New Republic writes—Restoring Democracy is Not Open to Debate:
Hours before Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate, the Supreme Court issued two rulings that could greatly affect our democracy. One decision failed to stop the drive toward increasingly partisan gerrymanders, and the other temporarily blocked the Trump Administration’s attempt to leverage the decennial United States Census for partisan advantage.
Despite this timely news peg, the debate moderators failed to ask a single question about the state of American democracy. This oversight is particularly egregious given that voter suppression, the deluge of big money in politics, and the rigging of district lines has undeniably limited the Democratic Party’s success over the past decade.
Fortunately, a few candidates chose to integrate democracy reform into their talking points, even without the prompt. And if Democrats want to convince voters they are serious about enacting meaningful, progressive legislation, everyone, across the party, should learn from what was said during the debates. Above all else, these candidates articulated a realistic theory of change, one that made their policy proposals more believable and spoke to the sense of powerlessness most Americans feel today.
Nancy LeTourneau at The Washington Monthly writes—A Simple Way to Increase Voter Turnout Among Young People:
In the ten years after I graduated from college, I moved ten times. Sometimes that meant going across town, and several times it meant moving across country to states as distant from each other as Texas, Colorado, California, and Minnesota.
Compared to other young people at that age, my experience might be a bit extreme. But the facts are that most young people are quite mobile, which, as Charlotte Hill and Jacob Grumbach explain, makes them less likely to register and vote.
One of many reasons for the lack of registration is that young adults change addresses more than twice as often as people over 30, and with each relocation comes the need to register anew. Political scientists have described it as “the key stumbling block in the trip to the polls.” There’s also the risk of being “too” registered: Simultaneous registrations in two places has led to countless young people being purged from voting rolls without notice, according to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
The simple solution proposed by Hill and Grumbach is for states to allow residents to register on the same day that they vote. Their research indicates that doing so would increase turnout among 18-24 year olds by as much as 10 percent.
Jon WolfStahl at The New Republic writes—Is Anyone Surprised Iran Has Returned to Enrichment?
The United States continues to have one strategic overriding objective with Iran: to prevent it from acquiring the capability to build nuclear weapons. If that one objective is achieved, then the United States, Israel, and its friends in the region are more than capable of deterring Iranian aggression in the region, and defeating it in any conventional battle.
President Donald Trump’s decision a year ago to violate America’s obligation and withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) undermined that objective. And to this day, the administration’s policy on Iran continues to make very little sense. Monday morning, news broke that Iran has now increased its stockpile of low-enriched uranium to more than the 300 kilograms permitted under the agreement—further evidence that the White House’s continued saber-rattling, from deploying 1,500 troops to the region to leaking military plans, is having the opposite effect intended: It is giving Iran more, not less, of an incentive to violate its nuclear obligations.
The good news is that Iran is being a lot more careful and nuanced than Trump is. While any violation of the JCPOA, by the U.S., Iran, or any other party, should be condemned, Tehran’s move does not mean it is any closer to being able to build a nuclear weapon. The JCPOA was negotiated to ensure that Iran was at least one year away from being able to produce enough nuclear material for one nuclear bomb, and that any move to do so would be rapidly if not instantaneously detected by international inspectors. Iran, even by surpassing the 300-kilogram mark, still remains a year away from being able to build a single bomb and lacks the quantity of material needed to get from here to there. Inspectors remain at work, with access to every part of Iran’s nuclear complex.
John Nichols at The Nation writes—Sorry ‘Washington Post’—Bernie Sanders Is Right About Economic Inequality:
Bernie Sanders has, for a very long time, been complaining about economic inequality in America. He has made it a theme of his speeches, his books, his congressional service and his presidential campaigning. During last week’s second Democratic presidential debate, no one was surprised when the senator from Vermont declared, “We have a new vision for America. And at a time when we have three people in this country owning more wealth than the bottom half of America, while 500,000 people are sleeping out on the streets today, we think it is time for change, real change.”
This is where Sanders, a democratic socialist who has sometimes been accused of focusing too intensely on economic issues, is coming from. Voters can agree or disagree with the vision. But it is hard to disagree with the basic premise of the argument, which is based on facts and figures.
Unless, apparently, you are a fact-checker for The Washington Post.
Then, you can dismiss the argument that Sanders is making as “not especially meaningful.” That’s what the Post’s Glenn Kessler and his team did in an otherwise useful fact-checking of the second night of Democratic debating.
Sasha Abramson at Truthout writes—The US War on Immigrants Is a Public Health Crisis:
This week, Americans will celebrate the 4th of July with barbecues and fireworks while drinking beers and listening to speeches extolling liberty and freedom. Others, however, will be more active in working to make sure the idea of freedom extends to more than just U.S. citizens. On Tuesday, protests and demonstrations are being held across the country to resist Trump’s increasingly violent nativism, with folks heading to their local Congressperson’s office or picketing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in their neighborhood.
The U.S.’s Independence Day holiday is taking place this year against a backdrop of venomous anti-immigrant actions being carried out by uniformed officers of the American state. Trump, who will be presiding over a particularly grotesque militarized “Salute to America” in Washington, D.C., that day, has declared that he will order his enforcement agents to begin mass deportation sweeps shortly after the holiday.
Since the demagogue-in-chief has promised the same thing previously, only to then announce a postponement, his words should be taken with a pinch of salt. But regardless of their reality, they are deliberately intended to ratchet up the fear levels and stress experienced by millions in the United States.
Thea N. Riofrancos at In These Times writes—The Democratic Debates Showcased the Most Dangerous Form of Climate Denial:
Of the 20, only Bernie Sanders seemed to grasp—and relish—the need to confront the fossil fuel industry, and to divert the “trillion and a half dollars” we spend “on weapons of destruction” to transform our energy systems. It’s less the dollar amount that sets him apart, and more the way he links international cooperation and U.S. demilitarization—and doesn’t shy away from naming climate change as our “common enemy.” Yet he didn’t mention the Green New Deal, even though it is an element of his campaign platform.
Weeks earlier, Tom Perez, chair of the Democratic National Committee, rejected calls for a debate centered on the climate emergency. His reasons, which framed the climate crisis as one narrow “issue” among many others and concern-trolled about breaking the previously-devised rules governing debate procedure, were cringeworthy. He also threatened any candidate who participates in a unsanctioned debate with exclusion from the official ones.
By doing so, he offered an on-the-nose illustration of how the political establishment is aiding and abetting the crimes of fossil capital. Perhaps Democratic Party elites believe that ignoring climate change is somehow necessary to winning over some slice of voters against Trump next November. But they're wrong on the politics: People know that action is necessary. According to recent polls commissioned by Data for Progress, 64% of registered Democratic voters want a climate debate and 71% support a Green New Deal.