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By Ari Natter on 11/25/2020

(Bloomberg) --Progressive environmentalists are mounting a long-shot bid to get President-elect Joe Biden to go beyond naming a climate czar and declare an environmental national emergency, borrowing a tactic employed by President Donald Trump to fund part of his border wall.

Invoking a climate emergency could give Biden the authority to circumvent Congress and fund clean energy projects, shut down crude oil exports, suspend offshore drilling and curtail the movement of fossil fuels on pipelines, trains, and ships, according to a research note by consulting firm ClearView Energy Partners.

The presidents powers to address climate change through an emergency are very, very large, said Kassie Siegel, an attorney with the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity, which is lobbying Bidens team to act. This is No. 1 on the list of things the Biden administration should do.

In a statement, Bidens transition team didnt explicitly address the question of a climate emergency, saying only that he plans to follow through on his policy platform to fight the climate crisis while creating millions of jobs. Bidens climate platform includes no mention of declaring a climate emergency.

The national emergency question could be an early potential source of tension between climate groups and Biden. It signals the tough fights ahead for the new president, as he walks a line between satisfying activists who backed his campaign and not promoting measures that would draw opposition from more moderate Democrats.

Many environmentalists were pleased to see Biden this week name former Secretary of State John Kerry as special presidential envoy for climate, fulfilling the campaign promise to elevate the issue of global warming to the highest levels of the White House.

In addressing the climate crisis, President-elect Joe Biden is determined to seize the future now and leave a healing planet to future generations, Kerry said Tuesday after being introduced as part of Bidens national security team.

Yet progressives want his administration to go further. They see the emergency declaration as a way to achieve his ambitious climate agenda, even if legislation is blocked by a Senate potentially controlled by Republicans. But such a move may fall victim to the political realities left by the election.

Declaring a climate emergency will radicalize climate protection, alienating the very moderate Senators needed to pass infrastructure and other bills with carbon-reducing provisions, said Paul Bledsoe, a former climate official in the Clinton White House, now with the Progressive Policy Institute. Why would Biden borrow from Trumps polarizing playbook, when Bidens trying to actually unite the country to act on climate?

While Biden has vowed to decarbonize the electricity sector by 2035 as part of a goal to reach zero net emissions by 2050, many elements of his plan would require Congress to act. And other policy shifts he promised, such as halting fracking on federal land, would have to go through a cumbersome, slow-moving regulatory process that complicated some of Trumps own ambitions.

That may not be good enough for progressive environmentalists who say they are counting on Biden to follow through on campaign rhetoric that appealed to climate-minded voters, such as calling global warming an existential threat to humanity.

Greenpeace, along with the Center for Biological Diversity and groups like Friends of the Earth, were among 500 organizations that called for the next president to declare a national climate emergency last December. Two candidates who sought the Democratic presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders and Tom Steyer, vowed on the campaign trail to declare climate change a national emergency.

Some are skeptical that Biden will declare a climate emergency given the election results and deepening crises with coronavirus and the economy -- at least not until the end of his presidency. Possible actions Biden could take under an emergency declaration -- such as suspending offshore drilling or trying to shutdown pipelines -- would almost certainly be held up in lengthy court battles brought by opponents. While the Trump administration was similarly challenged over its diversion of funds for the border wall, it ultimately prevailed at the Supreme Court.

It would be a pretty egregious sign of weakness right out of the gate; an acknowledgment that legislative and regulatory regular order were destined to fail, said Mike McKenna, who previously served in Trumps White House as deputy assistant to the president. That strikes me as something that might happen in year three or year four, as part of an effort to goose the re-elect, or the election, of whoever is running.

Trump declared a national emergency in February 2019, a move that allowed him to divert some $3.5 billion to start construction on the wall along the southern border after Congress refused to appropriate the funding. The move drew criticism from members of his own party, such as Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who said he was overstepping into the legislative prerogative.

Supporters of the move note that presidents have used emergency declarations in the past, which are designed to give the executive branch special, temporary powers to deal with a crisis, and dozens of active national emergencies remain.

The border wall declaration completely re-conceptualizes what constitutes an emergency -- and that genie never goes back in the bottle, said Benjamin Salisbury, a senior policy analyst at Height LLC.

Original post:
Progressives want Biden to sidestep Congress with green 'national emergency' - WorldOil

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Caution! Navel gazing ahead.

So Joe Biden has decided on Tony Blinken as his secretary of state. What should we think of this?

On the one hand, I think we all have a pretty low bar these days. Blinken is a fairly ordinary human being. Hes experienced and knowledgable. He doesnt have any desire to destroy the State Department. Foreign leaders will get along with him just fine. Based on this, hooray! Good choice.

On the other hand, Blinken is fairly hawkish, having supported both the Libya incursion and some kind of military intervention in Syria. Barack Obama, who had finally started to understand the national security blob a little better by then, vetoed any action in Syria, so we dodged that bullet. Unfortunately, its not clear if Blinken has learned any of the same lessons. Based on this, meh. We could do better. Why not someone like Sen. Chris Murphy instead?

Joe Biden is not a hard lefty, so its hardly surprising to see him choosing pretty mainstream aides so far. Thats what we collectively voted for, and thats what were going to get, especially in the highest profile appointments. Whats more, Im willing to cut him substantial slack with national security appointments. There is, literally, no progressive wing of the national security establishment with any real influence. Behind all the yelling and screaming, Democrats and Republicans are pretty much the same on NatSec issues, with smallish differences on the margin and not much else. This means that even if Biden did appoint someone more progressive, theyd just run into a brick wall of opposition: in the White House, in Congress, in the intelligence agencies, in the military, and in think tanks. Its all but impossible to buck this, and Biden probably doesnt really want to in the first place. Hes got bigger fish to fry.

This is a dangerous way of thinkingwhew, at least its not a Trumpie!and it will apply less and less once we get past the top three or four cabinet positions. In other areas, there are big differences between Democrats and Republicans and there are plenty of progressives with real clout. We should expect to see some riskier appointments at Labor, HHS, Energy, EPA, and so forth. If we dont, it would mean Biden is basically kissing off the progressive wing of the party.

Well start to hear more about those appointments in early December, and thats when well truly be able to get a concrete idea of just what Bidens administration will look like. Until then, Id resist jumping to any conclusions.

Original post:
How Progressive Will Joe Biden's Administration Be? Mother Jones - Mother Jones

Theres been a great deal of introspection and handwringing by North Carolina progressives in recent weeks in the aftermath of the election. After having spent much of the summer and fall reveling in the notion that the state was poised to issue a strong, across-the-board repudiation of Trumpism on Nov. 3, the final results were, on many fronts, a disappointment.

While voters re-elected Gov. Roy Cooper by a healthy margin and added two Democratic women (Deborah Ross and Kathy Manning) to the states now slightly-less-gerrymandered congressional delegation, Republicans swept most of the other high-profile races from the presidential race to the U.S. Senate to the Council of State to the judiciary to the General Assembly.

So what should progressives make of this outcome? Is the picture, as some analysts and politicos have opined, utterly bleak? Especially with legislative leaders Phil Berger and Tim Moore set to craft yet another collection of rigged electoral maps, is it time for progressives to move to right in hopes of winning over more Trump voters?

Here are five reasons progressives should keep calm and stay the course:

1. The North Carolina vote was hardly a ringing endorsement of Trumpism. Despite his unique and visceral connection with his supporters, and having mounted a feverish campaign in which he and his surrogates were a constant physical presence in the state during the campaigns closing weeks, Donald Trump an incumbent president who was using every tool of the office at his disposal won just 49.93% of the vote.

And while the GOP ultimately prevailed in numerous other statewide races, in virtually every instance, the margin was extremely narrow. Simply put, North Carolinas status as a sharply divided 50-50 purple state has not changed. A few thousand votes could have changed everything.

Indeed, theres a strong case to made that by forcing Trump to devote so much energy to holding the state, Biden supporters here helped keep Trump from spending the time in Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania that might have made the difference for him there.

2. The pandemic ended up being a big disadvantage for Democrats. As I noted in a column a couple weeks back, Republicans were able to generate a much higher degree of last-minute campaign enthusiasm by throwing caution to the wind when it came to staging high energy, in-person, non-socially-distanced rallies often headlined by Trump himself.

Democrats simply werent willing to take such a risk a move that no doubt saved lives, but almost certainly cost them thousands of votes. With any luck, this unique situation will not be repeated in the future.

3. Cal Cunninghams implosion was a big problem. North Carolina voters were clearly unenthusiastic about sending Sen. Thom Tillis back to Washington. Even in victory, he secured just 48.69% of the vote.

Ultimately, however, Cal Cunninghams massive political pratfall served as just the last-minute lifesaver Tillis needed. And not only did the revelations about Cunninghams maddening personal behavior help doom his own candidacy, they almost certainly played a role in dampening Democratic enthusiasm across the board. As with No. 2, this figures to be a unique situation.

4. Demographic trends remain positive. While it will continue to be gradual and uneven process, there is every reason to believe that North Carolinas population will (like much of the rest of the nation) continue to trend more urban and diverse as the years go by two factors that have helped turn Virginia, and more recently and famously Georgia, in a progressive direction.

And while such a turn is no guarantee of perpetual success for progressive candidates or policies, progressives are more likely to achieve success by working hard to capitalize on this trend (see, for example, Stacy Abramss voter turnout work in Georgia) than by devoting big resources to converting Trumps stubborn but slowly ebbing base of supporters.

In 1988, California voted for a Republican presidential candidate for the fifth consecutive election. Earlier this month, Biden defeated Trump in the Golden State by 63.6% to 34.2%.

5. Most voters are with progressives on the issues. Look at the list. Americans want higher taxes on the rich. They understand the reality of the climate emergency and want immediate action. They oppose racial discrimination in the criminal justice system. They favor a the protections of the Affordable Care Act. They want to raise the minimum wage. They favor abortion rights. They believe in public schools. They want reasonable gun control laws.

In other words, while Donald Trump and his ilk have clearly demonstrated that appeals based on tribe race, culture and religion can convince Americans to vote against their own economic interest and, indeed, counter to their views on any number of issues, its hard to see how progressives combat such a phenomenon by abandoning what amount to wise and popular stances.

The bottom line: Transforming the politics and policies of an historically conservative state like North Carolina was always going to be a marathon. Just because the breaks went against them in one 50-50 election is no reason for progressives to abandon the race.

Rob Schofield, director of NC Policy Watch, has three decades of experience as a lawyer, lobbyist, writer and commentator. He can be reached at [emailprotected]

Originally posted here:
Five reasons NC progressives should remain bullish about their political future - The Robesonian

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar are boosting a petition against Joe Biden nominating his former chief of staff to a new role in his administration, calling Bruce Reed a "deficit hawk and criticizing his past support for Social Security and Medicare cuts.

Why it matters: Progressives are mounting their pressure campaign after the president-elect did not include any of their favored candidates in his first slate of Cabinet nominees, and they are serious about installing some of their allies, blocking anyone who doesn't pass their smell test and making noise if they are not heard.

Driving the news: Some progressives have privately said the order of Biden's announcements was important to send an early signal the incoming administration took them seriously. So far, theyre suspicious of some of the people being named or rumored for jobs but happy with John Kerry, Janet Yellen, Alejandro Mayorkas and Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Omar (D-Minn.) and fellow Squad member Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) are the first sitting members of Congress to sign the petition, which objects to Reed potentially serving as head of the Office of Management and Budget. It was launched by Justice Democrats.

What they're saying: Omar told Axios she's "proud to join Justice Democrats and our progressive coalition in saying no to deficit hawks.

The backdrop: Incoming Reps. Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush who are also backing the petition attended a protest last week outside the Democratic National Committee urging Biden to keep his promise to pass a $2 trillion climate policy.

Between the lines: Progressive groups and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party have been in communication with staff on the Biden-Harris transition team, discussing personnel and policy, according to people involved in those discussions.

Progressives scored a win this week when the transition team said it will name a "high-level White House Climate Policy Coordinator" next month.

The bottom line: While left-wing Democrats have had a seat at the table, they dont want Biden-Harris administration to morph into a third Obama term.

Original post:
AOC and Ilhan Omar want to block Bidens former chief of staff - Axios

Progressives have had a mixed reaction to President-elect Joe Biden's early administration announcements as they seek to gain influence in the coming Democratic administration.

Biden sought to ally himself with the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., after a contentious primary fight and formed a task force to forge a more progressive platform for his administration. Sanders and Warren are not expectedto receive administration appointments, however, both due to concerns that Republican senators would derail their nominations and that Republican governors in their states would then appoint GOP replacements.

Biden's early West Wing hires and Cabinet nominees have been greeted by progressives with a mix of praise and consternation about their corporate ties. Some leftists express concernthat the Biden administration, like the Obama administration, would be guided by "corporatists"who prioritize business interests. But they've also stressed that there is no question Biden's team is light years ahead of PresidentTrump's administration, which has featureda revolving door of lobbyistsand executives who undermined their agenciesand sought to funnel taxpayer money to their corporate pals.

"Trump's government run by the corporate lobbyists, for the corporate lobbyists has devastated programs and rules that help working people," Warren said earlier this month. "Americans have made it clear: the last thing they want is for Washington to again hand over the keys to giant corporations and lobbyists."

Biden's selections have prioritized experience, diversityand coalition-building, a far cry from the Trump administration's war against the very agencies it leads.

Biden's team on Monday announcedthat he would name Antony Blinken, his former national security adviser and deputy secretary of state, as his secretary of state. Matt Duss, Sanders' foreign policy adviser, said Blinken was a "good choice"and praised Biden for selecting a diplomat who has "regularly engaged with progressive grassroots." Former Sanders adviser Faiz Shakir agreed that Blinken was a "solid choice."

But Blinken's corporate ties have drawn some handwringing from the left. Blinken, along with Michle Flournoy, a former top Pentagon official and defense contractor executive, who isrumored to be the frontrunner to become Biden's defense secretary, founded WestExec Advisors after their time in the Obama administration. Thatconsulting firm, which includes numerous Obama alums, aims to help companies win Pentagon contracts and has extensive ties to a variety of defense contractors, The American Prospectreported. WestExechas also helped a number of Silicon Valley firms pitch the Pentagon for defense contracts, according to The Intercept.

Little else is known about the clients of the firm, which keeps its client roster secret and does not have to disclose their names as lobbying firm would. Watchdog groups have raised concerns over potential conflicts of interest arising from the firm's secret client list.

"It's a company that sells influence and connections," Mandy Smithberger of the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight told ABC News. "Particularly for those who are going to go through the confirmation process, it's important to know who they were working for and the kind of work they were doing."

Biden also tapped Jake Sullivan, an ex-adviser to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, ashis national security adviser. Sullivan has been praised as "brilliant"and an "all-star"but has his own corporate ties. Since 2017, Sullivan has worked for Macro Advisory Partners, a consulting firm that works with mining companies and sovereign wealth funds, among others, according to the American Prospect. Earlier this year, Sullivan worked with Uber to try to restrict contract workers from being entitled to benefits, according to the report.

Biden's team on Monday announced that Avril Haines, the former deputy national security adviser and deputy CIA director under Obama, would be his director of national intelligence. She has also served in the State Department and worked for Biden when he was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. A Cuban-American immigrant, Haines would be the first woman to serve in the position.

Haines also previously worked as a consultant for the controversial data-mining firm Palantir, a fact that was scrapped from her bio when she joined the Biden campaign, according to The Intercept. "Co-founded by a far-right, Trump-supporting tech billionaire, Palantir, whose business has benefited from a slew of government contracts, has been accused of aiding in the Trump administration's immigration detention programs in the U.S. and helping the Trump administration build out its surveillance state," the Intercept reported.

Biden has picked former Deputy Homeland Security Secretary and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director Alejandro Mayorkas as his nominee to besecretary of Homeland Security. Former HUD Secretary Julin Castro praised Mayorkas, who would be the first Latino to lead DHS, as a "historic and experienced choice." A former federal prosecutor, Mayorkas has also worked as a private attorney representing Fortune 100 clients and other high-profile companies. He was investigated in 2015for intervening in visa cases on behalf of companies owned by Clinton's brother Anthony Rodham and longtime Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe, the former governor of Virginia.

Biden also tapped Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the longtime former top diplomat to Africa and head of the U.S. Foreign Service, as his ambassador to the United Nations. Thomas-Greenfield has been widely praised for her experience and commitment to the Foreign Service, though The New York Times' Ken Vogelnoted that she also served assenior vice president of a firm "that represented embattled Swiss-based mining giant Glencore," which is facing allegations of corruptionin the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Biden's early selections also include former Secretary of State John Kerry, who has served as an adviser to Bank of America, as a climate czar; longtime aide Ron Klain, a venture capital executive, as White House chief of staff; longtime health care lobbyistSteve Ricchetti as a senior counselor; Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., a top recipient ofoil and gas money, as senior adviser; and former campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon, the co-founder of Precision Strategies, which represents pharmaceutical and private equity firms, as deputy chief of staff.

Klain has largely drawn praise from progressives like Warren and Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., but progressive groups have called Richmond's selection a "betrayal"and "really disappointing." Jeff Hauser, the executive director of the Revolving Door Project, told The New York Timesthat Ricchetti was"a figure so paradigmatically swampy that the writers of 'House of Cards' might reject his biography as overly stereotypical."

Progressives have also warned Biden against selecting "divisive"former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to his Cabinet and haveexpressed concerns about Biden's transition team, which includes executives from Amazon, Lyft, Facebookand other tech firms. A variety of progressive groups, includingDemos, MoveOn, Our Revolution, Sunrise Movementand the Working Families Party,sent a letter to Bidencalling for him to avoid nominating "corporate executives, lobbyists, and prominent corporate consultants" to top positions. Many others have called for Biden to bar officials from working on issues on which they had lobbied in the past two years, as Obama did. Biden has not been nearly as averse to lobbyists as Obama, and has resisted calls for a lobbyist ban.

Some House Democrats have also pressed the party leadership to push back on corporate influence within the coming Biden administration.

"If the C.E.O. of a fossil fuel corporation should not be put in charge of U.S. diplomacy or an oil lobbyist should not be put in charge of the Interior Department under a Republican administration, there is no reason to believe that an officer or lobbyist at a major bank or financial firm should be put in charge of financial policy under a Democratic administration," a group of Democrats, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Ral Grijalva, D-Ariz., Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and Katie Porter, D-Calif., said in a letter to Senate leaders.

Other progressives have cautioned against litmus tests for administration picks.

"I understand the desire to have people that are ideologically aligned," Meredith McGehee, the head of IssueOne, a group seeking to limit money in politics, told The New York Times. "But when you start doing litmus tests on appointees it can backfire. You need to have appointees in the administration who can work with a range of people in Congress or you are not likely to get much done."

Moderate Democratic groups have also argued that a litmus test "makes it harder to get the diverse Cabinet"Biden and progressives want.

Others have argued that competency and experience are more important traits in administration appointments than ideological purity, particularly after Trump spent years crippling federal agencies.

"I need a team ready on Day 1 to help me reclaim America's seat at the head of the table, rally the world to meet the biggest challenges we face and advance our security, prosperity and values," Biden said in a statement on Monday after announcing his national security team."These individuals are equally as experienced and crisis-tested as they are innovative and imaginative. Their accomplishments in diplomacy are unmatched, but they also reflect the idea that we cannot meet the profound challenges of this new moment with old thinking and unchanged habits or without diversity of background and perspective. It's why I've selected them."

As the left debates how much or how little to push the incoming administration, Washington lobbying firms are celebrating a return to normal after the Trump administration limited influence to a small number of well-connected firms, according to The New York Times. Some firms have hired officials close to Biden while others stand to benefit from longstanding connections to the administration.

Amid the battle between the left and the more corporate-friendly wing of the Democratic Party, progressives have vowed to continue organizing to push the Biden administration to keep its campaign promises.

"We're going to organize and demand that this administration which I believe is decent and kind and honorable keep their promise," Ocasio-Cortez told a group of activists last week. "Keeps its promise to young people. Keeps its promise to the movement for Black lives. Keeps its promise to working-class people across the United States."

See the rest here:
Progressives praise early Biden picks but worry his team is stacked with corporatists - Salon