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Raab says UK bill of rights will stop free speech being 'whittled away by wokery'

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Dominic Raab has disclosed proposals to replace Labour's Human Rights Act with a British bill of rights which he believes will enable the principle of free speech to become a legal "trump card".

Raab, the deputy prime minister and justice secretary, has argued that the plan will better protect the press in exposing wrongdoing and said he feared free speech was being "whittled away" by "wokery and political correctness".

Raab told the Daily Mail that under plans being drawn up for the bill of rights, there would be only limited restrictions placed on the protections on free speech with checks to stop people abusing it to promote terrorism.

He said it would be given a "different status in the pecking order of rights" with the main ramifications expected to be on legal disputes.

Raab told the Daily Mail: "We will still be clamping down on those who try and use either media or free speech to incite violence, to radicalise terrorists, or to threaten children. All of those safeguards will be in place.

"But we've got to be able to strengthen free speech, the liberty that guards all of our other freedoms, and stop it being whittled away surreptitiously, sometimes without us really being conscious of it.

"So it will have a different status in the pecking order of rights and I think that will go a long way to protecting this country's freedom of speech and our history, which has always very strongly protected freedom of speech."

The proposals, currently out for consultation, are expected to be included in the Queen's speech later this year.

The Human Rights Act (HRA) was introduced in 1998 to enable UK nationals to rely on rights contained in the European convention on human rights before the domestic courts.

Raab added: "Effectively, free speech will be given what will amount to 'trump card' status in a whole range of areas.

"I feel very strongly that the parameters of free speech and democratic debate are being whittled away, whether by the privacy issue or whether it's wokery and political correctness.

"I worry about those parameters of free speech being narrowed."

In December, the government announced a consultation to revise the Human Rights Act.

It cited estimates that as many as 70 percent of successful human rights challenges are brought by foreign national offenders who cite a right to family life when appealing deportation orders.

The government said at the time that the "plans will give the supreme court more ability to interpret human rights law in a UK context".

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Raab says UK bill of rights will stop free speech being 'whittled away by wokery'

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Dominic Raab has disclosed proposals to replace Labour's Human Rights Act with a British bill of rights which he believes will enable the principle of free speech to become a legal "trump card".

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In Our Time - Peter Kropotkin - BBC Sounds

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In Our Time - Peter Kropotkin - BBC Sounds

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Catch up on your favourite BBC radio show from your favourite DJ right here, whenever you like. Listen without limits with BBC Sounds.

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The Johnson partygate saga shows the validity of anarchism

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Commentary from the Anarchist press on ‘partygate’

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Commentary from the Anarchist press on ‘partygate’

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The British Conservative Party is now being observed closely to see how it deals with its lying, disgraced leader. The public can do nothing within the system to change matters. Labour can do little. We are helpless, as we watch in anticipation day after weary day to see if things will change.

We are, as a society, obsessed with the Conservative Party. We have to be by dint of the fact that it is so often in power and when it is in power it can last decades. The Thatcher and Major governments lasted a combined 18 years. By the end of that period in office, the British public had to be transfixed by the divisions it had over Europe. Such issues returned when the current government began under the reigns of David Cameron. He had a plan to solve those divisions and shut the Eurosceptics up forever. A referendum on whether the UK should leave or remain in the European Union would do the trick.

When that plan backfired and Theresa May took over, we became obsessed with the divisions again. This time the divide wasn't simply based around Euroscepticism. New terms had developed, emphasising the divisions: Brexiteers and Remainers dominated our politics. May could not control her party but waiting in the wings was a man who many thought could. Boris Johnson took over in July 2019 and started to purge the Remainers. He transformed his party to ensure that candidates in the 2019 general election signed up to his Brexit plan.

With an election win and an 80 seat majority, it looked like plain sailing ahead for the Tories and they looked towards the second decade of continuous rule. Those who had taken just a summary glance at Boris Johnson knew that it would be harder than that. A serial liar, whose closest friends and family know not to trust him, Johnson would not be short of controversy in power. Nobody banked on a global pandemic though. Indeed, the Tory government decided not to prepare for one, despite repeated warnings over the years. It has exposed Johnson as a man who doesn't seem to care about whether the rules apply to him. He has been dogged in recent months over allegations of breaking his own lockdown rules.

I have written before that one of the most important factors in politics in the UK is a sense of fairness. If a party can present a policy as fair, then they have a good chance of it being accepted by the public. Suggestions of unfairness that stick will harm any British politician. The unfairness of Johnson's rule-breaking really hits home precisely because we can all relate to it. We were all suffering the restrictions placed upon us by the powerful. We have all suffered from the unfairness.

And yet here we are waiting for the Conservative Party to decide if it has the wisdom to act. And here we are watching the news and PMQs and the BBC Parliament Channel in higher numbers than normal. Our one-party state has us hooked on every twist and turn. This isn't a criticism of the public. I'm hooked too. In the last few days, I've been horrified by the amount of live news I've watched on the off chance that something might happen. Often it has. There has been so much in the way of political shenanigans. There has been a minister resigning at the dispatch box in the Lords, the Met Police cackhandedly getting involved with an investigation into Downing Street parties, high Tories like David Davis telling Johnson to resign, the update from senior civil servant Sue Gray. We wait though for the Conservative Party to act.

Johnson is banking on winning any possible vote of no confidence among his MPs. Those MPs are currently deciding whether to submit letters requesting such a vote. It is their choice. Not ours, not the Labour Party, not anyone but them. We often hear about how ruthless the Conservative Party is when it comes to failing leaders. I think that cliche needs ripping up. I wasn't planning on relying on their ruthlessness in any case but it's an idea that has run its course. If they were ruthless, they would have ditched Johnson months ago.

The more I think about it, the more I feel vindicated in my anarchism. This system stinks. It is rotten. My starting point here is that the problem isn't simply Johnson. There are some calling for better standards, that Johnson has sullied the office of prime minister etc etc. The truth is that so much in politics rests on a sense of fair play. It rests on having leaders who abide by the rules. A Johnson figure would always come along at some point if the conditions were right. They have and here we are. The answer isn't a better leader. The answer is a better political system.

The only way to prevent anything like this from happening again is to build a system that allows everybody a stake and say in the decisions that affect them. We should resist the call for hierarchical answers to this current crisis. It is a crisis in hierarchy itself and we should challenge the notion. We should build collective organisations to share power, nationally, in the workplace, in our communities. In short, we should be brimming with confidence that we have the answers and that we welcome people to join us in planning those solutions. The answers to the current problems in the UK are not a better leader. We won't find lasting solutions in the current parliamentary Conservative Party or in hoping for a Labour election victory. We, the people, are the answer and anarchism is the means.
Jon Bigger

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The Johnson partygate saga shows the validity of anarchism

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The British Conservative Party is now being observed closely to see how it deals with its lying, disgraced leader. The public can do nothing within the system to change matters. Labour can do little. We are helpless, as we watch in anticipation day after weary day to see if things will change.

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Case study for role of parliament in scrutiny and oversight 

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Case study for role of parliament in scrutiny and oversight 

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Owen Paterson has resigned as an MP after a row over his conduct led to a government U-turn.

The Conservative was found to have broken lobbying rules and was facing suspension - until Tory MPs blocked it by calling for an overhaul of the MPs' standards watchdog instead.

Mr Paterson said he now wanted a life "outside the cruel world of politics".

In a statement, the 65-year-old, who has represented North Shropshire since 1997, said the past two years had been "an indescribable nightmare for my family and me".

He said his integrity had been "repeatedly and publicly questioned", and claimed he was "totally innocent" of breaking lobbying rules.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson paid tribute to his "friend and colleague", saying he had had a "distinguished career" and was a "voice for freedom".

But other MPs said he needed to be held to account for his actions, with one, Labour's Sam Tarry, tweeting: "Good riddance."

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has called on the prime minister to apologise to the whole country for the "chaotic" past 24 hours, and for his "grubby attempt to cover up for the misdemeanour of his friend".

Analysis

By Damian Grammaticas, political correspondent

The past 24 hours have clearly been damaging to Boris Johnson and the government.

There's been a hit to both on the issue of integrity - a perception this was sleazy, undermining of standards.

There's also been a hit to the prime minister within the Conservative Party. Dozens of his MPs disobeyed when told to vote to block Owen Paterson's immediate suspension.

Every rebellion chips away at a prime minister's authority. The government's swift U-turn, making Wednesday's vote meaningless, only dismayed more MPs and left questions about poor decision-making at the top.

The government says its aim is to improve the standards system. But if so that task will be harder now, as there's suspicion about its motives - and the opposition will have to be satisfied with whatever it proposes.

And there's to be a by-election, which will play out under intense scrutiny, with the opposition undoubtedly hammering away that issue of sleaze.

The Commons Standards Committee concluded last week that Mr Paterson had misused his position as an MP to benefit two firms he worked for, after a damning report on his behaviour by standards commissioner Kathryn Stone.

It recommended he be suspended from the Commons for 30 sitting days - a sanction that could also lead to a recall petition in his constituency, and the possibility of him facing a by-election.

Such recommendations - which have to be signed off by MPs - are usually accepted without much discussion.

But on Wednesday, the government ordered its MPs to vote for an amendment to halt Mr Paterson's case and to rejig the standards system.

Who is Owen Paterson?

Born in Whitchurch, Shropshire, in 1956, he studied history at Cambridge University, before joining his family leather business, of which he later became managing director.

He was first elected MP for North Shropshire in 1997 and had a majority of almost 23,000 at the last general election.

Paterson was made Northern Ireland secretary in 2010, moving to become environment secretary in 2012.

After leaving the government in 2014 he was a strong supporter of Brexit.

His wife Rose, chair of Aintree racecourse, took her own life in 2020. The couple had three children.

Opposition parties accused the Conservatives of corruption and sleaze, saying they were just looking out for their own MP, and Labour, the SNP and the Liberal Democrats refused to take part in any new process.

On Thursday morning, Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg announced a U-turn, saying no new process would go ahead without cross-party support and any changes would not be made retrospectively in Mr Paterson's case.

Mr Paterson did not know the government was going to ditch the proposals ahead of Mr Rees-Mogg's announcement and was in a supermarket when told the news by a BBC journalist.

The prime minister's spokesman said he had "recognised the strength of feeling on all sides of the House around the issue and changed his mind when it became clear that a cross-party consensus on the changes was not possible".

But Labour's Sir Keir said Mr Johnson "must explain how he intends to fix the immense harm he has done to confidence in the probity of him and his MPs".

And despite Mr Paterson's resignation, the SNP's Pete Wishart said it was "not the end of this sorry saga".

He tweeted: "Something rotten has happened in the last couple of days and the extraordinary behaviour of this government must be examined."

Mr Paterson said it was a "painful decision" to resign but "the right one".

He said the past few days had been "intolerable", claiming he had seen people - including MPs - "publicly mock and deride" the death of his wife Rose, who took her own life last year.

In an earlier statement, the former Northern Ireland secretary said the investigation into his conduct had been "a major contributory factor" in her death.

On Thursday, Mr Paterson added: "My children have therefore asked me to leave politics altogether, for my sake as well as theirs.

"I agree with them. I do not want my wife's memory and reputation to become a political football. Above all, I always put my family first."

There was no mention of the standards row in Mr Johnson's tribute to the Tory MP, instead saying: "I am very sad that Parliament will lose the services of Owen Paterson who has been a friend and colleague of mine for decades.

"He has had a distinguished career, serving in two cabinet positions, and above all he has been a voice for freedom - for free markets and free trade and free societies - and he was an early and powerful champion of Brexit.

"I know that this must have been a very difficult decision but I can understand why - after the tragic circumstances in which he lost his beloved wife Rose - he has decided to put his family first."

Mr Paterson's resignation means there will shortly be a by-election for his safe Conservative seat.

What did Owen Paterson do?

Mr Paterson has been a paid consultant for clinical diagnostics company Randox since 2015 and to meat distributor Lynn's Country Foods since 2016, earning a total of £100,000 a year on top of his MP's salary.

MPs are allowed to have these jobs, but are not allowed to be paid advocates - using their influence in Whitehall for the company's gain.

The committee concluded that Mr Paterson had breached this rule on paid advocacy by:

Making three approaches to the Food Standards Agency relating to Randox and the testing of antibiotics in milk

Making seven approaches to the Food Standards Agency relating to Lynn's Country Foods

Making four approaches to ministers at the Department for International Development relating to Randox and blood testing technology

Mr Paterson was also found to have broken conduct rules by:

Failing to declare his interest as a paid consultant to Lynn's Country Foods in four emails to officials at the Food Standards Agency

Using his parliamentary office on 16 occasions for business meetings with his clients

And in sending two letters relating to his business interests, on House of Commons headed notepaper

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Owen Paterson quits as MP over lobbying row 'nightmare'

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Owen Paterson has resigned as an MP after a row over his conduct led to a government U-turn. The Conservative was found to have broken lobbying rules and was facing suspension - until Tory MPs blocked it by calling for an overhaul of the MPs' standards watchdog instead.

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticizes colleagues for allowing Texas abortion ban to remain in effect

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Sotomayor calls SC ruling on Texas abortion ban ‘catastrophic’

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Sotomayor calls SC ruling on Texas abortion ban ‘catastrophic’

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justice sonia sotomayor criticizes colleagues for allowing texas abortion ban to remain in effect - cnnpolitics

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticizes colleagues for allowing Texas abortion ban to remain in effect

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor sent a strong reminder Friday that she is not a justice looking to carve out compromises with a conservative majority.

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Speaker Lindsay Hoyle berates Rishi Sunak for briefing on budget details

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Lindsay Hoyle berates Sunak over budget briefings 

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Lindsay Hoyle berates Sunak over budget briefings 

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Speaker Lindsay Hoyle berates Rishi Sunak for briefing on budget details

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Hoyle says past chancellors would have resigned for ‘riding roughshod’ over MPs with pre-speech briefings

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Ernest Johnson: Missouri executes man for killing three in 1994 robbery

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Missouri man executed after US Supreme Court refuse to hear his case

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Missouri man executed after US Supreme Court refuse to hear his case

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Writing in support of the execution, Attorney General Eric Schmitt said that the facts of Johnson's actions "plainly reflect the offender's ability to plan, strategise, calculate, and scheme effectively".

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Ernest Johnson: Missouri executes man for killing three in 1994 robbery

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Writing in support of the execution, Attorney General Eric Schmitt said that the facts of Johnson's actions "plainly reflect the offender's ability to plan, strategise, calculate, and scheme effectively".

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Pelosi delays vote on Biden's infrastructure bill in defeat for Democrats

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Biden narrowly avoids shutdown over Build Back Better bill

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Biden narrowly avoids shutdown over Build Back Better bill

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The US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, postponed a planned vote on a $1tn infrastructure bill on Thursday night in a stinging defeat for Democrats after progressives revolted, withholding their support until an agreement could be reached to enact the full sweep of Joe Biden's economic vision.

The decision capped a frantic day of negotiations in Washington that stretched late into the evening, as the president and Democratic leaders attempted to break a stalemate between a handful of moderates, who pushed for the infrastructure vote, and progressives who believe it would be insufficient without a broader, $3.5tn social policy package.

"A great deal of progress has been made this week, and we are closer to an agreement than ever," said the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, after the House announced there would not be a vote on Thursday. "But we are not there yet, and so we will need some additional time to finish the work, starting tomorrow morning first thing."

Democrats insisted that the setback was temporary, but the delay underscored the fragile state of the negotiations as a pair of Senate holdouts demanded the president dramatically shrink the more expansive legislation containing many of the party's top policy priorities. The House was slated to reconvene on Friday, giving Democrats at least another day to attempt to reach an agreement that would satisfy the feuding factions.

Both pieces are critical to Biden's economic vision. He spent weeks personally courting Republican senators to secure a bipartisan victory on the infrastructure bill, which would invest $1tn in upgrading roads, bridges and broadband. But he has staked his presidency - and his legacy - on the passage of the mammoth social policy bill that would expand healthcare, make childcare more affordable, establish paid federal leave and combat the climate crisis, paid for by tax increases on wealthy Americans and corporations.

In a vaguely worded letter to colleagues on Thursday night, Pelosi called it a "day of progress".

"Discussions continue with the House, Senate and White House to reach a bicameral framework agreement to Build Back Better through a reconciliation bill," she wrote.

"All of this momentum brings us closer to shaping the reconciliation bill in a manner that will pass the House and Senate," she said, concluding the letter with the promise: "More to follow."

The delayed vote was a significant blow for Pelosi, a self-described master negotiator who insisted earlier that Democrats were "on the path to win" the infrastructure vote. "This is the fun part," she boasted to reporters on Thursday, referring to the final, chaotic stretch before securing a major legislative achievement.

Yet with only three votes to spare, and Republicans largely opposed, Pelosi was unable to untangle the competing promises made to progressives and centrists in time to vote on Thursday.

In an effort to placate a small band of centrist Democrats, Pelosi promised to bring the infrastructure bill to the House floor for a vote this week. But progressives had long maintained that they would only support that bill if it passed in tandem with the far more expansive $3.5tn package.

When it became clear on Thursday that the Senate was not prepared to pass the legislation as written, progressives stood by their threat to tank the infrastructure bill, which they saw as leverage for ensuring Biden's entire economic vision was enacted.

The fate of Biden's agenda remains in limbo, and with Democrats deeply at odds, it was unclear on Thursday night how they planned to progress.

The terms of the negotiations were largely driven by two Democratic holdouts in the Senate, who are opposed to the current size of the spending package. On Thursday, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia said he would not support a spending package that exceeded $1.5tn, less than half of the size of the proposal being pushed by Biden and most of the Democratic party.

Amid the negotiations and with only hours to spare, Congress passed legislation to avert a government shutdown at midnight on Thursday, with Biden later signing a measure that would fund the federal government through 3 December.

The measure was passed by the House and Senate with bipartisan support, though a significant number of Republicans voted against it.

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Pelosi delays vote on Biden's infrastructure bill in defeat for Democrats

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The US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, postponed a planned vote on a $1tn infrastructure bill on Thursday night in a stinging defeat for Democrats after progressives revolted, withholding their support until an agreement could be reached to enact the full sweep of Joe Biden's economic vision.

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Bogdanor speaking about constitutional reform in 2021

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Bogdanor speaking about constitutional reform in 2021

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In the first Constitution Society interview of 2021, Dr Andrew Blick talks to Professor Vernon Bogdanor about constitutional prospects for the forthcoming year. In a wide-ranging discussion, they cover the possibility of Scottish independence; the constitutional impact of Brexit; civil service reform; the role of the courts; electoral systems; and how plausible it is that the UK might one day adopt a written constitution.

The Constitution Society is committed to the promotion of informed debate and is politically impartial. Any views expressed in this interview are the personal views of the interviewer and interviewee and not those of The Constitution Society.

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The constitution in 2021: in conversation with Vernon Bogdanor - The Constitution Society

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In the first Constitution Society interview of 2021, Dr Andrew Blick talks to Professor Vernon Bogdanor about constitutional prospects for the forthcoming year. In a wide-ranging discussion, they cover the possibility of Scottish independence; the constitutional impact of Brexit; civil service reform; the role of the courts; electoral systems; and how plausible it is that the...

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Note: For the latest data on the racial and ethnic diversity of Congress, read our 2022 post.
About a quarter of voting members (23%) of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate are racial or ethnic minorities, making the 117th Congress the most racially and ethnically diverse in history. There has been a long-running trend toward higher numbers of non-White lawmakers on Capitol Hill: This is the sixth Congress to break the record set by the one before it.

Overall, 124 lawmakers today identify as Black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander or Native American, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the Congressional Research Service. This represents a 97% increase over the 107th Congress of 2001-03, which had 63 minority members.

Among today's senators and representatives, the overwhelming majority of racial and ethnic minority members are Democrats (83%), while 17% are Republicans. This represents a shift from the last Congress, when just 10% of non-White lawmakers were Republicans. Our analysis reflects the 532 voting members of Congress seated as of Jan. 26, 2021.

Although recent Congresses have continued to set new highs for racial and ethnic diversity, they have still been disproportionately White when compared with the overall U.S. population. Non-Hispanic White Americans account for 77% of voting members in the new Congress, considerably larger than their 60% share of the U.S. population overall. This gap hasn't narrowed with time: In 1981, 94% of members of Congress were White, compared with 80% of the U.S. population.

In the House of Representatives, however, representation of some racial and ethnic groups is now on par with their share of the total population. For example, 13% of House members are Black, about equal to the share of Black Americans. And Native Americans now make up about 1% of both the House and the U.S. population.

Other racial and ethnic groups in the House are somewhat less represented relative to their share of the population. The share of Hispanics in the U.S. population (19%) is about twice as high as it is in the House (9%). Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders together account for 6% of the national population and 3% of House members.

This analysis includes four representatives who are counted under more than one racial or ethnic identity: Rep. Robert Scott, D-Va., is counted as Black and Asian. Reps. Antonio Delgado and Ritchie Torres, both New York Democrats, are listed as Black and Hispanic. Rep. Marilyn Strickland, D-Wash., is both the first Black lawmaker to represent the state and one of the first Korean American women to be elected to Congress. Native Hawaiian Rep. Kai Kahele (D-Hawaii) is counted with the Native American lawmakers. Portuguese American members are not included in the Hispanic count.

In the House, Republicans account for a larger share of newly elected minority representatives than in the past. Of the 16 freshmen representatives who are non-White, nine are Republicans, compared with just one of the 22 new representatives in the 116th Congress. This freshman cohort includes the only two Black Republicans in the chamber: Burgess Owens of Utah and Byron Donalds of Florida.

Eleven senators are a racial or ethnic minority, up from nine in the 116th Congress. Six senators are Hispanic, two are Asian and three are Black. Freshman Raphael Warnock is the first Black senator to represent Georgia, and another freshman, Alex Padilla, is the first Hispanic senator to represent California. Padilla replaced Vice President and former Sen. Kamala Harris, who was one of four women of color (and the only Black woman) serving in the Senate.

Just three of the 11 non-White senators are Republicans: Tim Scott of South Carolina is Black, and Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas are both Hispanic.

Analyses of previous Congresses

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Racial, ethnic diversity increases yet again with the 117th Congress

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124 lawmakers today identify as Black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander or Native American, a 97% increase over the 107th Congress of 2001-02.

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Judge rules Obama exceeded power with DACA

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Judge rules Obama exceeded power with DACA

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The judge said President Barack Obama exceeded his authority when he created the program, but for now people protected under it will retain the ability to stay and work.

Supporters and beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program rallied outside the White House last month. Credit... Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via Shutterstock

A federal judge in Texas on Friday ruled unlawful a program that has shielded hundreds of thousands of undocumented young adults from deportation, throwing into question yet again the fate of immigrants known as Dreamers.

The judge, Andrew S. Hanen of the United States District Court in Houston, said President Barack Obama exceeded his authority when he created the program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, by executive order in 2012. But in a nuanced decision, the judge said he would not order that the program be immediately vacated.

In the judge's ruling, he wrote that the Department of Homeland Security may continue to accept new applications and renewals for the program known as DACA but is temporarily prohibited from approving any of them.

Immigrants enrolled in the program, most of whom were brought to the United States as children, will for now retain the ability to stay and work in the country, though those protections could evaporate if the government is unable to rectify a series of legal shortcomings in the program's authorization that were identified by the court.

Since its inception, DACA has enabled more than 800,000 immigrants who were brought illegally to the United States or fell into unlawful status when they were children to remain in the country and secure work authorization.

President Biden moved to strengthen the program on his first day in office, and in the absence of comprehensive immigration reform, the idea of extending a path to citizenship to the young immigrants who enrolled in the program has attracted bipartisan public support.

But the ruling by Judge Hanen, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, has introduced a new complication for the hundreds of thousands of people who have been able to build families, buy homes and work at jobs in the United States without fear of deportation.

The ruling also represents a significant new challenge for Mr. Biden as he attempts to build support in Congress for his ambitious plan to legalize up to 10 million other immigrants who are in the country without authorization.

The Biden administration is expected to appeal the ruling, and unless Congress steps in with a legislative remedy, the ultimate legality of DACA is almost certain to be decided by the Supreme Court.

Lawyers from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund had urged the judge to refrain altogether from ruling, citing Mr. Biden's directive to the Department of Homeland Security to create rules to fortify the program, and legislation introduced recently in Congress that would put Dreamers on a path to citizenship.

The state of Texas led the effort to terminate the program, along with Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina and West Virginia. Officials in those states had argued that the program was improperly adopted and left them with the burden of paying for education, health care and other benefits for immigrants who remained in the country under DACA's protections.

Currently, about 650,000 immigrants are enrolled in the program. Among them are some 200,000 frontline workers who have performed essential jobs in health care, agriculture, food processing and education, among others, during the coronavirus pandemic.

President Donald J. Trump announced a cancellation of the program in 2017 but several federal court rulings barred him from completely terminating it. Recipients were allowed to renew their DACA enrollment, a process that takes place every two years, even though new applications were not accepted.

With the embattled program's future still up in the air, Texas and the other states in 2018 filed the current lawsuit calling for the program's "immediate" rescission. Judge Hanen declined to issue a preliminary injunction, saying that the "egg had already been scrambled" and that "to try to put it back in the shell" did not serve the best interests of the country.

He warned, however, that Texas and the other states were likely to "prevail on the merits of their argument that DACA was unlawful."

In June 2020, the Supreme Court ruled against the Trump administration's decision to terminate the program, deeming its rescission in 2017 "arbitrary and capricious." But the high court did not rule on whether the program had been legally adopted.

In December, the administration was ordered by a federal judge in New York to begin accepting applications for new DACA applicants, opening the door for thousands of people who had been shut out while such applications had been suspended.

But the case in Texas continued to wind its way through the court.

"We knew there was still a threat out there. So we said, please, please apply," recalled Julie Mitchell, managing attorney at Caracen, a legal-aid organization in Los Angeles that has assisted thousands of students file applications.

Sarahi Magallanez, a psychology student in Los Angeles, is among thousands of young immigrants still waiting for approval of new applications.

"I am so grateful that I could finally apply, but I am still fearful," said Ms. Magallanez, who said the program in any case provides only partial protection. "DACA is not safe, and we are at the mercy of whoever is in power," she said.

Having broken immigration laws through no fault of their own when they arrived in the United States as children, there is broad support in the American public for allowing them to remain in the country. In a Pew survey conducted last year, about three-quarters of respondents, including majorities of Democrats and Republicans, favored extending Dreamers a pathway to permanent legal status.

When Mr. Obama rolled out the program, it was intended as a temporary measure in the absence of more comprehensive immigration legislation, which Congress has been unable to pass over the past two decades.

Mr. Biden has signaled his intent to protect the program, but only Congress can offer a legislative fix to allow Dreamers to live permanently, and legally, in the United States.

New proposals have already drawn stiff opposition from Republicans, who have resisted offering legal status to hundreds of thousands of immigrants while there are large numbers of unauthorized migrants crossing the southwestern border.

To qualify for DACA, applicants must have entered the United States before age 16, lived in the country continuously since June 2007, finished high school or enlisted in the military, and have a clean criminal record.

About 250,000 U.S.-born children have at least one parent who is enrolled in DACA, and about 1.5 million people in the United States live with a beneficiary of the program.

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Judge Rules DACA Is Unlawful and Suspends Applications

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The judge said President Barack Obama exceeded his authority when he created the program, but for now people protected under it will retain the ability to stay and work. A federal judge in Texas on Friday ruled unlawful a program that has shielded hundreds of thousands of undocumented young adults from deportation, throwing into question yet again the fate of immigrants known as Dreamers.

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Welsh devolution and the future of the Union 

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Welsh devolution and the future of the Union 

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As part of our series about the future of the Union, David and Helen talk to Dan Wincott of Cardiff Law School about the history of Welsh devolution and the possibility of Welsh independence. How has English dominance shaped Welsh attitudes to the Union? What did the Brexit vote reveal about the different strands of Welsh and British identity? Has the pandemic made the case for more devolution and even independence for Wales stronger? Plus, what happens to Wales if Scotland votes to leave the UK?

Talking Points:

The Anglo-Welsh union is a story of conquest and incorporation.

Wales was integrated into the English legal system under Henry VIII.

There are strong cultural institutions in Wales, and the persistence of Welsh as the vernacular language limited the reach of English laws for a long time.

It's hard to understand the rise of the Labour Party at the beginning of the 20th century without seeing its relationship to questions about the Union.

Welsh Labour politicians played a critical role in tying the UK together during that period.

Labour moved away from home rule after WWI, but as things got more complicated in the 1970s, Labour ended up struggling with devolution questions without an English majority.

When Labour came back into power in 1997 it set up the first version of the devolution settlements.

Labour's weakness in England from 2010 is central to the current situation.

For New Labour, Welsh devolution was an afterthought. They were more concerned with Scotland.

The majority of Wales who voted in the referendum voted Leave.

Wales is probably the part of Britain where patterns of national identity are most complex.

In Wales, those who prioritize British identity tended to vote Leave. But in England, those who prioritize British identity generally voted Remain.

People are at least curious about what more devolution might look like in Wales.

Although there is still anti-devolution sentiment in Wales in a way there isn't in Scotland.

As long as the Labour Party can't win a majority in Westminster, there is going to be curiosity about greater independence.

Mentioned in this Episode:

Further Learning:
And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking

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Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/talkingpolitics.

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Wales, England and the Future of the UK | TALKING POLITICS on Acast

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As part of our series about the future of the Union, David and Helen talk to Dan Wincott of Cardiff Law School about the history of Welsh devolution and the possibility of Welsh independence. How has English dominance shaped Welsh attitudes to the Union?

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Will federal ruling on at home access to pills make Roe v. Wade obsolete?

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Will federal ruling on at home access to pills make Roe v. Wade obsolete?

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As the Biden administration deliberates on the federal rules on where, when and from whom patients can get the pills, with a federal court deadline looming in early April, conservatives are already erecting barriers. In court, in Congress and in statehouses across the country, they're working to preemptively ban the pills or make them more difficult to obtain - with bills now pending in Indiana, Montana, Arizona, Arkansas, Alabama, Iowa this year alone.

"They're trying as hard as they can to restrict access to the pills now because they know they won't be able, later, to unring the bell," said Mary Ziegler, a professor at the Florida State University College of Law who studies abortion. "This is just as important as what happens with Roe."

Biden's pledge to "follow the science" when it comes to public health is under scrutiny as medical experts argue - citing new data gained during the pandemic - that administering the abortion drugs remotely is safe and effective.

Should the federal rules get rewritten, someone in, say, Arkansas, could have a video consultation with a doctor in Massachusetts or even the UK and then receive the pills by mail. Even if red states moved to ban their importation, enforcement would be nearly impossible.

"It takes the fight out of the clinic setting into individual people's homes," explained Alina Salganicoff, the Director of Women's Health Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. "That becomes much more difficult to regulate and could potentially broaden access."

Women's health and advocacy groups stress, however, that the pills are not a panacea. For one, they can only be used safely in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy - a narrow time window during which many people are not yet aware that they are pregnant. Additionally, taking the pills in a state that has banned them could be legally perilous, discouraging people from seeking medical help if they have a complication. This fear is not theoretical - already, even with Roe still in place, women have faced prosecution for self-induced abortions.

Biden may soon be forced to make a decision.Afederal appeals court is hearing a challenge to the Trump administration's decision to keep the FDA's in-person dispensing requirement for the pills in place during the pandemic, and Biden's DOJ must tell themby April 7whether or not it plans to keep enforcing those rules.

Even if the Biden administration were to choose to defend the Trump rule, there's a burgeoning online underground market for the pills which, like its counterparts in the formal health care system, has seen surging popularity during the pandemic.

Abortion opponents are already sounding the alarm about this potential wild west.

Congressional Republicans have for years raised concerns about the safety of the pills, sending letters pushing the FDA to take action against the drug and the online sellers who offer it. The most recent letters came last year, as nearly a hundred Republicans from each chamber of Congress urged the agency to take the drug off the market entirely.

Now that the administration is considering lifting the federal restrictions on the pill, conservatives are worried the state-level bans they're rushing to enact won't be enough.

"Chemical abortion really puts Roe vs. Wade on steroids," said Kristi Hamrick with the anti-abortion group Students for Life of America. " Roe made abortion possible anywhere in the country during all nine months of pregnancy, but this is really a new frontier - doing it virtually and chemically."

But for advocates like Silvia Henriquez, the co-president of the abortion rights group All* Above All, looser federal rules for the pills is part of a long-held goal.

"We are working towards a future where abortion care is there when we need it, where it's affordable, accessible and on our own terms, without barriers," she said. "Medication abortion gets us closer to that world - where it doesn't matter who we are, how much we earn, or where we live."

As conservative states have moved aggressively in recent years to restrict access to surgical abortions, passing hundreds of laws that have set limits on when, where and how people can have the procedure, demand for the cheaper and more convenient abortion pills has soared - including online, where patients have obtained the drug from underground marketplaces as well as approved vendors. In 2001, the drugs were used in just 5 percent of abortions in the U.S. By 2017, that jumped to 39 percent, according to the Guttmacher Institute. The increase came even as the total number of abortions dropped significantly.

Scientists and doctors are increasingly supportive of medication abortions and have long called for scrapping the rules dictating that patients pick them up in person even if they don't swallow them until they get home. They say it's a particularly pressing concern during the pandemic, when the government has moved to limit in-person dispensing - and promote telemedicine - for nearly every other drug.

Jen Villavicencio, an abortion provider and health policy fellow with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told POLITICO that she started going from car to car seeing patients in her clinic's parking lot and dispensing the pills after the Supreme Court intervened in January to restore the Trump administration rules that for several months had been blocked by lower courts.

"We were trying to avoid interactions with other people to try to quell the rising numbers of Covid-19 cases," she said. "Many medications that have much higher risk profiles were allowed to remove the in-person requirement because of the pandemic. But that courtesy and safety measure was not offered to people who were seeking abortion care or miscarriage management."

Medication abortion relies on two pills - misoprostol, which is lightly regulated, and mifepristone, which has been more tightly regulated by FDA since its introduction in the market decades ago.

Yetmifepristone "has very few risks at all," argues Villavicencio. "It is more safe than over-the-counter medications like ibuprofen and Tylenol. We know this medication can be safely administered via telemedicine because we've studied it."

ACOG, along with the American Medical Association and other leading medical groups, has been lobbying the Biden administration and arguing in court that the federal rules for dispensing the pills should be loosened. Their push has been echoed on Capitol Hill, where Democratic lawmakers have urged Biden to allow telemedicine abortions both during the pandemic and beyond.

But the decision still presents a political quandary for Biden, who until recently was relatively conservative on abortion for a Democratic politician.

The president has yet to take a position on the pills. When pressed by the New York Times in 2019 as part of a Democratic primary questionnaire on whether the medications should be over-the-counter, Biden gave a noncommittal answer, unlike several of his then-competitors, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who urged easier access to the pills.

Asked where it stands on the dispensing requirements on the drugs, the Department of Health and Human Services declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation. But Xavier Becerra, California's attorney general who was just confirmed as Biden's HHS secretary, last year led a coalition of 21 Democratic AGs in petitioning the FDA to allow telemedicine abortions at least for the duration of the pandemic.

"Forcing women to unnecessarily seek in-person reproductive healthcare during this public health crisis is foolish and irresponsible," he wrote at the time.

As they await a decision, abortion rights opponents are fighting on two fronts: pushing Congress, state lawmakers and the FDA to enact restrictions on the pills or ban them entirely while also seeking to convince the public that the pills are dangerous.

For the last three years, groups including Students for Life of America have bought ads online and on TV, created mini documentaries, sponsored events on college campuses, and trained members to testify before their state legislatures about possible complications and side effects of the pills and the danger that women could be pressured or tricked into taking them without consent.

With easier telemedicine access to the pills, conservatives warn, even the fall of Roe vs. Wade wouldn't curb their use in states that choose to ban abortion.

"There's always been an issue of people crossing state lines, in order to do things that might be illegal," said Roger Severino, a former top official in Trump's HHS now working for a think tank."It all depends on how the Biden administration reacts: if it fulfills its responsibility it'll clamp down on the black market for it."

Conservative fears around mifepristone are nothing new. When the drug was firstintroduced in the 1990s, politicians including George W. Bush worried the medication would popularize the practice.

Evidence since then - and especially during the pandemic - has borne those fears out. The popularity of so-called teleabortions has increased in the U.S. for years - long before the pandemic - both through the established health care system as well as more informal, underground groups. A January 2020 study in the American Journal of Public Health, for example, found increasing demand for one domestic teleabortion service operating underground in states where state restrictions on in-person abortion clinics increased. The federal government has also been seizing more pills shipped in from abroad, according to a POLITICO analysis of data on the FDA's seizures of misoprostol and mifepristone obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

In 2008, FDA intercepted nine shipments of abortion drugs, according to the FDA data obtained by POLITICO; in 2018, just a decade later, there were 26. The agency's annual totals have varied widely from year to year: a low of 5 in 2015, followed by rises during the Trump administration of 19 in 2017 and 26 in 2018. The number fell to 10 in 2019, the last year for which information is available.

The shifting landscape overseas for access to mifepristone is a potential indicator of how widespread the practice of teleabortion could become in the U.S., whether it gains new footing legally under the Biden administration or is kept underground.

In the United Kingdom, the not-for-profit group MSI Reproductive Choices performed some 16,750 abortions through telemedicine alone in 2020 after the government loosened restrictions on the practice. (The country typically has around 200,000 abortions per year.) A new study of the pandemic year in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology says the practice has been successful: patients wait on average 4 days fewer to get an abortion, with little difference from in-person abortions in safety or effectiveness.

Jonathan Lord, the chief medical officer of the group, says the increased ease in obtaining the medications has had the effect of expanding access to abortion generally. When women had to go in-person to pick up the pills, many vulnerable women - such as those being abused at home - were too fearful to make the trip, worrying that their partners would discover what they were doing.

Now, the health care system can coordinate with social workers and police for people in the group. "They're also the group we would really, really, really like to engage with," Lord said. "That's where telemedicine has really helped."

The change has also diminished the importance of some of the underground groups.

Women on Web, the most prominent international group providing abortion pills through the mail outside of formal health care channels, got contacts from 0 patients in the the U.K. during the first few months of the pandemic - down from 35 or 40 a month. In a study of eight European countries, the group generally found surging demand for its services during the pandemic year - unless the country allowed for more teleabortion.

No matter what decision Biden and other policymakers make in the coming months, these trends are likely to continue long after the threat of Covid-19 has passed. The medication is likely to be the future of the abortion wars, if only because it's the future of abortion.

"There are so many direct and indirect ways that states have moved to limit access to surgical abortion - from waiting periods to parental notification and requirements for special licenses - and I anticipate they would be equally creative with medication abortions," Salganicoff said. "Whether they can stop every pill from coming across the border is another story."

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Will at-home abortions make Roe v. Wade obsolete?

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As the Biden administration deliberates on the federal rules on where, when and from whom patients can get the pills, with a federal court deadline looming in early April, conservatives are already erecting barriers.

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List of Biden's first day executive orders

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List of Biden's first day executive orders

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WASHINGTON, D.C. - President Joe Biden hit the ground running on his first day in office.

Biden signed 15 executive orders and two agency actions on Wednesday evening. The new president's actions were aimed at reversing several of former President Donald Trump's policies, including the pandemic response, the environment, anti-immigration policies, diversity and economic recovery.

"There's no time to start like today," Biden told reporters in the Oval Office.

Here are Biden's executive actions from his first day:

An executive order requiring that people wear masks and maintain social distancing on federal property.

The launch of a "100 Days Masking Challenge" to encourage Americans to wear masks.

Wearing masks isn't a partisan issue - it's a patriotic act that can save countless lives. That's why I signed an executive order today issuing a mask mandate on federal property. It's time to mask up, America.
- President Biden (@POTUS) January 21, 2021

The reversal of Trump's decision to remove the U.S. from the World Health Organization. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, will lead the American delegation, CNN reported.

An executive order that creates the position of COVID-19 response coordinator and restores the Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, a team in charge of the pandemic response, within the National Security Council.

An executive order to extend eviction and foreclosure moratoriums. The moratorium for evictions will be extended until at least March 31.

Extended the existing pause on student loan payments and interest for Americans with federal student loans until at least Sept. 30. "These are emergency measures that will help to make sure that no American is put in the place of having to make the decision to pay their student loan payment or put food on the table in the short term and will help to provide some near-term relief," Brian Deese, the new director of the White House National Economic Council, told The Washington Post.

An "instrument" that will allow the U.S. to rejoin the Paris Agreement on climate change within 30 days. The executive order fulfilled a campaign promise and represented a stark rebuke of Trump's "America First" approach, the Post reported. Trump officially withdrew the nation from the Paris agreement on Nov. 4.

An executive order with the aim of "embedding equity across federal policymaking and rooting out systemic racism and other barriers to opportunity from federal programs and institutions." This order will also disband the Trump administration's 1776 Commission, which released a report on Monday that historians said distorted the role of slavery in the U.S.

An executive order reversing an order that excluded undocumented immigrants from the Census. The order now requires non-citizens to be included in the Census and the apportionment of congressional representatives.

A memorandum directing officials to "preserve and fortify" the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The memo strengthens DACA after Trump's efforts to undo protections for undocumented people who were brought into the country as children.

Biden issues his executive order on DACA:

"The Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Attorney General, shall take all actions he deems appropriate, consistent with applicable law, to preserve and fortify DACA." pic.twitter.com/6D2PKIV8ow
- Hamed Aleaziz (@Haleaziz) January 21, 2021

An executive action repealing two proclamations, informally known as the "Muslim ban" that restricted entry into the U.S. from majority-Muslim countries. Biden directed the State Department to restart visa processing for individuals from the affected countries, The New York Times reported. The president also asked the agency to develop ways to address the harm caused to those who were prevented from coming to the United States because of the ban.

An executive order revoking Trump's "harsh and extreme immigration enforcement" and directing agencies to set immigration policies more "in line" with the Biden administration's "values and priorities."

A proclamation that will pause the construction of the border wall with Mexico and determine how to best divert those funds elsewhere. The order includes an "immediate termination" of the national emergency declaration that allowed the Trump administration to redirect billions of dollars to the wall, the Times reported.

A memorandum to extend a designation allowing Liberians who have been in the United States for a long time to remain. The order would block the deportation of Liberians who have been living in the United States.

An executive order directing the government to interpret the Civil Rights Act as prohibiting workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, in addition to race, color, religion, sex and national origin.

An executive order enacting new ethics rules for government officials. The rules will require executive branch appointees to sign an ethics pledge, barring them from acting in their personal interest.

An executive order reversing "regulatory process executive orders" enacted by the Trump administration. Directs OMB director to develop recommendations to modernize regulatory review and reverses Trump's regulatory approval process.

Biden is expected to sign more executive orders relating to the coronavirus on Thursday and economic relief on Friday, the Post reported. A "Buy American" action is expected Monday, and an order addressing racial equity issues will follow Tuesday.

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Bob D'Angelo, Cox Media Group National Content Desk

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Here are the executive orders signed on President Joe Biden's first day

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WASHINGTON, D.C. - President Joe Biden hit the ground running on his first day in office. Biden signed 15 executive orders and two agency actions on Wednesday evening. The new president's actions were aimed at reversing several of former President Donald Trump's policies, including the pandemic response, the environment, anti-immigration policies, diversity and economic recovery.

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Virginia becomes first state in the Old South to legalise adult marijuana use

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Virginia becomes first state in the Old South to legalise adult marijuana use

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The vote came after a conference committee struck a deal on Saturday to reconcile different versions of the bill that passed in both chambers earlier this month.

The impact: Virginia is the 16th U.S. state to pass an adult-use marijuana legalization law, though sales would not start until 2024. Only two other states - Illinois and Vermont - have passed legislation to legalize, tax and regulate recreational marijuana through the legislature.

The move puts pressure on neighboring states such as Maryland, where an adult-use legalization bill got its first hearing this month. New Jersey also recently enacted legalization, after voters overwhelmingly backed a referendum in November.

What's next: Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam has championed legalization as a racial justice issue.

Under the compromise legislation, marijuana possession would not become legal until January 2024, when regulated sales are scheduled to start. The state would start setting up a marijuana regulatory agency this July.

The background: The state decriminalized marijuana last year during a special session to address criminal justice reform. Virginia's medical marijuana program is just getting off the ground, and lawmakers passed a bill this session that would expand the program to allow marijuana flower products.

Northam endorsed legalization in November and urged lawmakers to pass his proposal during his state of the state address. The legislation was based on two extensive studies on the issue: a report from his administration and another from the nonpartisan Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee.

The bills moved quickly through the chambers during a short, 30-day session, which Northam extended with a special session of 16 days. Lawmakers tackled thorny issues such as how to prevent large corporations from taking over the marijuana market, and how to handle automatic expungements of marijuana offenses when the criminal justice system lacks the technology to do so.

Opponents of marijuana legalization pointed to public health concerns such as youth use and impaired driving, as well as tobacco giant Altria's lobbying on the issue. Altria purchased a $1.8 billion stake in Canadian cannabis company Cronos Group in 2018.

Marijuana advocates pointed to the harms of the disproportionate enforcement of marijuana offenses in communities of color. The bill contains robust social equity provisions, includingprioritizingbusiness licenses for individuals deemed to have been disproportionately impacted by criminal enforcement,which dissuaded some otherwise supportive Republicans from voting for the bill.

"Initially, I was supportive of the approach that is encompassed in this bill," said GOPSenate Minority Leader Thomas Norment during floor debate. Norment pointed to his advocacy of the marijuana decriminalization bill that passed last year.

"I just don't accept this social equity set aside on the issuance of licenses. We don't do it for alcohol, we don't do it for other matters," he said.

The details: The bill would allow adults over 21 to possess up to 1 ounce of marijuana. Home cultivation would be allowed under the bill - up to two mature and two immature plants per household.

The bill sets a 21 percent excise tax on marijuana and allows municipalities to add an additional 3 percent tax on retailers on top of existing sales taxes.Marijuana tax revenues would be used to fund pre-K education, substance use disorder treatment programs and other public health initiatives. A portion of revenues would also go toward a Cannabis Equity Reinvestment Fund, which would provide resources such as scholarships and workforce development for communities disproportionately impacted by drug enforcement.

Vertical integration would be allowed in limited circumstances to grandfather in medical cannabis producers and industrial hemp processors. Micro-businesses would be allowed to vertically integrate as well.

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Virginia joins 15 other states in legalizing marijuana

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The vote came after a conference committee struck a deal on Saturday to reconcile different versions of the bill that passed in both chambers earlier this month. The impact: Virginia is the 16th U.S. state to pass an adult-use marijuana legalization law, though sales would not start until 2024.

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The resolution of the process and terms of the UK's departure from the EU finally ends what has been an intense preoccupation for both sides since June 2016, characterized by considerable domestic political dislocation in the UK, paralysis in its parliamentary politics, and a shock to the political psyche of the European integration process.

Despite this being a largely parochial affair, negotiations on Brexit and the future relationship engendered a real concern to preserve unity among the 27 member states, and the extent to which the EU and the UK actually share the same geopolitical and geo-economic challenges was a notable absence from the talks.

Now those talks have concluded, the EU and its member states have yet to collectively exercise much imagination in considering how they might want to cooperate with the UK on major international issues with the UK now effectively becoming a 'third country' in any discussions.

So far the EU27's ambitions have been limited to offering nothing more than its standard anodyne third country arrangements, which provide neither meaningful consultation or substantive joint action on foreign and security policy. For its part, the UK has been stymied in formulating a coherent post-Brexit European strategy because its position in Europe's political economy remained unsettled while the terms of the future trading relationship were undetermined.

The costs and benefits to the UK economy created by the new trading terms will remain disputed for some time to come, and a full evaluation of the economic effects may have to wait for up to a decade. But the broader political consequences of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement are more easily discerned.

The EU has lost a member state and a precedent is now set for how to unravel the obligations of membership, while a new style of EU trade relationship with a neighbouring state has been established, one which is not based on the ambition of closer integration with the regulatory framework of the EU single market. The 'UK-style' relationship can be added to the growing list of alternative models for EU membership, alongside the Norwegian/EEA, Swiss, and Ukraine-style (Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement) relationships.

For the UK, Brexit triggered new fissures as the politics of nationalist movements in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland were infused with a new rationale for succession from the United Kingdom to facilitate them each regaining their own membership of the EU. And the Boris Johnson-led UK government has been forced to accept the UK's own internal market cannot operate uniformly across its territory.

As Northern Ireland embarks on its own relationship with the EU's single market, using different market regulatory processes from the rest of the UK demarcated by a 'paperwork' border in the Irish Sea, its already-distinctive status within the United Kingdom - thanks to the Good Friday Agreement - will deepen.

Meanwhile, the push for independence in Scotland appears likely to become an all-consuming political debate on the future of the union of the United Kingdom if, as anticipated, the Scottish National Party uses Scottish parliament elections in May 2021 as a proxy for a new referendum on secession.

At least opposition to Scottish independence may unify a Westminster parliament left bitterly divided over Brexit - both between and within the two main UK political parties. Party political debate in Westminster is now likely to focus on whether to deepen or further weaken ties with the EU, rather than a push for re-entry.

Formal approval of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement signals the start of the 'new normal' in the EU-UK relationship, and the symbolic nature of finally reaching a formal agreement after all the political turmoil can be a basis for tangible substantive cooperation beyond trade. But there needs to be broader and deeper consideration in London, Brussels, and the EU member state capitals as to the expectations for their future relations.

The UK remains intertwined with the security of Europe and has a significant stake in the continuing stability and well-being of the EU's single market and the Euro. And the EU has an overwhelming interest in the success of its 'new neighbour' in terms of the UK economy, political integrity, and cohesiveness of society.

But the near future should not take the form of a push from Brussels or member state capitals to negotiate further formal agreements on issues excluded from the trade and cooperation agreement, such as foreign policy or defence. There is little appetite from the UK side for fresh negotiations right now, given a strong domestic political imperative to be able to signal the Brexit process has concluded.

However, a mutual interest in the security and stability of each other is apparent in their shared set of international challenges, such as China, climate change, the US commitment to the multilateral international order, the stability of Europe's neighbourhood, and especially future relations with Russia.

For now, perhaps a shared EU-UK New Year's resolution is to reflect on their mutual international interests, and to agree that rebuilding a shared automatic reflex for cooperation still serves the best interests of both sides of the English Channel.

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EU-UK Relations: Time for a 'New Normal' post-Brexit

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The resolution of the process and terms of the UK's departure from the EU finally ends what has been an intense preoccupation for both sides since June 2016, characterized by considerable domestic political dislocation in the UK, paralysis in its parliamentary politics, and a shock to the political psyche of the European integration process.

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LGBTQ rights bill passes through the House

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LGBTQ rights bill passes through the House

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The Greene-Newman incident has revived a thorny issue for the GOP, which has wrestled over its stance on gay marriage and battled accusations that it's not inclusive or protective of LGBTQ rights. Just last year, former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.) was censured by his state party for officiating a same-sex marriage; he wound up losing his primary race.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), who is hosting a transgender person on his podcast next week to discuss military issues, said it's "pretty damn important" for the GOP to clearly articulate why they oppose this particular bill.

"There's definitely a wrong way to message everything," he added.

For Democrats, Greene's comments about Newman's daughter only underscore the importance of passing the LGBTQ rights bill, which is unlikely to pass the Senate in its current form. Advocates for the LGBTQ community argue that the sort of federal protections the bill would enshrine are long overdue, especially because more than half of states in the U.S. lack explicit legal protections for those discriminated against on the basis of sexuality or gender identity.

"When you tell people that in a majority of states in this country, you can either be kicked out of your apartment, fired from your job, or denied service in a restaurant because you're gay or in the LGBTQ community, people think that can't be true," Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), the lead House co-sponsor of the bill, told POLITICO in an interview.

The LGBTQ rights bill would ban discrimination in various areas, including the workplace, housing and education, in addition to federally funded programs. The legislation also would expand the 1964 bill to cover public accommodations to include places like shopping malls, sports arenas, and even websites.

The measure's House passage comes on the heels of President Joe Biden ending Donald Trump's ban on transgender troops serving in the military. The bill passed the House in 2019, but LGBTQ activists are elated that it now has a shot at becoming law with Biden in the White House.

"It is time to move together to ensure LGBTQ people have the chance to belong, to participate and to succeed in all areas of American life," Sarah Kate Ellis, president of the LGBTQ rights group GLAAD, said in a statement after the House vote.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has promised that the legislation will get a floor vote "at exactly the right time." But it will need 10 Senate Republican votes in order to beat back a GOP filibuster. That won't be easy: Most Republicans, as well as some religious groups, warn that the LGBTQ rights bill would chip at religious liberty protections, leading to lengthy and pricey court battles.

House GOP leadership did not formally whip against the bill, but Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) said leaders have been recommending a "no" vote. Republicans also discussed their gripes with the measure during their weekly conference meeting, and ultimately two went from supporting it in 2019 to opposing it on Thursday: New York Rep. Elise Stefanik and Florida Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart.

The three Republicans who supported the LGBTQ rights bill were Reps. John Katko of New York, Tom Reed of New York and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.

On top of the Republicans and religious leaders who fear the broad language in the bill fails to clarify that "places of accommodation" does not include places of worship, like churches and synagogues. Other conservatives object to the LGBTQ rights expansion outright, arguing it would alter the country's social fabric by blurring gender lines in women's sports and other cultural practices.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) explained his opposition to the bill in terms of both its effects on religious liberty and women's sports.

"If you look at Biden's appointments[of] Cabinet members, suing nuns and others, this really seems like an onslaught against freedom of religion. For girls' sports as well," McCarthy said in a press conference. "Now the Democrats have even taken it further."

Utah GOP Rep. Chris Stewart, who has previously introduced his own compromise legislation aimed at protecting LGBTQ rights as well as religious freedom, said he plans to reintroduce his approach on Friday. It has won support from key religious groups but drawn quick, vocal pushback from civil rights and LGBTQ groups as failing to live up to its middle-ground billing.

"It isn't an either-or," Stewartsaid, referring to protecting LGBTQ rights and religious freedom. "We believe it can be both."

But that message has been complicated by Greene, who has insisted "there are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE" and hung an anti-transgender sign outside her office after Newman -- whose office neighbors Greene's -- hung a pink and blue transgender pride flag.

On the House floor, Greene argued the Equality Act "will put trans rights above women's rights," calling the bill "too much." She's already caused plenty of headaches for her colleagues with incendiary remarks, including support for conspiracy theories such as the false claim that mass shootings were staged.

One GOP lawmaker privately dismissed Greene's behavior as nothing more than attention-seeking, especially after she was stripped from her committee assignments over her behavior before offering an apology widely perceived as half-hearted at best.

But other Republicans went further, expressing worry that Greene's shenanigans could be a drag on the GOP and turn off the young, moderate and independent voters who will be crucial in the 2022 midterms and beyond.

"This is sad and I'm sorry this happened. Rep. Newman's daughter is transgender," tweeted Rep. Adam Kinzinger(R-Ill.), who noted that "this garbage must end" in order to restore the GOP. Greene's decision to antagonize Newman, he wrote, "represents the hate and fame driven politics of self-promotion at all evil costs."

Stewart, meanwhile, declined to directly comment on Greene. But, he added, "the less controversial we make this, the better it is. I will say that."

The GOP's potential political problems on the issue of LGBTQ rights are hardly limited to the raucous House. Across the Capitol, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) went after Dr. Rachel Levine, Biden's pick for assistant secretary of health, who's poised to become the first ever openly transgender official confirmed by the Senate.

Paul, an ophthalmologist, pushed Levine on her views on medical care for transgender teens, claiming hormone therapy leads to "women with beards" and alleging that young trans people are "confused."

Levine, a pediatrician by training, responded calmly that transgender health care is "complex and nuanced" and offered to meet with Paul privately to walk through the issue. He responded that she did not answer the question and said he's "alarmed" by her support for medical care for trans minors.

Committee chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) rebuked Paul a few minutes later for making "ideological and harmful misrepresentations" and told the whole panel to stick to questions about the nominee's professional qualifications.

"It is critical to me that our nominees be treated with respect," she said.
Alice Miranda Ollstein contributed.

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Historic LGBTQ rights bill passes - after exposing GOP divisions

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The Greene-Newman incident has revived a thorny issue for the GOP, which has wrestled over its stance on gay marriage and battled accusations that it's not inclusive or protective of LGBTQ rights. Just last year, former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.) was censured by his state party for officiating a same-sex marriage; he wound up losing his primary race.

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The Accidental Anarchist | Carne Ross | TEDxSkoll

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UK Supreme Court upholds ruling on Uber as employer

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UK Supreme Court upholds ruling on Uber as employer

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UK Supreme Court rules Uber drivers are workers

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The ride hailing app's drivers are workers rather than self-employed, the court says.

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A selection of programmes discussing feminism

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A selection of programmes discussing feminism

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BBC Radio 4 - Start the Week, Feminism: Natasha Walter and Catherine Hakim, Feminism

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Programmes that explore feminist theory and its impact on the world.

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Melvyn Bragg discusses the rise of Feminism and the subsequent empowerment of women. What have been the most lasting changes for women in the last century and what is there still left to achieve?

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most important events of the 20th century - the rise of Feminism and the subsequent empowerment of women. What have been the most important and lasting changes for women in the last 100 years and what is there still left to achieve? Are the biological differences between men and women insuperable? Is the feminist movement therefore set on a course it is inevitably bound to lose? Is the ideology of feminism in other words, working against our natural inclinations?If a man were to say "men are by nature more competitive, ambitious, status-conscious, dedicated, single-minded and persevering than women" then you could be forgiven for calling him anti-diluvian, blinkered and worse. But this is the express view of Dr Helena Cronin from the London School of Economics - a philosopher who has concentrated on Darwinian theory which she claims has never seriously been applied to humans. Joining her is Dr Germaine Greer whose book The Female Eunuch is credited with changing the lives of a generation of women. With Dr Helena Cronin, Co-director of the Centre for the Philosophy of the Natural and Social Sciences, London School of Economics; Dr Germaine Greer, Professor of English and Comparative Studies, Warwick University.

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Melvyn Bragg discusses the rise of Feminism and the subsequent empowerment of women. What have been the most lasting changes for women in the last century and what is there still left to achieve? Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most important events of the 20th century - the rise of Feminism and the subsequent empowerment of women.

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Defining

Nationalism is the belief that the nation should be the central unit of political organisation, as the nation is the only community which is of significance. There are many different forms of nationalism and it is not one cohesive ideology.

Core ideas and principles

Nations: A nation is a group of people. It can be defined as a group of people who share particular characteristics, such as language, history, culture, religion, and so on. It can be difficult to define a nation, as factors such as language and history may be more or less important to different groups of people. Therefore, if people identify themselves as being part of a nation, this is the key categorisation of a nation.

Different nations have different characteristics and beliefs about what is important. The French consider language and cuisine to be important, and religion not important. Belgium, on the other hand, has more than one language, and Italy places emphasis on the Catholic religion. The USA does not have a particularly long history and is made up of many different ethnic backgrounds, so instead, commonality is seen through ideas such as the 'American Dream'- the idea that anyone can succeed if they work hard enough.

Self-determination: This refers to the ability to decide how one is governed, or a nation ruling itself. This is based on the idea that, as the nation is the central form of political organisation, it is only right that the members of that nation are allowed to govern themselves, as they will know what is in their best interest.

Different types of nationalists have different views on self-determination. Some believe that the key to a stable world is one made up of independent nation-states, whereas others believe only their nation has the right to self-determination, at the expense of others. Conflicts throughout history have been fought on the principle of self-determination, such as the Balkans war of 1990, where different ethnic groups fought for the right of self-rule following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Nation-state: A state is a geographical area with clear boundaries, therefore the nation-state is one in which a group of people regarding themselves as a nation rule themselves in their own sovereign territory. This is closely related to the concept of self-determination, and usually today the nation-state is the way a country is organised. This has not always been the case, for example, the nation of Germany was divided into two nation-states for much of the 20 th century.

Liberal nationalists aim to create a world composed of nation-states. Other forms of nationalism, for example, chauvinistic nationalism, suggest only some nations benefit from 'nation-statehood', whereas others should accept that they are better off as colonies of these 'stronger' nations.

Colonialism (also known as imperialism) was the accepted practice of many countries in history. It involves one country controlling another, by invasion, settlement or economic domination. Great Britain had the largest empire in history, made up of many African and Asian countries, now known as the 'commonwealth'. Pursuing an Empire was seen as a good way of displaying power and ensuring prestige. As a consequence, there were fewer nation-states the further back in history one goes.

Culturalism: This argues that people have a deep, emotional tie to their nation. This is in contrast with civic nationalism (of which liberal nationalism is an example), which is based on a more rational or reason-based approach, suggesting there are rights and responsibilities which are agreed on and accepted by each member of the nation.

Culturalism suggests that each nation has an 'essence', referred to by Herder as the volksgeist ('spirit' of a nation). This is revealed through art, history, culture and shared stories or folktales. Herder's ideas have been used to support expansionist nationalism, the idea that, as a nation's spirit can be argued to be stronger than other nations', colonial domination can be justified (Herder himself rejected this idea).

Civic nationalism suggests that one can join a nation instantaneously, whereas culturalism suggests that membership of a nation takes time to develop. Being German does not, therefore, mean living in Germany and being able to speak German, but having spent years living as a German, becoming absorbed in Germany's culture and lifestyle. Culturalism links with patriotism- the belief of pride in one's nation and having a strong emotional connection to it.

Culturalism does not have to necessarily lead to a desire for statehood. In Wales, for example, the Welsh language is preserved, as well as particular ways of life, but this has not translated into a popular desire for Wales to become a separate country (like many in Scotland wish).

Racialism: This is the belief that a person's race (their biological background), is a significant aspect of their character, and that racial divisions are politically significant. Different races, therefore, have distinct qualities, and this may lead to a belief in the inherent superiority or inferiority of certain races. This leads to the idea of a racial hierarchy, and support for policies which ensure the separation of different races, in order to preserve their distinct characteristics.

Race can be distinguished from ethnicity, as ethnicity not only considers biological background but also a person's culture, the culture of their parents or upbringing, their language, religion, and other factors.

Internationalism: This is the belief that people should look beyond traditional national boundaries, in order to make a better world and work in the interests of more people than just the citizens of one nation.
There are two main types:

1. Liberal internationalism: individual nations have the right to self-determination (like individuals have the right to autonomy and freedom). These independent nation-states will naturally seek to co-operate with each other, by exchanging goods and services. This will lead to an interdependent network of states, which is inherently peaceful- as the costs of conflict would be too high. To help resolve disputes, supranational institutions (such as the EU) can play a part.

2. Socialist internationalism:__ __concerned with extending principles of harmony, cooperation and community across all of humanity, believing that nations are an artificial way of dividing people. Nationalism and patriotism are ways by which false consciousness are maintained amongst workers, to prevent them from realising the fact of their exploitation. Marx suggested 'the working man has no country'. Lenin suggested that one reason why capitalism has survived was the exploitation of workers in various countries, which allowed for improved wages and conditions in the 'host' country. This type of internationalism rejects nationalist thinking.

Nationalist views on:

1. Human nature: there is a range of views in how nationalists view human nature. A common one is that human nature is reflected as a natural instinct and humans naturally wish to be united around common themes. Liberal nationalists see humans as rational individuals who will make choices out of free will. Conservative nationalists see humans as drawn to the familiar and known, which means nationalism unites a people with common traits.

2. State: again, there is a range of views. Liberal nationalists view the state as a body which nations aspire to and the ideal preference is a world of nation-states. Conservative nationalists use the state as a device to unite a country and place it as a focal point of unity and trust, promoting the values of patriotism for the state. Expansionist nationalists use and view the state as a means of dominance, over both the indigenous inhabitants and as a means of challenging other states. In extremes, loyalty to the state is demanded from all citizens.

3. Society: nationalists share a common view of society, in that it is defined in terms of ethnic or cultural traits. Society to that extent is a series of mono-cultural segments. Society is held together and identified by widely held ideas and beliefs - there is no division. Nationalists would see a multicultural society as unstable and not able to unify and work together for any common goal.

4. Economy: nationalism is a cross-cutting doctrine, in that it can attach to views across the political spectrum, so there is no distinct or single economic view which emerges from nationalism. Nationalists on the extreme have willingly used economic planning to command the economy in terms of production. Conservative nationalists have been sceptical of large organisations with an international character taking ownership of a country's economic capital.

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Nationalism - A Level Politics Edexcel Revision - Study Rocket

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Nationalism is the belief that the nation should be the central unit of political organisation, as the nation is the only community which is of significance. There are many different forms of nationalism and it is not one cohesive ideology. Nations: A nation is a group of people.

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self-determination and secession: 5.1 ideology: a contested concept

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What makes a 'nation' and what makes peoples strive for nationhood? This free course, Nationalism, self-determination and secession, will provide you with an introduction to studying political...

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Professor Tariq Modood fromB Bristol University on Multiculturalism

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Professor Tariq Modood fromB Bristol University on Multiculturalism

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About this Course

In this course, Professor Tariq Modood (University of Bristol) explores the idea of multiculturalism. In the first module, we think about what constitutes 'difference' between distinct groups in a multicultural society. In the second module, we think about the different meanings of 'equality' that are relevant in a multicultural society - equality as equal rights and the idea of equality as respect for difference. And in the third module, we think about the relationship between multiculturalism, citizenship and national identity, and in particular the compatibility between a multicultural society and a strong national identity.

About the Lecturer

Tariq Modood is Professor of Sociology, Politics and Public Policy at the University of Bristol. Over the last twenty-five years, he has worked on the theory and politics of racism, racial equality, and multiculturalism and secularism, with special reference to British Asian Muslims. Some of his more recent publications include Multiculturalism: A Civic Idea (2007) and (co-authored with G. Levey) Secularism, Religion and Multicultural Citizenship.

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About this Course In this course, Professor Tariq Modood (University of Bristol) explores the idea of multiculturalism. In the first module, we think about what constitutes 'difference' between distinct groups in a multicultural society.

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Professor Ruth Kinna from Loughborough University on Anarchism

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Professor Ruth Kinna from Loughborough University on Anarchism

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About this Course

In this course, Professor Ruth Kinna (Loughborough University) explores the idea of anarchism. In the first five modules, we introduce five key figures in anarchist thinking: Max Stirner (1806-65), Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-65), Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876), Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), and Emma Goldman (1869-1940). After that, we spend five modules exploring four key principles in anarchism: rejection of the state, liberty, economic freedom and utopianism. In the eleventh, twelfth and thirteen modules, we think about six different types of anarchism - individualism, collectivism, communism, egoism, social anarchism and syndicalism - before turning in the final four modules to explore seven key concepts in anarchism: power, authority, government, the state, altruism, autonomy and direct action.

About the Lecturer

Ruth Kinna is Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Politics and International Studies at Loughborough University. She is a political theorist and historian of ideas with research interests in anarchism, nineteenth and early twentieth-century socialist thought, utopianism and contemporary radicalism. Her book William Morris: The Art of Socialism was published in 2000. She has since published The Beginner's Guide to Anarchism (Oneworld, 2005/2009), Kropotkin: Reviewing the Classical Anarchist Tradition (University of Edinburgh, 2016) and The Government of No One (Pelican, 2019).

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About this Course In this course, Professor Ruth Kinna (Loughborough University) explores the idea of anarchism. In the first five modules, we introduce five key figures in anarchist thinking: Max Stirner (1806-65), Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-65), Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876), Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), and Emma Goldman (1869-1940).

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Dr Shelley Budgeon from the University of Birmingham on Feminism

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Dr Shelley Budgeon from the University of Birmingham on Feminism

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About this Course

In this module, Dr Shelley Budgeon (University of Birmingham) explores feminism and some of the core ideas that constitute feminist thought. In the first module, we introduce some of the key concepts that are important in contemporary feminist theory. After that, in the following two modules, we think about the history of feminism, beginning in the second module with an exploration of first- and second-wave feminism and turning in the third module to Marxist and Postmodernist approaches to feminism. In the fourth module, we think about the concept of intersectionality, one of the most important developments in feminist thought of the past twenty years. In the fifth module, we think about how we theorise masculinity and the role masculinity plays in gender inequality. Finally, in the sixth module, we explore some of the current debates in feminism today - its achievements, what still needs to be done, and where we might be going next.

About the Lecturer

Dr Shelley Budgeon is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology who specializes in gender and feminist theory. Her research analyses the impact of various forces of social change on the constitution of gender relations and the performance of gendered identities. Her expertise encompasses theories of gendered subjectivity; feminist politics; gender, postfeminism and neoliberalism; sexuality and personal life; embodiment; theories of new materialism; and the structure of gendered organizations. Her books include Third Wave Feminism and the Politics of Gender in Late Modernity (Palgrave, 2011) and Choosing a Self: Young Women and the Individualization of Identity (Praegar, 2003).

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About this Course In this module, Dr Shelley Budgeon (University of Birmingham) explores feminism and some of the core ideas that constitute feminist thought. In the first module, we introduce some of the key concepts that are important in contemporary feminist theory.

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Professor Eric Kaufmann from Birkbeck College on Nationalism

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Professor Eric Kaufmann from Birkbeck College on Nationalism

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About this Course

In this course, Professor Eric Kaufmann (Birkbeck, University of London) provides an overview of Nationalism. In the first module, we define some of the key terms - 'the state', 'ethnicity', 'the nation' - as well as considering the question of whether the nation is by definition a modern phenomenon. In the second module, we think about some of the different types of nationalist movements, including unificatory, secessionist and irredentist movements, as well as the various forms of cultural nationalism. In the third module, we consider the usefulness of the distinction between 'ethnic nationalism' and 'civic nationalism' (a typology described by Hans Kohn in The Idea of Nationalism, 1944), before turning in the fourth module to the interaction between nationalism and the concepts of ethnicity, culture and race. In the fifth module, we think about how readily nationalism combines with other ideologies, before moving on in the sixth module to consider the effect globalisation is having on the nation state and nationalism.

About the Lecturer

Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth (2010), The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America (2004), The Orange Order (2007) and Unionism and Orangeism in Northern Ireland since 1945 - with H. Patterson (2007). He is co-editor, among others, of Political Demography (2012) and Whither the Child: Causes and Consequences of Low Fertility (2012), and editor of Rethinking Ethnicity: Majority Groups and Dominant Minorities (2004). An editor of the journal Nations & Nationalism, he has written for Newsweek International, Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines, and blogs at Huffington Post. His current ESRC grant, affiliated with the think tank Demos, examines white working-class responses to diversity in the UK. He may be found on twitter at @epkaufm.

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About this Course In this course, Professor Eric Kaufmann (Birkbeck, University of London) provides an overview of Nationalism. In the first module, we define some of the key terms - 'the state', 'ethnicity', 'the nation' - as well as considering the question of whether the nation is by definition a modern phenomenon.

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Professor Matthew Humphrey from Nottingham University on Ecologism

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Professor Matthew Humphrey from Nottingham University on Ecologism

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About this Lecture

In this first module, we develop a definition of ecologism, thinking in particular about: (i) ecologism's roots in the nineteenth-century science of ecology; (ii) the main distinctions that philosopher Arne Naess identifies between the 'shallow' and 'deep, long-range' ecology movements; and (iii) Naess's key conceptual contributions to ecologism, including his 'total field' view of nature, 'biospherical egalitarianism', and 'classless diversity'.

About this Course

In this course, Professor Matthew Humphrey (University of Nottingham) thinks about ecologism as a political ideology by surveying five key thinkers to illustrate both the diversity of ecological thought, and its core unifying themes. We begin in the first module by developing a definition of ecologism and considering how to organise its various ideological strands, focusing in particular on the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess's distinction between the 'shallow' and 'deep' ecology movements. We then begin our survey of key thinkers with the American conservationist Aldo Leopold, focusing in particular on his philosophy of the 'land ethic'. Then, in the third module, we consider the life and work of Rachel Carson, whose 1962 book Silent Spring is widely considered to have catalysed the modern environmentalist movement. In the fourth module, we foreground the German economist Ernst Friedrich Schumacher and examine the impact of his book Small is Beautiful (1973) on the ecologism movement. Our fourth key thinker is Carolyn Merchant, whose ecofeminism argued that the domination of nature was intimately linked to unequal gender relations. We end with the anarchist philosopher Murray Bookchin, who maintained that the root cause of environmental crises were the dual evils of hierarchy and domination within human societies, relations which he argued were then projected onto the natural world.

About the Lecturer

Matthew Humphrey is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Nottingham. He specialises in three areas of political theory in particular: (i) the theory of environmental politics; (ii) analytical political philosophy and theories of justice; and (iii) theories of ideology.

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About this Lecture In this first module, we develop a definition of ecologism, thinking in particular about: (i) ecologism's roots in the nineteenth-century science of ecology; (ii) the main distinctions that philosopher Arne Naess identifies between the 'shallow' and 'deep, long-range' ecology movements; and (iii) Naess's key conceptual contributions to ecologism, including his 'total field' view of nature, 'biospherical egalitarianism', and 'classless diversity'.

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Ecologism/Environmentalism denotes a social movement and an ideology or philosophy that focuses on the sustainable development and management of the earth's limited natural resources. According to Wikipedia, the term 'Ecologism' is more commonly used on the European continent while the term 'Environmentalism' is more frequently used in England. While Environmentalism focuses more on the environmental aspects of green ideology and politics, Ecologism combines the ideology of social ecology and environmentalism.

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Ecologism/Environmentalism Ecologism/Environmentalism denotes a social movement and an ideology or philosophy that focuses on the sustainable development and management of the earth's limited natural resources. According to Wikipedia, the term 'Ecologism' is more commonly used on the European continent while the term 'Environmentalism' is more frequently used in England.

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Miles of streets have been blocked off with concrete barriers and metal fences, with more than 20,000 National Guard expected to deploy. The FBI has warned of more possible violence and armed marches planned by pro-Trump supporters.

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Biden inauguration: Executive orders to reverse Trump policies

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Miles of streets have been blocked off with concrete barriers and metal fences, with more than 20,000 National Guard expected to deploy. The FBI has warned of more possible violence and armed marches planned by pro-Trump supporters.

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US Congress overrides presidential veto - bipartisanship is still alive!

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US Congress overrides presidential veto - bipartisanship is still alive!

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"Unfortunately, the Act fails to include critical national security measures, includes provisions that fail to respect our veterans and our military's history, and contradicts efforts by my administration to put America first in our national security and foreign policy actions," he said in a statement.

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US Congress overrides Trump defence spending bill veto

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"Unfortunately, the Act fails to include critical national security measures, includes provisions that fail to respect our veterans and our military's history, and contradicts efforts by my administration to put America first in our national security and foreign policy actions," he said in a statement.

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Brexit Select Committee advises Britain not ready for no deal

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Brexit Select Committee advises Britain not ready for no deal

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Significant concerns have been expressed over the country's preparedness for leaving the EU by an influential group of MPs less than two weeks before Brexit day on 31 December.

The Commons' Brexit select committee has called on the government to ensure there is a robust contingency plan in place in the next fortnight to cope with the fallout as it criticises the lack of an "overall state of readiness" for business and citizens.

Many of the details of the new trade and travel barriers are only beginning to sink in. Some will not emerge until it is known if the UK and the EU have been able to hammer out a deal before the Sunday deadline.

The committee has warned that borders must not be compromised if there is no agreement on policing that ensures continued access to law enforcement tools including the European arrest warrant.

"With just seven working days until the end of the transition period, significant concerns remain," said Hilary Benn, chair of the committee.

The warning comes in a report published on Saturday as Downing Street and Brussels continue to try to hammer out a deal, deadlocked over fishing, by the European parliament's deadline.

"At this late stage the government must be ready to implement contingency plans where necessary to mitigate the effects of any disruption. Failure to do so would mean the worst possible start to the new year for many people and businesses who are already experiencing the toughest of times," the report says.

Benn said the government "still cannot provide business, traders and citizens with certainty about what will happen in all the areas affected by the negotiations".

The report adds that decisions have been made "too late", communication with businesses has been "patchy at best" and police may be forced to use "slower and more cumbersome" systems.

The cross-party committee, which backed the report unanimously, warned that the combination of Brexit uncertainty and Covid-19 could hamper UK businesses.

Provisions to ensure the UK border is "secure and safe" must be put in place while ministers must carefully monitor the effectiveness of alternative means of intelligence sharing for law enforcement, the report says.

If the UK crashes out without a deal it loses access not just to the joint arrest system but also to four other systems including: live passenger number records vital in counter-terror operations; the Schengen Information System II database of missing persons and stolen goods; fingerprinting and DNA records in a system known as Prüm; and the European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS), which holds records of criminals across the bloc.

Prior to connecting to the Prüm DNA framework, which contains millions of records on criminal suspects, data exchange was done manually by the UK's National Crime Agency.

The government has said it would still be able to co-operate with EU security and police counterparts using Interpol and other forums.

However police representatives have said the alternatives will leave the UK in a weaker position.

While the precise nature of future co-operation with the EU on law enforcement remains unclear, the UK's safety and security must not be compromised, the MPs say.

They recognise that UK law enforcement agencies have been working hard to develop alternatives to EU databases but warn "the fallback systems for exchanging data are slower and more cumbersome".

They say a EU-UK surrender agreement to replace the European arrest warrant is "unlikely" to be ready in time and urge the government to open talks with the Irish government over bilateral policing arrangements for the island of Ireland.

The MPs praise the government for its early decision to phase in customs and regulatory controls in three stages between January and July, and the recent agreement on the implementation of the Northern Ireland protocol.

But they call on Westminster to work with the devolved governments to "minimise traffic disruption" near British ports, citing the lack of veterinary officers to provide health certificates for food and animal products mandatory for exports to the EU from 1 January.

Decisions on the border model are complicated but have been made "too late" and the "late delivery" of IT systems for customs makes training and testing difficult. The MPs warn that trade with the EU may be hindered if sufficient numbers of customs and veterinary staff to perform checks and give advice are not in place.

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Britain not ready for no deal, says Brexit select committee

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Significant concerns have been expressed over the country's preparedness for leaving the EU by an influential group of MPs less than two weeks before Brexit day on 31 December.

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UCL Constitution Unit - 9 lessons from the 2020 US presidential elections

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UCL Constitution Unit - 9 lessons from the 2020 US presidential elections

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As reported in the latest issue of Monitor, the US presidential election raised even more constitutional issues and questions about the US system of elections than many anticipated. Colin Provost and Nadia Hilliard of the UCL Centre for US Politics discuss how the election was administered, and the roles of the judiciary, Electoral College and social media in the process.

The US presidential election of 2020 has been perceived by many observers as one of the most important elections in American history. A highly polarised electorate turned out in record numbers in the middle of a pandemic and for the first time, the incumbent president refused to concede after a clear result, while pushing a steady, yet unsubstantiated series of claims about voter fraud and voting irregularities. Given the highly unusual set of circumstances surrounding this election, it is worth considering how well US institutions performed with respect to the conduct of a free and fair election, and what lessons should be learned for future electoral cycles.

1. States can run elections smoothly.

Although federal laws that are harmonised across the states might seem to make more sense for national elections, the US Constitution allows each state to set its own election laws, as long as they are in compliance with the 1965 Voting Rights Act and other relevant, federal legislation. Keeping that in mind, it is important not to understate the fact that, on average, the states performed well in terms of administration of this election. Despite the pandemic, millions of people were able to vote and perhaps more importantly, a large subset of those people were able to vote by mail, so that they would not have to put their health in jeopardy by waiting in long - and often cramped - queues. Ultimately, those votes were all counted, even if a victor could not be declared until7 November -five days after election day.
2. US electoral institutions are resilient.
The institutions of election administration proved to be resilient in the face of baseless allegations of voter fraud and voting irregularities: those allegations were many, and continue to be made. In a normal election year, post-election lawsuits are practically non-existent, but in 2020, the Trump campaign filed dozens of lawsuits across several states, nearly all of which have been found to be lacking in merit, while tweeting inaccurate information about the election and its results. Georgia senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler suggested that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger - the state official in charge of overseeing elections and certifying the results - should resign after not finding evidence of electoral fraud in that state. Additionally, President Trump invited the leadership of the Michigan legislature to the White House, apparently with the goal of getting them to nominate different electors to the Electoral College that formally votes in the new president than those selected by the Michigan Democratic Party. The only legal basis for this occurring is if one believed that Joe Biden did not clearly or lawfully win the state, even though his margin of victory was in excess of 150,000 votes. Finally, a large number of Trump allies in Congress, the media and elsewhere supported these actions, implicitly or explicitly. Despite all these challenges, the votes were counted and certified by all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

3. Do not underestimate the importance of an independent judiciary.

Numerous observers have viewed these events as extremely dangerous for democracy and for the conduct of free and fair elections. However, the effects could have been significantly worse in the absence of an independent judiciary. Many election administration officials in the US are elected officers from one of the two main political parties, so some observers have commented that a more partisan Secretary of State than Brad Raffensberger could have claimed that votes in some counties needed to be thrown out on account of voting irregularities. But the Secretary of State cannot make such a claim without evidence. Just as the Trump campaign has been asked to produce robust evidence in court to show voter fraud where it allegedly occurred, a Secretary of State would have had to do the same, in response to the forthcoming lawsuits that would have challenged the Secretary's actions. The Trump campaign's string of losses in court reveals that state and federal judges, including those appointed by President Trump, have not suffered easily claims of fraud where little evidence exists. Possibly the final chapter in this saga took place on Friday, 11 December, when the Supreme Court denied that a group of Republican state attorneys general had standing to claim that millions of votes in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin should be thrown out. Thus, while there are concerns about the politics of courts, when the president nominates and the Senate confirms federal judges, these rulings have demonstrated that there are basic standards for evidence and judicial interpretation that the Trump campaign lawsuits simply have not met.
4. The founts of disinformation are many.
Even though institutions have been resilient in some important instances this election season, this election has been highly instructive regarding the effects of disinformation. President Trump and his allies have used the social media megaphones of Twitter and Facebook to continually claim that voter fraud is rampant in order to cast doubt on the election's outcome and ultimately undermine the integrity of the electoral process. The result is that 70% of Republicans in the US haave said they genuinely believe that Joe Biden stole the election from Donald Trump. Such misinformation is extremely dangerous, as it destroys trust in the system of US elections and makes people more cynical about voting overall. It also damages public trust in government officials at all levels, which is particularly dangerous during a pandemic. The truth about the electoral system is that random errors do occur in election administration, but they are largely inconsequential. The broader claims of widespread fraud, dead people voting and voting machines rigged by the ghost of Hugo Chavez are plainly ludicrous.

5. Social media needs to be regulated.

Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have started to regulate online content and either flag or remove posts that are deemed inaccurate or inflammatory. Regulating content on social media platforms is of course fraught with constitutional issues, as it is important not to abridge people's right to free expression. However, there are reasonable justifications for taking action when it comes to speech that misleads people, resembles hate speech or threatens to incite violence. Of course, these are only the most outlying examples and possibly resemble low-hanging fruit in deciding what can be flagged or even removed. Many people can still post falsehoods on social media and get away with it, perhaps because they have a lower profile than the president, or because they have not incited violence. Deciding how to deal with these soft lies is a thornier, yet important problem. The Forum on Information and Democracy has released a report, with recommendations, on ' How to Address the Information Chaos '. Some of these recommendations involve judicially binding regulations that enforce transparency requirements. Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are certain to push back on solutions involving government regulation, but this only puts a greater onus on them to craft an effective, self-governing system, as pressure to regulate disinformation is unlikely to go away.

6. There is little danger of 'faithless electors' undermining the popular vote.

Longstanding features of the electoral system fell in the spotlight of public attention this year. The Trump team questioned the legal extent of election officials' discretion in counting votes, certifying results, and naming electors, and left the major news outlets scrambling to clarify little-known election laws. Despite multiple challenges to the outcome of the popular vote following the election, one possibility was ruled out this summer: in Chialfo v. Washington (2020), the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the 'faithless elector' laws that exist in many states. These laws, which require electors to vote for the candidate they have pledged to vote for, exist in 32 states and the District of Columbia. Responding to two challenges from Washington state and Colorado, the court affirmed that the historical precedent of electors remaining faithful to their stated commitments was sufficient to reject the claims of the faithless electors from the 2016 election.
7. The Electoral College still stands...though not without renewed criticism.
Faithless electors are, of course, a product of the Electoral College, the distinct American institution that remains a source of bafflement to foreign observers. Its legitimacy has come into question since the 2000 election handed the presidency to the loser of the popular vote. Two of the past seven elections have undermined the popular vote, including the 2016 election (meaning that Donald Trump has lost the popular vote both times he has run for president). Despite regular challenges to its shape and existence, the Electoral College has endured, partly because of the profound difficulty in amending the constitution. But Americans have often found ways to circumvent the rigidity of the constitution, and we might currently be witnessing a 'skirting' of the Electoral College. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an agreement that binds states to honour the results of the national popular vote regardless of the state result, has been signed by 15 states and the District of Columbia. Though this remedy might not address the imbalances that arise from the US's winner-take-all system ( which undermine any 'small state advantage' that the Electoral College protects), and might introduce further challenges to citizens' sense of legitimacy, the impulse towards reform signals wider discontent with existing structures.
8. Existing laws enable voter suppression tactics.
Since the 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby v. Holder, key states such as Georgia, Texas and Arizona have fundamentally altered the rules governing access to the vote. This decision, which eliminated the 'preclearance' requirement of the Voting Rights Act for states with a history of racially motivated voter suppression, created an opening for states to close polling stations in heavily African American districts, open additional stations in white neighbourhoods, prevent online registration, enact strict voter ID laws, and discourage voting by mail. The struggles witnessed in this year's elections serve as an acute reminder that the constitutional framework protecting voting access and integrity is damaged.
9. Polarisation deeply undermines democracy.
The widely held belief on the part of Trump supporters that the election was stolen will harden existing polarisation and will undermine Biden's administration and agenda. It will likely also undermine the willingness of both parties to reimagine themselves into institutions that are capable of working towards a common national project. Many of the challenges identified above are immediate products of decades of intensifying polarisation. Members of Congress who moderate their stances or work across the aisle often find themselves facing primary election challenges from the extremes of their party. Additionally, polarisation has been increasing in the states, as well as in the federal government, making partisan coalitions of states more willing to file lawsuits against federal rules with which they disagree. While such lawsuits can serve as a check on federal power, they can also enhance gridlock and frustrate the policymaking process in the federal government.
Conclusion
Although US institutions performed well on balance, the elections highlighted crucial areas of democratic vulnerability. Increased polarisation makes it more difficult to rein in the aforementioned disinformation threats on social media, and lawmakers will need to address these problems to rectify the legitimacy problem at the heart of the nation.
To mark the 25th anniversary of the Constitution Unit we have launched a special fundraising initiative, encouraging supporters to make donations incorporating the figures 2 and 5. If you value our work, and would like to contribute to its future continuation, please consider making a one-off or regular donation. Contributions are essential to supporting our public-facing work. Find out more on our donations page. About the authors is Associate Professor of Public Policy in the UCL Department of Political Science, where he directs the MSc in Public Policy. He is a member of the UCL Centre for U.S. Politics (CUSP) and is an affiliated researcher with the UCL Global Governance Institute. is a Lecturer of United States Studies (Politics) at UCL's Institute of the Americas and a member of the UCL Centre for U.S. Politics (CUSP)

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The 2020 US presidential election: nine lessons

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As reported in the latest issue of Monitor, the US presidential election raised even more constitutional issues and questions about the US system of elections than many anticipated. Colin Provost and Nadia Hilliard of the UCL Centre for US Politics discuss how the election was administered, and the roles of the judiciary, Electoral College and...

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Constitutional reform: then and now (in particular HRA)

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Constitutional reform: then and now (in particular HRA)

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In the latest blog celebrating the Constitution Unit's 25th anniversary, human rights academic and advocate Francesca Klug recounts how aspects of the constitutional agenda of the mid-1990s were realised, and what lessons we can learn about how to entrench its achievements, prevent democratic backsliding and stop erosion of hard-won rights.
When I was at school, I learned nothing about the British constitution, but one thing I did absorb was this: although we do not have a written founding document, our invisible constitution was apparently uniquely successful and therefore inviolable. However, during the 1980s, I gradually became aware that there was something a bit odd about this perfect constitution. In other democracies, many of the controversial or unpopular measures introduced by Margaret Thatcher's governments - such as the ' poll tax' and broadcasting and book bans - could be challenged in the courts. In the UK, however, there was nothing citizens could do to overturn such policies, except take to the streets to protest or wait up to five years for another election.

This powerlessness and lack of accountability was a major driver behind the founding of Charter 88 in 1988, led by Anthony Barnett and Stewart Weir. I was lucky as a relatively young activist to be asked to join its council. We called for holistic change: a democratic second chamber, electoral reform, devolution, freedom of information and a bill of rights. And we had one major overall objective: we wanted the people of this country to have more power over the decisions which affected them; what in today's money might be called 'taking back control'. We sought this not for its own sake, but as a means of making our society fairer.

It took a little time, but this message started to persuade people at the highest levels of the Labour Party. John Smith succeeded Neil Kinnock as Leader following the Conservatives' 1992 general election victory and the following year he gave a landmark speech to Charter 88, entitled 'A Citizens' Democracy'. For the first time, he articulated a clear objective for wholesale constitutional reform. Its purpose, he said, was to 'restore democracy to our people - for what we have in this country is not real democracy: it is elective dictatorship.' The use of the term 'elective dictatorship' is interesting, as it partly echoed Lord Hailsham, a former Conservative Lord Chancellor, who had coined the phrase two decades earlier. Notably, in this speech Smith committed the Labour Party to the introduction of a human rights act based on the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), which turned 70 years old this month.

John Smith died unexpectedly the following year, but Tony Blair, despite some scepticism, largely kept faith with his predecessor's commitment to constitutional reform. The precise objectives articulated by Smith, however, seemed to wither away and the purpose of the proposed policies became more obscure. In particular, there was no unified narrative to link them together and no sense of what might come next.

By the late 1990s, Labour was in government and I was a senior research fellow at the Human Rights Incorporation Project at King's College Law School, led by Professor Robert Blackburn. I was lucky to have the opportunity to work closely with then-Home Secretary, Jack Straw, and his advisors and officials, on the model for incorporating the ECHR into UK law which would become the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA). The Constitution Unit - which had been formed in 1995 and celebrates its 25th anniversary this year - was also closely involved, along with Liberty, Charter 88, Justice, the IPPR and other NGOs and lawyers.

Straw asked us to devise a model that would meet two key challenges: maintain parliamentary sovereignty whilst also 'bringing rights home' so that they could be exercised effectively in the UK. It is strange that in the 20 years since the HRA came into force, legislation that enabled individuals to claim their human rights through UK courts directly - rather than being required to appeal only to judges in Strasbourg - has been attacked for diluting British sovereignty, rather than increasing it.

In terms of the narrative, there was generally a confusion between two objectives. The first was a minimalist vision: we already have these rights so nothing much would change other than 'bringing them home.' The second was maximalist, epitomised by Jack Straw's description of the HRA as 'the most significant statement of human rights in domestic law since the 1689 Bill of Rights'. Regardless of which vision motivated the government, too little was done to communicate what these changes would really mean. The judiciary received training, but the government did virtually nothing else to prepare the public for what was to come, despite two years elapsing before the HRA came into force in 2000.

Less than a year later, the dreadful events of 9/11 saw the government shift its position, to the point that it began openly briefing against the HRA and criticising judicial decisions; such as when the Act proved an impediment to detaining foreign suspects without trial. This paved the way for the increasingly shrill anti-HRA rhetoric adopted by the Conservative Party and Conservative-supporting press. Once David Cameron became Leader, the Conservative Party pledged to replace the HRA with a so-called British bill of rights. Ten years and three Conservative Prime Ministers later, no such replacement has been forthcoming, although Chris Grayling, as Justice Secretary, produced a policy paper revealing the nakedness of the promised 'Emperor's Clothes' bill of rights. No new rights were proposed, and only 'the most serious' human rights violations would be protected, in all likelihood eliminating many of the benefits that the HRA has accrued to thousands of people in everyday life. Terms like torture would be 'more precisely' defined and the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights would be subject to parliamentary approval, a proposal warmly supported in Moscow.

In truth the Cameron government only ever wanted to restrict the scope of the HRA, rather than expand it. Boris Johnson's 2019 election manifesto dropped any pretence of making the HRA bigger and better by relabelling it as a 'British bill of rights.' Instead, what is promised is an 'update' of the HRA, and last month, Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland confirmed his intention to soon establish an inquiry into the Act. There are no specific details on what is proposed but the direction of travel towards 'death by a thousand cuts' is pretty clear. The Overseas Operations Bill already seeks to introduce limits on the HRA's ability to hold members of the military to account beyond specific time limits, even in cases of torture and murder. Alongside the government's repeated attacks on ' lefty human rights lawyers' with ' their grand theories of human rights', are serious threats to curtail asylum and deportation appeals, signalling that the universal application of the HRA - a hallmark of the very idea of human rights - is likely to be a major target. An ' Independent Review of Administrative Law' is also underway, examining whether courts should be told by parliament what is, and is not, eligible for judicial review. The drum beat of anti-HRA rhetoric has been bolstered by some unpopular judicial rulings. But with the passage of time an increasing range of people have benefited from the HRA, both inside and outside the court room. Popular outcomes have included: the Hillsborough Inquiry; the prosecution of the London cab rapist John Worboys; the disapplication of the bedroom tax for disabled people who need a spare room; and the establishment of an inquiry into the use of 'Do Not Resuscitate' notices during the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside new guidelines for family visits to care homes. Should the government attempt to repeal the HRA now, I believe they will have a fight on their hands!

The constitutional reforms of the Blair and Brown governments should have been the precursor to the UK finally adopting a written constitution, drafted and enacted following a major national conversation and debate, ideally involving citizens' assemblies. Instead, devolved governments are seeing EU powers returned directly to London under the cover of the EU Withdrawal Act, there have been repeated threats to public broadcasters such as the BBC and Channel 4, and most striking of all, the UK government no longer feels the need to hide its intention to break international law if it does not get its way. Numerous retired judges, MPs and peers, across all parties, have expressed grave concern about the risks posed to our democracy by these and other escalations.
To mark the 25th anniversary of the Constitution Unit we have launched a special fundraising initiative, encouraging supporters to make donations incorporating the figures 2 and 5. If you value our work, and would like to contribute to its future continuation, please consider making a one-off or regular donation. Contributions are essential to supporting our public-facing work. Find out more on our donations page. Sign up to our mailing lists, for news of events and publications, or to our blog, here. About the author Professor Francesca Klug is a Visiting Professor at LSE Human Rights and Sheffield Hallam Centre for International Justice. As a Senior Research Fellow at King's College Law School, she advised the then Labour Government on the Human Rights Act.
Looking back, there is one simple lesson can we learn from the last 25 years. If you introduce piecemeal legislation on constitutional reform with no overall narrative, and fail to properly engage the public via consultation, participation and education, then a later government with a different leader can all too easily reverse your achievements. Indeed, they may not just erase the gains you made, but could even succeed in strengthening the elective dictatorship that John Smith and Lord Hailsham warned about so long ago.

This blog is an adapted version of the contribution made by the author at a recent Unit event, Constitutional reform: then and now, at which she spoke on a panel alongside former Lord Chancellors Jack Straw and David Gauke. To watch all three contributions, you can view the event in full .

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Constitutional reform: then and now (1995-2020)

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In the latest blog celebrating the Constitution Unit's 25th anniversary, human rights academic and advocate Francesca Klug recounts how aspects of the constitutional agenda of the mid-1990s were realised, and what lessons we can learn about how to entrench its achievements, prevent democratic backsliding and stop erosion of hard-won rights.

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US Supreme Court upholds right to worship in time of Covid restrictions 

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US Supreme Court upholds right to worship in time of Covid restrictions 

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The US is continuing to battle the world's largest outbreak of coronavirus. Over 12.7 million cases have been recorded nationally, and more than 262,000 deaths, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

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Covid-19: US Supreme Court backs religious groups over New York caps

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The US is continuing to battle the world's largest outbreak of coronavirus. Over 12.7 million cases have been recorded nationally, and more than 262,000 deaths, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

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After nearly 50 years in public office, and a lifetime of presidential ambitions, Joe Biden has captured the White House.

It was not the campaign anyone predicted. It took place amidst a once-in-a-century pandemic and unprecedented social unrest. He was running against an unconventional, precedent-defying incumbent. But in his third try for the presidency, Biden and his team found a way to navigate the political obstacles and claim a victory that, while narrow in the electoral college tally, is projected to surpass Trump's overall national total by millions of votes.

These are the five reasons the son of a car salesman from Delaware finally won the presidency.

1. Covid, Covid, Covid

Perhaps the biggest reason Biden won the presidency was something entirely out of his control.

The coronavirus pandemic, as well as claiming more than 230,000 lives, also transformed American life and politics in 2020. And in the final days of the general election campaign, Donald Trump himself seemed to acknowledge this.

"With the fake news, everything is Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid," the president said at a rally last week in Wisconsin, where cases have spiked in recent days.

The media focus on Covid, however, was a reflection rather than a driver of the public's concern about the pandemic - which translated into unfavourable polling on the president's handling of the crisis. A poll last month by Pew Research, suggested Biden held a 17 percentage point lead over Trump when it came to confidence about their handling of the Covid outbreak.

The pandemic and the subsequent economic decline knocked Trump off his preferred campaign message of growth and prosperity. It also highlighted concerns that many Americans had about his presidency, over its occasional lack of focus, penchant for questioning science, haphazard handling of policies large and small, and prioritisation of the partisan. The pandemic was a lead weight on Trump's approval ratings, which, according to Gallup, dipped to 38% at one point in the summer - one that the Biden campaign exploited.

2. Low-key campaign

Over the course of his political career, Biden established a well-earned reputation for talking himself into trouble. His propensity for gaffes derailed his first presidential campaign in 1987, and helped ensure that he never had much of a shot when he ran again in 2007.

In his third try for the Oval Office, Biden still had his share of verbal stumbles, but they were sufficiently infrequent that they never became more than a short-term issue.

Part of the explanation for this, of course, is that the president himself was an unrelenting source of news cycle churn. Another factor was that there were bigger stories - the coronavirus pandemic, protests after the death of George Floyd and economic disruption - dominating national attention.

But at least some credit should be given to a concerted strategy by the Biden campaign to limit their candidate's exposure, keeping a measured pace in the campaign, and minimising the chances that fatigue or carelessness could create problems.

Perhaps in a normal election, when most Americans weren't worried about limiting their own exposure to a virus, this strategy would have backfired. Maybe then Trump's derisive "hidin' Biden" jabs would have taken their toll.

The campaign sought to stay out of the way and let Trump be the one whose mouth betrayed him - and, in the end, it paid off.

3. Anyone but Trump

The week before election day, the Biden campaign unveiled its final television adverts with a message that was remarkably similar to the one offered in his campaign kickoff last year, and his nomination acceptance speech in August.

The election was a "battle for the soul of America", he said, and a chance for the national to put what he characterised as the divisiveness and chaos of the past four years behind it.

Beneath that slogan, however, was a simple calculation. Biden bet his political fortunes on the contention that Trump was too polarising and too inflammatory, and what the American people wanted was calmer, steadier leadership.

"I'm just exhausted by Trump's attitude as a person," says Thierry Adams, a native of France who after 18 years living in Florida cast his first vote in a presidential election in Miami last week.

Democrats succeeded in making this election a referendum on Trump, not a binary choice between the two candidates.

Biden's winning message was simply that he was "not Trump". A common refrain from Democrats was that a Biden victory meant Americas could go for weeks without thinking about politics. It was meant as a joke, but it contained a kernel of truth.

4. Stay in the centre

During the campaign to be the Democratic candidate, Biden's competition came from his left, with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren who ran well-financed and organised campaigns that generated rock-concert sized crowds.

Despite this pressure from his liberal flank, Biden stuck with a centrist strategy, refusing to back universal government-run healthcare, free college education, or a wealth tax. This allowed him maximise his appeal to moderates and disaffected Republicans during the general election campaign.

This strategy was reflected in Biden's choice of Kamala Harris as his running mate when he could have opted for someone with stronger support from the party's left wing.

The one place where Biden moved closer to Sanders and Warren was on the environment and climate-change - perhaps calculating that the benefits of appealing to younger voters for whom the issue is a priority was worth the risk of alienating voters in energy-dependent swing-state industries. It was the exception, however, that proved the rule.

"It's no secret that we've been critical of Vice-President's Biden's plans and commitments in the past," said Varshini Prakash, co-founder of the environmental activist group the Sunrise Movement in July. "He's responded to many of those criticisms: dramatically increasing the scale and urgency of investments, filling in details on how he'd achieve environmental justice and create good union jobs, and promising immediate action."

5. More money, fewer problems

Earlier this year, Biden's campaign coffers were running on empty. He entered the general election campaign at a decided disadvantage to Trump, who had spent virtually his entire presidency amassing a campaign war chest that approached a billion dollars.

From April onward, however, the Biden campaign transformed itself into a fundraising juggernaut, and - in part because of profligacy on the part of the Trump campaign - ended up in a much stronger financial position than his opponent. At the beginning of October, the Biden campaign had $144m more cash on hand than the Trump operation, allowing it to bury the Republicans in a torrent of television advertising in almost every key battleground state.

Money isn't everything, of course. Four years ago, the Clinton campaign had a sizeable monetary lead over Trump's shoestring operation.

But in 2020, when in-person campaigning was curtailed by coronavirus and Americans across the country spent considerably more time consuming media in their homes, Biden's cash advantage let him reach voters and push his message out until the very end. It allowed him to expand the electoral map, putting money into what once seemed to be longshot states like Texas, Georgia, Ohio and Iowa. Most of those bets didn't pay off, but he put Trump on the defence, flipping what was once reliably conservative Arizona and staying highly competitive in Georgia.

Money gives a campaign options and initiative - and Biden put his advantage to good use.

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US election results: Five reasons Biden won

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After nearly 50 years in public office, and a lifetime of presidential ambitions, Joe Biden has captured the White House. It was not the campaign anyone predicted. It took place amidst a once-in-a-century pandemic and unprecedented social unrest. He was running against an unconventional, precedent-defying incumbent.

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Even in death, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is making history for women.

The Supreme Court associate justice, a driving force for gender equality in the United States who died last week at age 87, will be the first woman to lie in state Friday in the the U.S. Capitol. Thirty-four men have been so honored since 1852.

The honor comes after Ginsburg lay in repose at the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday and Thursday, a final visit to the high court she served for 27 years.

During those decades, Ginsburg helped act as a voice for women - and men - in countless ways, from education to workplace discrimination and health care.

She famously co-founded the Women's Rights Project at the ACLU as a lawyer, and brought and argued the cases that led the high court to affirm protections against gender discrimination.

Though it would be impossible to list every triumph that Ginsburg helped achieve, we're looking back to trace some of the impact she's had on women's lives in America.

Here are just some of the contributions she made for women, both on a legal and personal level.

In the 1996 United States v. Virginia case, Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion that it is unconstitutional for schools funded by taxpayer dollars to bar women.

"There is no reason to believe that the admission of women capable of all the activities required of (Virginia Military Institute) cadets would destroy the institute rather than enhance its capacity to serve the 'more perfect union,' " Ginsburg wrote.

Speaking to USA TODAY, women's rights attorney Gloria Allred described Ginsburg's opinion in the case as "groundbreaking."

"She was clear that state-sponsored educational institutions could not exclude women on account of their gender," Allred explained.

Ginsburg paved the way for the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which passed in 1974 and allowed women to apply for credit cards and mortgages without a male co-signer.

Naomi Mezey, law professor and co-founder of the Gender+ Justice Initiative at Georgetown University, told USA TODAY that Ginsburg's work surrounding women's financial independence laid a base for further issues of equality and independence.

Athia Hardt, a former Arizona Republic reporter and current consultant with Hardt and Associates, told USA TODAY about her personal experience with a bank telling her she could no longer have her account in her name after she married, but instead needed to be under "Mrs. Charles Case."

"I said, 'I'm not taking his name,' and they said, 'That doesn't matter,' " she recalled, saying she felt "both frustrated and angry at the system."

In a post to her Facebook page following Ginsburg's death, Hardt shared her story and encouraged other women to do the same as a way to "honor RBG with our memories of something we encountered before she changed the world."

Gloria Feldt, author and former president of Planned Parenthood, was another woman to share her experience on the Facebook post.

"I had been employed full time for several years and was earning more than my ex. I went to buy a car and couldn't get a loan without my husband's signature," she wrote. "That was my tipping point to feminist activism."

In 2007, Ginsburg famously dissented from the Supreme Court's decision on the pay discrimination case Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.

"When she was in the minority, she was a powerful voice in dissent in ways that changed the game," said Emily Martin, general counsel at the National Women's Law Center in Washington. "For example, when five justices ruled against Lilly Ledbetter in her pay discrimination case, Justice Ginsburg's call to action inspired the public and Congress to change the law and strengthen equal pay protections."

She was a crucial vote on the current court to keep Roe v. Wade. Even though she had doubts about the way the monumental case was decided, she was in no doubt about women's right to choose.

Randall Kessler, a family law and trial lawyer in Atlanta, says Ginsburg was an indispensable brick in the legal wall that has protected Roe v. Wade since the 1970s, and not just on the Supreme Court.

"Now she's gone, it means pro-choice proponents are scared to death of the unknown," Kessler says. "They believe (her death and replacement) will empower state legislatures to pass new laws or reintroduce those laws already struck down by the Supreme Court."

In 1972, Ginsburg argued that excluding a pregnant woman from the Air Force, like in the case of Struck v. Secretary of Defense, is sex discrimination.

"It was standard 50 years ago for women to be fired from their jobs when they were pregnant," Mezey explained. "(Ginsburg) herself hid her pregnancy while she was teaching at a law school in order not to be told that she couldn't teach."

But as a litigator and on the Supreme Court, Martin explained, Ginsburg changed "what was possible for women in the U.S."

Mezey added that Ginsburg was able to identify and help address stereotypes, both positive and negative, that "nonetheless end up creating self-fulfilling prophecies of unequal distribution of work."

"In her life - including as a daughter, a woman, a lawyer and a mother herself- she actually saw so much of what turned out to be profoundly unjust and unequal," Mezey said.

During the 1979 case Duren v. Missouri, jury duty was optional for women in several states because it was viewed to be a burden for women whose role was seen as the " center of home and family life." Ginsburg, who represented Billy Duren in the case, argued that women should serve on juries on the basis that they are valued the same as men.

In a 2009 interview with USA TODAY, Ginsburg upheld this notion, saying, "Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. &mldr; It shouldn't be that women are the exception."

The 2015 case Obergefell v. Hodges, which allowed queer women and the rest of the LGBTQ community the right to same-sex marriages in all 50 states, ended in a 5-4 ruling. Without Ginsburg, the outcome may have been different.

Imani Rupert-Gordon, the executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, told USA TODAY that Ginsburg's impact on queer women spans far beyond just the issue of gay marriage.

"She really was responsible for helping us expand the concept of gender discrimination," she said. "It's those same types of principles that led to the intellectual foundation that would extend discrimination protections to other considerations like gender identity and sexual orientation, which is important in general but especially important to LGBTQ people."

Mezey added that in Ginsburg's gender advocacy, she "opened up space for protection of people on the basis of gender identity."

More: Supreme Court grants federal job protections to gay, lesbian, transgender workers

Though Ginsburg left her mark on the legal world, she also had a lasting influence on women on an individual level by being an example of a powerful woman in her writing, speaking and work as a judge.

And Ginsburg's impact on empowerment didn't stop with her generation or the next - she's continued to energize young women. Her rise as a pop culture icon has inspired books, movies and even Halloween costumes for young girls.

"That grief is about her, about people's connection to her," said Louise Melling, deputy legal director of the ACLU who heads its newly renamed Ruth Bader Ginsburg Center for Liberty. "I'm thinking about what an icon she became in the last 20 years - I own an RBG bracelet because someone sent it to me! I can't think of any other justice who became a pop culture icon in that particular way."

Hardt says Ginsburg's legacy has also taught others to "continue to do the hard work."

"She really kept going on the good fight for her whole life," she said. "She really is a heroine."

In an interview with USA TODAY in 2013, Ginsburg exemplified this ideal, insisting she would continue working even as others pressured her to step down as the oldest justice on the court.

"As long as I can do the job full-steam, I would like to stay here," she said. "I have to take it year by year at my age, and who knows what could happen next year? Right now, I know I'm OK."
Contributing: Richard Wolf; photo illustrations by Veronica Bravo
More: 'I Dissent': Six books to read about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

'RBG': How Ruth Bader Ginsburg became a legit pop-culture icon

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg becomes first woman to lie in state: 8 other strides she made for women

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Even in death, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is making history for women. The Supreme Court associate justice, a driving force for gender equality in the United States who died last week at age 87, will be the first woman to lie in state Friday in the the U.S. Capitol.

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What you need to know about Amy Coney Barrett

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What you need to know about Amy Coney Barrett

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Barrett would be Trump's third nominee to the high court, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has pledged to hold a vote on Ginsburg's replacement. With only weeks before Election Day, her confirmation is bound to be an epic showdown.

Here's what you need to know know about Amy Coney Barrett:

A reliable conservative

Religious conservatives would have much to be pleased with Barrett, a devout Catholic.

Barrett has stated that "life begins at conception," according to a 2013 Notre Dame Magazine . She also said that justices should not be strictly bound by Supreme Court precedents, a deference known as stare decisis, leaving open the possibility that she could vote to overturn Roe v. Wade if seated on the court.

Evangelical and other anti-abortion activists have been pushing for her nomination. Marjorie Dannenfelser, head of the anti-abortion rights group Susan B. Anthony List, spoke with Trump earlier this week to advocate for Barrett.

She has also voiced conservative views on a number of other issues, from guns to the Affordable Care Act. Her reported membership in a controversial Christian group has also raised eyebrows for its teachings on family relationships.

She could serve for decades

At 48 years old, Barrett would be the youngest justice currently on the Supreme Court, making it entirely plausible that Barrett could leave her mark on a swath of cases for a generation or more.

A lasting conservative influence on the court has been a major talking point for Trump throughout his reelection efforts. POLITICO Tuesday that McConnell - who has been a major force in his party's push for conservative influence in the courts - voiced his preference for Barrett to the president.

A protégée of Scalia

Barrett clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia after graduating from Notre Dame Law School. Like Scalia, Barrett is a strict originalist and would "enforce her best understanding of the Constitution rather than a precedent she thinks is clearly in conflict with it," she wrote in a 2013 Texas Law Review .

She can go toe to toe with Democrats

During her confirmation hearing to serve on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017, Barrett engaged in a contentious exchange with the Senate Judiciary Committee's top Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein. The California Democrat pressed Barrett on her deeply held religious beliefs and how they could impact her jurisprudence, which led to criticism that Democrats' questioning was anti-Catholic.

"The dogma lives loudly within you, and that's of concern when you come to big issues that people have fought for years in this country," Feinstein said to Barrett.

Barrett responded sharply: "It's never appropriate for a judge to impose that judge's personal convictions, whether they arise from faith or anywhere else, on the law."

She'd join a small club

Barrett, if confirmed, would be only the fifth woman to serve on the Supreme Court. She'd join Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor on the bench.

Harriet Miers' 2005 nomination was the last time a Republican president picked a woman for a seat on the court.

Her record

Barrett has served less than three years on the 7th Circuit after working as a law professor at Notre Dame Law School for nearly two decades.

Her short tenure on the bench means there's been little time to develop a body of legal opinions, which lawmakers from both sides of the aisle would likely scrutinize. Republicans, having been burned in the past by GOP presidents' nominees who ended up voting more liberally, would also likely demand reassurances from Barrett before granting her a lifetime appointment to the court.

Personal life

Barrett, born and raised in New Orleans, is married to Jesse Barrett, a former assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of Indiana. Together they have seven children.

Trump's opinion

"She's very highly respected, I can say that."

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What you need to know about Amy Coney Barrett

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Barrett would be Trump's third nominee to the high court, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has pledged to hold a vote on Ginsburg's replacement. With only weeks before Election Day, her confirmation is bound to be an epic showdown.

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A behind-the-scenes rift has emerged between the government's top legal advisers over the legality of the decision to bring legislation that overrides the EU withdrawal agreement.

Legal advice contained in a three-page letter marked "official - sensitive", seen by the Guardian, summarises the legal opinions of the government's three law officers, whose role includes ensuring ministers act in accordance with the law.

The letter appears to show that Richard Keen, the advocate general for Scotland, advised that ministers would be breaching the ministerial code if they defied international law.
Brexit letter: are MPs obliged to comply with international law?
The attorney general, Suella Braverman, and solicitor general, Michael Ellis, disagreed with their fellow Conservative minister, arguing the code applies only to UK law, according to the letter.

The advice of all three law officers was summarised in the letter, which was sent by the attorney general's office to a senior Whitehall official on 2 September.

It states that all three law officers agreed that the UK internal market bill, which seeks to override portions of the Northern Ireland protocol in the event of there being no trade deal with the EU, would amount to a "clear breach" of the withdrawal agreement and international law.

Their language appears stronger than that used by the Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, when he told MPs this week that the government's legislation would break international law "in a very specific and limited way".

The government's decision to bring legislation that would override parts of its agreement with the EU has thrown the ongoing trade talks into crisis, prompting Brussels to plan legal action that could lead to financial and trade sanctions.

The EU said the UK had until the end of the month to withdraw the draft legislation, warning that it had seriously damaged trust.

On Thursday, two hours after the Guardian contacted the government for comment, the Cabinet Office posted online what it described as its "legal position" on the internal market bill and Northern Ireland protocol. The document summarised some of the issues covered in the 2 September letter, but did not disclose the differences between Lord Keen and the other law officers over the ministerial code.

The revelation of a backroom disagreement over the ministerial code - which stipulates an "overarching duty on ministers to comply with the law" - could prove particularly damaging to Boris Johnson's government.

The legal advice is understood to have been shared with a select group of officials and cabinet ministers, meaning other government ministers were potentially unaware of the risk the legislation could pose to their compliance with the code.

The letter summarises the legal opinions of Braverman and Ellis and explains where they parted company with Keen, who is the Ministry of Justice's spokesperson in the Lords.

In a crucial passage, the letter states: "Whilst there is no dispute between law officers that parliamentary sovereignty embraces the power to pass legislation that is contrary to international law, they do differ on whether ministers can propose such legislation in compliance with the ministerial code.

"The law officers do agree that the code itself does not carry the force of law, is not enforceable in the courts, and does not pose a legal bar to action. However, the law officers differ as to the interpretation of the underlying constitutional conventions."

It continues: "It is the opinion of the advocate general for Scotland that the terms of the ministerial code expressly reflect a constitutional convention that ministers shall act in accordance with the rule of law, which in his view includes international law. In his opinion that includes the obligation under international law to act in good faith with respect to the UK's treaty obligations.

"In contrast, the attorney general and solicitor general are confident that there is a strong legal basis, supported by authorities, which separate the rule of law into its domestic and international spheres."

Braverman and Ellis argued that the code refers only to "UK law and UK constitutional principles". The letter adds: "On this established view it would be both lawful and constitutional for a minister to introduce legislation that was in breach of international obligations".

The letter was addressed to a senior official in the Government legal department, the head of which, Sir Jonathan Jones, resigned this week amid speculation he objected to the course of action being pursued by Downing Street.

The thrust of the advice from the law officers is understood to have been relayed last week to the six members of the cabinet EU exit strategy committee, chaired by the prime minister and including Braverman and the Cabinet Office minister, Michael Gove.

Do you have information about this story? Email investigations@theguardian.com, or use Signal or WhatsApp to message (UK) +44 7584 640566 or (US) +1 646 886 8761.

Braverman is said to have been trenchant in her support of Downing Street's proposed legislation, telling colleagues the ministerial code was no obstacle because it was not legally enforceable and, in any event, could be unilaterally amended by the prime minister.

She and Ellis are understood to have been considering these issues since late July. In mid-August they sought legal opinions over "the rule of law issues" from external counsel named in the letter as Guglielmo Verdirame QC, Richard Howell and Prof Richard Ekins.

Elsewhere in the letter, the law officers agree that "legislation to remove the possibility of challenge before the domestic courts, or prevent the government from complying with the rulings of EU courts, contrary to article 4 of the withdrawal agreement would be a clear breach of the withdrawal agreement and of the UK's international law duty to act in good faith with respect to its treaty obligations".

Explaining how such a breach could be legally justified, the letter explains: "All law officers agree that it is an established principle of international law that a state, acting through its executive government, is obliged to discharge its treaty obligations in good faith. This is, and ought to remain, the key principle in informing the UK's approach to international relations.

"However in the difficult circumstances in which we find ourselves, the attorney general and solicitor general consider it is important to remember that an established principle of international law is subordinate to the much more fundamental principle of parliamentary sovereignty."

Despite his apparent reservations about the code relayed in confidential legal advice, Keen was vocal in his defence of the government's position when responding to questions in the Lords about the internal market bill.

"We are not showing scant regard for our treaty obligations," he said. "We are endeavouring to allow for a contingency that may arise very soon which will require us to ensure that we can discharge our obligations to Northern Ireland."

He added: "From time to time tensions do occur between domestic legal obligations and international law. It's not unprecedented for legislation passed by this parliament to cut across obligations undertaken at the level of international law. Domestic legislation does prevail."

The attorney general's office and the Ministry of Justice did not respond to requests to comment.
Topics

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Government's top legal advisers divided over move to override Brexit deal

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A behind-the-scenes rift has emerged between the government's top legal advisers over the legality of the decision to bring legislation that overrides the EU withdrawal agreement. Legal advice contained in a three-page letter marked "official - sensitive", seen by the Guardian, summarises the legal opinions of the government's three law officers, whose role includes ensuring ministers act in accordance with the law.

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Could the ERA become the 28th Amendment?

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Could the ERA become the 28th Amendment?

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Editor's Note: On January 15, 2020, the Virginia legislature passed a resolution to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. The move sets off an extended debate about the prospects of the ERA joining the Constitution as the 28th Amendment. This story from November 7, 2019 previewed the legal discussion to follow such a move in Virginia.
On Tuesday, Americans across the country went to the polls, and one election had particular significance for the future of the Constitution. In Virginia, the Democratic Party took control of both chambers of the state legislature, which previously had a narrow Republican majority. As a result, Virginia is poised to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.

Earlier this year, a ratification resolution passed the state Senate but failed in the House of Delegates by an evenly divided vote -with every Democrat voting in favor and all Republicans but one opposed. Now there will be 54 Democrats in the House of Delegates, and assuming they all support ratification, it should have enough support to pass.

What happens if Virginia ratifies the Equal Rights Amendment? The truth is, no one knows. Congress proposed the ERA in 1972 through a resolution stating it would "be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission by the Congress." By 1979, 35 states had ratified the proposed amendment, three states short of the necessary three-quarters requirement. In October 1978, Congress passed a resolution extending the deadline for three years, until 1982, but no new states ratified it in that time, and for decades the ERA has been dormant, if not defeated.

Recently, however, activists adopted the so-called "three-state strategy." Their goal has been to have three more states ratify the ERA, which would make 38 in total-enough for ratification. Nevada ratified the amendment in 2017, and Illinois did so in 2018; Virginia, then, would be the crucial 38th state. But it is far from clear that, if Virginia ratifies the ERA, it would, therefore, be adopted as part of the Constitution. There are three unresolved questions that ERA supporters would have to answer:

Can Congress impose a deadline on ratification of a constitutional amendment in the resolution proposing that amendment?

If so, then the three ratifications in recent years are of no effect-with one caveat, discussed below. But if not, then ratification remains pending before the states, and the latter-day ratifications should count just as much as those in the 1970s. In the 1921 case Dillon v. Gloss, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the seven-year time limit for ratification of the 18th Amendment, which was the first proposed amendment to include a deadline. But there are three reasons for thinking Dillon might not apply to the case of the ERA.

First, the 18th Amendment was ratified by the requisite number of states well before its deadline. The challenger in that case argued that the entire amendment was invalid because the Constitution's Article V did not authorize Congress to propose ratification with a deadline. Arguably, therefore, the Court did not squarely address the question of what would happen if an amendment was ratified subsequent to a deadline.

Second, the Dillon Court concluded that Article V itself requires that proposal by Congress and ratification by the states must be close in time, partly because the contrary interpretation would mean that several amendments proposed over a century earlier, none of which had deadlines for their ratification, would still be pending before the states. Thus, it concluded that Congress could specify the reasonable time period during which ratification must take place. But in 1992, one of those long-dormant amendments was ratified. Although it was a subject of some controversy at the time, no one today doubts that the 27th Amendment is a valid part of the Constitution. The nation has, therefore, largely repudiated Dillon 's reasoning.

Finally, the ratification deadline was included in the text of the 18th Amendment itself, whose third section stated that "this article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress." The ERA's deadline, on the other hand, is not in the text of the proposed amendment but in the resolution proposing it. This matters because arguably the 18th Amendment's provision was not actually a ratification deadline at all. Even if the amendment was ratified after more than seven years, it would become a part of the Constitution-it would simply be inoperative. Congress clearly has the power to propose an amendment that, by its own terms, would be inoperative under certain conditions. That does not necessarily imply that it can propose an amendment that will only be pending before the states for a fixed period of time.

If Dillon is not controlling precedent, then this is an open question. Several other amendments-the 23rd, 24th, 25th, and 26th-included similar seven-year time limits in their proposing resolutions, but each was ratified well prior to the deadline. The question has simply never been tested.

If the deadline imposed by the resolution proposing the ERA is valid, can a subsequent Congress disregard or extend that deadline?

Even if the deadline for ratifying the ERA had legal force, it is possible that Congress today could pass a resolution removing that deadline and recognizing the ratifications by Nevada, Illinois, and Virginia as valid. In 1982, several lower federal courts held that Congress's action extending the deadline to ratify the ERA from 1979 to 1982 was invalid, but the Supreme Court stayed those cases until after the deadline had passed. Then, because no additional states had in fact ratified the amendment during the three-year extension period, the Court dismissed the cases as moot. As with the validity of the deadline itself, the validity of subsequent resolutions modifying or extending such a deadline is an issue never confronted.

And there are arguments on both sides. In Coleman v. Miller (1939), the Court suggested that Congress could judge whether an amendment had been ratified in a sufficiently timely fashion when presented with ratifications by three-fourths of the states. But that was in the context of an amendment with no specified time limit and proceeded from the conclusion in Dillon that Article V itself requires contemporaneous ratification. The answer could depend on how we understand the congressionally imposed deadline. If it is an intrinsic part of the proposal itself, such that the amendment is no longer pending before the states once the deadline has passed, then logically Congress would have to propose the amendment from scratch to revive it, with the constitutionally prescribed two-thirds majority of each House. If, on the other hand, the deadline is an independent bar to ratification created by Congress in the proposing resolution, it would appear to be within Congress's power to modify or remove that bar.

Can a state rescind ratification of a proposed amendment?

Even if supporters of the ERA can overcome the ratification deadline, either because it was never effective to begin with or because today's Congress can modify it, they would have to confront the fact that four states-Nebraska, Tennessee, Idaho, and Kentucky-voted to rescind ratification of the ERA during the original ratification period. Another state, South Dakota, stated that its ratification would lapse after the original 1979 deadline. If these rescissions are valid, then the ERA has today been ratified by only 32 states, not 37, and Virginia would be only the 33rd-not enough for ratification.

Unlike the issues pertaining to the deadline itself, the question of rescinding ratification has come up before. Two states attempted to withdraw ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868. Secretary of State William Seward held that these attempted withdrawals were probably "irregular, invalid, and therefore ineffectual," and Congress counted those states in the three-fourths majority when it declared that the 14th Amendment had been adopted. It is not clear if this precedent would be treated as authoritative. In Coleman v. Miller, the Supreme Court suggested that Congress must decide the validity of rescinded ratifications in each case.

Which leads to the final unresolved question about the potential ratification of the ERA: who would decide? Currently, federal law charges the Archivist of the United States with certifying that an amendment has been validly adopted. (Previously, the Secretary of State had the same duty.) When the 27th Amendment was adopted, the Archivist declared its validity, and Congress then passed a resolution confirming that judgment. That would seem to suggest that the responsibility ultimately lies with Congress.

But the question will also come before the courts, as litigants seek to invoke the ERA, and there are conflicting precedents as to whether the Supreme Court can adjudicate an amendment's validity. In Leser v. Garnett (1922), the Court considered three different challenges to the 19th Amendment's validity: that it was beyond the Article V amendment power because of its character; that some of the ratifying states could not legitimately have ratified it due to their state constitutional provisions against women's suffrage; and that the ratification in several states had been procedurally irregular. The Court rejected the first two arguments but held that as to procedural irregularities in particular states it must defer to the judgment of the Secretary of State. This could suggest that courts may consider purely legal questions concerning the interpretation of Article V, but not factual questions concerning whether a given state has actually ratified a particular amendment. The Court could reasonably view the disputes over Congress's power to set ratification deadlines, as well as the power of states to rescind ratification, as legal rather than factual. On the other hand, Coleman v. Miller suggested that many of these same issues are political questions that must be decided by Congress.

There are a number of ways this could play out. If Congress passes a resolution stating its position on the ERA's validity one way or another, the courts would likely defer to that judgment, or would at least have to consider whether to defer to it. But if Congress deadlocks on the issue, leaving the Archivist's judgment to stand on its own, that could force the courts to act even where they would rather defer. In that case, would a subsequent Congress be able to weigh in? Or what if Congress declares that the ERA is not valid; could a future Congress reverse that determination?

In short, the elections in Virginia have created not only the possibility that the Equal Rights Amendment will become a part of the Constitution but that, as of early next year, we may not know what the full text of the Constitution is-or even how to determine what the text of the Constitution is!
Robert Black is Senior Fellow for Constitutional Content at the National Constitution Center.

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Could the Equal Rights Amendment become a reality?

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On January 15, 2020, the Virginia legislature passed a resolution to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. The move sets off an extended debate about the prospects of the ERA joining the Constitution as the 28th Amendment. This story from November 7, 2019 previewed the legal discussion to follow such a move in Virginia.

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The US Supreme Court reshaped under President Donald Trump has been called the most conservative-leaning court in modern US history.

Now the death of liberal judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg means it could further tilt towards conservatives if the Republican Party is able to replace her in the months ahead.

With two appointments already in the president's first term, the bench's ideological balance already tilted right, favouring conservatives in a 5-4 split.

The top court in the US has a profound impact on American life, ruling on highly contentious issues like abortion and gun rights.

Nine judges on its bench, called justices, get lifetime terms so when President Trump got to pick two - Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh - there was huge expectation to see the impact this would have.

We look back at five closely watched cases this year to see if this conservative-leaning court actually voted that way.

In June, the court said that a Louisiana law requiring doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals - effectively limiting the number of abortion providers in the state - was unconstitutional. The ruling, in which Justice Roberts sided with the court's liberal quartet, was seen as a major victory for progressives and pro-choice advocates. The future of reproductive rights in the US had been garnered intense focus since Justice Kavanuagh's nomination in 2018. With a conservative majority secured, many feared previous cases protecting a woman's right to choose, namely Roe v Wade, would be overturned.

Anti-abortion activists were hoping this case would provide proof that a majority of the court was ready to start rolling back abortion protections with the ultimate goal of allowing states to entirely ban the procedure. Instead, it demonstrated that Roberts, who sided with the four liberals, was more interested in respecting the precedent set by a recent case with similar facts than quickly steering the court in a more conservative direction.

Looking at three different cases, the court decided that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects gay and transgender employees from workplace discrimination. Justice Roberts and Justice Gorsuch joined the court's progressives in arguing that Title VII of the act, which bars discrimination against sex, applies to claims of sexual orientation and gender identity. The 6-3 ruling is a resolute victory for progressives and marks the biggest moment for LGBT rights in the US since the court legalised same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015.

This will probably be seen as the big surprise of this court term, given that conservatives Roberts and Gorsuch sided voted with the liberals to expand federal employment protections to gay and transgender individuals. It's yet further evidence of how fast and how far views in American society, including the courts, have come on the issue of gay rights.

In Department of Homeland Security v Regents of the University of California, the nine justices examined an Obama-era policy that shields hundreds of thousands of undocumented young people - known as Dreamers - from deportation, and gives them work and study permits. Somewhat unexpectedly, the court ruled that the administration's attempts to shut down the programme were "arbitrary and capricious" in a way prohibited by federal law. Once again, Justice Roberts joined the liberal judges to deliver a win for liberals.

This case had all the makings of political dynamite, with the possibility that hundreds of thousands of US residents could face the prospect of deportation if their temporary immigration protection was stripped away. Instead, Roberts once again proved to be a stickler for proper procedure, ruling that while the Trump administration may have had the power to do something - in this case, rescind DACA - they botched the process so badly they'd have to start over from the beginning.

Last month, the court ruled that states must allow religious schools to participate in state scholarship programs funded by tax credits. The case, Espinoza v Montana Department of Revenue, centred on a 2015 Montana law - later struck down by the state supreme court - that allowed public funds for scholarships to help families send their children to private schools, most of which were religious schools. The 5-4 ruling, which fell neatly within ideological lines, may open the door to further public funding of religious institutions, marking a victory for conservatives and the Trump administration. Critics say it may divert funds from public schools, in favour of private or religious schools.

The court had a number of cases dealing with issues of religious freedom and church/state separation this term. While decisions involving contraceptive coverage and employment discrimination in religious institutions garnered the headlines, they turned on details of the laws in question. No case more clearly exposed the durability of the conservative majority in this area than the ruling in Montana v. Epsinoza, where five justices held that the US constitution itself required government programmes to be made equally accessible to secular and religious schools.

The Supreme Court ruled in March that states are free to abandon the insanity defence in cases where defendants argue they could not distinguish between right and wrong. In an unusual move, liberal Justice Elena Kagan joined the five conservative justices in her decision. The 6-member majority ruled that a 1995 Kansas law eliminating the insanity defence did not violate the US constitution. In this state, mental capacity may only be considered in the sentencing phase of trial. To date, Kansas is one of just five states to effectively eliminate the insanity defence. This ruling may encourage others to follow suit.

The use of insanity as a defence from criminal culpability has been around longer than the United States itself. This term, however, Elena Kagan broke with the liberal justices to write an opinion joined by the five conservatives allowing states to significantly curtail its use in criminal trials. It's a notable ruling, given that criminal procedure is one area where even some conservatives justices have been divided recently, as the court tries to balance the powers of law enforcement and the criminal courts with defendant rights.

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg death: How has Trump's Supreme Court changed America?

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The US Supreme Court reshaped under President Donald Trump has been called the most conservative-leaning court in modern US history. Now the death of liberal judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg means it could further tilt towards conservatives if the Republican Party is able to replace her in the months ahead.

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SCOTUS rules against ‘faithless’ electors

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SCOTUS rules against ‘faithless’ electors

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"The Constitution's text and the Nation's history both support allowing a State to enforce an elector's pledge to support his party's nominee-and the state voters' choice-for President," Kagan wrote in her majority opinion.

Kagan emphasized that the founders had ample opportunity to include language protecting electors' free choice - in fact they had contemporary examples to draw from - but opted against it.

Justice Clarence Thomas reached the same ultimate conclusion, but declined to join Kagan's opinion and wrote separately. Thomas said the Tenth Amendment, reserving unenumerated powers to the states and people, should be read to allow states the power to police their electors.

"Powers related to electors reside with States to the extent that the Constitution does not remove or restrict that power," Thomas wrote, in an opinion partially joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, who also signed onto Kagan's opinion in full.

In 2016, seven of the 535 electors cast votes at odds with the popular-vote winners and three attempted to do so. Most of the faithless electors were part of an unsuccessful attempt to seek out a moderate, more conventional presidential contender who could deny Donald Trump the presidency.

The cases ruled on Monday involved suits filed by electors in Colorado, after an elector there had his vote for former Rep. John Kasich invalidated, and in Washington state after the state imposed $1000 fines on several electors who strayed from Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

The court issued full opinions only in the Washington dispute, leaving lower courts to resolve the Colorado case, but appearing to bless that state's laws on electors as well.

Kagan noted that the court's opinion doesn't extend to every conceivable scenario where states might try to coerce electors, including some possibilities offered by advocates for the so-called faithless.

For example, if the winning presidential candidate dies after Election Day but before the Electoral College casts its votes, states can't necessarily force electors to cast ballots for a dead person, Kagan wrote.

And she notes that other limits in the Constitution would apply to state laws - for example state restrictions on electors couldn't violate the Equal Protection clause or impose additional qualifications for presidential candidates.

Kagan didn't give examples, but California recently tried to add a requirement that presidential candidates release their tax returns. The courts blocked that.

At oral arguments in May, the justices also discussed the possibility that states could condition the votes of their electors on whether a candidate had visited a state. Monday's ruling doesn't address that possibility.

Amidst the dry legal analysis in Kagan's majority opinion, the Obama appointee managed to slip in a couple of pop culture references. There was a shout-out for the hit musical, "Hamilton," as Kagan noted that under the original Electoral College rules, Hamilton engineered Thomas Jefferson's victory in 1801 by persuading electors to give Jefferson the nod over Aaron Burr. (Burr later killed Hamilton in a duel.)

"Alexander Hamilton secured his place on the Broadway stage-but possibly in the cemetery too-by lobbying Federalists in the House to tip the election to Jefferson, whom he loathed but viewed as less of an existential threat to the Republic," Kagan wrote.

Kagan also demonstrated her knowledge of political TV comedies, by suggesting that the awkward outcome of the first Electoral College fight in 1796-where the presidency and vice presidency went to members of rival parties-could be good "fodder for a new season of Veep."

Both sides in the cases decided Monday insisted that a ruling for the other would have bizarre and unintended consequences - some with alarming implications for the 2020 election, particularly if it's a close race.

State officials said putting electors beyond the coercive power of state law could effectively immunize the bribery of electors.

Though states have long governed the rules around the selection and votes of presidential electors, the process is largely driven by political parties. Each party typically chooses a slate of electors who would cast the official votes for the state depending on the winner of the state's popular vote. In other words, Democratic electors cast ballots in states won by Democratic candidates, and Republican electors cast ballots in states won by Republicans.

In most election cycles, this has led to a drama-free process, with nearly all electors voting for their state's winner and the rare, few "faithless" votes being tallied without consequence. But 2016 changed the equation when a group of Democratic electors seeking to block Trump's ascendance to the presidency sought to rally Republican electors against him. The group, dubbing itself the Hamilton Electors in a nod to Alexander Hamilton's Federal Papers defense of electors' free choice, vowed to cast their own votes for a more mainstream Republican alternative.

After the 2016 election, as evidence emerged indicating that Russia had intervened in the election on behalf of Trump, Democratic electors demanded, but were denied, intelligence briefings that might inform their choices. Aides to Clinton kept tabs on the effort but never formally endorsed it. Republicans, meanwhile, employed their own whip operation and monitoring to ensure their electors remained aligned with Trump.

In the end, just two Republican electors, both in Texas, broke from Trump.

The cases decided by the Supreme Court stem from that hard-fought presidential race.

Micheal Baca and Polly Baca - no relation - were both presidential electors from Colorado who helped lead the Hamilton Electors effort, worked to inspire about three-dozen Republican electors to join them and swing the vote away from Trump.

But when Micheal Baca tried to cast his vote for a Republican, defying Colorado's popular vote for Clinton, the secretary of state refused to count it and moved to replace him as an elector. Ultimately, Baca's attempted vote wasn't counted, and he sued.

In Washington state, four electors on the slate supporting Clinton were fined $1,000 apiece for casting their ballots for others. Three backed Colin Powell in what they said was a protest against Trump's abrasive and confrontational campaign style. A fourth, a Native American activist, diverted to vote for another American Indian leader, Faith Spotted Eagle.

The various efforts were ultimately inconsequential, but the 2016 Electoral College vote featured more "faithless" votes than any in history, with seven electors - representing nearly 5 million voters - defying the popular vote in their states. Several other attempted faithless votes were blocked.

The effort also renewed national focus on the creaky and untested processes that surround the Electoral College, as well as an effort by a growing list of states to circumvent it by pledging their votes to the winner of the national popular vote. A multistate compact has been in progress for years but only triggers when enough states comprising the majority of all electors sign onto the plan.

In a way, though, the frenetic lobbying effort to swing the election foreshadowed the constant crisis atmosphere that has surrounded the Trump election and presidency. Electors, historically anonymous figures elected at little-noticed political party functions, found themselves bombarded by pressure campaigns and threats. And as evidence of Russia's attack on the 2016 election began to trickle out, Clinton backers urged that electors be briefed on classified intelligence in order to factor it into their votes.

One justice, Sonia Sotomayor, voted on the Washington case but sat out of the Colorado one. About two months after the court agreed in January to hear both disputes, Sotomayor revealed that she was recusing herself from the Colorado case due to a friendship with Polly Baca.

In a ruling more than half a century ago, the Supreme Court held that it was constitutional for state parties to require electors to sign pledges, but stopped short of saying the electors could actually be forced to follow those pledges or face consequences.

Two justices, Robert Jackson and William Douglas, dissented from that 1952 decision and argued that the Constitution envisioned broad discretion for electors.

"No one faithful to our history can deny that the plan originally contemplated what is implicit in its text - that electors would be free agents, to exercise an independent and nonpartisan judgment as to the men best qualified for the Nation's highest offices," Jackson wrote, joined by Douglas.

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States can punish 'faithless' electors, Supreme Court rules

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"The Constitution's text and the Nation's history both support allowing a State to enforce an elector's pledge to support his party's nominee-and the state voters' choice-for President," Kagan wrote in her majority opinion. Kagan emphasized that the founders had ample opportunity to include language protecting electors' free choice - in fact they had contemporary examples to draw from - but opted against it.

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Five times strict constructionist Roberts upheld the Constitution and precedent to disappoint Trump and the GOP

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Five times strict constructionist Roberts upheld the Constitution and precedent to disappoint Trump and the GOP

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The Louisiana abortion case: Roberts strikes down an anti-abortion law

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) blocked a Louisiana law barring physicians from performing abortions unless the doctor had admitting privileges at a local hospital. Chief Justice Roberts, the crucial conservative vote that swung the decision toward the liberal argument, wrote his own opinion, in order to make it clear that his vote was guided by earlier precedent.

"The Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons," the Chief justice wrote. "Therefore Louisiana's law cannot stand under our precedents."

In fact, Roberts was opposed to the decision in case of the Texas law. The Texas case, decided by SCOTUS in 2016, struck down a law which they found created an "undue burden" on women seeking an abortion. Chief Justice Roberts was among those who dissented, voting to uphold the Texas law. Roberts has also said publicly that he believes "that the case was wrongly decided." So why did he vote against the new Louisiana law? Because the law stands on precedent, and this argument had been decided.

The arguments against the recent Louisiana law were that this was " not medically necessary," and that the law was in fact written in order to restrict abortion. Because admitting privileges are granted at the discretion of each individual hospital, this put a physician's ability to legally perform an abortion at the discretion of local hospitals as well. The majority opinion, written by Justice Stephen Breyer, held that the Louisiana law was unconstitutional.

Breyer also noted, "The evidence also shows that opposition to abortion played a significant role in some hospitals' decisions to deny admitting privileges."

In his footnote to the Louisiana decision, Roberts showed that his opinion in this case was a narrow one, writing that the "validity of admitting privileges law depends on numerous factors that may differ from state to state." SCOTUS Chief Justice Roberts may be signaling that if someone can just bring a valid argument in front of the Supreme Court, he would be free to vote in support of a law that restricted abortion in some way.

In other words, Roberts may vote to uphold current abortion laws only until conservatives wise up and make a new argument against them - but for now, the Supreme Court Justice is thwarting the wishes of the current administration.

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5 times Supreme Court Justice Roberts was true to the Constitution-thereby angering Trump fans

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In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) blocked a Louisiana law barring physicians from performing abortions unless the doctor had admitting privileges at a local hospital. Chief Justice Roberts, the crucial conservative vote that swung the decision toward the liberal argument, wrote his own opinion, in order to make it clear that his vote was guided by earlier precedent.

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Article linking advance of Liberalism to economics 

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Article linking advance of Liberalism to economics 

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You use the history of the Economist as a prism to investigate what you called "real existing liberalism." How do you distinguish this strand of liberalism from more conventional approaches?

A lot has been written about liberalism, but little from a genuinely historical - still less global and comparative - perspective. The standard account tends to treat liberalism as a boundless body of thought, loosely cohering around a few abstract principles of freedom, to be found in this or that great thinker.

John Locke and Adam Smith are popular starting points. From here all sorts of ideas get ascribed to it - reason, toleration, individualism, secularism, pluralism, democracy, equality - in ways that fly in the face of what so many liberals actually thought and did.

My approach is different. This history does not start with seventeenth-century political theory or eighteenth-century economic thought, but in the Napoleonic era when political actors began to call themselves liberals in Spain and France.

The term then migrates to Britain, where it undergoes a unique double development: political ideas of the rule of law and civil liberties fuse with economic maxims of free trade and free markets in theories of "limited government." Liberalism emerges as a more potent ideological-organizational force than anywhere else in Europe.

The Economist was founded at around this point in 1843. Unlike a particular thinker or theme, the publication offers a continuous record of liberalism in action, as it confronted three challenges: growing demands from workers for democracy, the rise of high finance within the global capitalist order, and the expansion of European empires. My history revolves around these questions.

It thus rejects the free-for-all approach to liberal ideas - while also being flexible, allowing for the ways these ideas changed, recombined, and reacted to other traditions and arguments. The Economist is not the only or purest expression of liberalism - but it is the dominant one, I argue, with the greatest global impact for 175 years.

In a sense, you seem to explain the Economist 's unique representativeness in terms of the specific place England played in the history of liberalism.

This is central.

From the start, the Economist hitches its sails to the earth's leading capitalist state. This is not only reflected in coverage, with a relentless drive to bring the world economy into focus for its readers, through the collection, measurement, and tabulation (often for the first time) of various price, trade, and stock indexes, company reports, news bulletins, and so on.

It is also a function of its editors' location within that burgeoning world system - shuttling between the economic hub of the City of London, the political-administrative corridors of Westminster and Whitehall, and the formal and informal empires.

James Wilson, the hat manufacturer turned political economist who started the Economist, used it as a springboard into high politics and finance: within four years, he was in parliament, and enjoyed a rapid advance - the India Board, the Treasury, and then the Board of Trade.

In 1859, he was sent to India as the first "Chancellor of the Indian Exchequer," tasked with devising a new fiscal state to rule the British Raj in the wake of the Indian rebellion (including state guarantees on forms of inward investment); at the same time, the Chartered Bank he co-founded in London in 1852 was opening branches all throughout Asia to profit from Indian opium pouring into China.

As I show in the book, the growing power of finance capital was not only important in all the ways economic historians have discussed - but as the basis of an entire liberal politics, a literal worldview. Walter Bagehot, the famous banker-editor, wrote of the "incalculable sums" that London was sending abroad in the 1870s. Bagehot made it the business of the Economist to analyze this new politico-economic reality, and to prescribe the policies best adapted to sustain and deepen it at home and abroad.

This orientation is clear in his theorizing of the role of central banks in liberal polities - as lenders of last resort, independent of "meddling," with the duty to bring under control the giant crises this globalizing capitalism was already generating.

It is also present in his analyses of the best liberal constitutional systems for societies undergoing these changes - in Britain, America, France, and beyond. The need to inspire investor confidence led Bagehot to favor strong executives and narrow franchises, with local variations to suit what he called "national character."

This way of looking at the world is so commonplace today, we take it for granted. Politics appears to take place within the limits set by the mobility of capital. When Argentina struggles to pay bondholders; when the US Federal Reserve raises interest rates; when a "populist" coalition takes office in Italy - certain questions follow, as if automatically.

What reforms will Buenos Aires undertake? How will the flow of capital out of emerging markets affect their growth and stability? Are Italian spending plans compatible with growing Italian bond spreads? The answers to these questions are political. They were first posed in this way in the Economist.

Something fascinating, here, are the close ties the Economist itself had to modern laissez-faire.

It is no exaggeration to say that the Economist embodied the most theoretically sophisticated - and unremitting - example of early laissez-faire thought. I try to reconstruct what this body of thought looked like, contextualizing it and the writers who espoused it in the pages of the Economist.

This matters, since many accounts downplay or ignore this element in liberalism's history. It is not hard to see why. Here are the villains that lurk in the footnotes to Capital. I try to let them speak, without telling the reader to be horrified.

The Economist makes a case for free trade that is plainly millenarian. Wilson argued that absolute free trade would result in the end of the trade cycle itself: at home, it alone could cure "ignorance, depravity, immorality and irreligion" and "want, pauperism and hunger;" abroad, it would "do more than any other visible agent to extend civilization ... yes, to extinguish slavery itself."

In this providentialist register, the Economist opposed almost all "interference" in the operations of the market as divine trespass. While the paper certainly attacked the protectionists in Parliament committed to the Corn Laws or Navigation Acts, it was far more passionate in denouncing another group: politicians and writers who, acting out of benevolence, philanthropy, or charity - all three words became insults in the pages of the Economist - tried to mitigate the suffering of the lower orders.

Good deeds had unforeseen consequences, almost always in the form of evil. This was just as true for the state undertaking a task "rather fit for God than man" when it limited the working day, as it was for private individuals and groups.

On this basis, the Economist opposed nearly every piece of reform legislation - the Pacific Railway Act, the Factory Act, the Ten Hours Act, and the Board of Health ("there is a worse evil than typhus or cholera or impure water, and that is mental imbecility").

It condemned not just calls for public education, but charity schools; not just official attempts to embargo slave-produced goods, but abolitionists (those "truly great philanthropists"); and it rejected what we would now consider basic company, banking, patent, and copyright laws. Wilson's paper played a key role in shaping the official response to the Great Famine in Ireland, with foreseeably devastating consequences.

Lenin famously used to argue that a newspaper was also a way to organize and unify the worldview of the working class. In a certain sense isn't the Economist just the Pravda for the Anglo-American ruling class? The perfect embodiment of the dominant form of liberalism?

It cannot be a coincidence that so many Marxists have read - and that several have even written for - the Economist. It can sometimes feel like reading Marx in a funhouse mirror. Indeed, what Bagehot praised as the genius of the English political system - that a Cabinet, akin to a "board of directors," ran the nation, behind a screen of royal pomp - is not unlike Marx's description of parliamentary government, as the executive committee of the bourgeoisie. Of course, the judgments are inverted.

Marx himself carefully studied the Economist - as much for information about the peripeteia of global capital as to understand the worldview of its managers. Marx called it the tribune of "the aristocracy of finance" - so, a powerful fraction of the ruling class - and he used it in the Eighteenth Brumaire to show the illiberal ways that liberals were reacting to the threat of popular democracy, marking up the price of public funds at the first signs of a coup d'état to crush the French National Assembly. Lenin also read the Economist, calling it a paper that - quite simply - "speaks for British millionaires."

There are certainly parallels with Pravda. There are also differences. The Economist has had to be (in a general way) rather more candid with its wealthy clique of readers. The Polish Marxist Daniel Singer - the Economist's unusual Paris correspondent in 1968 - once argued that before circulation exploded in the 1980s, you could read the Economist to "hear the bourgeoisie speaking to itself, and it could talk quite frankly."

In part, I think this must reflect the difference between the task of organizing the worldview of a ruling class that is for itself, with a class whose existence has yet to find coherent political expression; between a paper whose mission is to mobilize for the overthrow of capitalism, and one intent on running it smoothly. Could socialists ever produce a magazine like the Economist? Would it be a sign of strength if they could?

An important part of your argument is about the relation between liberalism and war. A quite widespread story is the one associating free trade to peace. The European Union has made it its credo. But you tell us another story. One where liberals promote free markets "by the barrel of the gun."

This is one of the main discoveries of the book. Not that liberal imperialism existed, which is well-known, at least to critically-minded scholars. What I excavate is when, where, and how imperialism became so central to the dominant strand of liberalism. A key moment - a turning point - was an epic row between James Wilson, the Economist 's founder, and two of his liberal comrades-in-arms, that began during the Crimean War.

Richard Cobden and John Bright are the two most famous names associated with the struggle for free trade in Britain - textile manufacturers and leading members of the Anti-Corn Law League.

Cobden's motto (and that of the League) was "Free Trade, Peace and Good-Will Among Nations," and his own writings placed as much stress on the prosperity unilateral free trade would bring as its tendency to eradicate war. (Inscribed on the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, this motto delighted Woodrow Wilson when he spoke there in 1919 on his way to Paris; today, it is a Radisson hotel). Cobden and Bright were instrumental in starting the Economist - agreeing in 1843 to order twenty thousand copies for distribution by the League.

Wilson worked closely with Cobden and Bright, and at first his paper was just as zealous in linking the cause of free trade to peace: one early article argued for replacing the entire diplomatic corps with cool, calculating merchants.

In 1854, however, the Economist broke decisively with this line of reasoning: the notion that laissez-faire meant noninterference at home as well as abroad went up in smoke. What lit the fuse? A run of imperial conflicts in the 1850s, which started in Crimea, and extended to the Second Opium War with China and the repression of the Indian rebellion.

Wilson had become a member of the government. He sat on the Treasury bench in parliament, and behind the scenes was organizing war loans and levies. The Economist not only justified the wars, but viciously attacked those like Cobden and Bright who publicly opposed them in parliament and the press as "tools of the Tsar" and "enemies of free institutions." The paper turned against the idea that free trade on its own led to peace.

This was now a "hideous and shallow doctrine" - allowing Russia to run amok, "barbarous sovereigns oppressing their subjects" and "bullying and partitioning their weaker neighbors." To bring about a world of free commercial intercourse and liberal political values, force could - and should - be used. "We may regret war," it mused as British ships shelled Canton, "but we cannot deny that great advantages have followed in its wake."

For Cobden, justifying these wars on the basis of free trade was hypocritical nonsense: "words without meaning, mere echoes of the past." It was also a betrayal. Asked if he had seen an issue in 1855 pressing to expand the war against Russia, Cobden replied, "I never see the Economist though I have it on my conscience that I was mainly concerned in starting it."

To read it now was "a task I would not condemn a dog to." Cobden even came to reflect rather dimly on "the great capitalist class" he had helped to organize - wondering if their wealth and belligerence were compatible with a "democratic political movement."

To be clear: a strand of radical liberalism continued to carry the torch of a Cobdenite pacifism. But from the 1850s on, this remained an inconsistent and minoritarian position - far less prominent and effectual than the line taken - with very few exceptions - by the Economist.

There was however an exception under Francis Hirst, who saw imperialism as a threat to liberalism and didn't hesitate to publish pacifist tribunes J. A. Hobson and Bertrand Russell in the magazine.

Francis Hirst is the most intriguing exception to the rule. An eruption of Cobdenism at a publication that had done more than any other to expel these views from the liberal mainstream. In July and August 1914, Hirst argued that Britain should remain neutral, putting pressure on his friends inside the Cabinet, joining neutrality committees - albeit to little effect, given the enormous structural and ideological impetus for war.

Even more noteworthy: once the conflict was underway, Hirst pushed for a negotiated peace, and refused to fall into line behind the war, as did many of his Liberal friends. Not only did he see the war as the death knell of liberalism, "murdered" by a Liberal government sworn to uphold it - with tariffs and taxes, followed by censorship and conscription.

He also tried to bring home the dangers the war posed to the hegemony of the City and the "delicate architecture" of global finance. "Grass will be growing on Lombard Street before the end of the year," Hirst told a junior editor in despair. The Economist board of trustees soon grew alarmed. Hirst was fired in 1916.

But if Hirst was exceptional in this respect, he did not escape the contradictions at the heart of the dominant liberalism. The First World War brought two of these sharply into focus. First, Hirst had become an advocate of New Liberalism - which argued that the state could play a more active role in the economy, in terms of education, social insurance, and so on.

But Hirst always insisted that "social reform" would require more than new taxes. Liberals must tamp down imperialism, reach an understanding with Germany, and cut arms spending. The reality of New Liberalism in power, however, was completely different: if Liberals achieved some progressive aims prior to 1914, it was by agreeing to escalate - not reduce - the arms race with Germany.

Second, Hirst argued that finance was a force for peace in the lead-up to 1914: the more financially interdependent the world, the more the threat of war receded. Foreign investments were "hostages for peace" - a view held not just by Hirst, but Hobson, Norman Angell, and other liberals.

The First World War put pain to this thesis. But there was ample evidence contradicting it in the Economist long before the outbreak of the war: from East Asia - where the City's single best customer since the turn of the century was Japan, borrowing £84 million to carve out an empire - to the Moroccan crises closer to Europe. What if capital flows were fuses with long timers, rather than peace feelers?

The other important topic of your book is liberalism's response to the rise of democracy. Why do you think that the Economist offers us valuable historical lessons on liberalism's relationship to democracy? How did we come to think of "liberalism" and "democracy" as an ideal couple rather than an antagonism, and what role did the Economist play in this?

I am not the first to point out that liberalism and democracy are two distinct concepts - and their conjunction is recent and fraught. As Duncan Bell has shown, the category of "liberal democracy," and its elevation into the most authentic (or distinctive) ideology of the West, began in earnest in the 1930s - providing a powerful self-justification for Euro-Atlantic states in their geopolitical and ideological confrontation with "totalitarian threats" of left and right.

The Cold War supercharged this dynamic: excluding the communist states (which also claimed the democratic, but not liberal, label), the idea took root in the disciplines of political science, and in history in Western civilization courses (with helpful subventions, via the CIA-backed Congress for Cultural Freedom)

Liberalism in this sense may be an invented tradition. But the idea that it has some basic democratic core, or that it tends internally towards the realization of democracy, is enduring. For the liberals in my book, democracy is a problem - to be resisted in the nineteenth century, through restrictions on voting based on property, education, and region; to be managed and contained in the twentieth century, when working-class pressure and the exigencies of total war became too powerful to resist.

If new democratic countermovements arise as a result of the current crisis - this is by no means certain, given the weak structural position of labor in the context of sky-high unemployment and the lockdowns - liberals will confront similar dilemmas. Liberal historians have their own teleologies. Instead of gradual - still less inevitable - progress towards democracy, we should be talking about a history of tension, resistance, workarounds, and ruptures.

The intellectual history of neoliberalism has been, in recent years, the object of increasing interest. But how does this shift - from liberalism to neoliberalism - look from the perspective of a journal like The Economist?

There is much to be said in answer to this question.

First, a point on the historical field. One of the things that struck me in Quinn Slobodian's history, Globalists, is that the preoccupations of his "Geneva" neoliberals - how to construct the global economy after empires, and to insulate it from political demands at the level of the nation - are so continuous with the concerns of earlier liberals.

We now have a much more sophisticated grasp of neoliberalism than the one that painted it as hostile to the state, welfare, the family, to human rights - Jessica Whyte, Ben Jackson, Keith Tribe, Melinda Cooper, and many others have done excellent work on these themes. I think there is still interesting work to be done, however, on the relationship between liberalism and neoliberalism.

Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, and Colloque Walter Lippmann participants - all rejected the "fallacies of laissez-faire," but, in so doing, they constructed a certain intellectual picture of it that suited their ends. Their battles in the 1930s were not just with socialist planners, but other liberals - like Keynes - and therefore over control of liberalism as an intellectual tradition.

Second, by the late 1980s, the Economist was the champion of - indeed, it would define itself as the "rough guide" to - neoliberal globalization. In fact, the paper was late to embrace neoliberalism, at least in its monetarist form. I recount the editorial fights that broke out over this - in exchanges with Milton Friedman, who attacked the Economist for backing an incomes policy, and between section editors, over whether or not to endorse Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

It is a bit like peaking behind the curtain of Stuart Hall's The Great Moving Right Show - to reveal the struggles within the struggles, and to then construct a new hegemony in response to the crises of the 1970s. The Economist complicates both ends of this story: both the advent of a so-called Keynesian consensus after 1945, and its collapse into Thatcherism at the turn of the 1980s.

In this regard, how exactly has the Economist responded to the "populist" decade? This development in many ways challenges the ideas the magazine has long promoted - globalization, inequality, financialization, and so on. So, how does it explain Trump or Brexit?

Liberalism may have been quite helpless in foreseeing and explaining what it terms "populism." The Economist's flat-footed coverage of Brexit and Trump attests to that, as has the coverage coming from other outlets: think of the New York Times with its broken electoral speedometer predicting Clinton's triumph, or the Guardian and its whimsical populist personality tests.

The media has taken up the term in part because it is so imprecise: it allows them, as Marco D'Eramo and Wolfgang Streeck have argued, to avoid distinctions, in defense of a narrow center ground, on which an emaciated form of politics is allowed to persist. Very different sorts of movements rejecting this status quo can be branded as similarly simplistic, deluded, or dangerous.

Yet, the liberal center has proved more adept at containing these threats - in part because of the power of the institutions liberals themselves have crafted, from central banks and media giants, to party organs and international organizations.

In the UK, Corbynism was disarmed and defeated with spurious charges of antisemitism, making way for a "forensic" (i. e. becalmed) opposition; in the United States, Bernie Sanders was dispatched in favor of a decrepit cipher of the credit card lobby and security state - someone who is perhaps, even so, capable of winning, provided he does not leave his basement; and in Italy, Matteo Salvini is out of the government. This does not mean liberals have found an answer, or that they have done anything but defer a much more severe crisis - albeit on terms less favorable to the Left, and perhaps also to themselves...

It's not that liberal publications don't recognize the need for change. As I write this, Mark Carney, the Bank of England's governor, is in the Economist, sounding for all the world like Keynes on the economic future of our grandchildren: the need for new "public values" to supersede those signaled by prices and markets; more and better "social support and medical care"; bold tackling of climate change.

And yet. Liberal institutions have felt no need to concede to the social forces that advocate for these changes - savaging the movements, parties, and representatives that have tried to harness them into political programs. Winning the battle of ideas is not going to be enough.

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Liberalism Is as Bad as the Economist Makes It Sound

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Liberalism is often presented as a loose set of principles like reason, freedom, and the rule of law. But over almost two centuries, the Economist has provided a window into the dominant strand of liberalism in action - with imperial conquest and undemocratic regimes defended in the name of upholding "free trade."

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SC ruling on DACA blow to Trump administration 

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SC ruling on DACA blow to Trump administration 

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Updated at 6:35 p.m. ET
In a major rebuke to President Trump, the U.S. Supreme Court has blocked the administration's plan to dismantle an Obama-era program that has protected 700,000 so-called DREAMers from deportation. The vote was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing the opinion.

Under the Obama program, qualified individuals brought to the U.S. as children were given temporary legal status if they graduated from high school or were honorably discharged from the military, and if they passed a background check. Just months after taking office, Trump moved to revoke the program, only to be blocked by lower courts - and now the Supreme Court.

Roberts' opinion for the court was a narrow but powerful rejection of the way the Trump administration went about trying to abolish the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.

"We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies," Roberts wrote. "The wisdom of those decisions is none of our concern. Here we address only whether the Administration complied with the procedural requirements in the law that insist on 'a reasoned explanation for its action.' "

In 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions simply declared DACA illegal and unconstitutional. "Such an open-ended circumvention of immigration laws was an unconstitutional exercise of authority by the executive branch," he said at the time. Sessions argued that the program should be rescinded because he said it was unlawful from the start.

But, as Roberts observed, the attorney general offered no detailed justifications for canceling DACA. Nor did the acting secretary of homeland security at the time, Elaine Duke, who put out a memo announcing the rescission of DACA that relied entirely on Sessions' opinion that the program was unlawful.

As Roberts noted, Duke's memo didn't address the fact that thousands of young people had come to rely on the program, emerging from the shadows to enroll in degree programs, embark on careers, start businesses, buy homes and even marry and have 200,000 children of their own who are U.S. citizens, not to mention that DACA recipients pay $60 billion in taxes each year.

None of these concerns are "dispositive," Roberts said, but they have to be addressed. The fact that they weren't addressed made the decision to rescind DACA "arbitrary and capricious," he wrote. And none of the justifications the administration offered after the fact sufficed either, including a memo issued by then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen. That memo, said Roberts, was essentially too little, too late. An agency must defend its action based on the reasons it gave at the time it acted, he said, instead of when the case is already in court.

Roberts made clear that an administration can rescind a program like DACA, and indeed immigration experts don't disagree with that bottom line. The problem for the administration was that it never wanted to take responsibility for abolishing DACA and instead sought to blame the Obama administration for what it called an "illegal and unconstitutional" program.

The chief justice didn't address that issue. Instead, says immigration law professor Lucas Guttentag, the justices in the majority seemed to be saying, "Why should the court be the bad guy" when the administration "won't take responsibility" for rescinding DACA by explaining clearly what the policy justifications for the revocation are?

Joining the Roberts opinion were the court's four liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Sotomayor wrote separately to say that while she agreed that rescinding DACA violated the law for the procedural reasons outlined by the chief justice, she would have allowed the litigants to return to the lower courts and make the case that rescinding DACA also amounted to unconstitutional discrimination.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the principal dissent, accusing Roberts of writing a political rather than a legal opinion. Joining him were Justices Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito, with separate dissents also filed by Alito and Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

In a tweet, Trump blasted the decision as one of the "horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court." The president also asked: "Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn't like me?"

These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives. We need more Justices or we will lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else. Vote Trump 2020!
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2020

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, on the other hand, celebrated the decision, saying in a statement, "The Supreme Court's ruling today is a victory made possible by the courage and resilience of hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients who bravely stood up and refused to be ignored."

In an interview with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly, Ken Cuccinelli, the Trump administration senior official who oversees immigration and citizenship at the Department of Homeland Security, said Trump is considering his options.

"I do expect you will see some action out of the administration," he said, adding: "He is not a man who sits on his hands."

While the decision gives DACA and its hundreds of thousands of recipients a lifeline, the issue is far from settled. The court decided that the way Trump went about canceling DACA was illegal, but all the justices seemed to agree that the president does have the authority to cancel the program if done properly.

As for the immediate future of DACA, the consensus among immigration experts is that there is not enough time for Trump to try again to abolish the program before January. Cornell Law School professor Stephen Yale-Loehr, the author of a 21-volume treatise on immigration law, says, "It's not remotely possible before the election. But if [Trump] is reelected, he almost certainly will try again" to cancel DACA.

For now, though, more individuals eligible for DACA status may be able to apply. Marisol Orihuela, co-director of the Worker & Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic at Yale Law School, notes that the administration has refused to accept new applications since 2017. But she thinks that will change now. "Our understanding is that the program is restored to what it was in 2012 when it went into effect," she says.

Guttentag, who teaches immigration law at Yale and Stanford University, says if Trump is not reelected, a new administration could repair "much of the damage" that he says has been inflicted on immigrants during the Trump administration. But, he adds that the immigration system is "completely shattered" and needs "fundamental reform."

Politically, Thursday's decision played out as expected, with anti-immigration groups condemning the decision and DACA recipients jubilant and relieved.

But aside from the president, lots of Republicans are relieved as well. If Thursday's decision had gone the other way, the pressure on congressional Republicans to pass legislation protecting the DREAMers would have been intense.

DACA is an astonishingly popular program, with recent polls showing up to 85% support among Democratic and independent voters, and huge majorities among Republican voters as well.

Indeed, 200 major corporations filed briefs in the Supreme Court supporting the DACA recipients. Among them was Microsoft, which was a plaintiff in one of the cases that made it to the Supreme Court, and its president, Brad Smith.

"There are more than 30,000 DACA registrants working in the health space alone. We've needed these people more than we do today," he said. "Every time I meet with them, I have the same reaction. We are lucky as a country to have them."

Not all DACA critics are against the substance of DACA. Instead, some oppose the fact that Obama, frustrated with congressional inaction, put the program into effect unilaterally through executive order. Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute warns of unforeseen consequences if presidents can create new programs that future administrations will struggle to unwind.

"This raises profound issues of executive power and in effect sets out a ratchet whereby statutory changes can be enacted by presidential executive order but can only be rescinded through jumping through various administrative law hoops," he said.

At the end of the day, the man of the hour is Chief Justice Roberts. Amid a politicized and polarized society, he has repeatedly tried to portray the court as apolitical. He sees the growth of organizations on the hard right like the Judicial Crisis Network, and on the hard left like Demand Justice, each trying to stack the court with like-minded justices or pack the court by expanding the number of justices.

"What these decisions underscore is we have a chief justice who's plainly working hard to demonstrate to the American people that the court, unlike the other two branches, is doing its job and doing its best," said Harvard Law School professor Richard Lazarus, who has known the chief justice for decades. "He wants the American people to believe there is a thing called law and justice. His job is to apply it."

( Read the decision here.)
Emmett Witkovsky-Eldred contributed to this report.

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Supreme Court Rules For DREAMers, Against Trump

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The decision is a dramatic victory for immigration advocates and gives a new lease on life for the so-called DREAMers, immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

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Supreme Court ruling supports LGBT rights in the workplace 

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Supreme Court ruling supports LGBT rights in the workplace 

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The decision was a rout for social conservatives and a defeat for President Donald Trump's administration, which had urged the justices to take a narrow view of the half-century-old law.

Some Trump allies immediately denounced Gorsuch's opinion as a betrayal from the Trump appointee. A top Trump aide quickly criticized the ruling, but when the president himself was asked about it he offered a mild response and passed up a chance to try to make political hay out of the court's decree.

"I've read the decision," the president said of the various opinions, which ran to 119 pages in all. "Some people were surprised, but they've ruled and we live with their decision. That's what it's all about. We live with the decision of the Supreme Court. Very powerful, very powerful decision, actually."

While the cases ruled on Monday garnered less attention than the showdown five years ago that led to the court's landmark decision finding a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, the latest ruling could be even more impactful, providing millions of LGBT Americans with new workplace rights and ushering in similar legal guarantees of equal treatment in private businesses, schools and elsewhere.

Yet, the high court's edict also seemed far less earth shaking than the 2015 ruling, perhaps due to ongoing racial unrest and perhaps because polls show an increasingly broad consensus in support of LGBT rights.

Explaining the ruling, Gorsuch said Congress may not have intended to ban discrimination against gays, lesbians and transgender individuals, but that the logic of their protection by the statute was inescapable.

"Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result. Likely, they weren't thinking about many of the Act's consequences that have become apparent over the years, including its prohibition against discrimination on the basis of motherhood or its ban on the sexual harassment of male employees," Gorsuch wrote.

"But the limits of the drafters' imagination supply no reason to ignore the law's demands," he continued. "When the express terms of a statute give us one answer and extratextual considerations suggest another, it's no contest. Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit."

LGBT activists were thought to face an uphill battle at the high court because Congress has spent more than four decades considering, but failing to pass, measures intended to expand the coverage of the 1964 law by explicitly adding sexual orientation to the list of protected traits.

Such legislation passed the Democrat-controlled House in 2007 and again last year and was approved by the Democrat-controlled Senate in 2013, with the latter two efforts also explicitly aimed outlawing workplace discrimination against transgender people. The bills never cleared both chambers in the same Congress.

That Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion was viewed as a major coup by gay rights advocates. They hoped his professed devotion to "textualism" - an often literal approach to reading Congressional enactments - would persuade him to embrace a view that LGBT discrimination is sex discrimination because it involves treating someone differently at least in part due to gender.

Gorsuch did just that, sounding unequivocal in his conclusions about the half-century-old workplace discrimination ban, known as Title VII.

"An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids," wrote Gorsuch, an appointee of President Donald Trump.

Gorsuch also took a jaundiced eye to suggestions that the court should try to divine why Congress never passed language explicitly adding LGBT protections to the workplace discrimination law.

When images of packed Florida beaches flashed across TV screens, critics grimly predicted overrun hospitals. But that didn't happen. Now as Florida prepares to host the GOP convention, cases are spiking.

"Speculation about why a later Congress declined to adopt new legislation offers a 'particularly dangerous' basis on which to rest an interpretation of an existing law a different and earlier Congress did adopt," he wrote, quoting a prior case.

Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway initially lamented the ruling, arguing that the court departed from Congress' clear intent.

"We've had the Civil Rights Act for 56 years. Everybody has understood what it meant," she said on Fox News Monday. "It's very important though to stick to a statute or a law as it is written....If people want to change the law they should go to the Congress. Our Congress doesn't seem to like to work as hard as the other two branches."

Some activists who supported Gorsuch as Trump's first Supreme Court nominee were even more vocal, fuming about his betrayal and arguing he'd cast aside the legacy of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, whose vacancy Republicans held open through 2016 so it could be filled by a Trump nominee.

"Justice Scalia would be disappointed that his successor has bungled textualism so badly today, for the sake of appealing to college campuses and editorial boards," Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network said on Twitter. "This was not judging, this was legislating-a brute force attack on our constitutional system."

Roberts' vote to back LGBT rights in the new ruling was also notable, since he joined the rest of the court's conservatives in 2015 in vocal dissent from the same-sex marriage decision.

Because the decision Monday is a matter of statutory interpretation, it is not an all-out guarantee of workplace protections for LGBT people in the future, since Congress is free to tinker with the law. But as a practical political matter, it seems highly unlikely Congress would reach a consensus to repeal those rights anytime soon.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh dissented from the new ruling, arguing that Gorsuch's claimed humility about simply interpreting the law's language was belied by the huge gulf between what lawmakers intended and what the court held.

Alito leveled one of the gravest insults one conservative can train on another as he accused his colleague of legislating from the bench.

"There is only one word for what the Court has done today: legislation," Alito, wrote in a fiery dissent joined only by Thomas. "The document that the Court releases is in the form of a judicial opinion interpreting a statute, but that is deceptive...A more brazen abuse of our authority to interpret statutes is hard to recall. The Court tries to convince readers that it is merely enforcing the terms of the statute, but that is preposterous."

Alito also insisted that textualism doesn't mean reading a statute so literally that the purpose of the authors is ignored.

"It calls for an examination of the social context in which a statute was enacted because this may have an important bearing on what its words were understood to mean at the time of enactment," he wrote. "Textualists do not read statutes as if they were messages picked up by a powerful radio telescope from a distant and utterly unknown civilization."

Kavanaugh's solo dissent was more restrained in its tone. He said courts must give force to the "ordinary" meaning of the laws Congress passes, not a "literal" one.

"Both the rule of law and democratic accountability badly suffer when a court adopts a hidden or obscure interpretation of the law, and not its ordinary meaning," the court's newest justice wrote.

Kavanaugh said the majority was making "a mistake of history and sociology" because even a rudimentary look at the motivating forces behind the 1964 law shows that it wasn't seeking to advance gay rights.

"Seneca Falls was not Stonewall. The women's rights movement was not (and is not) the gay rights movement, although many people obviously support or participate in both," he wrote.

The Trump stance was a reversal of positions taken during the Obama administration, when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission held that both anti-gay and anti-transgender discrimination violated existing law, although courts divided on those issues.

Social conservatives who argued against finding protections for LGBT Americans in the existing statute sounded dejected Monday about the court's ruling and warned that it will have unexpected effects.

"Redefining 'sex' to mean 'gender identity' will create chaos and enormous unfairness for women and girls in athletics, women's shelters, and many other contexts. Civil rights laws that use the word 'sex' were put in place to protect equal opportunities for women," said John Bursch of the Alliance Defending Freedom.

By contrast, LGBT activists were ecstatic about the high court's decision.

"This is a landmark victory for LGBTQ equality," said Human Rights Campaign President Alphonso David.

Backers of the new decision said it could spell doom for some Trump administration policies, particularly an effort to roll back protections for transgender individuals seeking health care.

Prior to Monday's ruling, court decisions or enforcement authorities in nearly half of U.S. states interpreted state law to prohibit workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. In the remaining states, LGBT workers had no legal protection against being fired, demoted or paid less on account of those traits.

LGBT individuals in many states still have no legal protection against other forms of discrimination, such as in housing or public accommodations, although the new decision could bolster efforts to win such protection in the courts or in Congress.

"In many aspects of the public square, LGBTQ people still lack non-discrimination protections, which is why it is crucial that Congress pass the Equality Act to address the significant gaps in federal civil rights laws and improve protections for everyone," David said.

The gay and transgender rights cases decided Monday have been lingering on the court's docket for more than seven months. They were argued last October, on the second day of the court's current term.

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With LGBT ruling, Supreme Court hands liberals a surprise victory

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The decision was a rout for social conservatives and a defeat for President Donald Trump's administration, which had urged the justices to take a narrow view of the half-century-old law. Some Trump allies immediately denounced Gorsuch's opinion as a betrayal from the Trump appointee.

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LSE blog on why the US complex federal system will blunt the over-reaching initiatives of Trump

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LSE blog on why the US complex federal system will blunt the over-reaching initiatives of Trump

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elections and party politics across the us

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Why the US' complex federal system will blunt the worst aspects of Trump's transgressive presidency.

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For 230 years federalism, as set out in the Constitution, has been the bedrock of the US system of government. John Kincaid writes that American federalism has evolved to become a mixture of dual p...

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Federalism has become another casualty of Trump

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Federalism has become another casualty of Trump

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any American institutions and traditions have been challenged in the era of Donald Trump. The latest is federalism, the idea that power should be shared between the federal government and the states. The president's response to the coronavirus epidemic has had a curious impact, overturning the historical preferences of both parties. Put simply, coronavirus has meant federalism for Democrats who have been abandoned in the face of the pandemic, and slavish devotion to federal authority for Republicans.

Federalism provides a logical way for the United States to respond to epidemics. States have the primary responsibility for their citizens' health - about which they have the best information - but the federal government needs to take the lead in coordinating a national response. Supplies need to be sent where they are needed most, and measures like lockdowns have to be implemented and lifted in accordance with a national plan rather than haphazardly at the state level - because, as Andrew Cuomo has said, "state boundaries mean very little to the virus".

Yet a vacuum of responsible leadership from the White House has meant that the system has not worked as intended. Rather than seeing it as his role to work with the states to develop a national plan, Trump instead spent months denying that a problem even existed and stating that he took " no responsibility" for fighting the virus. When the prospect of emerging as the hero who restarted the economy beckoned, he swung to the other extreme, claiming " total authority" to supersede decisions made by the states and suggesting that governors who wanted to lift lockdowns at their own pace rather than his direction were committing " mutiny". On Friday, Trump went on a bizarre, all-caps Twitter rampage, calling on citizens to "LIBERATE" Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia from state quarantine measures.

Many Republican governors have responded by following the president's lead. Even as the government's top infectious diseases expert was pleading for a nationwide lockdown, governors like Florida's Ron DeSantis chose to sacrifice the health of their constituents on the altar of their desire to please the president.

When DeSantis did eventually issue a stay-at-home order, he explicitly cited Trump's changing " demeanor" as his reason for doing so. Other Republican governors took their cues from the federal government too, for instance by waiting for Trump to issue a national emergency declaration before they issued their own. Some Republican governors - such as Mike DeWine of Ohio and Larry Hogan of Maryland - acted earlier, but they represent states in which Trump's popularity is much lower than average among Republican-governed states.

Democratic governors have been more in tune with the needs of their localities than the president's shifting moods, issuing emergency declarations and lockdown orders sooner than their Republican counterparts. When their pleas for a more effective federal response were ignored, they turned to self-help instead. As it becomes clear that Trump is pushing for an irresponsible reopening of the economy, Democratic governors in the west and north-east have established working groups consisting of public health experts and economists to plot their own way forward.

Why did Republican governors stick with the president while Democratic governors went their own way? Much of the explanation can be found in the power of partisanship, and the nationalization of state politics. Trump's grip on the Republican base is so absolute that the governors of red states value their relationship with him above almost any other. And so much of local politics is now filtered through a national lens that Republican governors must be seen to be toeing the president's line even on local issues in order to please that base.

The particular way that Trump exercises power has also contributed to the reaction of governors from both parties. Trump has made clear that he will dole out federal largesse according to political loyalty, even preventing Colorado's Democratic-led government from purchasing ventilators on the open market and later sending a hundred units " at the request " of the state's Republican senator, who is facing a tough re-election battle. The message is clear: Democratic governors need to help themselves, because Trump sure won't. And Republican governors need to stick close to a president who sees himself as his party's feudal patron rather than the leader of the entire nation.

The result has been an inversion of what the Founders intended, with some states slavishly following federal dictate in flagrant disregard of local needs, and others hung out to dry as a national crisis looms and Washington does little to shepherd a national response. Democratic governors cannot rely on the president to protect the lives of their citizens, and Republican governors find themselves acting more as the lackeys of a monarch than representatives of the interests of their states. Taken together, these developments suggest that federalism has become another casualty of a president unprecedented in his disregard for everything which truly makes America great.

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Federalism has become another casualty of Trump and the coronavirus | Andrew Gawthorpe

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any American institutions and traditions have been challenged in the era of Donald Trump. The latest is federalism, the idea that power should be shared between the federal government and the states. The president's response to the coronavirus epidemic has had a curious impact, overturning the historical preferences of both parties.

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What does federalism mean for coronavirus response

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What does federalism mean for coronavirus response

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President Donald Trump recently attempted to explain the complex relationship between the federal government and the states, as outlined by the framers in 1787.

"[Y]ou can call it 'federalist,' you can call it 'the Constitution,' but I call it 'the Constitution,'" he said at a briefing by the Coronavirus Task Force.

Trump's statement, along with several others he has made recently, highlights one of the key issues that has affected America's response to the coronavirus pandemic: federalism.

In its most basic terms, "federalism" is the Constitution's way of distributing decision-making authority. The Constitution grants the national government the power to conduct certain activities and reserves the rest of governmental decisions to the states.

But who does what is not always clear-cut.

Throughout the coronavirus crisis, the president has made contradictory statements about who is responsible for key aspects of the nation's response to the pandemic.

For example, while Trump asserted he has the authority to order the states to reopen the economy, he also insisted that it is the governors' responsibility to manage coronavirus testing. From my perspective as a constitutional scholar, Trump's statements are haphazard at best and unconstitutional at worst.

But what is the president's role when it comes to guiding the nation through the pandemic? How much power do state governors have? Who is in charge?

Parceling out power

One of the most difficult tasks facing the framers when they drafted the Constitution was the proper distribution of power. Americans' experience living under British rule taught them that power centralized in a single executive could lead to oppression. As a result, many were reluctant to grant too much power to a president.

This reluctance was reflected in the Articles of Confederation. The articles, which were adopted after the Declaration of Independence but before the Constitution, gave a lot of power to the states and almost no power to the national government.

Yet early American governance under the articles illustrated that individual states can fail to work together to overcome big problems, like national security.

What became clear to the Founding Fathers was that a central authority is often necessary to coordinate the responses of individual states to the big economic and security issues that face the nation.

The framers' solution to this problem was to grant the national government authority to regulate citizens but not to regulate the states themselves. Put in the most basic terms, Congress and the president lack the constitutional power to tell states what to do.

The Constitution gives the federal government the ability to address national issues like defense, foreign policy and monetary policy. The states retain the power to address the well-being of their citizens. This includes setting health and education policy and even regulating elections.

Managing relationships

The constitutional balance between state and federal power is still in flux. Enormous changes in our federal system mean that the national government now takes on challenges that the framers of the Constitution could not have imagined. For example, the national government protects human health by regulating the environment and helps our ability to communicate by providing uniform standards for internet technologies.

As a result, the president has more expansive power than anticipated. Yet, a large part of the president's executive and administrative tasks involves managing the relationship between the national government and the states.

The president cannot constitutionally issue directives to require states to address certain problems or command governors to administer specific programs. But presidential administrations can encourage states to adopt certain policies, such as uniform education standards.

Sometimes this occurs by providing states with opportunities for federal funding but attaching conditions to the receipt of those funds. For example, the Obama administration routinely used federal funding to encourage states to adopt his preferred health care policies.

Architect of the Capitol

Coordination common

Federalism is often viewed as a conflict between the national government and the states. Yet there are many areas in which coordinated action between all levels of government occurs on a regular basis.

Health care is a prime example. While states have the constitutional power to regulate health and welfare, there is a long history of national government involvement in health policy.

Historical crises such as the Great Depression and the two World Wars highlighted the fact that not every state has the means to address all of the medical needs of its citizens. Every president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has used the national government to expand or improve health care in the states.

The framers recognized the importance of national government in times of crisis. Both James Madison and Alexander Hamilton acknowledged the need for unified, national leadership when the country faced threatening circumstances. Madison said in the Federalist Papers, "The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the State governments, in times of peace and security."

The coronavirus is such an emergency.

Divided governing

What does all of this constitutional history mean for the nation's response to COVID-19?

First, consistent with constitutional principles, the national government's US$2 trillion response bill is largely directed at providing help to individuals and private entities. The provisions of the bill that do relate to state and local government simply offer opportunities for federal funding.

Second, the Trump administration retains the authority to administer funds. President Trump has used this authority to do things like direct military aid to states and relax rules that regulate government approval for coronavirus testing. He also has announced guidelines for states to use when reopening state economies.

However, consistent with the Constitution, governors have discretion whether to implement these guidelines.

This means that it is still up to individual states to craft policies that protect the health and welfare of their citizens during this time of crisis. Some states are working closely with the White House, and others are coordinating their response efforts with neighboring states.

So if America's response to the coronavirus crisis will likely remain piecemeal and state-specific, perhaps this is what the framers intended.

[ Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation's newsletter.]

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Trump versus the states: What federalism means for the coronavirus response

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President Donald Trump recently attempted to explain the complex relationship between the federal government and the states, as outlined by the framers in 1787. "[Y]ou can call it 'federalist,' you can call it 'the Constitution,' but I call it 'the Constitution,'" he said at a briefing by the Coronavirus Task Force.

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Parliamentary response to Covid crisis - how has parliament adapted and what has it meant for parliamentary processes

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Parliamentary response to Covid crisis - how has parliament adapted and what has it meant for parliamentary processes

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Adapting to the situation we are left in due to the Covid-19 crisis is crucial for companies across the globe. GPG is intending to extend and expand what we have always done by continuing communication, providing advice, guidance and mentoring to our partners whether we are in-country or not. Our Parliamentary Response To Crisis series is designed to gather together the thoughts and experience of parliamentary experts on the current Covid-19 pandemic, the response of governments and what comes next.

Parliament finally returned in semi-virtual form this week. While initial coverage has inevitably focused on the novel use of digital technology in the most analogue of institutions, underlying this are more important questions about whether parliament will be able to exert the same political pressure on government when its members are not physically present.

Westminster is not alone in this task. Every other legislature around the world is looking for ways to meet and decide things when MPs cannot be in the same room, most of which seem destined to further increase the share price of Zoom. Yet, as most parliaments are finding, whilst adapting the formal procedures is a relatively easy task, the politics is more complex.

For example, Brazil moved swiftly to change its rules to allow fully virtual plenary sessions, South Africa has introduced new systems for electronic submission of questions to ministers and many parliamentary committees have quickly moved to remote meetings. Other countries, like France, Ireland, Norway and Germany have reduced both the amount of business, and the number of people allowed in the plenary at any one time, along with other provisions for remote deliberations and questions.

The UK has ended up with a similar combination of measures, but spats have already emerged in other countries about the politics of such changes. Reducing the number of MPs in the chamber at any one time for questions seems appropriate, provided those numbers reflect the party balance. But who decides which MPs get to turn up? And if parliamentary business is being reduced, what takes priority? This is the traditional territory of the party whips, who will relish the ability to further influence the tone and contents of such public debates.

Fewer MPs is also likely to change the dynamic in parliament. Although the bear-pit atmosphere of the Commons is often rightly derided as creating more heat than light, the sheer presence of the place when fully-occupied has a concentrating effect on ministers. And a ministerial ability to read the mood of the place and to hold the floor of the chamber - or not - has been a key factor in determining the outcome of numerous critical debates over recent decades from foreign intervention in places like Iraq and Syria, to domestic policies such as tuition fees. A half-empty chamber is unlikely to carry the same political heft.

There may be similar effects on the quality of committee oversight. While many committees have moved quickly to continue their investigations remotely, the forensic questioning of a minister often depends on the unspoken interactions between MPs inside the committee room that enable follow-up. The orchestration of such sessions when MPs are on the other end of an internet connection becomes more difficult, which may in turn diminish the tensions of such proceedings.

However, the bigger problem for committee accountability is one that is less immediately obvious. Attempts by the Home Affairs Select Committee to question Priti Patel since early

March have been successively ignored or evaded by the Home Secretary, much to the annoyance of Yvette Cooper, the committee's chair.

The Home Secretary has been aided in her evasion by wider events related to the pandemic and the Easter holidays, but has been almost entirely absent from the political firmament. Given the lingering questions about the departure of the department's Permanent Secretary Philip Rutnam, accusations of improper conduct and a highly contentious immigration bill arriving in parliament imminently, it is difficult to see how a minister obliged to walk through the division lobbies alongside all of their colleagues every day could withstand that sort of political pressure for long.

As it is, parliament's famously archaic and time-consuming voting procedure has provided the thorniest of problems when fewer people can be present. The alternative to forcing 650 jostling MPs through the division lobbies to have their names ticked off by a lobby clerk (albeit on ipad these days) will need to be more sophisticated than Jacob Rees-Mogg's suggestion that they open a window. But a supermarket-style staggered queue, with MPs six feet apart, snaking back through Central Lobby would dramatically increase the already lengthy 15 minutes it takes to count every head.

Almost every other modern parliament already allows MPs to vote electronically from their seats in the plenary session. And, many parliaments are now simply extending security provisions so that votes can be undertaken remotely. While proposals to introduce electronic voting at Westminster over the last 30 years have traditionally been rejected because of security concerns, the real reason is in fact more to do with the uniquely British problem that the Commons chamber has fewer seats than MPs, making it impossible for all of them to have their own desk.

Assuming that we could get over the technical difficulties, remote electronic voting would alter parliamentary politics in other ways. Almost every MP I have spoken to over the last 25 years at Westminster has defended the practice of voting in the lobbies because it allows them access to ministers who would otherwise be difficult to pin down. Politicians will frequently describe the system as a 'great leveller', as lowly backbenchers and cabinet ministers are all forced through the lobbies at the same time. The chance to buttonhole a minister about funding for a local hospital, the quality of a local school or some wider policy issue is cherished by most MPs, and would be difficult to replicate with electronic voting.

The changes will also present new problems for the art of whipping - surely the most physical of all parliamentary arts - in keeping tabs on their own MPs. During my own time as an adviser to successive Leaders of the House of Commons in the last Labour government I was constantly impressed by the ability of the whips to ferret out recalcitrant MPs hiding in different parts of the parliamentary estate. And as I have seen at first-hand it is difficult to resist the carefully-framed requests of a whip who is breathing into your face, but perhaps easier to simply find that you have a dodgy internet connection at home.

The whips' ability to understand what MPs are thinking, sense where opinions are hardening, and anticipate potential splits within the parliamentary party has always revolved to a large degree on corridor conversations, and the trading of information between politicians and journalists. Anyone who has worked in the Palace of Westminster knows that there are certain cafés and walkways in those buildings that are invaluable for understanding what is really going on in government and parliament. If fewer people are gathering, it

potentially makes it more difficult for the whips to do their jobs. But it also makes it more difficult for the lobby journalists to have the sort of snatched face-to-face conversations that will often verify a story, or not.

The COVID-19 crisis has been seized upon by several governments to extend their reach and sideline parliament, as seen most vividly in Hungary. But the danger for the vast majority of parliaments is less in a direct attack, than in the slow erosion of parliamentary oversight. Much of Westminster's strength comes from what goes on outside its formal proceedings - the behavioural norms and accepted practices that create pressure on government. A digital parliament might have many benefits, but it is up to MPs to ensure that the strengths of analogue politics are also retained.
Greg Power is Founder and Board Chair of Global Partners Governance, which works with politicians and governments to strengthen their political systems. This blog is a joint release between GPG and The Constitution Unit.
Follow Greg Power on Twitter: @gregpower_1

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Parliamentary Response to Crisis: Can analogue politics work in an era of digital scrutiny? The corrosive effect of Covid-19 on the informal politics of Westminster

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Adapting to the situation we are left in due to the Covid-19 crisis is crucial for companies across the globe. GPG is intending to extend and expand what we have always done by continuing communication, providing advice, guidance and mentoring to our partners whether we are in-country or not.

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UCL Constitution Unit on coronavirus and devolution 

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UCL Constitution Unit on coronavirus and devolution 

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The coronavirus is a once in a generation event that has required an almost unprecedented response from government at all levels, from Westminster to West Lothian. Akash Paun argues that it has raised five crucial questions about the politics of devolution at a time when efficient and effective intergovernmental relations are crucial.
Coronavirus has hit all parts of the UK and has required a comprehensive response by government at all levels - central, devolved and local. The crisis has raised (at least!) five big questions about devolution, intergovernmental relations and the politics of the Union:

Does the crisis show that the UK and devolved governments can cooperate effectively?

To what extent does devolution enable policy divergence between the UK nations?

How is the crisis affecting the operation of the devolved institutions themselves?

How is the pandemic response being funded - and with what impact on devolution?

What might this period mean for wider constitutional debates and the Union?

It is too early to give a definitive answer to any of these questions. But developments over the past few months already point to some preliminary conclusions, as well as identifying important lines of investigation for future research.

The UK and devolved governments can work together - at least in a crisis
One important finding, as the Institute for Government (IfG) recently concluded , is that the UK and devolved governments have shown the ability to work together well at various points over the past three months. Given the many disputes over Brexit, the Union and other matters in recent years, and the underlying weaknesses of the UK's system of intergovernmental relations , it was far from a foregone conclusion that the different administrations would be able to cooperate at all.

But credit should be given where it is due. In early March, the UK and devolved governments published a joint Coronavirus Action Plan - a rare sighting of a government policy paper that was co-branded by the four administrations. There was close working too on the Coronavirus Act , which was drafted with significant devolved input before being passed at Westminster with devolved consent under the Sewel Convention . And devolved leaders participated in meetings of the COBRA emergency committee throughout this period, helping to ensure that major announcements, not least the imposition of the lockdown in late March, were coordinated between the capitals.

More recently, however, it appears that the trust and close relationships that underpinned that cooperation may have begun to dissipate. The key announcement by Boris Johnson, on Sunday 17 May, that the lockdown was to be gradually eased did not reflect a consensus between the four nations, and the change of slogan from 'Stay at Home' to 'Stay Alert' was publicly disowned by the three devolved administrations. In keeping with an ' enduring habit of British governance ', the Prime Minister also chose not to clarify that his announced changes to lockdown rules would apply in England only. Subsequently, the UK and devolved governments have each published separate exit strategies from lockdown , whose varying formats and terminology, perhaps more than their substance, point to a decline in coordination.
Devolution inevitably leads to policy divergence - but within constraints
It is a feature - not a bug - of devolution that it enables different parts of the UK to reach different decisions and test alternative solutions to common problems (the idea of devolution as a 'policy laboratory' ). However, it appears to have come as a surprise to some in Westminster that the devolved bodies in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast might adopt different lockdown rules or move at different speeds in allowing businesses, schools and normal social life to resume operation.

In addition, ministers might simply reach different positions on what they view to be the appropriate trade-offs between public health, economic concerns and other factors such as personal freedom. Governments naturally wish to avoid the charge that they are 'playing politics' amidst a health crisis, but the reality is that evidence can inform but not determine policy choices, especially when there is substantial uncertainty about the consequences of particular decisions, such as allowing schools to reopen in June (as in England) rather than August (as in Scotland). There is, in other words, scope for legitimate political judgement, for which ministers can be held to account. In such circumstances, the transparency of the decision-making process and the evidence used to inform such decisions becomes of crucial importance - and, whether or not one agrees with any particular decisions taken, it is notable that Whitehall has moved more slowly than the Scottish and Welsh governments in .
Coronavirus has led to a substantial rise in public spending - by both UK and devolved governments
Furthermore, alongside the extra money provided through the Barnett block grant system, the devolved nations are benefitting from UK Treasury-controlled schemes for supporting employers, employees and the self-employed during this period, funded mainly via an expansion of public borrowing . These are expensive programmes. For instance, the Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (the 'furloughed workers' scheme) will cost the exchequer £14 billion per month between mid-March and July of this year. This figure is not broken down territorially, but if the four nations were to receive a share of this money in proportion to their populations (which will not be precisely the case), then Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would gain around £5bn, £3bn and £2bn respectively over this period. The devolved governments do not have the resources or fiscal levers to replace this and other UK-wide schemes once they are phased out. This will limit their ability to operate on a different timetable to England when it comes to reopening the economy.
Coronavirus creates big challenges for the four UK governments - and for the four legislatures Coronavirus may create new opportunities for unionists - and nationalists too
At the start of the coronavirus crisis, the Scottish government officially dropped its plan to hold a second Scottish independence referendum in 2020. But with elections to the Scottish and Welsh parliaments less than a year away, the debate over the future of the Union has just been put on temporary hold and seems likely to reignite as May 2021 approaches, a period in which the ever-divisive issue of . The resumption of arguments over the UK-EU relationship may also reopen divisions in Northern Ireland, potentially Brexit will also return to the top of the agenda sparking further talk of a 'border poll' on Irish reunification.

On the other hand, the crisis has enabled the devolved administrations to demonstrate their own capacity to coordinate much of the coronavirus response within their territories. Data from Ipsos MORI suggests that, in Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon's performance was viewed far more favourably than that of Boris Johnson, even before the controversy about Number 10 adviser Dominic Cummings. In addition, evidence that the UK may emerge from the pandemic with one of the worst mortality rates in the world may strengthen the nationalist argument that Scotland would be better able to deal with such challenges if it were independent, and therefore had the full panoply of fiscal and other levers available to ministers in Westminster. On the island of Ireland, of a higher coronavirus death rate in the north than the south may similarly help pro-reunification politicians to press their cause.

Following the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the 2016 EU referendum, and the bruising Brexit battles that followed, coronavirus is the latest black swan event to raise big questions about devolution and the Union. Answering these questions seems set to keep those of us who follow such matters busy for some time to come.
This is If you want to stay up to date with our work, our mailing list for news of our events and research, or you could through a one-off or regular donation. Donations are crucial to funding the blog, and the Unit's research. About the author the latest in a series of blogs in response to the constitutional challenges posed by the coronavirus. To see past blogs in the series, click here. To be notified of future blogs as they go live, sign up for updates in the left sidebar.

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Five key questions about coronavirus and devolution

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The coronavirus is a once in a generation event that has required an almost unprecedented response from government at all levels, from Westminster to West Lothian. Akash Paun argues that it has raised five crucial questions about the politics of devolution at a time when efficient and effective intergovernmental relations are crucial.

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subscribe to The NPR Politics Podcast podcast

As overlapping crises convulse an anxious nation, President Trump on Sunday sought to cast blame for widespread protests gripping cities on "radical-left anarchists," while adding that the media "is doing everything within their power to foment hatred and anarchy."

The president has said that members of the loosely defined far-left group Antifa - short for "anti-fascists" - have led clashes with police and looting in cities across the U.S. since the killing of a black man in police custody in Minneapolis.

It's unclear if any group or groups are primarily responsible for escalating protests that began following George Floyd's death on May 25 as Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin held his knee on Floyd's neck.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, has told the press that he'd heard unconfirmed reports that white supremacists were coming from elsewhere to stoke the violence.

In one tweet on Sunday, Trump said the U.S. "will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization." It's something he has previously floated, and last year two Republican senators introduced a resolution that sought to designate the group as a domestic terrorist organization.

Following Trump's tweet, Attorney General William Barr said in a statement that "[f]ederal law enforcement actions will be directed at apprehending and charging the violent radical agitators who have hijacked peaceful protest."

Barr added: "The violence instigated and carried out by Antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly."

The clashes, spreading to dozens of cities across the U.S., follow a series of racist incidents and deaths of black people, including Floyd's on Monday.

Chauvin, now a former Minneapolis police officer, was seen on video kneeling on Floyd's neck while holding him in custody as Floyd pleaded that he couldn't breathe. Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter. Three other officers present at the scene have been fired but not arrested or charged.

Protests and clashes that have since followed come at a time of unprecedented crisis for the country, with confirmed deaths from the coronavirus pandemic topping 100,000 and millions of people out of work as a result of broad business shutdowns. Minorities, including African Americans, have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 deaths and pandemic-induced economic peril.

"The death of George Floyd on the streets of Minneapolis was a grave tragedy. It should never have happened. It has filled Americans all over the country with horror, anger, and grief." pic.twitter.com/lirAMSv4Wo
- The White House (@WhiteHouse) May 30, 2020

Trump addressed the demonstrations Saturday,striking a milder tone than he has on Twitter during prepared remarks following a space launch in Florida. He said Floyd's death "has filled Americans all over the country with horror, anger and grief." He added that he "understands the pain that people are feeling" and supports peaceful protest, but that "the memory of George Floyd is being dishonored by rioters, looters and anarchists."
"He should just sometimes stop talking"
Apart from Saturday's remarks, though, Trump has not often played a unifying role in recent days. His tweets about radical-left anarchists have also included criticism of Democratic leadership in Minnesota. In another tweet on Sunday, he blamed the mainstream media for fomenting "hatred and anarchy."

On Friday, Trump tweeted provocatively that "when the looting starts, the shooting starts," a phrase with a racist history that Trump said he was not aware of. Later on, he said his intent was not to make a threat but to register a statement of concern that armed violence can accompany looting.

Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican, said on Fox News Sunday that the president's tweets about demonstrations turning violent are "not constructive."

Speaking on ABC's This Week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said on Sunday morning that she's not paying attention to Trump's inflammatory tweets. Instead, she said he "should be a unifying force in our country. We have seen that with Democratic and Republican presidents all along. They have seen their responsibility to be the president of the United States, to unify our country and not to fuel the flame."

Also Sunday, Keisha Lance Bottoms - mayor of Atlanta, one city that has seen protests and clashes with police - told CBS' Face the Nation that Trump's tweets are "making it worse" and "he should just sometimes stop talking."

In his own statement on Saturday, former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, wrote that "Protesting [Floyd's killing] is right and necessary. It's an utterly American response. But burning down communities and needless destruction is not. Violence that endangers lives is not." He added that as president, he'd lead the conversation about turning the nation's "anguish to purpose."

Biden made an unannounced visit on Sunday to the site in Wilmington, Del., where protests had taken place the night before.

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Trump Lays Blame For Clashes On 'Radical-Left Anarchists'

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subscribe to The NPR Politics Podcast podcast As overlapping crises convulse an anxious nation, President Trump on Sunday sought to cast blame for widespread protests gripping cities on "radical-left anarchists," while adding that the media "is doing everything within their power to foment hatred and anarchy."

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Rick Scott cites the First Amendment in case for Americans to decide for themselves over church attendance 

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Rick Scott cites the First Amendment in case for Americans to decide for themselves over church attendance 

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"It doesn't matter what a governor says or president or local leaders" say when it comes to religion and other matters of personal choice, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said Sunday.

"Do I believe that government should be telling us what to do? Do I believe government can tell us we don't have a right to worship? I don't believe they can," Scott told host Dana Bash on CNN's "State of the Union."

"All Floridians, all Americans, have a Bill of Rights, and we have a right to worship if they want to. I believe people are going to do it safely."

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Rick Scott says the Bill of Rights trumps all

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"It doesn't matter what a governor says or president or local leaders" say when it comes to religion and other matters of personal choice, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said Sunday. "Do I believe that government should be telling us what to do? Do I believe government can tell us we don't have a right to worship?

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Article on the 10 battleground states in presidential election

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Article on the 10 battleground states in presidential election

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The Spectator - news, politics, life & arts

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With just under six months to go, now is a good time to assess where things stand in the 2020 presidential election. You would think that with the Wuhan virus pandemic, predicting the outcome of the 2020 election would be even harder than normal. Given the sheer 'redness' and 'blueness' of most states, however, the only meaningful change will occur in the 10 or so states we've categorized as battleground states over the last five elections.

Historically, the last real landslide presidential election occurred in 1988 when George H.W. Bush won 40 states and 426 electoral votes as he earned 53.6 percent of the popular vote. Bill Clinton's 370 electoral votes in 1992 papered over the fact he only received 43 percent of the popular vote. He upped his electoral vote victory by nine votes in 1996 yet still failed to garner 50 percent of the popular vote.

George W. Bush's five-point electoral vote squeaker in 2000 came with losing the popular vote by half-of-a-percent. He managed to add 16 Electoral Votes in 2004 when he hit 50.7 percent of the popular vote. In 2008, Barack Obama nearly matched Clinton's 1992 electoral vote total at 365 votes despite hitting almost 53 percent of the popular vote. Obama lost ground in 2012 when he only managed to secure 332 electoral votes in his four-point victory. Of course, Donald Trump's managed to top 300 electoral votes in 2016, but lost the popular vote by two percent.

As this rundown shows, since Bush's 1988 landslide, neither party has come anywhere close to winning a landslide, as most of the states became reliably red or blue over the last 32 years. That fact means most of the states won't really be up for grabs during the 2020 election.

In the red column, you can fully expect these states to go for Trump:

Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

These 23 states possess 188 electoral votes of the 270 electoral votes needed to win. While Texas may be shifting to purple due to demographics, that shift won't happen in 2020. Republicans still dominate the state and federal races in the Lone Star state.

The 18 blue states are:

California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.

These states total 218 electoral votes. Pundits like to proclaim that Colorado and Virginia are purple states, but the big races prove otherwise. In Virginia, Republicans haven't won a race for the presidency, governorship, or US Senate since 2000, 2009, and 2002, respectfully. The swelling of liberals in Northern Virginia over the last 20 years has simply overwhelmed conservative voters in southern Virginia. Colorado looks much the same due to the influx of liberal Californians starting in the late 1990s. Other than Cory Gardner's upset US Senate win in 2014, no other Republican has won top-of-the-ticket races since 2002.

That leaves just 10 states with 132 electoral votes for the two parties to fight over during the general election. These states are: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump won six of the 10 in 2016.

Given the current dynamics, Trump likely will win Florida, Georgia, New Hampshire and North Carolina in 2020, with Biden favored again in Nevada and New Mexico. That would give Trump a 252 to 229 advantage with just Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to decide the election. To win the White House, Biden would need to win Pennsylvania and two of the remaining three, as Trump would need to win just Pennsylvania or two of the other three to secure his reelection. Thus, Trump's pathway to 270 electoral votes isn't as treacherous as Biden's road.

Biden also has to successfully navigate rough vice presidential running-mate waters. With his pledge, we know his running mate will be a woman. Some on the left believe he needs to have an African American on the ticket to repeat Obama's high watermark on African American voter turnout. Kamala Harris would be an obvious choice except that she comes from deep-blue California and didn't seem to attract much of the African American vote in the Democratic primaries. Stacey Abrams is on the list, as well, and hails from Georgia, but her resume is very thin and her strident positions could alienate moderate suburban voters, especially if those voters are concerned with Biden's health given his age.

If his advisers think given his strong support in South Carolina among African American voters that Biden doesn't need a woman of color to generate turnout, then Gov. Gretchen Whitmer from Michigan and Sen. Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota are high on the list. Klobuchar is reportedly being 'vetted' as I write. Whitmer comes from a key state Biden likely needs to win, but her heavy-handedness during the response to the Wuhan virus pandemic has hurt her among Michigan voters. That would make Klobuchar the safest, least controversial pick. We should know in the next 10 days or so who Biden asks to join the Democratic ticket.

Given how much has happened in the last six months and the utter unpredictability inherent with the pandemic, it is possible my analysis will miss the mark. History, however, indicates otherwise. Regardless, even if things turned solidly one way or the other, the vast majority of states will remain in the red or blue column as in past years. At best, Trump or Biden would top-out at around 320 electoral votes, ensuring that America remains a very divided country over the next four years.

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Six months out - who will win the Electoral College? - The Spectator - news, politics, life & arts

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With just under six months to go, now is a good time to assess where things stand in the 2020 presidential election. You would think that with the Wuhan virus pandemic, predicting the outcome of the 2020 election would be even harder than normal.

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MoneyWeek reviews the ideological implications of state intervention in light of Covid-19

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MoneyWeek reviews the ideological implications of state intervention in light of Covid-19

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The coronavirus crisis has led to levels of state intervention unprecedented in peace time. The Austrian School reminds us of the challenges, say Dan Greenwood and Stuart Watkins.

By Dan Greenwood and Stuart Watkins

This year marks the centenary of the publication of "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth", an essay by Ludwig von Mises that began the so-called "socialist calculation debate", a fundamentally important, long-standing argument among scholars of economics and politics about whether socialism is possible.

That might sound rather arcane and indeed the debate remains barely known outside of academia and political circles of the radical left and libertarian right. Given that the debate was especially concerned with the feasibility of a global communist system that had abolished trade and money, you may wonder what relevance it can possibly have given that few advocates of socialism or social democracy these days envisage the kind of centrally planned, entirely non-market communism sought by the Bolsheviks and stringently critiqued by Mises and his fellow Austrian School economist Friedrich Hayek. A closer look at Mises' arguments, however, reveals that they remain pertinent. In the 1945 election, Winston Churchill famously paraphrased Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and worried about the consequences of electing a Labour government committed to socialising the economy. Today in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, which has seen a massively expanded role for the state, we would do well to remind ourselves of these arguments.

Why socialism doesn't work

Mises and Hayek were classical liberals who believed that the state should have a strictly circumscribed role - primarily that of enforcing private property rights, supplying a minimal range of public goods, as well as minimal welfare provision only for those in most severe need - in a broader context of private ownership and free markets. Socialists and social democrats today, while not necessarily advocating full communism instead, would see the last 100 years as providing strong grounds for challenging the wisdom of this.

Inequalities of wealth and income, severe economic crises and ecological destruction would seem to challenge the idea that such a system inevitably leads to the best of all possible worlds. The profundity of market failures and the vital importance of public goods that cannot be provided through the market alone is widely recognised, not least in the current public-health crisis. The rapidity with which the state had to step in and take control of everything from the railways to paying workers' wages in the wake of the spread of the coronavirus would seem to have placed the Austrian case for markets under significant strain.

Yet as the economic calculation debate of 100 years ago highlighted, the case for classical liberalism is based upon some deep and compelling arguments, the force of which has been underestimated by the left. They need to be kept in mind even at a time when there is a strong imperative for state intervention and planning in the heat of a crisis.

Mises and Hayek saw their scholarly role in terms of developing ideas that would percolate through society. Their ideas, which evolved in the course of the calculation debate, did indeed pass into our everyday understanding of markets as indispensable drivers of economic efficiency and innovation. We are used to hearing these arguments rehearsed when politicians pursue the privatisation of industries, for example, or hear them deployed against those who seek nationalisation. Alongside this more familiar case for markets, the Austrians developed a stringent critique of central planning and more generally of state intervention to achieve social goals.

Perhaps the more familiar aspect of that critique has to do with incentives - that only market processes can reliably establish the incentives required for achieving economic efficiency. We can rely on entrepreneurs to solve problems for us as they are motivated to act by the prospect of profit and are spurred on to greater heights by competition. We can rely on the world's workers getting out of bed on time if the monetary reward is sufficient. A non-market, planned economy would lack such incentives, the argument goes.

This idea gained prominence with the rise of "public choice theory", which assumes that political actors, like economic ones, are self-interested individuals acting rationally to maximise satisfaction. This model seemed to explain well at least some of the failures we have come to associate with government control, such as corruption and inefficiencies. Mises and Hayek, however, writing at a time of large-scale socialist movements and indeed revolution, recognised the need to avoid relying entirely upon this argument. What if people with non-monetary incentives and impeccable intentions were in charge, say? Mises and Hayek's claim was stronger - that attempts to plan an economy without markets, however well-intentioned and motivated the planners might be, would inevitably fail due to the complexity of modern economies.

The knowledge problem

As Hayek in particular emphasised, the fundamental problem for a socialist economy concerns knowledge. The highly decentralised market process of exchange and price generation captures and communicates a vast amount of dynamically changing knowledge, responding to highly complex and ever-changing demand and supply levels and reflecting the locally situated goals and decisions of individuals across society. By contrast, state planning, even at a local scale and most certainly at national and international level, necessarily involves an element of centralisation. Attempting to achieve coordination of knowledge of the kind facilitated by markets is a profound problem for non-market planning. Decision-making is more susceptible to unforeseen consequences and failures to capture important local knowledge and expert insights. Hayek's view of the inevitable error and arbitrariness of state interventions being a road to dictatorship and serfdom may be exaggerated, as many critics have argued. But his articulation of this "epistemological" challenge raises questions of vital relevance to contemporary governance where the aim is to shape market outcomes rather than remove markets entirely.

Hayek's philosophical approach challenges the rationalistic presumption, evident across the political spectrum, that politicians can straightforwardly access technocratically defined solutions to social problems. Such assumptions may now be more widespread than ever, explaining, at least in part, current scepticism about politicians as they inevitably fail to deliver what they imagine and promise they can achieve. Austrian scepticism was not a postmodernist rejection of the potential for social progress, but rather a call to recognise the need for a political economy that fosters processes of knowledge discovery and innovation in the face of complexity and uncertainty.

Anthony Giddens' famous vision of the "third way" tried to marry Hayek's insights with social-democratic ambitions to correct for perceived market failures. New Labour's programme aimed to put those ideas into practice, promoting state engagement with the private and third sectors in an effort to overcome Hayek's epistemological challenge. Where markets could not solve social and economic problems of society, ways were tried to mimic market competition. Yet this entailed some new, often problematic forms of technocracy. Performance measures and targets were imposed in a range of fields, from health and education to climate-change mitigation and social care. These were, as we now appreciate all too well, far from a complete success, to say the least. As Hayek warned, performance measures established outside of the market run the risk of failing adequately to capture public value, leading to unintended consequences.

New Labour's performance measures created perverse incentives and led to the gaming of targets - for example, schools manipulated exam results to meet their targets; ambulance drivers delayed patients' entry to A&E to keep within maximum waiting limits once inside; police priorities were skewed to focus on the crimes most easily solved. The response to such failings, some of which have persisted or taken new forms under the Conservatives, need not be sceptical rejection of targets as such, however, but might instead be a search for new, smarter forms of intervention - ones that appreciate and seek to respond to Hayek's insights.

The challenges states face today of protecting public health, promoting ecological sustainability and stabilising the climate are unprecedented. Profound inequalities remain entrenched. But just how can state capacity be improved and the failings of markets corrected for, in the face of complexity? The Austrians' philosophical perspective cautions us against simplistic assumptions that introducing any particular set of targets or regulations will be the answer. Fundamental threats to human life and security in the coronavirus crisis create the need for public goods, but delivering them requires a careful balancing of profoundly difficult trade-offs and uncertainties that we hear about every day, and which are not entirely measurable either by money or any other quantitative measure. Mises and Hayek are famous as advocates of free markets, but their arguments were founded on a fundamental recognition of the profound limitations of any form of decision-making, market or otherwise, in the face of the countless, continually changing array of individual priorities and economic choices across society.

An open question

None of this is to dismiss the case for state intervention in some circumstances. But the question of the most suitable forms of intervention in different contexts is best viewed as inevitably an open one. Politicians go wrong when they see their task as being to promise and then deliver pre-given solutions, rather than constructing frameworks within which socially dispersed knowledge can be discovered, captured and put to use. The Corbyn Labour party, for example, was quick to advocate specific kinds of state intervention as the solution to social problems, but reflection on the complexities involved and the dangers inherent in central planning had seemingly vanished entirely.

Mises' century-old challenge should spur a rethink about how states can effectively achieve goals that will not be secured by markets. Latter-day Lenins may be sad to learn that, in all but the most adventurous and unlikely scenarios, money and markets, or something very like them, will continue to play an important role. We can all gain from reflecting on the reasons why.

* Dr Dan Greenwood is Reader in Politics at the University of Westminster. His book, Effective Governance: Complexity, Coordination and Discovery, is published by Palgrave early next year

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Are we back on the road to serfdom? | MoneyWeek

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The coronavirus crisis has led to levels of state intervention unprecedented in peace time. The Austrian School reminds us of the challenges, say Dan Greenwood and Stuart Watkins.

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Accessible YouTube videos on core ideologies 

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Accessible YouTube videos on core ideologies 

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A series of videos going through the Political Ideas Section of the EDEXCEL A-Level Politics. I will add videos looking at aspects of the core ideologies- Li...

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Why have UK government's followed different routes out of lockdown?

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Why have UK government's followed different routes out of lockdown?

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Boris Johnson's announcement of the next steps in his government's coronavirus response has generated some sharp, public disagreements with the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The tensions underlying these differences stem from differing approaches to public communications and to the management of risk. They also reflect the increasingly fragile relations between the governments of the different parts of the UK.

While there has been fairly close co-ordination on some of the key decisions in earlier stages of the crisis, on this occasion the devolved governments complained that announcements had been trailed in the press before they had been properly consulted. Much of the content of Johnson's phased plan to loosen the lockdown, including encouraging more people to go back to work and the possible reopening of schools from 1st June, actually applies only in England, although that is rarely made clear in UK government communications. All the administrations elsewhere have announced their own, more limited, adjustments to lockdown. Their leaders have all made a point of maintaining the 'Stay at Home' messaging instead of adopting Johnson's new 'Stay Alert' campaign, sending a clear signal to their own domestic audiences that they are able and willing to act independently of the UK, in both political and policy terms.

These differences cannot be explained purely in terms of epidemiological conditions on the ground across the UK, given that the trajectories of the coronavirus outbreaks in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are broadly similar to those in England. The reality is that the leaders of the devolved governments have reached a different political judgement from Johnson on the appropriateness of signalling even a modest relaxation of restrictions at this stage. At a time when the UK's response to the pandemic is eliciting growing criticism, and as it is now one of the worst hit countries in Europe, they have decided to strike a clearer distance from Johnson's strategy. Each of them had been coming under pressure to move away from UK government, with some commentary asserting that the earlier 'four nations' approach had been a mistake.

The degree of unity until this point was, as we argued previously, somewhat overstated. And the underlying state of relations between the different tiers of government within the UK have deteriorated greatly since devolution was introduced, and were significantly damaged by Brexit. Institutional arrangements for bringing these governments together to discuss matters of common interest have widely come to be seen as inadequate among the devolved governments. Additionally, the surprise of some of London's politicians and journalists at the ability of these other governments to determine their own course, in relation to lockdown, is a telling sign of the lack of awareness of the nature and extent of devolution among much of the UK's political class.

One particular source of resentment arises from the dual role of Johnson's government, which is both the executive authority acting for the UK in its entirety on some key areas of policy, and also the de facto government of England in policy areas that are devolved - like public health. Over recent weeks the devolveds have become increasingly irked by UK government announcements relating to issues that are in their own competence, and where the English scope of the government's writ is not made clear.

The failure to acknowledge and name the English focus of much governmental decision-making reflects an enduring habit of British governance, and - in the current context - a sense of unease among Conservative ministers about publicly acknowledging that the centre does not have the authority over the whole of the UK on issues that have become so sensitive. Although devolution has been in existence for two decades, its implications and operation have still not been internalised fully in Westminster or Whitehall. And this mixture of indifference and incomprehension are now coming back to bite Johnson's government.

One possible consequence of this lack of clarity is that it may sew confusion in the minds of ordinary citizens living in the devolved areas, about which are the rules they should be following now that there are some important variations between those that different governments are going to enforce. Equally, the implications of these variable new rules for those people who live along the edges of England's borders, and are used to moving across this boundary for educational, employment or health reasons, remain to be seen.

Inevitably, a debate has begun to stir about what all this means for the future of the Union. Commentators like Alex Massie and Chris Deerin have argued that the co-operative 'four nation' approach witnessed earlier on in the crisis might herald an era of better relations, and perhaps end up boosting the unionist cause. But others see things very differently. For Iain Macwhirter 'far from reviving the United Kingdom as a going concern, this pandemic could be the final nail in its coffin'. And on the island of Ireland, claims that the pandemic promotes the case for Irish unity are commonplace, as both the imperative for some degree of all-Ireland co-operation and the apparently more effective response of the Irish government have become important factors in debate within Northern Ireland.

It is, in truth, far too early to predict with any certainty how public opinion will move in the coming weeks in the different parts of the UK, and what the longer-term political and constitutional consequences of the pandemic will be. But it does seem increasingly likely that the deep crisis triggered by Covid-19 will become a vital chapter in the history of the UK as a pluri-national state.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

This blog was first published on 11 May 2020 by the Centre on Constitutional Change

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Why have the UK's governments diverged on easing lockdown?

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Jack Sheldon and Michael Kenny consider why Boris Johnson's televised address on a phased approach to easing lockdown has sparked public disagreements with the devolved governments, and the implications these differences might have for future relations between the governments of the UK.

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Is a national response the only way out of the covid-19 crisis and is it constitutional?

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Is a national response the only way out of the covid-19 crisis and is it constitutional?

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During the next pandemic-which is all but inevitable-Washington can and should impose an immediate, nationwide program of contact tracing and mandatory quarantine for infected people. The stunningly low death toll in South Korea (fewer than 300 people), which reported its first coronavirus infection on the same day as the United States, has been credited to the country's policy of aggressively tracing infected individuals' recent movements and isolating people they may have come in contact with. This common-sense approach, if executed properly in the U.S., would enable many people to go back to their daily lives-inevitably spurring the economy-while at the same time minimizing the spread of the deadly virus by keeping the highest-risk spreaders at home.

A federal order of this magnitude will sound to some like a step toward tyranny. But the question is whether saving thousands of lives and staving off another Depression are worth the price of finite, albeit substantial, infringements on individual liberties. The Trump administration has resisted such drastic measures, shunting responsibility onto the states, but the power is nevertheless within the executive branch, and it can be imposed without violating the Constitution.

Keep in mind that-much like access to health care, abortion, the right to vote and even freedom from the death penalty-Americans' constitutional rights are highly contingent on their states of residence. This is by design, as the Constitution's framers believed that maintaining state sovereignty was crucial to ensuring an accountable government and avoiding an accumulation of power in one place. In this moment, an individual's freedom to move about and associate with friends, family and colleagues (rights that implicate the First, Fourth, Fifth and 14th Amendments to the Constitution) depends on where that person resides. A federal order would level the playing field while minimizing litigation-as only one sovereign would be challenged in court.

One reason the federal government can constitutionally infringe on all kinds of individual rights is that sometimes protecting the greater public good requires it. Threatening the president is a felony even though the Constitution guarantees free speech, for example. Nor does the Second Amendment give every civilian an unqualified right to own military-grade weapons.

By the same token, in 1905, the Supreme Court in Jacobson v. Massachusetts upheld a mandatory vaccine law under the Constitution. It held-in a criminal action against a defendant who refused a smallpox vaccination-that a state can constitutionally "require and enforce the vaccination and revaccination of all the inhabitants thereof" notwithstanding the Bill of Rights. Such a law must be reasonable, not arbitrary, and tailored to the government's interest in preserving public safety. This category of state power is known as the police power, and it means that states can "enact quarantine laws and health laws of every description . . . to protect the public health and the public safety."

Significantly, the Jacobson court rejected the defendant's arguments regarding the "alleged injurious or dangerous effects of vaccination" on him personally. The court was also unpersuaded that "the inherent right of every freeman to care for his own body and health in such way as to him seems best" superseded his susceptibility to a mandatory vaccine. Based on the "testimony of experts" that "regarded vaccination, repeated after intervals, as a preventive of smallpox," the court reasoned, the benefit to the greater good supplanted the rights of the individual.

Since the discovery of penicillin in 1928, involuntary quarantines have been rare in the United States, although they were common before. In 2014, a number of states implemented quarantines for health care workers and others who had gone to West Africa to during the Ebola epidemic, and two federal courts rejected constitutional challenges to the Ebola-inspired mandates.

Fast-forward to Covid-19. Federal law gives the president extraordinary power to implement a national pandemic response program if he determines that the states aren't doing enough under the Public Health Service Act, among other laws. Were Trump to take such a step, a national contact tracing program that required infected individuals and their contacts to self-quarantine would likely satisfy Jacobson, which allows for nonarbitrary limits on individual freedom that are tailored to protecting public health. As the Jacobson court explained, "[e]ven liberty itself, the greatest of all rights, is not unrestricted license to act according to one's own will."

According to the CDC, contact tracing is a "specialized skill" that requires expertise in patient confidentiality, medicine, interpersonal skills and resourcefulness. For contact tracing to work, it is also important that the government maintain "engaged and supportive" communication with the public, as well as "agile data management systems to facilitate real-time electronic transmission of laboratory and case data for public health action." We have none of this. All of it would benefit from a coordinated federal response.

It is beyond reasonable debate that the current hodge-podge of state and local rules do not go far enough to protect overall public health, and have not been uniformly enforced-to the extent they exist at all. And the angry wave of anti-mask, anti-governor protests in states such as Michigan, Ohio and California reflects a gross misunderstanding of the law of the land. As the Supreme Court put it, a community has a "right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members." Narcissism is not a constitutionally protected value, let alone a right.

Given the widespread outrage over moderate Covid-19-related restrictions, how could a federal quarantine be enforced (even if it were deemed constitutional and even if a fractured public miraculously bought into its wisdom)?

Congress has the constitutional power to raise and support armed forces, without any express limitations, and it can call forth the militia "to execute the laws of the union." The president, in turn, has the power to "take care that the laws are faithfully executed." But Congress has long prohibited the federal government from engaging military forces for law enforcement purposes and, for the most part, that law's exceptions require that there be a specific request or at least cooperation from the states. (The U.S. Coast Guard is an exception to the exception.)

It's also possible that the current Supreme Court-despite the conservative majority's apparent sympathies for broad presidential power-might not condone a unified federal response to a pandemic. Constitutional law has evolved substantially since 1905, and the court has never explicitly addressed the propriety of what was known from the 1870s to the early 1900s as " shotgun quarantines," whereby armed men prevented people infected with yellow fever from entering certain districts. Nor has the court considered the extent to which the federal government could override state and local quarantines as a matter of federalism if Congress were to amend federal laws to give the president more power to protect the nation during pandemics.

One case is instructive. In 1886, the Supreme Court upheld Louisiana's system of quarantine laws designed to protect against the spread of infectious diseases by vessels coming up the Mississippi River. In that decision, the court acknowledged that Congress has some power in this area, and that "all state laws on the subject will be abrogated [i.e., overridden] at least so far as the two are inconsistent." It would benefit the public if, in the wake of Covid-19, Congress were to establish by law some best practices for minimizing another equivalent disaster, thereby allowing the current Supreme Court to weigh in on the laws' constitutionality in light of modern threats to public health.

At the dawn of the 21st century-as megaviruses like Covid-19 become the new normal-abnormal-government quarantines may well return with regularity. State governors and legislators, local authorities, Congress, the executive branch, as well as state and federal judges will all be forced to strike the thorny balance between public health and individual liberties. So far, the response to Covid-19 in countries such as South Korea has shown that a reasonably tailored and science-based national contact tracing program would be the gold standard for protecting the public from widespread illness and death.

Yet as things stand under the Trump administration, Americans will likely wind up shuttered and reshuttered for longer than we might have been under an urgent national quarantine. And the personal costs in lives and livelihoods will be predictably dire.

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Yes, a National Quarantine Is Constitutional ... and Necessary

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During the next pandemic-which is all but inevitable-Washington can and should impose an immediate, nationwide program of contact tracing and mandatory quarantine for infected people. The stunningly low death toll in South Korea (fewer than 300 people), which reported its first coronavirus infection on the same day as the United States, has been credited to the country's policy of aggressively tracing infected individuals' recent movements and isolating people they may have come in contact with.

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BBC Radio 4 - British Socialism: The Grand Tour - Available now

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Available episodes of British Socialism: The Grand Tour

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History Of Ideas is a podcast sharing talks by David Runciman in which he explores some of the most important thinkers and prominent ideas lying behind modern politics - from Hobbes to Gandhi, from democracy to patriarchy, from revolution to lockdown.

David also talks about the crises - revolutions, wars, depressions, pandemics - that generated these new ways of political thinking.

Created by the team that brought you Talking Politics: this podcast is a history of ideas to help make sense of what's happening today.

"This podcast is a treasure! It is both entertaining and intellectually demanding... a shelter in the middle of this pandemic storm. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to record it." "A magnificent spin-off podcast series from Talking Politics -⁩ it's like a third (and better) year of A Level politics." Twitter Follower Apple Podcast Listener

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History Of Ideas is a podcast sharing talks by David Runciman in which he explores some of the most important thinkers and prominent ideas lying behind modern politics - from Hobbes to Gandhi, from democracy to patriarchy, from revolution to lockdown.

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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anarchism and why its political ideas became synonymous with chaos and disorder.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anarchism and why its political ideas became synonymous with chaos and disorder. Pierre Joseph Proudhon famously declared "property is theft". And perhaps more surprisingly that "Anarchy is order". Speaking in 1840, he was the first self-proclaimed anarchist. Anarchy comes from the Greek word "anarchos", meaning "without rulers", and the movement draws on the ideas of philosophers like William Godwin and John Locke. It is also prominent in Taoism, Buddhism and other religions. In Christianity, for example, St Paul said there is no authority except God. The anarchist rejection of a ruling class inspired communist thinkers too. Peter Kropotkin, a Russian prince and leading anarcho-communist, led this rousing cry in 1897: "Either the State for ever, crushing individual and local life... Or the destruction of States and new life starting again.. on the principles of the lively initiative of the individual and groups and that of free agreement. The choice lies with you!" In the Spanish Civil War, anarchists embarked on the largest experiment to date in organising society along anarchist principles. Although it ultimately failed, it was not without successes along the way.So why has anarchism become synonymous with chaos and disorder? What factors came together to make the 19th century and early 20th century the high point for its ideas? How has its philosophy influenced other movements from The Diggers and Ranters to communism, feminism and eco-warriors?With John Keane, Professor of Politics at Westminster University; Ruth Kinna, Senior Lecturer in Politics at Loughborough University; Peter Marshall, philosopher and historian.

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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anarchism and why its political ideas became synonymous with chaos and disorder. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anarchism and why its political ideas became synonymous with chaos and disorder. Pierre Joseph Proudhon famously declared "property is theft". And perhaps more surprisingly that "Anarchy is order".

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According to Isaiah Berlin, it is not Machiavelli's supposed immorality that has made him a perennially scandalous thinker: "There is evidently something peculiarly disturbing about what Machiavelli said or implied," Berlin wrote, "something that has caused profound and lasting uneasiness." The Renaissance Italian diplomat and historian did not prize power for its own sake, as has been so often claimed. The conflict Machiavelli has never been forgiven for exposing was not between ethics and politics but two irreconcilably antagonistic moralities, one inherited from Christianity and the other from the ancient pagan world.

Machiavelli's unpardonable sin was to reveal that, if they are genuinely practised and not just hypocritically professed, Christian humility, loving kindness and trust bring ruin to any state that honours them. In contrast, what Machiavelli called virtù - a pagan resolve "to do whatever may be necessary for the attainment of civic glory and greatness" - enables the state to achieve republican self-government, which he considered the supreme political good.

Berlin identified the true source of Machiavelli's infamous reputation. The man who became notorious throughout Europe with the publication of The Prince in 1532, five years after he died, was not a lover of evil. Unlike Nietzsche, who lauded his would-be patron Cesare Borgia as a "predatory animal", Machiavelli did not revel in an aesthetic spectacle of tyranny and cruelty. Instead, quite calmly, he observed that Christian virtues have no place in politics. "When it is absolutely a question of the safety of one's country," he wrote, "there must be no question of just or unjust, of merciful or cruel, of praiseworthy or disgraceful; instead, setting aside every scruple, one must follow to the utmost any plan that will save her life and keep her liberty."

No ruler can govern for long without a constant readiness to dispose of his enemies. Yet the sword is a blunt instrument if it is wielded without the mask. A ruler must not be one person, the righteous sovereign as described in medieval "mirrors for princes" that were written to guide nobles who had succeeded to power. Instead, they must have many personae, changing the face they present to the world as circumstances require. Personal authenticity is a luxury they cannot afford, and truth a weapon that must be used sparingly. As much as the readiness to eliminate their enemies, rulers need constant exercise in dissimulation. Success in any political project depends on traits that Christianity condemns as vices.

Machiavelli reports these facts without sadness or regret. There is no trace in his writings of the narcissistic anguish of the disillusioned humanist.

Although he suffered many trials, including being imprisoned and tortured as a result of an unfounded accusation of being involved in a conspiracy against Florence's ruling Medici family, he relished to the full the pleasures available to someone with his position in society. As was the custom he married for life, but that did not stop him patronising courtesans and rent boys, or engaging in a late-life love affair that for a time consumed him. A poet and playwright, he was a spirited conversationalist. When his public career was interrupted he made the best of exile in his farm outside of Florence, catching thrushes to roast and walking in the woods while reading Latin verse. In the course of his life he often suffered defeat, but did not let it trouble him too much. Though he died an avowed Christian and prayed to God to forgive him his sins, a deathbed dream provoked a laughing last word in which he confessed that he would be happier in the company of those who were consigned to Hell.

Alexander Lee writes that his biography does not "attempt to advance an especially radical vision of its subject". He aims to set Machiavelli in his historical context, taking into account the full range of his writings while being fully aware of their almost accidental nature. If Machiavelli's life and thought unfolded in any particular direction, it was known to him only in retrospect, if at all. He had no more foresight than anyone else. Lee tells us he has "treated each moment in Machiavelli's life as it was lived - and only as such".

The result is a life of Machiavelli that must surely be definitive in its faithfulness to the man and his experience of his time. Perhaps more surprisingly, given the rigorously biographical focus of his book, Lee presents a novel interpretation of his subject's thinking. Machiavelli, Lee argues persuasively, was a radical conservative who aimed to show his fellow-citizens how to reclaim self-government from a corrupt oligarchy.

Born in 1469 as the third child and first son of an old and once prominent family originating in a village a few miles south of Florence, Niccolò Machiavelli had comparatively modest beginnings. The family was far from wealthy. Niccolò's mother Bartolomea, the remarried widow of an apothecary, was an independent-minded person who, despite legal restrictions on women, conducted business on her own initiative, though she spent most of her time managing the household. His father Bernardo had trained as a lawyer, but never practised that or any other profession. With the exact date of his birth unclear but known to be some time after the death of his own father, Bernardo was troubled throughout his life by rumours that he was an illegitimate child.

A bookish man who composed an index to one of the works of the Roman historian Livy, Bernardo was a failure in worldly terms. Just as he was finishing his legal studies his extended family was jolted by political conflict. The Medici were bent on turning the city into a private corporation, displacing the popular self-government Florence had traditionally enjoyed. The attempt was resisted by leading figures in the city, including a second cousin of Bernardo's and several of his wife's former in-laws. The opposition was crushed, and its leaders banished. Though playing no part in the struggle Bernardo was tarnished by his family connections with the rebels and forfeited any future he may have had as a public figure. He relied for sustenance on local farms he had inherited, which provided regular supplies of basic foodstuffs along with a meagre income.

Bernardo's life was made harder by debts he had also inherited. The family lived in a decayed palazzo on the Via Romana, and at times he was compelled to sell his clothes to make ends meet. When he died in 1500 he left a muddle of unpaid rents and outstanding borrowings.

Niccolò was much more astute and venturesome than his father, but his life and thinking tracked his father's in several respects. Niccolò too was plagued by money troubles, and his career as a public figure disrupted by political intrigues in which he was not himself involved. Above all, like his father and many in Italy at the time, Niccolò took his moral and intellectual bearings not from the Christian religion they all professed but from classical civilisation.

Importantly, it was not to the mysticism of Plato or the metaphysics of Aristotle that Machiavelli returned. In his youth he had been much impressed by the materialism of Lucretius, scribbling in the margin of a copy of the Roman philosopher-poet's De Rerum Natura ( The Nature of Things) the observation: "the gods don't care about mortal things". History contains no redemptive providence or meaning. The Rota Fortunae - the randomly spinning wheel of fortune - governs everything. This was hard for Machiavelli to accept, and like many in Renaissance Europe he turned to astrologers when life seemed exceptionally uncertain.

A version of Lucretian philosophy surfaces in The Prince, where Machiavelli claimed that half of human life was owed to fortuna and the other half to virtù. Intelligence and energy can seize the opportunities that fortune grants. Great projects can be realised. But then the wheel spins again, and what has been achieved is lost. The human world is ruled by the turns of chance.

In a letter to Machiavelli, his friend the historian and statesman Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540) spelled out the implications of this unending cycle:

I earnestly believe that only men's faces and the outward aspect of things change, while the same things reoccur again and again. Thus we are witnessing events that happened earlier. But the alteration in names and outward aspects is such that only the most learned are able to recognise them. That is why history is a useful and profitable discipline, because it shows you and allows you to recognise what you've never seen or experienced.

Guicciardini agreed with Machiavelli in thinking of history as a guide to action, but differed in his assessment of how much in life could be shaped by human will. Reflecting his own experience, Guicciardini's Ricordi ( Maxims and Reflections) are much more sceptical of the capacity of human beings to outwit fortune. In comparison, The Prince is the work of an optimist.

As Lee shows, the book was written as an attempt to mend his relations with the Medici family. As a stratagem to restore Machiavelli's fortunes it came to nothing. When a new republican government was formed in Florence he was denied any role in it. Sick and worn out, he died, like his father, a failure in worldly terms. But his incendiary little volume transcended the events that produced it, and the challenge it poses are as profound today as they were when it first scandalised European opinion.

Machiavelli planted a bomb in the foundations of Western ethics, whose detonating shock reverberates more loudly even as Christian virtue has seemingly fallen into disrepute. His objection to Christian morality was that, taken seriously, it was incompatible with the necessities of power. Defenders of Christianity will point to St Augustine's two cities, the worldly city of Rome and the heavenly city of Christian love, as evidence that the imperfections of human government have long been recognised by believers. But this is an evasion of Machiavelli's message, for he does not teach imperfection. He dismisses the very idea of perfection in ethics and politics. The two moralities he distinguishes are incomparable, and one is not better or worse than the other. Choose between them as you please, he tells us, and pay the price.

It is a message that challenges liberal humanism as much as monotheism. The Christian gospel of universal salvation extended moral concern to sections of humankind the pagan world ignored. But this had a dark side, for it meant Christian values were binding on everyone. The early 19th-century Italian poet and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi believed this universalism produced what he regarded as the peculiar barbarism of Christianity, for it licensed the Church to destroy classical civilisation. Liberals claim a similar licence when they look forward to a universal civilisation ruled by personal autonomy and human rights. Here as elsewhere, liberal humanist values are Christian values in secular clothing.

Yet the greater danger at the present time is not that liberalism will destroy other ways of life. Rather, a hyperbolic liberal ideology is unravelling the liberal way of life itself. A generation of alt-liberals believes the liberal West is the epicentre of evil, injustice and oppression. In their moral frenzy they are not unlike the early Christians who destroyed the classical world. The irony is that the liberal world these neo-Christian zealots are bent on demolishing was itself a Christian creation. As Machiavelli knew too well, the wheel of history never stops turning.

Machiavelli: His Life and Times
Alexander Lee
Picador, 768pp, £30

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According to Isaiah Berlin, it is not Machiavelli's supposed immorality that has made him a perennially scandalous thinker: "There is evidently something peculiarly disturbing about what Machiavelli said or implied," Berlin wrote, "something that has caused profound and lasting uneasiness." The Renaissance Italian diplomat and historian did not prize power for its own sake, as has been so often claimed.

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Covid-19 Hybrid proceedings in the House of Commons

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Covid-19 Hybrid proceedings in the House of Commons

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Scrutiny continues despite lockdown

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(Image: Mark Lewis)

As of today, the National Assembly for Wales officially becomes officially the Senedd Cymru and Welsh Parliament

The new name is written in law in the Senedd and Elections (Wales) Act and the date was picked because it is exactly one year from the scheduled date of the 2021 Senedd Elections.

The 60 Members elected are now known as Member of the Senedd (MS), and Aelod o'r Senedd (AS) in Welsh.

The Senedd Llywydd, Elin Jones MS said: "Responding to the coronavirus crisis remains the priority of the Senedd and its Members. Now, more than ever, our citizens expect a strong national parliament working for Wales: Members asking questions of the Government, scrutinising emergency powers and laws, and representing their communities to the best of their ability in the Senedd.

"The role of our parliament is of far more significance than its name. But it is right that the name reflects the range of powers and responsibilities this parliament holds on behalf of the people of Wales. The Senedd today is a very different institution to the one established as the Assembly in 1999. Now with full law-making powers and the ability to vary taxes, the new name reflects the Senedd's constitutional status as a national parliament."

The name change is not the only change to be introduced today.

The main changes introduced in the Senedd and Election (Wales) Act are:

* The new official name of Senedd Cymru and Welsh Parliament.

* Lower the voting age to 16 at Senedd Elections

* Giving the vote to eligible foreign nationals at Senedd Elections

* Change the law so that most disqualifications prohibit a person from taking up a seat in the Senedd but not from standing for election, thereby allowing more people to stand for election.

* To make the Electoral Commission funded by and accountable to the Senedd for Welsh elections.

Speaking on the change, First Minister of Wales Mark Drakeford said: "Today, the National Assembly for Wales becomes the Senedd. This change means more than just a new name. It's the recognition that Wales, defined by its people, is building its own future.

Ground-breaking decisions have already been made in its chamber - we are the first country in the world to have enshrined in law that legislation made today has to consider the impact it will have on future generations; we were amongst the first countries in the world to declare a climate emergency; we were the pioneers of an opt-out organ donation system which is already saving lives in Wales.

"The Senedd holds Wales' best interests at the heart of its decision-making, and will continue to work for the people of Wales."

Sian Gwenllian Plaid Cymru MS Sian Gwenllian said: "Today signifies an important milestone in our democracy, in which our national Parliament takes on a name that reflects its full law making powers. Plaid Cymru wants to see an even stronger Senedd with powers over energy, justice, broadcasting and the economy so that people in Wales have a full and final say on all the big decisions which impact their lives.

"We need more than a name change, we need a change of Government. A year from now the people of Wales go to the polls to decide between the leadership of Adam Price, the lethargy of Labour or the Tories who always put Westminster before Wales."

The Welsh Covservative leader Paul Davies said that celebration would "not be appropriate, given he current crisis.

He told WalesOnline: "Today marks the date when the Welsh Assembly transitions into the Welsh Parliament, and although under other circumstances it would be a time to mark the occasion, we are in uncertain times and great fanfare or celebration would not be appropriate during this pandemic, which is causing such concern, sadness, and anxiety for many people.

"However, I hope that the official change from an Assembly to a Welsh Parliament will make its responsibilities much clearer, emphasising the separate duties between the legislative body and the Welsh Government."

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The Welsh Assembly is now a Parliament - this is what AMs are now called

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As of today, the National Assembly for Wales officially becomes officially the Senedd Cymru and Welsh Parliament The new name is written in law in the Senedd and Elections (Wales) Act and the date was picked because it is exactly one year from the scheduled date of the 2021 Senedd Elections.

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The Supreme Court held a memorial service for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Chief Justice Roberts and Rabbi Lauren...

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How accurate are Trumps claims to total powers to lift lockdown?

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How accurate are Trumps claims to total powers to lift lockdown?

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New York Governor Andrew Cuomo accused President Donald Trump of "spoiling for a fight", as the US leader lashed out at "Democrat Governors".

Several states, including New York, have begun cautious talks on reopening, but Mr Trump has claimed he has "total" power to lift virus lockdowns.

Mr Cuomo refuted the claim on Tuesday as Mr Trump took to Twitter to criticise the governor.

The US is the epicentre of the pandemic with 592,743 cases and 25,239 deaths.

New York state has the most cases, with almost 190,000 cases and over 10,000 deaths. However, it has seen signs of improvement, with the number of people hospitalised due to coronavirus falling for the first time on Tuesday.

What's the row about?

On Monday, Mr Trump wrote on Twitter that deciding when to reopen states was "the decision of the president", not state governors, although he added that he would make his decision "in conjunction with governors".

The US Constitution says that states maintain public order and safety. So far, it has been individual state governors who have issued lockdown or shelter-in-place orders.

Also on Monday, several US state governors discussed plans to resume economic activity without apparent input from the Trump administration.

Ten states - seven on the East Coast, led by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, and three on the West Coast, led by California Governor Gavin Newsom, said they would co-ordinate how to reopen businesses after the outbreak is contained. All but one of the states is led by a Democratic governor.

Now, a row has erupted over who has the ultimate authority to lift lockdown orders.

Who said what?

On Monday night, Mr Trump gave a combative press conference where he feuded with reporters, criticised their coverage of how he handled the outbreak, and said that when it came to reopening the economy, "the president of the United States calls the shots".

"When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total," he said, adding: "They can't do anything without the approval of the president of the United States."

His position has been contradicted by governors and legal experts. It also contrasts with his earlier position that the responsibility for fighting the outbreak and order lockdowns lies primarily with state governors.

The row continued on Tuesday, as Mr Cuomo told CBS Mr Trump did not have total authority to decide when to reopen businesses, because "we don't have a king, we have a president".

During his daily press briefing, Mr Cuomo criticised Mr Trump, adding he would "not engage" in a fight with him, but would have "no choice" if the president the threatened the welfare of New Yorkers.

He added: "I put my hand out in total partnership and co-operation with the president."

Meanwhile, Mr Trump took the row to Twitter on Tuesday, criticising Mr Cuomo and issuing an oblique snipe at other governors.

"Tell the Democrat Governors that 'Mutiny On The Bounty" was one of my all time favourite movies," Mr Trump, a Republican, wrote.

"A good old fashioned mutiny every now and then is an exciting and invigorating thing to watch, especially when the mutineers need so much from the Captain." The tale tells of a ship's revolt in which mutineers meet with unhappy ends, with Mr Trump appearing to compare himself to the captain.

The president aimed particular fire at Mr Cuomo, who he said was calling "daily, even hourly, begging for everything," like hospitals, beds, ventilators for his state. New York remains the US state hardest-hit by the coronavirus outbreak, reporting 778 deaths in the past 24 hours.

However, Mr Trump struck a less combative tone later on Tuesday, saying he would make a decision on the economy "in conjunction with governors" soon.

"We have tremendous support from governors, and what I do is going to be done in conjunction with governors."

The Trump administration had previously signalled 1 May as a potential date for easing the restrictions.

The current White House recommendations for Americans to avoid restaurants and non-essential travel and keep in-person gatherings to no more than 10 people expire on 30 April.

However, the US's top infectious diseases adviser, Dr Anthony Fauci, told AP on Tuesday that the 1 May date might be "a bit overly optimistic".

Referring to testing and tracing procedures, he said: "We have to have something in place that is efficient and that we can rely on, and we're not there yet."

Globally, different approaches have been adopted to loosening lockdown restrictions.

The Chinese province of Wuhan, where coronavirus was first reported last December, has partially reopened after more than two months of isolation.

Spain has allowed around 300,000 nonessential workers to return to their jobs.

Italy - the hardest-hit country in Europe - will allow a narrow range of businesses to resume operations this week.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron has announced the country's near-lockdown will extend until 11 May.

The UK government has said no one should expect any changes to its lockdown restrictions this week.

What else did Trump say?

Mr Trump told Monday's briefing he did not intend to fire Anthony Fauci - a day after the president shared a tweet with the hashtag "#firefauci".

Dr Fauci incurred the ire of the president's supporters after he told CNN that lives could have been saved if the US had shut down earlier during the coronavirus outbreak.

Mr Trump invited Dr Fauci - a key member of the White House coronavirus task force - to the stage in the opening minutes of the briefing.

The president said that he and Dr Fauci had been on the same page "from the beginning" and declared he liked the respected doctor.

"I think he's a wonderful guy," Mr Trump said, while adding that not everyone was happy with the health expert.

Dr Fauci has contradicted or corrected Mr Trump on scientific matters during the public health crisis. But on Monday, he conceded he had used "a poor choice of words" in his CNN interview.

While Mr Trump initially played down the threat of coronavirus, he was by no means alone among US public officials in doing so.

Dr Fauci himself on 17 February said the danger from coronavirus is "just minuscule" compared with the "real and present danger" of flu.

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Coronavirus: Trump feuds with governors over authority

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New York Governor Andrew Cuomo accused President Donald Trump of "spoiling for a fight", as the US leader lashed out at "Democrat Governors". Several states, including New York, have begun cautious talks on reopening, but Mr Trump has claimed he has "total" power to lift virus lockdowns.

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Links to new-liberalism

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Chomsky slams US's handling of virus as he warns nuclear war, global warming threats will remain after pandemic is over.

At 91 years old, US linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky is currently self-isolating amid the coronavirus pandemic [File: Uli Deck/EPA]

The coronavirus crisis could have been prevented because there was enough information available to the world, according to Noam Chomsky, who has warned that once the pandemic is over, two critical challenges will remain - the threats of nuclear war and global warming.

Speaking from his office in self-isolation to Croatian philosopher and author Srecko Horvat, the celebrated 91-year-old US linguist offered a stark perspective on how the pandemic has been managed by different countries.

"This coronavirus pandemic could have been prevented, the information was there to prevent it. In fact, it was well-known. In October 2019, just before the outbreak, there was a large-scale simulation in the United States - possible pandemic of this kind," he said, referring to an exercise - titled Event 201 - hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

"Nothing was done. The crisis was then made worse by the treachery of the political systems that didn't pay attention to the information that they were aware of.

"On December 31, China informed the World Health Organization (WHO) of pneumonia-like symptoms with unknown origins. A week later, some Chinese scientists identified a coronavirus. Furthermore, they sequenced it and provided information to the world. By then, virologists and others who were bothering to read WHO reports knew that there was a coronavirus and knew that had to deal with it. Did they do anything? Well yes, some did.

"China, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore began to do something, and they have sort of pretty much seemed to have contained at least the first surge of the crisis."

He explained that the way the West prepared for the crisis differed between countries.

"In Europe, to some extent, it's happened. Germany ... did have spare diagnostic capacity and was able to act in a highly selfish fashion, not helping others but for itself at least, to evident reasonable containment.

"Other countries just ignored it. The worst was the United Kingdom and the worst of all was the United States.

"One day [US President Donald Trump] says, 'There is no crisis, it's just like flu.' The next day, 'It's a terrible crisis and I knew it all along.' The next day, 'We have to go back to the business, because I have to win the election'. The idea that the world is in these hands is shocking."

The US has the world's highest number of infections with more than 250,000 cases, while more than 6,500 have died with the virus.

Globally, there are more than a million cases across at least 180 countries, and more than 53,000 people have died of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, which has origins in China.

Describing the US president as a "sociopathic buffoon", Chomsky said while the coronavirus was serious, "it's worth recalling that there is a much greater horror approaching. We are racing to the edge of disaster, far worse than anything that's happened in human history.

"Donald Trump and his minions are in the lead in racing to the abyss. In fact there are two immense threats that we're facing - one is the growing threat of nuclear war ... and the other of course is the growing threat of global warming."

While the coronavirus can have "terrifying consequences, there will be recovery", said Chomsky, but regarding the other threats, "there won't be recovery, it's finished".

He also blasted Trump for continuing punishing sanctions on Iran, a country which is struggling to contain the virus with more than 3,000 deaths, as a way to make people suffer bitterly.

"When the US imposes devastating sanctions - it's the only country that can do that, everyone has to follow ... the master. Or else they are kicked out the financial system," said Chomsky.

Why is there a coronavirus crisis? It's a colossal market failure. It goes right back to the essence of markets exacerbated by the savage neoliberal intensification of deep social-economic problems.

Noam Chomsky

The conversation with Horvat took place online on March 28 as part of a series by Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, a political party launched by Greece's former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, to discuss the world after the pandemic.

Other speakers have included Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek and German-Croatian theatre director and author Angela Richter.

Looking ahead, Chomsky said there could be reason for hope as he made a case against neoliberalism.

"Possibly, a good side of the coronavirus, is it might bring people to think about what kind of a world do we want.

"We should think about the emergence of this crisis, why is there a coronavirus crisis? It's a colossal market failure. It goes right back to the essence of markets exacerbated by the savage neoliberal intensification of deep social-economic problems.

"It was known for a long time that pandemics are very likely and it was underestimated. It was very well understood there were likely to be coronavirus pandemics, modifications of the SARS epidemic 15 years ago.

"At the time, it was overcome. The viruses were identified, sequences to the vaccines were available.

"Labs around the world could be working right then on developing protection for potential coronavirus pandemics. Why didn't they do it? The market signals were wrong. The drug companies. We have handed over our fate to private tyrannies called corporations, which are unaccountable to the public, in this case, Big Pharma. And for them, making new body creams is more profitable than finding a vaccine that will protect people from total destruction."

Remembering the polio epidemic in the US, Chomsky noted that it was ended by the discovery of the Salk vaccine by a government institution. The vaccine was available by the early 1950s.

"No patents, available to everyone. That could have been done this time, but the neoliberal plague has blocked that."

Asked for his view on the current "war-time" language used during the crisis, which has seen medical workers described as being on the "front line" and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warning of the biggest challenge since World War II, Chomsky said the rhetoric was justified to mobilise people.

But post-pandemic options, he warned, "range from the installation of highly authoritarian brutal states all the way over to radical reconstruction of society and more humane terms concerned with human need and no private profit.

"We should bear in mind that highly authoritarian vicious states are quite compatible with neoliberalism."

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Noam Chomsky: 'Coronavirus pandemic could have been prevented'

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Chomsky slams US's handling of virus as he warns nuclear war, global warming threats will remain after pandemic is over. The coronavirus crisis could have been prevented because there was enough information available to the world, according to Noam Chomsky, who has warned that once the pandemic is over, two critical challenges will remain - the threats of nuclear war and global warming.

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Financial Times on Starmer’s shadow cabinet 

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Financial Times on Starmer’s shadow cabinet 

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UK opposition leader Keir Starmer has completed his shadow ministerial line-up by appointing a number of former Blairite MPs to the front bench, in a move which has caused concern among some on the left of the party.

Sir Keir's final team includes a number of big figures in the party who chose to "sit out" the years when Jeremy Corbyn was leader, including former business minister Pat McFadden and former leadership contenders Liz Kendall and Jess Phillips.

The new Labour leader, who was elected on Saturday, had already unveiled a shadow cabinet almost entirely drawn from the "soft left" of the party - including figures such as Mr Corbyn's predecessor, Ed Miliband.

The choice of a senior team that was largely unscarred by the factional infighting of the last five years was seen as a gesture of compromise towards the warring wings of the party.

However the junior ranks of his team, announced on Friday, include a number of moderates who had no time for Mr Corbyn. "At last we have a leader who actually looks like a prime minister," said one of those promoted.

Sir Keir is treading a careful path between those who want to return the party to the election-winning centrism of Tony Blair's "New Labour" and the majority of the 500,000-plus members who want a radical green form of socialism.

Two prominent "rightwingers", Mr McFadden and Wes Streeting, will serve under the soft-left Anneliese Dodds in the Treasury team, in a move which has raised the hackles of some on the Corbynite wing of the party.

"Packing the Treasury team with people whose political positions are to the right of Rishi Sunak right now seems particularly provocative," said one leftwing MP.

Some on the Labour left fear that such promotions could be a sign that Sir Keir is stealthily moving the party towards the centre and that former supporters of Mr Blair could be in top jobs before the next election.

Stephen Doughty and Stephen Kinnock, both at foreign affairs, Peter Kyle at justice and Matthew Pennycook at the business department are among the former critics of Mr Corbyn to be promoted.

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Corbynites are particularly nervous because so many figures from the "hard left" were removed from the shadow cabinet on Sunday and Monday in Sir Keir's first reshuffle. They included shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon and shadow trade secretary Barry Gardiner.

Ian Lavery has also been sacked as party chairman while Seumas Milne, one of Mr Corbyn's closest advisers, left his role as the party's director of strategy and communications.

One Labour official said: "It will be a new team that represents the breadth, depth and talent of the Labour party."

But a Labour MP said: "I think Keir is underestimating how badly this will go down with many of the members who backed him, expecting that he would stick largely with the economic policies left by Corbyn.

"A lot of people are soft-left and are not loony left but they don't want a return to the Blair era either and are going to be asking 'what the flying f**k'?"

Mr Miliband was appointed to the crucial role of shadow business secretary on Monday, returning to the front bench five years after he stepped down as party leader.

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Starmer alarms Corbyn supporters with Blairite appointments

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UK opposition leader Keir Starmer has completed his shadow ministerial line-up by appointing a number of former Blairite MPs to the front bench, in a move which has caused concern among some on the left of the party.

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These short introductions delve into the anarchist canon to recover some of the distinctive ideas that historical anarchists advanced to address problems relevant to their circumstances. Many of the issues the anarchists wrestled with still plague our lives. Anarchists developed a body of writing about power, domination, injustice and exploitation, education, prisons and a lot more besides.

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What does this tell us about the nature of the US Supreme Court?

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What does this tell us about the nature of the US Supreme Court?

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Liberals excoriated the Supreme Court's conservative majority on Monday over its decision blocking a court order that extended the period to return absentee ballots in Wisconsin's primary election, warning that the high court's ruling is an ominous sign of massive disenfranchisement of voters in November.

Many critics said the justices had acquiesced in forcing voters to literally put their lives on the line to cast their ballots.

"It is unconscionable," said Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. "It is among the most cynical decisions I have read from this Court - devoid of even the pretense of engaging with the reality that this decision will mean one of two things for many WI voters: either they will risk their health & lives to vote, or they will be disenfranchised."

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Liberals recoil at SCOTUS' Wisconsin primary decision

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Liberals excoriated the Supreme Court's conservative majority on Monday over its decision blocking a court order that extended the period to return absentee ballots in Wisconsin's primary election, warning that the high court's ruling is an ominous sign of massive disenfranchisement of voters in November.

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Assembling a shadow cabinet - what Keir Starmer will be considering

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Assembling a shadow cabinet - what Keir Starmer will be considering

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As the UK enters its third week of lockdown, Keir Starmer probably won't be the only person who has spent time trying to put their house in order, or grappling with the task of assembling a new cabinet. Like many, he will be hoping he's put it together correctly, and that it won't collapse as soon as he tries to use it.

For the leader of the opposition, however, there is no handy instruction sheet to tell him how to go about the task of appointing his shadow team.

What he can have done, though, is to look at the experience of previous leaders of the opposition for an idea of what works and what doesn't. Some leaders have found it easier than others, but some of the difficulties, it turns out, have remained constant over the years.

The first dilemma after winning a leadership election is what to do with those you have beaten. Do you reward them with senior appointments, keeping them in the tent? Or do you remove them in the hope of consolidating your distinctive position?

In 1997 William Hague effectively excluded his opponent Kenneth Clarke by insisting that all members of his top team had to sign up to his policy on the euro. By contrast Jeremy Corbyn in 2015 appointed his nearest rival, Andy Burnham, to the senior post of Shadow Home Secretary, something David Cameron also did with David Davis in 2005 (though Davis, like Burnham, resigned from the post before the next election).

Perhaps the most famous example of this delicate issue playing out occurred in 1975 after Margaret Thatcher defeated the incumbent leader, Edward Heath. Despite knowing (and being content) that he would not serve under her, Mrs Thatcher was keen to preserve the appearance of unity, and made a pilgrimage to his home to ask him in person.

She was snubbed - indeed, so swiftly that, in order to conceal from the watching media how embarrassingly short their conversation had been, she resorted to having a coffee with Heath's parliamentary private secretary in the kitchen before she left.

Heath was not alone in deciding to rule himself out: David Miliband, who had been the favourite to win the contest in 2010, very publicly chose not to serve in his brother's shadow cabinet, claiming he would have been a distraction. And in 2015 Yvette Cooper announced during the leadership contest that she would not be prepared to serve under Corbyn.

Such decisions limit the available talent pool, but at least Starmer has a relatively free hand to choose his team from the remaining MPs. Until 2010, Labour leaders had to contend with the results of elections to the shadow cabinet from within the Parliamentary Labour Party whilst the party was in opposition.

All they could do was decide which portfolios those elected received. This practice was abolished by Ed Miliband in 2010 - though had it been retained, the Corbyn years might have unfolded very differently.

Even without formal elections, it will be fairly clear who are the senior figures in the parliamentary party, and many of them no doubt expect to be given a position they feel reflects their status.

A new leader, however, almost always wants 'an injection of new blood' (as Ted Heath put it), signalling a fresh start and putting their own stamp on the opposition. For Starmer, that is a particularly important consideration, and he has begun by promoting some notably fresh faces into the senior positions.

Making way for these appointments of course requires dropping some of the old guard. The brutality or simple awkwardness of this task is one which even strong leaders have found difficult, with Tony Blair calling the process of sacking frontbench spokespeople 'ghastly'.

Starmer is lucky in the sense that many of Corbyn's shadow cabinet will have already been expecting the chop. But there are bound to be others who harbour resentment at their treatment, and with their remaining allies on the left, could cause trouble for him later on.

A new leader of the opposition has a fairly narrow window of opportunity to make a first impression on the electorate, and many have found to their cost that a negative one is almost impossible to shift.

The formation of a shadow cabinet is usually the first chance a new leader has to signal the direction they want to lead their party, and to begin introducing their team to the public. In the current extraordinary times, however, only the most devoted of political devotees are likely to be paying any attention.

Despite this extra challenge, the people Starmer chooses to sit around his (for now, virtual) top table are worth scrutinising. Do they represent a complete break from the past? How competent and media-friendly are the new appointments? How representative are they of the country they aspire to govern?

Starmer's resounding win has given him a mandate for bold choices, but he must be careful not to entrench divisions that could have damaging future consequences.

Crucially, his new shadow cabinet must be able to work together effectively as a team, and appear to the electorate as a credible government-in-waiting. If they don't, they could be waiting a very long time.
By Dr Nigel Fletcher, Teaching Fellow in Politics and Contemporary History at King's College London, and the co-founder of the Centre for Opposition Studies.

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Assembling a shadow cabinet | UK in a changing Europe

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As the UK enters its third week of lockdown, Keir Starmer probably won't be the only person who has spent time trying to put their house in order, or grappling with the task of assembling a new cabinet. Like many, he will be hoping he's put it together correctly, and that it won't collapse as soon as he tries to use it.

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Democrats delay naming 2020 nominee in unprecedented move

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Democrats delay naming 2020 nominee in unprecedented move

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"We will continue to be in contact with local, state, and federal health officials as we monitor this fluid situation. The Democratic Party is ready to defeat Donald Trump, the American people are ready to elect a Democratic president, and I have absolute confidence that our team is ready to deliver a successful convention for our nominee."

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Coronavirus: Democrats to delay crowning presidential nominee

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"We will continue to be in contact with local, state, and federal health officials as we monitor this fluid situation. The Democratic Party is ready to defeat Donald Trump, the American people are ready to elect a Democratic president, and I have absolute confidence that our team is ready to deliver a successful convention for our nominee."

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Trump uses executive order powers amid Coronavirus pandemic 

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Trump uses executive order powers amid Coronavirus pandemic 

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"Decisions about which individuals may be activated are still being reviewed," Hoffman said.

"Generally, these members will be persons in Headquarters units and persons with high demand medical capabilities whose call-up would not adversely affect their civilian communities," Hoffman said. The departments would consult with state officials before using any National Guard Reserve Component units under the executive order, he added.

Trump said the order would allow the U.S. to mobilize medical, disaster and emergency response personnel to help fight the virus, which has sickened more than 100,000 people around the country.

"Great, great military people coming back in who have offered to support the nation at this extraordinary time of need. They come back in. They don't say how much. They want to come back in," Trump told reporters Friday.

Already this week, the Army, Navy and Veterans Affairs Department have called on former service members to rejoin the force and help the military in the pandemic response.

The Army has since heard from 14,600 people who had expressed interest, an Army spokesperson said Friday.

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Trump authorizes call-ups of military reservists to fight virus

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"Decisions about which individuals may be activated are still being reviewed," Hoffman said. "Generally, these members will be persons in Headquarters units and persons with high demand medical capabilities whose call-up would not adversely affect their civilian communities," Hoffman said.

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Super pac attack on Trump’s response to Covid-19

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Super pac attack on Trump’s response to Covid-19

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One of the Democratic Party's main 2020 super PACs is attacking President Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus outbreak with new TV ads airing in four key swing states.

The new ad from Priorities USA Action, which plans to spend $6 million on TV and digital ads condemning Trump's response to Covid-19, began running in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida on Tuesday and features Trump quotes juxtaposed against a graph showing the number of positive coronavirus tests in America.

At the end of the ad, footage plays of Trump saying, during a Rose Garden press conference at the White House, "I don't take responsibility at all."

The ad marks a new front in the political battle over government response to the coronavirus. There has been relatively little TV advertising on the pandemic so far, with some scattered ads showing up in the Kentucky Senate race and the West Virginia governor's race so far. In a statement, Priorities USA chairman Guy Cecil said Trump had "repeatedly misled the American people and exposed us to unnecessary danger."

The series of ads targeting Trump's handling of the coronavirus are part of a $150 million commitment from Priorities USA to run ads slamming Trump on health care in Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona ahead of the Democratic National Convention in July. The PAC's coronavirus ad campaign comes amid a lull among the Democratic candidates on the airwaves. As several states' primaries remain in flux, neither Bernie Sanders nor Joe Biden has purchased TV or radio airtime since the March 17 elections in Florida and Arizona.

Priorities USA is also out with a second TV ad highlighting Biden's experience in the executive branch along with two other digital ads with similar themes are also out on the airwaves in battleground states.

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Priorities USA begins $6 million blitz of anti-Trump coronavirus ads

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One of the Democratic Party's main 2020 super PACs is attacking President Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus outbreak with new TV ads airing in four key swing states.

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SCOTUS online in unprecedented time of Coronavirus 

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SCOTUS online in unprecedented time of Coronavirus 

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In an opinion written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the court ruled that plaintiffs in such cases must show that racial animus was an essential reason for treating a company or individual differently in a business transaction, and not simply that race played some role in the decision.

"A plaintiff bears the burden of showing that race was a but-for cause of its injury," Gorsuch wrote.

All nine justices endorsed the bulk of Gorsuch's opinion, but Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg took exception to one footnote and emphasized that discrimination at any point in the contracting process should be actionable.

Another ruling by the court Monday produced an unusual ideological alignment.

Justice Elena Kagan, a Democratic appointee, joined with her five GOP-appointed colleagues to allow states to use a narrow definition of insanity when assessing whether a defendant should be held responsible for his or her crimes.

Kagan wrote for the six-justice majority in the case, ruling that the State of Kansas did not have to absolve a murder defendant said to be unable to distinguish between right and wrong.

"Defining the precise relationship between criminal culpability and mental illness involves examining the workings of the brain, the purposes of the criminal law, the ideas of free will and responsibility," Kagan wrote.

"It is a project for state governance, not constitutional law," she added.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented, with Breyer arguing that the court was ignoring "seven hundred years of Anglo-American legal history" by endorsing punishment for people who could not perceive that their actions were wrong.

The court also issued a 7-2 decision Monday that gives federal appeals courts greater authority to review rulings by immigration courts and a Justice Department appeals panel that oversees those courts. Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Gorsuch joined all of their Democratic-appointed colleagues in the decision favoring broad oversight of executive branch actions in immigration cases, while Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.

In a fourth case, the justices said states are not subject to suits for copyright infringement under current law. However, they left open the question of whether Congress could retool the law to create such liability for states.

The justices also announced Monday that when they hear arguments in a trio of cases about efforts to subpoena President Donald Trump's financial records, they will hear not only from a personal lawyer for Trump but also from an attorney representing the official position of the U.S. government. Those cases were set to be argued next Tuesday but have been put off indefinitely due to the coronavirus crisis.

The next scheduled arguments at the court are set for April 20, but whether those will take place as planned is unclear. Six of the justices are age 65 or over, which puts them at high risk of serious complications or death from the virus, heightening concerns about the court convening in person.

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SCOTUS rulings land online, upending tradition

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In an opinion written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the court ruled that plaintiffs in such cases must show that racial animus was an essential reason for treating a company or individual differently in a business transaction, and not simply that race played some role in the decision.

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Case study for federalism - state authority in Illinois ‘stay-at-home’ order

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Case study for federalism - state authority in Illinois ‘stay-at-home’ order

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Gov. J.B. Pritzker has issued a "stay-at-home" order for the entire state starting at 5 p.m. Saturday through at least April 7, marking Illinois' most aggressive step yet to try to slow the coronavirus's spread.

A dramatic-sounding move, to be sure, but one that largely codifies the previous recommendations and rules issued by state officials. Pritzker said his latest decision was based on conversations with "some of the best medical experts, epidemiologists, mathematicians and modelers."

He announced the change on Friday afternoon, as Illinois reached 585 confirmed cases across 25 counties, including 163 new cases. The death toll has risen to five, as officials announced a Cook County woman in her 70s had died from COVID-19.

"I've asked every one of these experts, 'What action can I take to save the most lives?'" the governor said. "Well, they've come back to me with one inescapable conclusion: To avoid the loss of potentially tens of thousands of lives, we must enact an immediate stay-at-home order for the state of Illinois."

The directive prohibits any gathering larger than 10 people, in keeping with the latest recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It also bars residents from socializing in-person with people outside their household, meaning even small parties and casual get-togethers should not take place.

Playgrounds will be closed, though each community will decide whether green space will remain open for recreational use. Illinois has shut down its state parks. All Chicago Park District facilities will be closed, but people can still enjoy the open spaces as long as they maintain a social distance of 6 feet.

"How can soccer or book club be so dangerous? Why ask so much of people for just a few hundred cases?" said Dr. Emily Landon, medical director of antimicrobial stewardship and infection control at University of Chicago Medicine. "Because it's the only way to save those lives. And now is the time, because the numbers you see today in the news are by the people that got sick a week ago, and there are still people who got sick today and haven't even noticed that they got sick yet."

Residents can still go to grocery stores, put gas in their cars, take walks outside and make pharmacy runs. All local roads and airports remain open, with interstate travel expressly permitted. Illinoisans can leave home to help care for relatives, elderly residents or other vulnerable people.

Grabbing takeout, ordering an Uber and dropping off dry cleaning also are still permitted. The order even allows liquor stores and recreational cannabis dispensaries to remain open for business should the second week of impromptu homeschooling create an essential need.

Pritzker's order includes a long list of vital occupations that can stay on the job: health care workers, grocery employees, funeral home employees, pharmacists, hardware store workers, plumbers, electricians, day care providers, bank tellers and roles that are essential to the supply chain. Police, firefighters and paramedics also can keep working.

In short, most residents who have been able to work from home, maintain a social distance and repeatedly wash their hands will have no problem adjusting to the governor's latest directive.

"For the vast majority of you already taking precautions, your lives will not change very much," said Pritzker, whose order also halts evictions for as long as it is in place.

The governor also pushed back the reopening date for schools statewide until at least April 8. Chicago Public Schools will not start again until April 21.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who voiced her support for the "stay-at-home" order, announced Chicago Public Libraries will close at 5 p.m Saturday. The CTA will remain in operation, though people are encouraged to socially distance themselves from other riders.

"This is not a lockdown or martial law," Lightfoot said.

Pritzker acknowledged the state doesn't have "the resources, the capacity or the desire" to police every individual's behavior. Instead, he said, officials will rely on Illinoisans to be good citizens and do right by their communities.

In Chicago, police officers will be instructed to keep an eye out for groups of 10 or more people, then find out if the violators have a vital reason for congregating. The objective is to educate the public about the governor's order, not punish people for disobeying it, department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.

"Our very, very firm position here is this is a public health issue," he said. "This is not a quarantine. And the spirit of law is different than the letter of the law. People can expect to be reminded of the governor's order, (to have officers) asking them to create social distance, disperse the area in some cases. ... Arrest is only a very, very last resort because this is not intended to be a criminal order."

Though the governor has activated the Illinois National Guard to help combat the virus, the service members will have no role in enforcing any potential order. Pritzker said irresponsible social media users, as well as Russian and Chinese meddlers, spread unfounded rumors about the Guard being deployed to enforce a quarantine.

In reality, 60 service members will be used to establish drive-up testing sites, help with food delivery to disadvantaged families impacted by school closures and possibly prepare closed hospitals to reopen. The vast majority of currently activated troops are health care professionals - doctors, nurses, medical technicians - who would not be tapped for a law-enforcement assignment.

"We have never even discussed a quarantine mission for the Illinois National Guard," Lt. Col. Bradford Leighton told the Tribune. "It's never come up."

Illinois joins California, New York and Connecticut in ordering residents to stay home, meaning the country's three largest cities - New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago - will be essentially shuttered in an attempt to blunt COVID-19′s reach.

Oak Park spent its first day under such conditions Friday. The suburb's unofficial lockdown did not look very different from a typical weekday afternoon. On the streets in the eastern third of town, a handful of people were out walking their dogs or jogging.

The artificial turf soccer field at Ridgeland Common had a father and son at one end, a handful of teenage boys at the other playing soccer on a goal that was still up. One woman and her two dogs were in the small dog park at the field's south end.

A visible difference was evident at Pete's Fresh Market, where the parking lot was about 90% full, ordinary for a Sunday evening but exceptional for a midday Friday. Whole Foods also had a security guard posted at the door, ensuring that no more than 40 people were inside at any given time.

That lack of a sharp dividing line is what residents observed as well.

"My family and I took it very seriously from the get-go, so it really doesn't look a whole lot different to us," said Molly Monaco, 37, who works in technology sales and has been on maternity leave since January. "We have four grandparents close by. Starting Sunday, we decided it would be best if we kept the kids separate from their grandparents. We're using FaceTime."

Monaco's message for Illinoisans wondering what it'll be like with a statewide stay-at-home order? "Keep to your immediate family. The stricter you are, the faster it'll be for everybody, hopefully. I just hope everyone is listening because, honestly, the people that aren't listening are just going to make it longer for everybody else and themselves," she said.

Indeed, Landon, the epidemiologist who has been consulting with the governor, said history suggests a stay-at-home order could be the most effective tool in fighting the virus's spread. At the beginning of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, St. Louis shut down with a "shelter-in-place" order, while Philadelphia hosted a parade to celebrate soldiers coming home from war.

A week later, Philadelphia's hospitals were overrun with patients, and thousands died. St. Louis fared far better.

"This is a cautionary tale for our time. Things are already tough in Illinois hospitals, including mine. There's no vaccine or readily available anti-viral to help the stem the tide. All we have to slow the spread is distance - social distance," she said. "If we let every single patient with this infection infect three more people, and then each of them infect two or three more people, there won't be a hospital bed when my mother can't breathe very well, or when yours is coughing too much."

Pritzker's decision was applauded by several pro-business groups, including organizations representing retailers and manufacturers. It also had the support of Lightfoot and DuPage County Board Chairman Dan Cronin, both of whom stood beside him as he announced the decision.

Some Illinois residents also said they understood the order, even as it threatened to make their lives more challenging.

"I'm glad he is calling for a shutdown in movement," South Shore resident Shirley Rollins. "Everyone has to sacrifice, things are getting too out of control. As long as I can get food and my medicine, I'm good."

Still, the governor said he did not make the decision easily. He had been weighing the order for days, sources told the Tribune, as he tried to balance the needs of Illinois' economy and the public's safety.

Even as he announced the order Friday, he acknowledged it could extend beyond early April, meaning businesses deemed nonessential would suffer even greater losses. The Illinois Chamber of Commerce already has called on the governor to ease the economic hardship the order will create for local businesses.

"I fully recognize, in some cases, I am choosing between saving people's lives and saving people's livelihoods," Pritzker said. "But ultimately you can't have a livelihood if you don't have your life."

Now everyone has a chance to help save lives - even if it won't seem that way.

"It's really hard to feel like you're saving the world when you're watching Netflix from your couch," Landon said. "But if we do this right, nothing happens. A successful shelter in place means you're going to feel like it was all for nothing."

Chicago Tribune's Jamie Munks, Javonte Anderson, Annie Sweeney, Deanese Williams-Harris, John Byrne and Antonia Ayres-Brown contributed.

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Gov. J.B. Pritzker issues order requiring residents to 'stay at home' starting Saturday

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Gov. J.B. Pritzker has issued a "stay-at-home" order for the entire state starting at 5 p.m. Saturday through at least April 7, marking Illinois' most aggressive step yet to try to slow the coronavirus's spread. A dramatic-sounding move, to be sure, but one that largely codifies the previous recommendations and rules issued by state officials.

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Supreme Court chief denies power ‘grab’ from parliament 

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Supreme Court chief denies power ‘grab’ from parliament 

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Judges are not staging a power grab to take over parliament's role and do not make up law "as we go along", the new president of the supreme court has told a parliamentary committee.

In a robust defence of judicial independence in the face of government plans to change the UK's constitution, Lord Reed of Allermuir warned that US-style confirmation hearings to select judges on the basis of their political views would be "really intolerable".

It was the first appearance by Reed and the deputy supreme court president, Lord Hodge, before the House of Lords constitution committee since their appointment at the beginning of the year.

They have taken up their roles at a sensitive political moment with the Johnson government promising two commissions on legal affairs, one aimed at reviewing criminal justice and a more wide-ranging constitution, democracy and rights commission.

Few details of either commission's scope, personnel, timing or ultimate aims have emerged. Some fear they will merely enable the government to exact revenge for its two Brexit-related landmark defeats in the supreme court involving article 50 and the prime minister's attempt to prorogue parliament.

Shortly before being made attorney general, the Conservative MP and Brexiter Suella Braverman wrote an article on the Conservative Home website urging the government to "take back control" from an interfering judiciary.

Asked at the constitution committee on Wednesday about such alleged behaviour, Reed insisted: "It's not a power grab by us."

Judges, he said, were merely giving effect to legislation, including the Human Rights Act, previously passed by parliament.

"We don't make it up as we go along," he told the committee. He said it may be true that judges are considering matters they wouldn't have looked at 100 or 50 years ago but that was because parliament has "given the courts the duty of enforcing laws which reflect a constitutional culture which is not the traditional constitutional culture".

Judges are already repelling cases where they consider judicial review claims are brought on political rather than legal grounds in order, Reed said, to avoid straying outside genuinely legal matters.

He acknowledged that the recent cases brought by the constitutional campaigner Gina Miller and the Brexit crisis had subjected the UK's constitutional arrangements to a degree of "stress testing".

"While the decision taken by the courts in the prorogation case was not greeted by universal acclaim, I don't feel it reveals an inherent weakness in the courts," Reed said.

Judges in the UK do not face the same pressure as in many other countries where they are pressured by politicians and their ruling ignored, Reed said. In a reference to Donald Trump, he added: "Last month the US saw the president criticising the judge and foreman of the jury in a case where one of his aides was being tried."

Some criticism of judges in Britain was acceptable, Reed said, but "what's irresponsible is an attack on our integrity", such as the allegation that decisions are based on political bias because it undermines public trust in the judiciary.

Asked whether there was a role for greater involvement by politicians in appointing senior judges, Reed said the primary principle of appointment should be merit. "We have to maintain our position where we are seen as politically neutral," he added.

Hodge said: "Most [judges] will have private political views but we have no democratic mandate to bring those into our work. We leave them at the door of the court."

If there were politically controlled confirmation hearings to appoint judges then judges might feel they "have some sort of mandate in bringing their political views into court.".

Reed said he knew some of the American justices who have gone through the process of US confirmation hearings and "it's really intolerable".

While not supporting a written UK constitution, Reed said he thought that writing down a few more of the conventions that govern political life might be helpful in future debates.
Topics

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Supreme court chief denies judges trying to 'grab' power from parliament

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Judges are not staging a power grab to take over parliament's role and do not make up law "as we go along", the new president of the supreme court has told a parliamentary committee.

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By Daniel Kraemer
BBC Political Research Unit

Politics can be an expensive business. Parties put a lot of time and effort into attracting the big bucks.

But who has come out on top in the past ten years? And where has the cash been coming from?

Since 2010 parties have received £541m in large donations from companies, individuals and - for Labour - trade unions.

Income has fluctuated year-by-year and there were clear spikes leading up to the four general elections that have taken place in the past decade.

But 2019 broke all records, thanks largely to a massive inflow of cash into the Conservative Party.

The total amount of donations to all parties almost tripled between 2018 and 2019, rising to £104m, more than half of which came in the last three months of the year.

Where is the money going?

Every party's income gets a boost around election time, but the Conservative Party has been consistently ahead of the curve. The gap between the two main parties was £1.4m in 2011, but had rocketed to £35m by 2019.

Parties have to register donations over £7,500, or a combination of smaller donations if they come from the same source.

So these numbers do not include a large chunk of money that trickles in from smaller donors. For example, during the 2019 election, the Labour Party - which has more than twice as many members as the Conservative Party - said two thirds of its donations were under £20.

Who's paying?

The 2019 spike for the Liberal Democrats was largely thanks to the biggest single political donation on record: £8m from Labour peer - and former Labour minister - Lord David Sainsbury.

The supermarket magnate - who said in 2017 he would no longer fund political causes - handed over the money to the anti-Brexit Lib Dems before the December election campaign kicked off.

Lord Sainsbury was also responsible for the second largest donation from an individual on record, when he gave £2.2m to the Labour Party in 2016.

Single donations like these can transform a party's finances. The Conservative Party's largest source of money over the decade has been JCB, which has also provided a reliable source of venues for photo opportunities.

More than £10m has flowed into Tory coffers from JCB, on top of more than a million from Mark Bamford, a member of the family that owns the digger maker.

The Brexit Party's short life has been bankrolled by some of the largest donations on record.

Christopher Harborne, a largely unknown figure in the Westminster village, donated a total of £4m over the space of two months before the election.

Unions and companies

In the 2010s, Labour raised £152m in total, well below the £267m donated to the Conservatives.

Donations from trade unions made up 72% of Labour's total. The party's three largest donors were Unite, Unison and GMB, the three main unions in the UK.

In contrast, Conservative money has been dominated by individual donors, topped up by contributions from companies, which made up 29% over the ten years.

The dominance of trade union money in Labour's accounts is unsurprising, being a party created out of the trade union movement at the turn of the 19th century.

But its reliance on these donations has increased in recent years, from 58% in 2014 to 88% last year.

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Tories way ahead in donations over past decade

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By Daniel Kraemer BBC Political Research Unit Politics can be an expensive business. Parties put a lot of time and effort into attracting the big bucks. But who has come out on top in the past ten years? And where has the cash been coming from?

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Anti-lynching bill finally secures House approval 

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Anti-lynching bill finally secures House approval 

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Rush added that he had been assured by Senate sponsors that the bill would be brought up for a vote and passed in the upper chamber by the end of the week, meaning Congress could pass the legislationby the end of Black History Month.

Congress's attempts to address the racially-driven mob killings date back over a century, but past House bills have either stalled or been blocked in the Senate. The bill is named after Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black teen from Chicago who was lynched in 1955 while visiting family in Mississippi. The incident drew national attention, especially after his mother insisted on an open-casket funeral and photos of his disfigured face circulated nationwide.

"That picture of Emmett in that casket catalyzed an entire nation," Rush told reporters ahead of the vote.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said it was fitting that the measure was named after Till, and that the "bill is late in coming, but it is never too late to do the right thing."

"Lynching was a blot on the history of America, but the even greater blot is the silence that for too long maintained in the context of what people knew was happening," Hoyer said.

Our must-read rundown of political news in the Land of Lincoln.

The brutal practice emerged after slavery ended and was mainly used against black people by mobs of angry whites. A majority of lynchings took place in the American South, and of the 4,743 recorded lynching which took place between 1882 and 1968, 72.7% of the victims were black, according to the NAACP.

Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, said though lynchings took on a different form when groups such as the Ku Klux Klan began carrying them out after abolition, the practice was also used to terrorize enslaved people and prevent them from rebelling.

"And frankly even today periodically you hear new stories of nooses being left on college campuses, worker locker rooms, to threaten and terrorize African Americans, a vicious reminder that the past is never that far away," Bass said.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who last year worked to introduce House legislation to mirror the Senate bill's language, said on the House floor earlier on Wednesday that Congress was closer than it had ever been making lynching a federal crime, and that the action was long overdue.

"We will finally get this to the president's desk to be signed into law in order to close one of the ugliest chapters in America's history once and for all," he said.

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'It is never too late to do the right thing': House passes federal anti-lynching bill

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Rush added that he had been assured by Senate sponsors that the bill would be brought up for a vote and passed in the upper chamber by the end of the week, meaning Congress could pass the legislationby the end of Black History Month.

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Is the British prime minister too powerful?

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Is the British prime minister too powerful?

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The Brexit process has highlighted the strengths - and limitations - of Britain's executive

Parliament will today seize control of the legislative agenda from the government for the first time in over a century.

It marks a hugely symbolic moment as the balance of power swings dramatically from the executive to MPs.

The past three years have been some of the most tumultuous for British politics since the end of the Second World War. Yet the process has also revealed the extent - and limitations - of prime ministerial power.

The Week looks at what authority the British prime minister has, whether she has exceeded it, and if the country is headed for a dramatic realignment.

What powers does the prime minister have?

Although the government is officially titled Her Majesty's Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, power in the UK rests with the prime minister.

The PM must formally ask the monarch to form a government, but is "ultimately responsible for the policy and decisions of the government", for appointing the Cabinet and setting the legislative agenda, explains GOV.UK. This is normally based on the ruling party's most recent election manifesto, effectively a blueprint for how it means to govern.

The prime minister is, in theory, accountable to the House of Commons but in most cases when the PM commands a majority, MPs' primary function is to rubber-stamp legislation put forward by the government.

There are exceptions where the prime minister can act unilaterally without the consent of Parliament or even the Cabinet. One of these includes the power to declare war through what is called Royal Prerogative (using powers invested in the monarch but devolved to the prime minister).

As well as chairing all cabinet meetings, the PM also appoints or approves senior civil servants, ambassadors, the heads of the intelligence and security services, and some senior military staff.

Until recently the power to call an election was included, by asking the monarch to dissolve Parliament. However, since 2011 PMs have been bound by the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act which limits the ability to call a snap vote.

Was it always like this?

Parliament has functioned in one form or another since the Middle Ages, but it was not until the 18th century that the concept of a "first minister" began to take shape. The position was formalised by the MP Robert Walpole who shaped the office into something recognisable today. He was also the first resident of Number 10 Downing Street, which has remained the official residence and office of the prime minister.

At first the role was called First Lord of the Treasury and it was not until 1905 that the title "Prime Minister" was formally adopted and, since then, power has steadily concentrated in Downing Street. From the 1960s under Labour's Harold Wilson, the prime minister's office has steadily grown, with its own policy unit separate from other government departments. Over the past half century, the international role of the prime minister has also changed, vastly superseding that of the foreign secretary.

"The 'presidentialisation thesis' claims that the power of the prime minister is increasing so that he or she can no longer be seen as just the most important member of the Cabinet but is now more like an American president," says Brit Politics.

But unlike the US, Britain has no written constitution, meaning the exact role and authority of the prime minister is forever changing and growing.

While the US has a codified separation of power, "in the UK, those powers are consolidated", writes Brittany Bennett in Bustle, so it could be argued that Downing Street actually wields more power than the White House.

"Whereas the administrative branch is its own wing of the government, May is actually a member of the legislature, meaning that the two divisions operate as one," says Bennett.

So why is this changing now?

Like its impact on the rest of the UK, Brexit has upended the accepted order of British politics.

Over the past two centuries the prime minister's authority has in most cases been guaranteed as the leader of the largest party in the House of Commons. Even during hung parliaments, when no single party commands a majority of seats, minority or coalition governments have managed to function effectively.

But the breakdown of old party loyalties following the EU referendum, exacerbated by May's disastrous decision to call the 2017 general election, which wiped out her working majority, has left the current PM in limbo - with more MPs questioning the "dictatorial" power of the executive during a time of national crisis.

During her time in office, May has effectively lost her parliamentary majority, suffered multiple Commons defeats - some of historic proportions - and seen a significant number of resignations from her government while in office.

"With the timetable now wrestled from her, May is in an incredibly weakened position and the numbers are such that she could even be considered the weakest prime minister in modern UK politics," argues the Irish Independent.

What is more, according to the Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, any indicative motion passed by MPs setting out a new route through the Brexit impasse would legally require the Government to follow Parliament's instruction or risk breaching ministerial code.

"To put it another way, the PM would be obliged to endeavour to negotiate with the EU the revealed will of MPs, even if that revealed will involved a Brexit delay that requires the UK to participate in May's European parliamentary elections, or is at odds with the Tories' manifesto," says ITV's Robert Peston.

This would represent the ultimate transfer of power from executive to Parliament, setting a precedent that some claim could reshape British politics for years to come.

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Is the British prime minister too powerful? | The Week UK

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The Brexit process has highlighted the strengths - and limitations - of Britain's executive Parliament will today seize control of the legislative agenda from the government for the first time in over a century. It marks a hugely symbolic moment as the balance of power swings dramatically from the executive to MPs.

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Plans by UK prime minister Boris Johnson to conduct a sweeping review of the constitutional relationship between the UK government and the courts have raised fears that he may be seeking to punish the Supreme Court for overturning his prorogation of parliament.

In September, Mr Johnson's attempt to suspend parliament was deemed unlawful by the UK Supreme Court in a brutal and damning judgment. The 11 justices unanimously concluded that the prime minister had used prorogation to prevent MPs from holding the government to account over its Brexit plan. As a result of the judgment, parliament immediately resumed its work, to Mr Johnson's considerable embarrassment.

Lawyers and constitutional experts say they are now concerned by a section of the Conservative manifesto on constitutional affairs. This suggests that if Mr Johnson wins this week's general election he could try to water down the powers of the Supreme Court.

The manifesto states that the Conservatives want a review of "the broader aspects of our constitution" including "the relationship between the Government, Parliament and the courts; the functioning of the royal prerogative . . . "

It pledges that in its first year, a Conservative government would set up a "Constitution, Democracy & Rights Commission that will . . . come up with proposals to restore trust in our institutions and in how our democracy operates".

Lawyers say this could examine prorogation powers in Britain's unwritten constitution. "It could be seen as attempted revenge," said a barrister specialising in human rights. "The government haven't been able to have the last word on the prorogation case and some would probably like the commission to conclude that the Supreme Court got it wrong and over-reached itself."

The manifesto also sets out the need to "update" the Human Rights Act. This incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights into UK statute and is now cited in many judicial review cases brought by charities and NGOs against government policies.

The HRA has long been a thorn in the government's side. In the past year it has had to fight a variety of judicial challenges in areas as diverse as immigration and tax cases brought by NGOs for possible breach of human rights law.

The Conservatives have repeatedly downplayed the significance of the constitutional reform commitment. Brandon Lewis, Conservative party chairman, told the BBC at the weekend: "I'll be very clear, the independence of the judiciary is sacrosanct. We're absolutely passionate about that."

But he added: "I think it is right that we actually from time to time do look at the structure within which we work."

Martha Spurrier, director of human rights organisation Liberty, said: "The executive lost a huge judicial review on prorogation and was recently burnt on that. It would be a real concern to see anything which would water down people's rights."

Recommended

Several leading lawyers and constitutional experts said that while it would be reasonable for a new government to conduct a review of the UK's constitutional arrangements, given the ambiguities that have emerged in recent years, they are uneasy about the growing criticism of the judiciary by politicians.

"I can have no objection . . . to a process of reflection on the relationship between the executive, the legislature and the courts," said Philippe Sands QC, a barrister, a professor of law and director of the Centre for International Courts and Tribunals at University College London.

But he added he was "deeply concerned" that judges were "increasingly attacked by politicians". "I am particularly concerned to maintain the absolute independence of our judges, who are globally esteemed. There is a concern, in many quarters, that such independence is in the crosshairs, with knee-jerk proposals for US-style vetting of judges, in which legal and political considerations merge."

Raphael Hogarth of the Institute for Government think-tank said: "There is nothing wrong with trying to create the conditions for some kind of reset [on these constitutional issues]. If that is what this is about, that has to be celebrated and Labour had something not dissimilar in its own manifesto."

But he added: "It would be much more serious if this is about people in the Conservative party saying: 'We have been thwarted by other institutions like parliament and the courts and we need to bring in reforms to make sure we can't be thwarted again'."

David Pannick, one of the country's leading barristers and a cross-bencher in the House of Lords, said it was "unseemly" that a government which had recently lost a high-profile case would consider changing the law on judicial review not least because any such changes would remove a check on future governments and would be "difficult to draft".

"When they think about it a bit more I would suspect it [the proposal] could be quietly dropped," he said.

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Lawyers fear Tories are planning 'revenge' against Supreme Court

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Plans by UK prime minister Boris Johnson to conduct a sweeping review of the constitutional relationship between the UK government and the courts have raised fears that he may be seeking to punish the Supreme Court for overturning his prorogation of parliament.

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First five key decisions of Supreme Court

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First five key decisions of Supreme Court

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"One of the risks of this job is that you get too interested in the law and forget the human aspect," said Lord Neuberger, the president of the Supreme Court. "We don't have witnesses, whereas trial judges are reminded of the real world constantly. One wants to be detached, but not remote."

They are surprisingly candid words from Britain's most senior judge. In a rare interview, to mark five years since the opening of the country's highest court, Lord Neuberger tells The Independent on Sunday what it is like to be one of the 12 justices given the task of deciding cases which raise points of law of critical public importance.

"It's a great privilege to be able to do it, and it's a great responsibility," he said. "You find yourself considering all sorts of very interesting, difficult and challenging points of law affecting all sorts of different people in all sorts of different ways."

To illustrate the almost limitless remit of the court, Lord Neuberger has selected five of the most significant cases it has heard since the Queen officially opened its doors on 16 October 2009, covering subjects as diverse as the HS2 rail link and the Tony Nicklinson "right to die" case.

The Supreme Court has sat on 508 days over five years, adding up to an estimated 2,286 hours of legal time, hearing 382 appeals and handing down 344 judgments. Lord Neuberger admits that narrowing the choice down to five had proved difficult.

Asked what it was like to sit on highly sensitive cases such as that of Tony Nicklinson, who suffered from locked-in syndrome and wanted his family to end his life, he said: "Rather like doctors who deal with children with fatal diseases, you mustn't lose your humanity and your sympathy - but you must maintain detachment.

"If you don't maintain a degree of detachment and objectivity, the danger is you become emotionally involved and that affects your judgement. In some areas of law, such as family cases, you risk affecting your mental health. You have to maintain a distance, but it's a subtle distinction between maintaining objectivity and retaining your humanity."

Before the Supreme Court came into existence, so-called "last resort" hearings were dealt with by 12 professional judges sitting in the House of Lords. The new building is not far away, on Parliament Square, but the atmosphere is very different, which Lord Neuberger said had been a conscious decision.

The current justices - none of whom wear gowns or wigs while sitting - are more "informal" and "relaxed", he said. "In the House of Lords, the tradition was you never discussed a case ahead of the hearing. Now we do. I think we're also more ready to discuss things afterwards and work collaboratively."

Wandering the corridors of the Supreme Court, you are likely to pass groups of visiting tourists or schoolchildren. Opening up to the general public, said Lord Neuberger, was "a big change".

"We have been much more visitable. It's very easy for a member of the public to get into the building and to get to sit in court. Compared with the old Law Lords, the number of visitors has increased enormously," he said.

About 370,000 people have visited the Supreme Court over the past five years, with 350 school and university groups attending last year alone. Summaries of the sometimes highly complex judgments are published so that the public can more easily understand them, while the hearings themselves are filmed and streamed online.
Supreme Court case studies The tycoon, the divorce battle and the 'corporate veil'
In 2013, the Supreme Court was asked to examine the disputed assets at the heart of Nigerian oil tycoon Michael Prest's acrimonious separation from his British wife Yasmin.

Mrs Prest said she deserved to be transferred seven of her husband's UK properties. He claimed that although he had put up the money to buy them, they were technically owned by his companies. "It's an important rule of law that a company is treated as an entirely separate legal entity: the individuals who own it, the individuals who run it and the individuals who finance it," said Lord Neuberger. "To use legal jargon, courts are reluctant to 'pierce the veil of incorporation' and treat assets owned by a company as assets owned by a shareholder or a director."

Some of the justices had different views on whether it could ever be appropriate for a court to lift the corporate veil, but Lord Neuberger said all of them agreed that it should not be done in the Prest case, because the companies "weren't an artificial creation simply brought into existence to allow the husband to avoid having to pay off his wife".

The case showed how "technical legal principles can play an important part in ordinary disputes".
Horncastle and 'hearsay' evidence
The thorny issue of "hearsay" evidence was dealt with by the Supreme Court in one of its earliest cases. The use of statements from witnesses who are not present, were not under oath at the time and are not able to be cross-examined has long been permitted in British courts.

Lord Neuberger said: "It's sometimes hard to get witnesses to give evidence in the witness box - sometimes for the sad reason they're dead, sometimes for the more sinister reason that they have been intimidated." The case came about after the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg ruled if a person was convicted on the strength of hearsay evidence, then their human right to fair trial would be infringed. The British Government felt this stance posed a real risk to justice - and the SC justices agreed.

"Although normally we follow the Strasbourg cases, in the Horncastle case we didn't," said Lord Neuberger. "We explained in some detail why we thought our system was fair and that Strasbourg had in fact gone wrong."

After the ruling, the ECHR altered its original decision. Lord Neuberger showed "there can be genuine, civilised and constructive dialogue between the UK courts and the ECHR".
Al Rawi and secret hearings
Should protecting national security trump the long-held British legal principle of open justice? That was the point at issue in the case of Al Rawi after a series of former inmates from US-run prisons, including Guantanamo Bay tried to bring claims against UK security services for contributing to their detention, rendition and mistreatment.

To fight the case, the security services said they must be allowed to give evidence to the judge in secret in the interests of national security - resulting in a situation where the former prisoners may have their claim dismissed on the basis of evidence that neither they nor their legal teams had seen.

The Supreme Court decided such an arrangement "simply wasn't possible", adding: "However sympathetic one might be to the security services wanting to produce evidence to exonerate themselves, we felt we simply couldn't approve a trial process which undermined one of the most fundamental principles of a fair trial: that each side hears and sees all the evidence and arguments put before the judge by the other side."
HS2 and the monitoring of Parliament
Campaigners opposing the high-speed rail link between London and the North-west (HS2) sought a judicial review of the Government's plans - specifically whether they complied with EU environmental directives.

The court unanimously dismissed the appeal, saying that until Parliament reached a final decision on the HS2 scheme, its merits remained open to debate. In doing so, said Lord Neuberger, it fired a "warning shot" across the bows of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg.

"We criticised the EU court for saying the directives in question meant something different from that which, frankly, they naturally meant," he said. "We said that was wrong in principle. That's not what a court should do. The law should be made by the European Commission and the ministers, not the judges rewriting directives."

The Supreme Court also criticised observations made in Strasbourg that courts should monitor parliamentary debate. Lord Neuberger described this as "completely contrary" to the long-established British view that judges shouldn't "poke their noses into what's going on in Parliament", adding: "We thought this was risking blurring that important separation."
Tony Nicklinson and the right to die
One of the most famous cases heard by the Supreme Court was brought by the family of Tony Nicklinson, who had locked-in syndrome; by Paul Lamb, paralysed in a road accident; and by a man known only as Martin who wished to go to a Swiss suicide clinic.

"They all felt condemned to a life that was worthless, demeaning and sometimes even rather painful," said Lord Neuberger.

The Supreme Court had to decide whether the 1961 Suicide Act, which made encouraging or aiding another person to commit suicide illegal, should be ruled unlawful. The men claimed the Act infringed their right to decide when to die.

Nine justices took part. Although there were differences of opinion, Lord Neuberger said the issues were discussed in a "friendly and civilised way". He had "no doubt" some of the judges discussed the case among themselves, prompting some to change their minds. "There were some changes in views - as there should be," he said.

The court decided against the men by seven to two. The majority agreed the question centred on a moral judgement which should be addressed by Parliament.

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Lord Neuberger on the Supreme Court: Five key cases from its first

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"One of the risks of this job is that you get too interested in the law and forget the human aspect," said Lord Neuberger, the president of the Supreme Court. "We don't have witnesses, whereas trial judges are reminded of the real world constantly. One wants to be detached, but not remote."

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Sutton Trust report on Johnson’s cabinet

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Sutton Trust report on Johnson’s cabinet

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Sutton Trust Cabinet Analysis 2020 - Sutton Trust

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Our analysis of the educational background of Boris Johnson's new cabinet.

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For someone with a supposedly backroom role, Mr Cummings has achieved remarkable prominence, and indeed notoriety.

His lockdown trip to County Durham became the stuff of social media legend, dominating the tabloid front pages and the national conversation for days.

It also succeeded in putting the historic market town of Barnard Castle on the map.

Mr Cummings revealed he had visited the town, with his family, to test his ability to drive back to London, after experiencing loss of vision due to coronavirus.

This explanation - which launched a thousand memes - came during an unprecedented press conference in the Downing Street garden to explain the reasons why he chose to travel to his parents' County Durham farm in March - at a time when he believed both he and his wife were about to be laid low with coronavirus - in order to guarantee his four-year-old son's safety.

"I don't regret what I did," he told journalists. "The situation I was in was exceptional circumstances. I think I behaved reasonably."

Boris Johnson stood by his adviser throughout this episode - to the consternation of some of his supporters, who feared it was undermining his attempts to hold the country together in the face of arguably one of the biggest peacetime threats it has faced. Not to mention burning through the political capital, and goodwill, he had generated months earlier at a triumphant general election.

But it is hard to overstate how important Mr Cummings was to the Johnson project.

Ruthless strategist

The two are very different characters - Mr Johnson likes to be popular, Mr Cummings appears indifferent to such concerns - but they formed a strong bond in the white heat of the 2016 Vote Leave campaign to get Britain out of the EU.

The combination of Mr Johnson, the flamboyant household-name frontman, with Mr Cummings, the ruthless, data-driven strategist, with a flair for an eye-catching slogan, proved to be unbeatable.

Mr Cummings was credited with the "take back control" slogan that appears to have struck a chord with so many referendum voters, changing the course of British history.

It still surprised some when Mr Cummings was brought into the heart of government as Mr Johnson's chief adviser, when he became PM, given his past record of rubbing senior Tory politicians up the wrong way.

But it proved to be a shrewd move. It was Mr Cummings who devised the high-risk strategy of pushing for an election last year to be fought on a "Get Brexit Done" ticket, focusing on winning seats in Labour heartlands, something no previous Tory leader had managed to do in decades.

'Levelling-up'

Many of the policy ideas that have shaped the Johnson government's agenda have his fingerprints all over them.

"Levelling up" - moving power and money out of London and the South East of England - is a Cummings project, as are plans to shake-up the civil service, take on the judiciary and reform the planning system.

The team around Mr Cummings at Downing Street, some of whom are Vote Leave veterans, are fiercely loyal to him and share with him a sense that they are outsiders in Whitehall battling an entrenched "elite".

There have been tales of crackdowns on special advisers suspected of leaking to the media and angry, dismissive behaviour towards Tory MPs, civil servants and even secretaries of state.

But the "Vote Leave gang", as they are disparagingly referred to by their enemies, have seen their power curtailed dramatically in recent days, amid battles with those around the PM who don't like their abrasive, confrontational style.

The departure of Mr Cummings' Vote Leave ally, director of communications Lee Cain, led to rumours that he too would be heading for the exit.

He denied them, but said his "position hadn't changed" since he suggested he would complete his government work by the end of 2020. But he has now left his role after a conversation with Mr Johnson.

None of this will have come as much of a surprise to veteran Cummings watchers.

'Weirdos and misfits'

He has been in and around the upper reaches of government and the Conservative Party for nearly two decades, and has made a career out of defying conventional wisdom and challenging the established order.

He has never been a member of the Conservative Party and has little time for what he sees as some of the time-servers and publicity addicts that populate the Commons benches.

A longstanding Eurosceptic who cut his campaigning teeth as a director of the anti-euro Business for Sterling group, Mr Cummings's other passion is changing the way government operates.

He grabbed headlines when he posted an advert on his personal blog for "weirdos and misfits with odd skills" to work in government.

The career civil servants and "public school bluffers" in Whitehall are singularly ill-equipped to take decisions about complex issues, he has argued at great length on his blog.

Instead, he believes, mathematicians and data scientists should be given a far bigger role - and he has made an effort to educate himself in these fields.

As the world now knows, Mr Cummings is a native of Durham, in the North East of England. His father, Robert, was an oil rig engineer and his mother, Morag, a teacher and behavioural specialist.

He went to a state primary school and was then privately educated at Durham School. He graduated from Oxford University with a first-class degree in modern history and spent some time in Russia, where he was involved with an ill-fated attempt to launch an airline, among other projects.

After a stint as campaign director for Business for Sterling, he spent eight months as chief strategy adviser to then Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith.

He played a key role in the 2004 campaign against an elected regional assembly in his native North East.

'Career psychopath'

In what turned out to be a dry run for the Brexit campaign, the North East Says No team won the referendum with a mix of eye-catching stunts - including an inflatable white elephant - and snappy slogans that tapped into the growing anti-politics mood among the public.

He is then said to have retreated to his father's farm, in County Durham, where he spent his time reading science and history books in an effort to attain a better understanding of the world.

He re-emerged in 2007 as a special adviser to Michael Gove, who became education secretary from 2010 and turned out to be something of a kindred spirit. The pair would rail against what they called "the blob" - the informal alliance of senior civil servants and teachers' unions that sought, in their opinion, to frustrate their attempts at reform.

He left of his own accord to set up a free school, having alienated a number of senior people in the ministry and the Conservative Party.

He once described Brexit Secretary David Davis as "thick as mince" and as "lazy as a toad" and irritated David Cameron, the then prime minister, who called him a "career psychopath".

His appointment as head of the Vote Leave campaign - dramatised last year in Channel 4 drama Brexit: The Uncivil War - was seen as a risk worth taking by those putting the campaign together but he left a controversial legacy.

Vote Leave was found to have broken electoral law over spending limits by the Electoral Commission and Mr Cummings was held in contempt of Parliament for failing to respond to a summons to appear before and give evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee.

On the few occasions he has been scrutinised by MPs, there have often been rhetorical fireworks and bad blood on both sides.

He has given few clues as to what he will do after quitting his Downing Street role, but it seems unlikely that we have heard the last of him.

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Dominic Cummings: Who is Boris Johnson's senior adviser?

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For someone with a supposedly backroom role, Mr Cummings has achieved remarkable prominence, and indeed notoriety. His lockdown trip to County Durham became the stuff of social media legend, dominating the tabloid front pages and the national conversation for days. It also succeeded in putting the historic market town of Barnard Castle on the map.

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Progress for ERA amendment after almost a century

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Progress for ERA amendment after almost a century

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The House on Feb. 13 passed a resolution that would revive the dormant Equal Rights Amendment. (Video: House of Representatives)

The U.S. House gave the Equal Rights Amendment a temporary new lease on life Thursday by voting to remove a 1982 deadline for ratification by the states.

The 232-to-183 vote, on a resolution introduced by Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), pushes the issue to the Senate, where Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) have introduced a similar measure.

During debate on the House floor, Republicans leaned on antiabortion and constitutional arguments to oppose the ERA, arguing that enshrining protections for women in the Constitution would mean abortion could not be restricted. Democrats focused on the legality of deadlines and the importance of equal rights.

"This has nothing to do with the abortion issue. That is an excuse, not a reason," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), arguing that women are still paid less than men for similar work, and often are shorted on pensions and maternity leaves.

The Democratic side of the House floor erupted in cheers once enough votes were cast to ensure the resolution would pass. Republican Reps. John Curtis (Utah), Rodney Davis (Ill.), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Tom Reed (N.Y.) and Jeff Van Drew (N.J.) joined 227 Democrats in voting for it.

Pelosi and some other female lawmakers wore purple to show their support for the long-sought amendment, which was first proposed nearly a century ago.

But it will take more than color coordination to enact the ERA.

Three-quarters of the states must ratify a proposed amendment for it to be added to the Constitution. With new Democratic majorities in both chambers, the Virginia General Assembly met that threshold last month, becoming the 38th state to ratify the ERA.

Supporters of the amendment say Congress's deadline can be changed by a simple vote of the same body, because the Constitution itself does not specify a ratification deadline. Others disagree.

In anticipation of Virginia's vote, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel advised the national archivist not to certify the ratification because of the expired deadline.

Three lawsuits have been filed over the ERA, including one last month by the attorneys general of Illinois, Nevada and Virginia, calling for its addition to the Constitution. A lawsuit opposing ratification was filed in Alabama last year by the attorneys general of Alabama, Louisiana and South Dakota. A third lawsuit filed in Massachusetts in January supports ratification.

At least one of the legal challenges is expected to end up at the U.S. Supreme Court.

The ERA, first proposed in Congress in 1923, was reintroduced every year until it passed in 1972. Its 1979 ratification deadline was extended to 1982 after only 35 states ratified it. But no others ratified the measure before the second deadline passed.

The ERA was considered dead until 1992, when the 27th Amendment, which addresses the pay for members of Congress, was ratified 202 years after it was introduced. Unlike the ERA and other amendments proposed in the 20th century, it had no deadline for ratification.

Nevada's legislature endorsed the ERA in 2017, followed by Illinois in 2018.

But five states that ratified the amendment in the 1970s have since said they wanted to rescind their votes. ERA proponents say those actions are moot, because reversals have not been allowed in the past, while opponents say it's a clear signal of the will of the states.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a longtime ERA advocate, told an audience at Georgetown University Law School earlier this week that she thinks ERA activists should start over.

"There's too much controversy about latecomers," Ginsburg said. "Plus, a number of states have withdrawn their ratification. So if you count a latecomer on the plus side, how can you disregard states that said, 'We've changed our minds'?"

Republicans on the House floor Thursday repeatedly quoted the justice's words as they marshaled arguments against the amendment.

Rep. Douglas A. Collins (R-Georgia) said the ERA would allow unfettered access to abortion, which he said could jeopardize fetuses with chronic, debilitating diseases. He noted his 27-year-old daughter Jordan was born with spina bifida. "This is an open door to abortion on demand with no restrictions, no government interference. In fact, government would pay for it," an emotional Collins said.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) pointed out that abortion is, in fact, legal now, and has been since the Roe v. Wade case was decided in 1973.

Despite arguments that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees rights to all citizens, protects women's equality, Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) said those rights are elusive without the ERA. "We've seen it when the Supreme Court gutted the Violence Against Women Act, we've seen it when judges don't enforce equal pay for equal work, or when a federal judge ruled that Congress didn't have the authority to outlaw female genital mutilation," she said.

Students for Life Action, which calls itself the nation's largest youth organization that opposes abortion, focused its advocacy on the Republican-majority Senate on Thursday, delivering anti-ERA petitions to that chamber.

Kristan Hawkins, president of the group, said the ERA should not be allowed to "sneak its way" into the Constitution.

"I think it's unnecessary," Hawkins said in an interview. "This was supposed to be dead three years before I was born."

Others celebrated the resolution's passage, including the nonpartisan League of Women Voters, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary Friday.

"I can't think of a better birthday present than this clear progress towards a more equal democracy for women," said president Chris Carson. "The ERA will pave the way for further legislative progress towards gender equality and will allow the courts to closely scrutinize sex-based discrimination."

The ERA Coalition, which has championed the measure for six years, said in a statement after the vote: "We're thrilled the House removed the so-called time limit. We hope the Senate will soon follow."

Virginia congresswoman to preside at historic ERA debate in U.S. House

Virginia finalizes passage of Equal Rights Amendment, sets stage for legal fight

After years of anti-bias laws, activists say ERA is still necessary

Local newsletters: Local headlines (8 a.m.) | Afternoon Buzz (4 p.m.)

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U.S. House removes ERA ratification deadline, one obstacle to enactment

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Placeholder while article actions load The U.S. House gave the Equal Rights Amendment a temporary new lease on life Thursday by voting to remove a 1982 deadline for ratification by the states. The 232-to-183 vote, on a resolution introduced by Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), pushes the issue to the Senate, where Sens.

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1. Timeline of Presidential Elections

2. Primaries & Caucuses

3. Awarding Delegates & Conventions

4. The General Election

5. The Electoral College

Click here to download the full guide
In order to select a candidate to represent their party in the general election, the Republican and Democratic parties each hold state by state primaries and caucuses. Each state has different voting laws and procedures, but there are two main types of elections.
PRIMARIES
A primary functions most like a typical election - voters from each party go to a polling place and vote for their preferred candidate.
CAUCUSES
A caucus is when a group of regular citizens come together to discuss and vote on candidates. Once the discussion is over, head count votes are taken and delegates are assigned to the candidates who receive the most votes.
Click here to download the full guide
: a person sent or authorized to represent others - in particular, an elected representative sent to conference.
AWARDING DELEGATES
There are two methods for awarding delegate votes:
1. "Winner Takes All"
The candidate who receives the most votes from a state's caucus/primary gets all of the state's delegate votes at the convention.
2. Proportional
The number of delegates awarded to each candidate is proportional based on the number of primary/caucus votes a candidate receives in that state.

Here's an example of the proportional method: A state has 20 delegates and 4 primary candidates:

DEMOCRATS use the proportional method by state.

REPUBLICANS allow each state to decide whether to use the winner takes all method or proportional method.
CONVENTIONS
Conventions are where each party's nominee for president is selected and the party platform and rules are established.

During the day, party activists hold meetings and rallies to work on the party's platform. The platform is essentially a list of broad policy goals. Lower profile party figures address the convention during the day, while voting and speeches by notable party or public figures are held in the evening.

On the last day of the convention, there are formal acceptance speeches from the presidential and vice-presidential nominees.

There are 3 types of conventions:
Click here to download the full guide
After the party conventions, ballots are announced and the general election begins. The Republican and Democratic candidates for president and vice president participate in debates and campaigns across the country.

Voting takes place on the first Tuesday in November. In 2020 that will be Nov. 3.

There are two measures of success for presidential elections, but only one produces an official winner.

THE POPULAR VOTE: the total number of votes each candidate receives. The winner of the popular vote does not always win the election.

THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE: Delegates chosen by each state vote for the candidate who won the popular vote in their state.

Click here to download the full guide

After the general election, the governor of each state writes a Certificate of Ascertainment, which lists the electors for that state and how many votes for each candidate that each elector received.

Each state gets a number of electors based on the number of congressional districts in that state. All the states but Maine and Alaska have a "winner takes all" system where whoever wins the most votes gets all of the state's electoral votes.

Electors are typically party insiders or individuals who represent certain demographics or issue areas in that party. Each elector casts one electoral vote after the general election.

Current allocations: The allocations below are based on the 2010 Census.

Total electoral votes: 538; majority needed to elect: 270
Click here to download the full guide
Want more 2020 Election Content from POLITICO Pro?

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The Essential Guide to Presidential Elections

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Timeline of Presidential Elections Primaries & Caucuses Awarding Delegates & Conventions The General Election The Electoral College Click here to download the full guide In order to select a candidate to represent their party in the general election, the Republican and Democratic parties each hold state by state primaries and caucuses.

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Under the bill, presidents would be required in the future to consult with the secretaries of State and Homeland Security before exercising this power. The secretary of State would have to affirm, "based on credible facts," that a barred class of foreigners poses risks to public safety, security, human rights or other factors. Congress would receive updated notifications throughout the duration of the travel restrictions.

Republicans on the committee said that the legislation would usurp the power of the president. The bill "effectively eviscerates the ability of the administration to take quick and decisive action to protect our homeland when concerns arise," ranking member Doug Collins (R-Ga.) said.

A Republican amendment to return decision-making power from the secretary of State to the president was defeated in committee.

Seven days after he took office, Trump signed a controversial executive order denying visas to citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries. The action followed candidate Trump's call for a " total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."

The January 2017 executive order created enormous confusion in airports worldwide, and prompted multiple protests and legal challenges. The Supreme Court eventually allowed Trump to move forward with a scaled-down version of the ban that restricted entry of some citizens from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, along with Venezuela and North Korea.

The president at the end of January expanded the travel ban to Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Sudan, Tanzania and Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa. A Democratic amendment to terminate those latest restrictions was approved, 19-8, during the markup.

The bill would also strengthen nondiscrimination protections in the Immigration and Nationality Act to prohibit discrimination based on religion. The law states that immigrants cannot be denied a visa based on "race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence." These protections would be extended to non-immigrant visas.

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House committee votes to rescind Trump travel ban

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Under the bill, presidents would be required in the future to consult with the secretaries of State and Homeland Security before exercising this power. The secretary of State would have to affirm, "based on credible facts," that a barred class of foreigners poses risks to public safety, security, human rights or other factors.

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EVEL triggered for NHS vote raises concerns from SNP and Plaid Cymru over Barnett Formula

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EVEL triggered for NHS vote raises concerns from SNP and Plaid Cymru over Barnett Formula

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English votes for English laws makes Welsh MPs feel like "second-class" politicians, a former Welsh Secretary has said.

Stephen Crabb said excluding MPs from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland from certain votes had not "done anything" to strengthen the UK.

Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party protested after they were blocked from voting on an "English-only" NHS bill.

Mr Crabb said the rule was "bizarre".

The English votes for English laws convention was introduced in Parliament following the Scottish independence referendum in 2014.

It means politicians from devolved nations, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, are not allowed to vote on proposed legislation thought to apply only to constituencies in England.

On Tuesday, Plaid Cymru MPs and SNP MEPs were accused of a parliamentary "stunt" after they were blocked from voting on an "English-only" bill about the NHS.

They protested as they argued that due to funding formulas, any decision on the health service in England would ultimately have financial implications for the devolved nations.

While health is devolved in Wales, any cuts or increases for the English NHS, will lead to more or less money being allocated to the Welsh Government to be spent here under the Barnett Formula.

Conservative MP for Preseli Pembrokeshire Mr Crabb said that the whole convention was damaging to the United Kingdom.

What are English votes for English laws?

Mr Crabb, who was Welsh Secretary until 2016, said it was "bizarre", and one of the "least useful constitutional things that's happened".

"It makes Welsh, Northern Irish and Scottish MPs feel at times like they are almost second-class MPs," he told the BBC's Politics Wales programme.

"It hasn't really strengthened the glue that holds the United Kingdom together."

"It was a constitutional and parliamentary innovation that, in my view, has done very little," he added.

Following the Scottish independence vote, the Conservative UK government, passed a law in 2017 that changed the powers of the Welsh Assembly.

But Mr Crabb said he now thought that devolution arrangements were "pretty weak, and unsatisfactory".

"What is the answer? Nobody can quite put their finger on that just yet. So the danger is that we just muddle along, because there isn't a clear solution," he added.

A YouGov opinion poll for Cardiff University and ITV Wales published earlier in the week suggested relatively similar levels of support for abolishing the Welsh Assembly and independence for Wales.

Mr Crabb said that it suggested there was "discontent at the current state of affairs, constitutionally and economically as well".

"When the numbers go up for full abolition of devolution, it doesn't quite get the political attention, and if I were a decision maker in the Senedd, if I was part of Welsh Government, I'd be very nervous about those figures because that's a dangerous signal for devolution," he added.

Politics Wales is on BBC One Wales at 10:00 GMT on Sunday, 9 February

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Welsh MPs 'second-class' due to English-only votes

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English votes for English laws makes Welsh MPs feel like "second-class" politicians, a former Welsh Secretary has said. Stephen Crabb said excluding MPs from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland from certain votes had not "done anything" to strengthen the UK. Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party protested after they were blocked from voting on an "English-only" NHS bill.

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Johnson’s cabinet - a review of who is likely to stay and who might go

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Johnson’s cabinet - a review of who is likely to stay and who might go

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Boris Johnson is expected to conduct his long-awaited reshuffle next week, with No 10 now considering keeping loyalist minister Rishi Sunak in the Treasury to keep an eye on the chancellor, Sajid Javid.

Sunak had been tipped to head up a new economic super-ministry but those plans are in doubt and Johnson is thought to want to keep him in his current job as chief secretary to the Treasury, overseeing the spending review coming up later this year.

The reshuffle, expected next Thursday or Friday, comes as different ministers and advisers jostle to get close to the prime minister, whose circle of confidants has become clearer in recent weeks.

This has also highlighted the tensions between Javid and No 10 advisers including Johnson's senior aide Dominic Cummings.

Although Javid is expected to keep his job as chancellor and has good personal relations with the prime minister, bad feeling has been simmering at adviser level since as long ago as the summer. Tensions erupted once again last week after allies of Javid briefed that he had swung behind HS2, meaning it was likely to go ahead - stealing the thunder of the announcement from No 10.

Another briefing against Cummings and in favour of Javid emerged on Wednesday after it was reported that the chancellor won the battle over appointing Andrew Bailey as governor of the Bank of England against the adviser's choice, Andy Haldane.

Furthermore, Buzzfeed reported on Monday that a new "Pizza Club" of ministers had been set up to plot against the huge influence of Cummings, who has made clear he is watching their performance and wants them to engage less with the media.

Sunak has been repeatedly talked up by allies of No 10 as a favourite of the prime minister. He was trusted to do television debates in the election in Johnson's place.

His name was subsequently briefed as a possible business or finance secretary in charge of a new economic super-ministry to rival the Treasury. However, this change may be at least postponed for now, following lobbying from the Treasury against this and a recent move to grab control over the government's skills programme.

One Tory source said: "He's trusted in the Treasury and No 10 thinks he's good at his job."

Another Whitehall change under consideration is the possibility of a merger between No 10 and the Cabinet Office, centralising power and downgrading the importance of the Treasury

According to a paper drawn up by a quartet in No 10, including Cummings and policy chief Munira Mirza, this was mapped out as a longer-term option for reforming the way power in Whitehall works.

In the shorter term, the reshuffle could bring a merging of the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development, with Dominic Raab put in charge of both.

Johnson circles of influence

A string of female ministers have been rumoured for the axe, including Theresa Villiers, the environment secretary, Andrea Leadsom, the business secretary, and Thérèse Coffey, the work and pensions secretary. Liz Truss, the trade secretary, had also been thought to be under threat but she was repeatedly praised by Johnson in a speech about Brexit on Monday.

Caroline Nokes, a former Tory minister, warned at an event in parliament on Wednesday that the reshuffle would end up with a "cabinet full of men" as there was "no pipeline" of female junior ministers ready to step up.

Male cabinet ministers who are considered to have fallen out of favour include Johnson's former ally Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, after cabinet clashes, Geoffrey Cox, the attorney general, and possibly Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Commons, over his Grenfell blunder during the election.

Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister who has led no-deal preparations, has been tipped for a bigger "chief executive of government"-type role but is also suggested for the job of coordinating the COP 26 climate summit in November, which would involve a huge amount of travel.
Topics

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Ministers jostle as Johnson plans long-awaited reshuffle

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Boris Johnson is expected to conduct his long-awaited reshuffle next week, with No 10 now considering keeping loyalist minister Rishi Sunak in the Treasury to keep an eye on the chancellor, Sajid Javid.

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Track the latest results in the presidential nomination race

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Track the latest results in the presidential nomination race

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Happy Election Day! No surprise, I'm watching the battle for Senate control. Republicans go into the night with a 53-47 majority. There are a huge number of potentially competitive races. The likeliest flip for Republicans is Alabama. The likeliest flips for Democrats are Colorado and Arizona, followed by tight races in Maine, North Carolina and Iowa. If Democrats can flip two of those three, they'll likely win back the majority six years after losing it. There are also races in Montana, South Carolina, Kansas, Alaska and Texas that could flip if Democrats are having a REALLY good night. And if Republicans are having a really strong night, Michigan is their next best opportunity. The possibilities are a little dizzying.

But one thing to keep a close eye on: Georgia. Two races in that state, and one is almost certain to head to a January 5 runoff, while the other is going to be extremely close and could potentially also go to a runoff. So the majority could be won tonight. Or... it could be won in January.

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Live election results: 2020 Iowa results

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Happy Election Day! No surprise, I'm watching the battle for Senate control. Republicans go into the night with a 53-47 majority. There are a huge number of potentially competitive races. The likeliest flip for Republicans is Alabama. The likeliest flips for Democrats are Colorado and Arizona, followed by tight races in Maine, North Carolina and Iowa.

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Journalists walked out of a Downing Street briefing on Boris Johnson's Brexit plans after the prime minister's director of communications tried to restrict it to selected publications and broadcasters.

Among those boycotting the briefing were the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg and ITV's Robert Peston.

Labour accused the prime minister of adopting the tactics of US president Donald Trump, who regularly excludes reporters who he regards as hostile.

An invitation sent out by No 10 offered a "technical background briefing" on the PM's plans to negotiate a Canadian-style free trade agreement with the EU by the end of the year.

But when political correspondents from various outlets arrived inside No 10, they were asked their names and told to stand in two groups on opposite sides of the entrance hall.

Director of communications Lee Cain then invited those on one side to enter and told those on the other to leave.

Asked to explain why Downing Street was denying access to some publications - including The Independent - he replied: "We are welcome to brief whoever we want whenever we want."

All of the correspondents refused to take part in the event on those terms and left No 10.

Cain refused to say how much taxpayers' money was being spent on the planned selective briefing, which was expected to involve civil service experts including chief negotiator David Frost explaining details of the UK stance in the upcoming talks.

Brexit timeline: How did we get here?
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Shadow culture, media and sport secretary Tracy Brabin said: "Press freedom is a cornerstone of our democracy and journalists must be able to hold the government to account. It is concerning that Boris Johnson seems to be resorting to tactics imported from Donald Trump to hide from scrutiny.

"The future trade agreement with the European Union is an issue of great public importance and interest. Those gaining access to such important information should not be cherry-picked by No 10."

It is not uncommon for politicians and their political special advisers to brief particular publications or journalists about their plans.

But it has long been the convention that briefings from politically neutral civil servants are conducted on a strictly non-partisan basis, with publications of all shades of opinion represented to ensure that readers and viewers are kept informed.

Concerns about No 10's attempt to exclude selected publications from the briefing were raised in the House of Commons by Labour Brexit spokesman Paul Blomfield, who told MPs: "If the government is serious about bringing people together, we need reassurance that they will conduct the next stage of negotiations in an open and accountable way, and not by banning journalists from their briefings."

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Journalists walk out of No 10 after bid to impose selective briefing of Boris Johnson's Brexit plans

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Journalists walked out of a Downing Street briefing on Boris Johnson's Brexit plans after the prime minister's director of communications tried to restrict it to selected publications and broadcasters. Among those boycotting the briefing were the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg and ITV's Robert Peston.

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Four years after the world watched Donald Trump's momentum build and build until he became the Republican nominee, America is again deciding who will run for the White House.

The nominees are being chosen through a series of primaries and caucuses in every US state and territory, that began in Iowa on 3 February and ends in Puerto Rico in early June.

The Republican nominee will be Donald Trump. Even though technically he has a challenger, he is so popular among Republicans, he has a clear run ahead of him. With that in mind, the Democratic primaries are the only ones worth watching.

It's an unusual process, not all of which makes sense, although we've tried.

Step one: The start line

A whole year before the primaries, the first candidates emerged from hibernation. Over the year, others woke up and eventually 28 people announced they were running to become the Democratic nominee for president.

But dwindling funds, luke-warm or (ice-cold) public reaction and campaign infighting have, to varying degrees, led to most of them pulling out of the race.

At the start of primary season, 11 people remained in the running, a number that has now reduced to three. In theory, any one of them could become the nominee. In reality, only two now have a chance.

Step two: The Iowa caucuses

The first event of the primary season isn't a primary at all - it's a series of caucuses, in Iowa. These took place on Monday 3 February, in somewhat chaotic fashion.
What are caucuses?
A caucus involves people attending a meeting - maybe for a few hours - before they vote on their preferred candidate, perhaps via a head count or a show of hands. Those meetings might be in just a few select locations - you can't just turn up at a polling station.

As a result, caucuses tend to really suit candidates who are good at rousing their supporters to get out of bed. People like Bernie Sanders, for example, who performed well in Iowa this time, as did Pete Buttigieg.

Caucuses used to be far more popular back in the day, but this year, Democrats are holding only four in US states - in Nevada, North Dakota, Wyoming and Iowa.

If any candidate gets under 15% of the vote in any caucus, their supporters then get to pick a second choice from among the candidates who did get more than 15%, or they can just choose to sit out the second vote.
Why does Iowa matter?
A win there for any candidate can help give them momentum and propel them to victory in the primaries.

Why is Iowa first in the primary calendar? You can blame Jimmy Carter, sort of. Iowa became first in 1972, for various technical electoral reasons too boring to go into here. But when Carter ran for president in 1976, his team realised they could grab the momentum by campaigning early in Iowa. He won there, then surprisingly won the presidency, and Iowa's fate was sealed.
Why does Iowa not matter?
Iowa doesn't represent the entire US - it's largely white, so the way people vote there is very, very different than in other states.

Its record on picking the eventual nominees is a bit rubbish too, at least when it comes to Republicans - when there's an open Republican race, Iowa hasn't opted for the eventual nominee since 2000. Such names as Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz have won there in recent years.

This year, Iowa suffered a bloody nose when the Democratic result was delayed by days due to technical glitches. Its curtain-raiser status may now be in doubt.

Step three: The New Hampshire primary

Eight days after Iowa on Tuesday, 11 February, was the first primary, in New Hampshire. The tiny north-eastern state of only 1.3m people once again became an unlikely hotbed of political activity.
What is a primary?
Unlike a caucus, where voters are expected to turn up at a few limited locations at certain times and stick around for a while, primary voters can just turn up at a polling booth and vote in secret. Then leave.
How does a primary work?
The more votes a candidate gets in a caucus or primary, the more "delegates" they are awarded, and all candidates will be hoping to win an unbeatable majority of delegates.

The number of delegates differs in each state, and is decided by a convoluted series of criteria. In California's primary, for example, there are 415 Democratic delegates up for grabs this year. In New Hampshire, it was only 24.

This year is a bit different. Any candidate would need to get at least 15% of the vote in any primary or caucus to be awarded delegates. There are still eight candidates in the running - an unusually large number - so there's a risk the vote share will be spread out and some of the candidates may struggle to reach 15%.

After New Hampshire, we started to get a clear picture of who was struggling (Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren), but even though Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg had claimed the most delegates at this stage, neither is guaranteed to become the nominee.

The picture became much clearer on...

Step four: Super Tuesday

A few other states voted in between New Hampshire and the end of February, but things really started to warm up by Super Tuesday, on 3 March.
What is Super Tuesday?
THE big date in the primary calendar, when 16 states, territories or groups voted for their preferred candidate in primaries or caucuses. A third of all the delegates available in the entire primary season were up for grabs on Super Tuesday. By the end of the day it became much clearer that Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders were the front-runners for the Democratic nomination.

The two states with the most delegates voted on Super Tuesday - California (with 415 Democratic delegates) and Texas (228). California voted three months earlier than in 2016, making Super Tuesday even more super than normal.

Step five: The rest of the race

After hectic Super Tuesday, everyone gets to cool down for a week, before another busy day on Tuesday, 10 March, when six states vote, with 352 delegates available.

After that, the primary season still has three months left to run and at the end, the role of those delegates will become clear...

Step six: The conventions

Donald Trump will almost certainly be sworn in as the Republican nominee at the party convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, between 24 and 27 August. The Democrats will confirm their candidate at their own convention between 13 and 16 July in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
What happens in a convention?
Here's where those delegates come in.

Let's say that during primary season, candidate A wins 10 delegates. During the convention, those 10 delegates would vote for candidate A to become the Democratic nominee. (Any party member can apply to be a delegate - they tend to be party activists or local political leaders.)

All through the Democratic primaries, there are 3,979 delegates available. If any one candidate wins more than 50% of those delegates during primary season (that's 1,990 delegates ), then they become the nominee in a vote at the convention.

But if we get to the Democratic convention and no-one has more than 50% of the delegates, it becomes what's known as a "contested" or "brokered" convention. This could well happen this year. There are so many candidates that no one frontrunner emerges in the primaries, and they split the delegates between them. In that circumstance, a second vote would follow.

In that second vote, all the 3,979 delegates would vote again, except this time they would be joined by an estimated 771 "superdelegates" . These are senior party officials past and present (former president Bill Clinton is one, as is current Vermont senator and presidential contender Bernie Sanders), and they're free to vote for whomever they wish.

If a candidate wins 50% or more in that vote - 2,376 delegates - then they become the nominee.

This is all thanks to a rule change in 2020: last time around, the superdelegates voted at the start of the convention, with the delegates. But many had pledged their support to Hillary Clinton even before the convention, leading her rival Mr Sanders to suggest the deck was stacked against him.

He's the one who campaigned for the change - and it may benefit him in 2020.

Step seven: The presidency?

After inching past Iowa, negotiated New Hampshire, survived Super Tuesday and come through the convention, there is only one step left for the nominee: the presidential election, on 3 November.

We'll explain how that one works a little closer to the time.

Full primary season calendar
(Primaries unless stated otherwise) FEBRUARY Monday 3

Iowa caucuses (Democratic, Republican)
Tuesday 11 Saturday 22
Saturday 29 :
MARCH Tuesday 3 (Super Tuesday)

Alabama (D, R)

American Samoa caucuses (D)

Arkansas (D, R)

California (D, R)

Colorado (D, R)

Maine (D, R)

Massachusetts (D, R)

Minnesota (D, R)

North Carolina (D, R)

Oklahoma (D, R)

Tennessee (D, R)

Texas (D, R)

Utah (D, R)

Vermont (D, R)

Virginia (D)

Democrats Abroad (D)

Tuesday 10

Idaho (D, R)

Michigan (D, R)

Mississippi (D, R)

Missouri (D, R)

North Dakota caucuses (D)

Washington state (D, R)

Thursday, 12

Virgin Islands caucuses (R)
Saturday 14

Guam caucuses (R)

Northern Marianas (D)

Tuesday 17 Tuesday 24

American Samoa caucuses (R)

Georgia (D, R)

Sunday 29 APRIL Saturday 4 Tuesday 7 Tuesday 28 MAY Saturday 2 Tuesday 5 Tuesday 12 Tuesday 19 JUNE Tuesday 2

District of Columbia (D, R)

Montana (D, R)

New Jersey (D, R)

New Mexico (D, R)

South Dakota (D, R)

Saturday 6

Virgin Islands caucuses (D)
Sunday 7

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US election 2020: What are primaries and caucuses and how do they work?

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Four years after the world watched Donald Trump's momentum build and build until he became the Republican nominee, America is again deciding who will run for the White House. The nominees are being chosen through a series of primaries and caucuses in every US state and territory, that began in Iowa on 3 February and ends in Puerto Rico in early June.

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The Democrat presidential nomination is under way with the Iowa caucuses 

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The Democrat presidential nomination is under way with the Iowa caucuses 

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The first event that will help decide the candidates for US president is to take place with Monday's Iowa caucuses.

Democratic and Republican voters will choose their preferred nominees for the White House race.

While victory in Iowa doesn't guarantee anyone the nomination, it can help give them crucial momentum.

The path appears clear for Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee, but 11 candidates are running for the Democratic nomination.

Many have spent the past few weeks vigorously campaigning in the Midwest state, which is always the first to vote. The primaries contest goes on until early June, and moves on to New Hampshire next Tuesday.

Here's the story of what to expect in Iowa, broken down.

One person to watch

Polls suggest that Bernie Sanders has risen to be the favourite in Iowa (or - depending where you look - the joint-favourite, with former vice-president Joe Biden).

He is one of four senators running for president who have had to stay behind in Washington to attend Mr Trump's impeachment trial, but his supporters, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a well-known congresswoman, have been energetically campaigning on his behalf in Iowa.

Four years after losing out to Hillary Clinton, could this be the 78-year-old's time? He is backed by a huge pot of donations and a team of hundreds. But if he won the nomination, would moderate Democrats really rally around a candidate for the White House who identifies as a democratic socialist?

Some of the other big names including Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg will be hoping Mr Sanders doesn't have it all his own way in Iowa.

There are also Republican caucuses on Monday, and two people are running against Mr Trump, but the president's popularity within his own party is such that his nomination is all but a formality.

One piece of context

Iowa, to some extent, provides a glimpse of what went wrong for Democrats in 2016.

In the last election, more than 200 US counties flipped from supporting President Barack Obama in 2012 to backing Mr Trump - and 31 of those counties were in Iowa.

Democrats will be hoping to lure back those swing voters in 2020. And while we won't know until November whether they have been successful, we may get a glimpse of where the land lies on Monday.

Howard County in northern Iowa flipped by 41 percentage points in 2016, the largest change in the US. The BBC's Angélica Casas and Marianna Brady went there to ask people whether they would vote for a Democrat in 2020.

One key question

Does Iowa actually matter? It depends how you look at it.

As the primary season curtain-raiser, Iowa can help shape perceptions among voters. A win here can help give a candidate momentum early in the race (as it did in 1976 with Jimmy Carter) and erase any doubts about their viability.

While Iowans have a good record at picking the eventual Democratic nominee, their record when it comes to the Republican candidate is more mixed. When it's an open Republican race (unlike this year, for example), none of the winners of Iowa has become the Republican nominee since 2000.

It's worth pointing out that Iowa isn't the most diverse of states either - the rest of America will vote very differently in upcoming primaries and caucuses.

One quote

People in other states may not understand why you'd stand around for two hours for a caucus

So says Ann Anhalt, from Des Moines, who plans to vote for tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang on Monday. But this is exactly what a caucus involves - they are essentially internal party meetings, scattered across the state, that might last a few hours.

At some point during the meeting, you have to show your support for a candidate. You do this by standing next to others who also support that candidate, and a count takes place.

What's at stake is delegates - 41 Democratic ones in Iowa - distributed according to how well candidates performed in the caucuses. If candidate A is awarded 10 delegates, those delegates would later vote for candidate A as the Democratic nominee at the summer convention - the aim for any candidate is to gain as many delegates as possible over the primary season.

One voter's view

Gina Weekley, 36 - Youth advocate from Waterloo, Iowa

I'm married to a woman, so my livelihood and happiness is at stake in this election. My family's future is at stake in this election. And our freedom as Americans is at stake.

We need a strong leader to emerge as the Democratic nominee. Someone with great passion and energy who can unify the United States.

The division and hate messages that we've seen under the Trump presidency needs to end. We don't currently have a leader that works for all Americans.

I'm caucusing so that future generations can access quality education. We need a president who helps "at risk" youth get the proper services they need so they don't fall victim to the school-to-prison pipeline.

At each of the 1,677 locations across the state, a candidate must have the support of at least 15% of voters in order to qualify for a chance to win Iowa delegates to the national convention in July - when the candidate is ultimately picked.

After a first round of tabulations, those who support a candidate that doesn't reach "viability" have the opportunity to switch sides.

Complicating everything is the new reporting system the Democratic Party has instituted for the Iowa caucus results.

In the past, the party has only released one number - the final tabulation of support after all the caucus horse-trading and support swapping takes place. This time, however, there will be two sets of numbers - the final tally as well as a count of each candidate's support in the first round of balloting.

That means two - or more! - candidates could be on stage declaring victory on Monday night.

It has the makings for a long, chaotic night - the first of what could be many for the candidates still standing after the Iowa dust settles.

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Iowa caucuses: Race to decide election candidates begins

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The first event that will help decide the candidates for US president is to take place with Monday's Iowa caucuses. Democratic and Republican voters will choose their preferred nominees for the White House race. While victory in Iowa doesn't guarantee anyone the nomination, it can help give them crucial momentum.

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Why Republican senators recognise wrongdoing but refuse to impeach

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Why Republican senators recognise wrongdoing but refuse to impeach

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Removal of Trump will only lead to further division in an already divided America, claim Republican senators.

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Outraged by what they see as a coverup in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, grassroots activists are planning a massive "payback project" designed to punish Republican senators at the ballot box.

Even as key Republican senators acknowledged Trump's guilt on charges of abusing power and obstructing Congress, they defied public opinion on Friday by voting to block witnesses and documents, paving the way for the president to be acquitted and claim exoneration.

Republican fealty to Trump has long wearied liberals but the senators' move appeared to cause a new level of anger. The Indivisible Project, a progressive group, announced it would target nine senators, among them majority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Trump loyalist Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, in November's elections.

Indivisible said it would next week call out one of the "nine Payback Project senators for their participating in a coverup by placing a full page newspaper ad in one of their biggest state papers". In an appeal to activists, it said "rage is good for recruiting. Hello. Are you pissed about impeachment too?"

Trump was impeached by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives in December, for seeking to coerce a foreign government for his own personal political gain. Two articles of impeachment - abuse of power and obstruction of Congress - were transferred to the Senate for trial.

But on Friday the Senate failed to allow documents and new witnesses including the former national security adviser John Bolton, who in an upcoming book accuses the president of making military aid to Ukraine conditional on an investigation into his rival Joe Biden.

Every impeachment trial in US history, including the two that featured presidents, allowed documents and witnesses. But only two Republicans voted in favour: Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah.

Some said they did not think Trump did anything wrong. Others went through extraordinary contortions. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Rob Portman of Ohio reasoned that Trump's actions were wrong but not impeachable.

In an interview with NBC's Meet the Press due to be broadcast on Sunday, Alexander said: "If you have eight witnesses who say someone left the scene of an accident, why do you need nine? I mean, the question for me was: do I need more evidence to conclude that the president did what he did? And I concluded no."

Alexander told the New York Times why that was not enough to require Trump's removal: "The Senate reflects the country, and the country is as divided as it has been for a long time. For the Senate to tear up the ballots in this election and say President Trump couldn't be on it, the country probably wouldn't accept that. It would just pour gasoline on cultural fires that are burning out there."

In a stunning Medium post, Marco Rubio of Florida, humiliated by Trump in the 2016 primary, went even further, arguing that impeachment would be too divisive even if a president engaged in clearly impeachable conduct.

"Just because actions meet a standard of impeachment does not mean it is in the best interest of the country to remove a president from office," he wrote.

Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a moderate who Democrats courted, said the case was rushed and flawed. She told reporters she was "angry at all sides" and the prospect of a tie vote on witnesses weighed on her decision. She also said she knew how she would vote on the charges but: "Will I share it with you tonight? I've had so much drama today, I'm just going to chill. How's that? Was that fair?"

Trump's takeover of the Republican party appears complete. On Saturday the widely read Politico Playbook commented: "Here's the truth: Republicans are not comfortable with the president's behavior. They say it privately, some say it publicly on their way out.

"But they have no incentive to say this aloud no matter how egregious they believe the president's behavior to be. To win as a Republican in any seat that's at all marginal, you need to appeal to Republicans to vote."

Republicans who break from Trump can face a bitter backlash. Matt Schlapp, the chair of the American Conservative Union, announced on Twitter that Romney was "formally NOT invited" to the influential Conservative Political Action Conference.

Lamar Alexander leaves the Trump impeachment trial. Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters

Democrats will seek to make Republicans pay in November, as they did in the 2018 midterms when victory in the House made impeachment possible. Under the headline, "How impeachment could flip the Senate", Rahm Emanuel, a former White House chief of staff, wrote in the Washington Post that "impeachment is likely to have an outsize impact" and every Republican senator will "own Trump's emboldened rhetoric of being exonerated".

He added: "Some 63% of voters in Arizona, Colorado, Maine and North Carolina look unfavourably on the Senate's decision ... to disallow witnesses and hide documents... That may partly explain why the five Republican senators are 'underwater', meaning more constituents view them negatively than positively."

The trial will resume on Monday for final arguments. That evening, Trump is sure to cruise to victory in the Iowa caucuses while Democrats battle for the right to challenge him. The president will deliver his state of the union address on Tuesday and is set to be acquitted by the Senate on the following day.

As he did after special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, Trump is expected to falsely claim "total exoneration" and that Democrats seek to overturn the last election. In turn, Democrats will warn that the president will solicit foreign interference again.

David Axelrod, a former chief strategist for Barack Obama, suggested the trial could inflict lasting damage.

"For Trump, this trial is going to end swiftly, as he hoped," he tweeted. "But it's not ending well. Far from vindication, even some who oppose his removal, acknowledge his guilt. And the conspicuous avoidance of material witnesses like Bolton casts an inescapable shadow."

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Trump impeachment: Republican Senate 'coverup' prompts backlash

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Outraged by what they see as a coverup in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, grassroots activists are planning a massive "payback project" designed to punish Republican senators at the ballot box.

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Iowa Democrats are expecting their largest turnout ever for Monday's caucuses, as new rules for them go into place.

[Iowa caucuses 2020: Latest updates]

The caucus process is convoluted compared with straightforward primary votes, but the outcome has a big impact on the entire country's political landscape: The victor and close runners-up get a significant boost heading into the rest of the primary season.

The party has also made some significant changes to the caucuses this year. Here's what you need to know about the 2020 Iowa caucuses.

When are the Iowa caucuses, and how can I follow them?

This year's caucuses will be held on Monday, Feb. 3, starting at 7 p.m. Central time at more than 1,600 precinct locations in Iowa, plus some out-of-state locations where there are a lot of Iowa residents.

Coverage on national news outlets will be abundant and easy to find. We'll have full coverage and results here and a live show broadcasting from Iowa. You can sign up here for alerts on your phone.

What are the Iowa caucuses, and why do they matter so much?

Let's tackle the second question first: They matter because they are first. About a year after candidates start campaigning, we finally get actual votes.

This means Iowans have a lot of influence on the rest of the presidential nomination process. It's a position they cherish, and it garners them a ton of attention from candidates and national media. Winning Iowa doesn't always translate to a candidate winning the party's nomination, but the results typically provide a winnowing of the field. There is a saying that "there are only three tickets out of Iowa" for presidential candidates. That may not be precisely the case, especially this year, but it is true that a bad finish in Iowa has signified the end of many campaigns.

Instead of holding a straightforward primary vote like most states, Iowans hold caucuses to determine how many delegates to the national party conventions are allocated to each candidate. We'll get into the weeds of how they work in a moment.

The February political calendar

[The 2020 election calendar]

Timothy Hagle, a political science professor at the University of Iowa, says the state has stuck with caucuses because they encourage more engagement and a tradition of grass-roots politicking. That tradition got Iowa moved to the front of the primary calendar when Democrats changed their nominating process after the chaotic 1968 Democratic convention.

Democratic hopefuls, noting its positioning, started putting an emphasis on the state in their campaigns. Underdog candidates such as Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Barack Obama in 2008 used a victory in the Iowa caucuses to gain momentum that took them all the way to the Democratic nomination. But the caucuses aren't always predictive. The 2016 Republican winner of the Iowa caucuses was Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.).

How do the Iowa caucuses work?

Iowans who are registered with their party and will be 18 by Election Day are eligible to caucus. The Democratic and Republican caucuses work a little differently. President Trump doesn't face a serious primary challenge, so everyone's going to focus on the Democrats this year.

Registered Democratic voters head to their designated precinct location, such as gymnasiums, school cafeterias, churches and union halls. There are 1,678 precincts in Iowa this year, plus more than 90 satellite precincts, 28 of which are outside the state.

The caucus chairs will open the proceedings, and voters are likely to get last-minute pitches from representatives from the campaigns. After that, voting for their preferred presidential candidate starts.

So begins the nation's most consequential game of musical chairs.

Caucus-goers divide themselves into groups based on their preferred candidate, physically standing with their fellow supporters. At most precincts, a Democratic candidate needs to get the support of at least 15 percent of the votes at the caucus site to be considered "viable," which means they get to hang on to their voters and get some delegates. The voters who chose viable candidates in the first round are locked in; they are not allowed to defect to other candidates in the second round of voting. They hand in a card with their choice, and they can go home. (Those cards will create a paper trail in case a recount is ordered.)

When the figurative music stops, no candidates want to be in a situation where their group consists of a couple of people standing in a corner by themselves, but they're not totally done for if that's the case. They move into the next round, known as realignment.

Supporters of the nonviable candidates have a few options. They can go join a group supporting a viable candidate or a different candidate who is close to the viability threshold and needs help hitting 15 percent. Or, they could try to woo caucus-goers away from other nonviable candidates to help support their candidate. Or, they can just stick with their original pick, hand in their card and go home. In the realignment stage, well-organized campaigns will have representatives scurrying around trying to win over voters to their side.

In past years, candidates have agreed to support each other in subsequent alignment rounds to help eke out any advantage they can get. Ahead of the 2020 Democratic Iowa Caucus, allies of former vice president Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders reached out to tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang's campaign to express interest in such an arrangement. Representatives for former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg have reportedly reached out to billionaire Tom Steyer's campaign to feel out their interest.

[How caucus night cooperation traditionally works, and why 2020 might be different]

Once the voting is over, it's time to translate those results into delegates.

Delegates, after all, are the point of presidential primaries and caucuses. It's delegates, not the sheer number of votes, that political parties count to determine who will be their nominee.

After the alignments, the viable candidates will be allocated what's called "State Delegate Equivalents," according to their performance at that site.

These delegates, through a process involving Democratic Party math and the state convention, will eventually correlate to the number of national delegates a candidate gets at the national conventions.

The Iowa Democratic Party doesn't declare a winner, but historically the person with the most SDEs has been considered the winner. However, with the first- and second-round results being reported out this year, it's conceivable candidates could have more opportunities to spin the results in their favor.

[Figuring out who won the Iowa caucuses could be a lot harder than you think]

Registered Republican voters show up at their caucus site, hear some speeches and vote for their preferred candidate. The votes are counted and the delegates are elected to the county convention based on the proportion of support a candidate receives.

Despite several state Republican parties canceling their 2020 primaries because an incumbent is running for reelection, Iowa Republicans will hold their caucus on Feb. 3.

What is different this year?

The Democrats have made some pretty significant changes to their caucus system this year in an attempt to make it more open, transparent and efficient, McClure said. They are also trying to clean up some things that have caused controversy in past caucuses.

Here are the main changes.

There are going to be only two "alignment" rounds this year, so, fewer rounds of musical chairs.

Once candidates hits the 15 percent viability threshold at a precinct caucus, their status as viable is locked in. The candidate can gain more voters in the second alignment round by trying to lure voters from nonviable candidates, but they don't have to worry about losing any. In the past, people could defect in subsequent realignment rounds, which caused all kinds of chaos.

The party will be reporting out the results of both the first and second alignment, which Hagle said gives candidates more opportunities to spin results in their favor if they improve in the second round.

The Iowa Democratic Party has opened up more than 90 satellite caucus sites for registered Iowa voters in the state, around the country and internationally in an attempt to make their primary more accessible. Some of the satellite sites will serve residents who are most comfortable in a language other than English, while others will allow people to caucus in a location other than their home precinct in case they're unable to get there in time. Out-of-state satellite caucuses will occur in places where enough full-time residents spend the winter to merit satellite caucuses, such as Florida and Arizona, and on some out-of-state college campuses. There are also three international locations: Paris; Glasgow, Scotland; and Tblisi, Georgia. The Iowa party had proposed virtual caucuses in an effort to make the process more accessible to all Iowa Democrats, but the Democratic National Committee declined the change, over security concerns.

Who is leading the polls for the Iowa caucuses (and who else is running)?

Heading into the caucuses, the top four Democratic contenders in Iowa are Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), former vice president Joe Biden, former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

A Washington Post average of polling in Iowa this January finds those four nearly even: Biden (22 percent), Sanders (19 percent), Buttigieg (18 percent) and Warren (17 percent). That's tighter than the race is nationally between those four.

The final Des Moines Register poll, one of the most anticipated, was scrapped at the last minute Saturday.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) is at 8 percent in Iowa according to The Post's average. Several other Democratic candidates are running, but all their support in Iowa is at less than 3 percent, including Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.), tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, businessman Tom Steyer and former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick.

A January Monmouth University poll took stock of voters' second choices, because the voters supporting many of those candidates will get a chance to pick that second choice. You can read about how that games out here.

Despite the "three tickets out of Iowa" logic, Hagle said that with such a crowded field, and four top contenders jockeying at the top of the Democratic polls, there may be more leeway this time. "We just don't know what's going to happen on caucus night in terms of those four people," he said.

Why are the caucuses controversial?

Iowa cherishes its status as the "first in the nation" to vote for president. But with that comes a great deal of influence on the primary process - and regular questions about why Iowa should have it.

Iowa's population is 90 percent white, and critics of the current primary calendar, such as former Housing and Urban Development secretary Julián Castro, say the state does not reflect the changing demographics of the country nor the Democrats' diverse coalition of voters.

"We've changed in the 50 years since order was established - and I believe it's time our primaries reflect our nation's diversity," he tweeted in November. Castro has since dropped out of the presidential race after failing to garner the necessary support to qualify for the debates. Out of a historically diverse field of candidates, only white candidates qualified for the Jan. 14 debate, the final Democratic debate before the Iowa caucuses.

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Analysis | How do the Iowa caucuses work, and how are they different in 2020?

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Iowa Democrats are expecting their largest turnout ever for Monday's caucuses, as new rules for them go into place. [Iowa caucuses 2020: Latest updates] The caucus process is convoluted compared with straightforward primary votes, but the outcome has a big impact on the entire country's political landscape: The victor and close runners-up get a significant boost heading into the rest of the primary season.

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DWP loses court fight over treatment of severely disabled 

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DWP loses court fight over treatment of severely disabled 

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The government has suffered a humiliating court defeat after it was found to have unlawfully discriminated against thousands of severely disabled people who were left financially worse off after moving on to universal credit.

The court of appeal dismissed a challenge by the Department for Work and Pensions to two previous high court decisions that protected claimants in receipt of severe disability premium against a drop in income under the new benefit.

The cases were brought by two disabled individuals, known as TP and AR, who had sought justice after their benefit income was reduced by £180 a month when they were required to claim universal credit after moving house into a different local authority area.

Responding to Wednesday's decision, AR said: "We hope that the court of appeal ruling will finally bring an end to our fight for severely disabled people not to be disadvantaged by universal credit. It is still so shocking to us that we have had to fight so long and so hard just to get the government to see that their policy is unfair."

Tessa Gregory from the law firm Leigh Day, which represented AR and TP, said the ruling was a "wake-up call" for the DWP.

"We hope that the government will waste no more time or resources fighting this legal case and will instead get on with what it should have been doing in the first place: protecting this acutely vulnerable cohort of claimants and overhauling universal credit to make it fit for purpose."

The DWP has seven days to decide whether to continue its attempt to overturn the two judgments by applying to the supreme court. A DWP spokesperson said: "We will continue to make transitional payments to those previously receiving the severe disability premium where eligible, and have already paid £51.5m to more than 15,000 people. We are carefully considering this judgment."

The court ruled in the first case in June 2018 that the cut was unlawful because claimants who had moved to a different local authority area where universal credit was in operation had been treated differently to those who had moved within their home borough where the new benefit had not yet arrived. TP and AR were awarded compensation plus continuing £180-a-month payments to meet their benefit shortfall.

The government subsequently proposed new regulations to prevent other severely disabled people moving on to universal credit and to compensate those who already had done so. But it decided those who had moved on to the new system before 19 January 2019 would get just £80 a month in compensation.

TP and AR launched another legal challenge to this decision and in May 2019 the high court ruled this was unlawful, as the estimated 10,000 people who moved before 19 January would receive significantly less in compensation than those who moved afterwards, despite their needs being the same.

While appealing against both judgments in July, the government increased the proposed top-up payments to £120 a month, and a third legal challenge to this is pending, depending on whether the DWP decides to appeal the case further.

Michael Bates from Central England Law Centre, which represented a third claimant in the second case, said: "There is no justification for the way these vulnerable claimants have been discriminated against and they [the government] should think very carefully about how to properly protect people in the transition to universal credit."

Severe disability premium and the enhanced disability premium are benefit supplements specifically aimed at meeting the additional care needs and costs of severely disabled people living alone with no carer. They were scrapped under universal credit.
Topics

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DWP loses court fight over treatment of severely disabled

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The government has suffered a humiliating court defeat after it was found to have unlawfully discriminated against thousands of severely disabled people who were left financially worse off after moving on to universal credit.

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Was it the media wot lost it? This general election has seen an unparalleled level of criticism of British journalism, a prime minister who showed it was possible to skip tough interviews without suffering at the ballot box, and an online campaign that pushed the limits of what was previously considered acceptable in UK politics.

The aftermath has seen Jeremy Corbyn partly blame the still-powerful Sun and Daily Mail for his defeat, despite the plummeting print circulations of national newspapers. At the same time the Conservatives have turned their fire on the media and are threatening to decriminalise the licence fee - potentially severely undermining the BBC - and look at other ways of changing the way the UK media operates.

Here's what we learned this election campaign.

Age defines what media voters consume

While audiences of 20-somethings have largely abandoned television news altogether, BBC bulletins remain important for reaching older viewers who are more likely to back the Tories. And while print newspaper sales are collapsing and online news audiences growing, right-wing tabloids which relentlessly backed the Conservatives still sell millions of copies a day - and often indirectly help to set the agenda on television, radio, and online. Although it will be months before academic studies drill down in to the results, there remains a simple demographic divide on how people across the political spectrum get their news.

"One of the clearest differences is that most of those on the left prefer to get news online, and most of those on the right prefer to get it offline," said Dr Richard Fletcher of the University of Oxford's Reuters Institute. "There will undoubtedly be questions about the influence of online media on the election result in the coming weeks, and we should take these questions seriously. But to correctly understand the impact of online media on the election result, we must constantly remind ourselves that the people most likely to have voted Conservative in 2019 are the least likely to have accessed news about the election online."

The British public were more than capable of creating their own disinformation

Ahead of the election there were concerns about foreign manipulation of the electoral process. Although there were some issues - the prime minister refused to let a report into Russian money be released pre-election, and Reddit suggested a Russian-linked account may have helped distribute leaked US-UK trade papers - ordinary, politicised Britons proved more than capable of creating their own fake posts.

When the Tory campaign was briefly derailed by a photograph of a child on the floor of Leeds General Infirmary, a viral message spread among Conservative backers that the image had been faked by Labour supporters. Aided by a toxic mix of falling trust in traditional media outlets and Facebook's hands-off approach to content moderation, the hoax message was spread to millions of people aided by promotion from mainstream journalists and influencers such as former England cricketer Kevin Pietersen.

Some of the behaviour of those sharing the message - often older, less tech-savvy Facebook users - was so strange that they were mistaken for coordinated 'bot farms'. In reality it appears they were just copying and pasting the same message out of enthusiasm and a desire to believe the photo was faked for political reasons.

We are becoming passive consumers of news on our phones

There's nothing new about the idea of a political leader winning an election by repeating a slogan until they are blue in the face. But the experience of consuming news on a smartphone - where headlines drift into view via push alert notifications from news apps, on Facebook, and through links sent by friends - means that it's often the only way to cut through the noise. There is limited space for nuanced policy platforms and complicated offers to the electorate if people are not concentrating; it's easier to adopt a policy of 'endless screaming' and bombard them with the same message - such as "Get Brexit Done" - through as many different channels as possible.

While it might be a case of borrowed nostalgia to pretend that people ever really engaged with every news story they saw on television or in a print newspaper, online data makes it easier to show how widespread this behaviour has become. When the Guardian ran an experiment to record the smartphone screens of volunteers we found that some people consumed their news almost entirely through headlines, few clicked through to the full article, and those that read to the end of a piece were a rarity.

Attacking the media is the new normal - but mistakes can be quickly called out

The BBC is facing a difficult post-election comedown as it reckons with widespread criticism from both the Conservative government - who accuse it of anti-Brexit bias - and from some Labour supporters who feel it made a series of errors in favour of the Conservatives.

Journalists at the corporation fear the damage done by some incidents, such as quoting Conservatives party sources claiming Labour supporters had assaulted a Tory aide at a hospital in Leeds when no such incident took place. Social media helped set the record straight: within an hour a full video of the alleged altercation was online, making clear that the incident was not as Tory sources had described it, killing the story in its tracks.

We don't know what people were reading online and what had an impact

In the past - when political news was focussed on a few broadcaster bulletins and print newspapers - it was possible to have a good idea of what people were reading, watching, and consuming. If a politician made a mistake on television programme watched by 10 million people then it clearly mattered. If a print newspaper sold 4m copies a day - as the Sun did in the 1990s - then it clearly mattered. But online audiences are so fragmented that information can reach millions of people without ever being seen by journalists or political campaigns.

One Labour MP who nearly lost their Brexit-backing seat told the Guardian that on doorstep after doorstep, people brought up Corbyn's connections with the IRA after seeing memes and images on Facebook: "It was never used by the Tories in the campaign but there was a separate election going on, which was a Facebook-orientated campaign."

The MP suggested constituents are increasingly overwhelmed by information and unsure what is real and what is not, assuming there is some sort of editing of what goes on Facebook. "People have a sense that some of this stuff is probably wrong but they have no compass. They would say: 'But it's on Facebook - how can there be something that isn't true?' They think there are gatekeepers but there aren't."

Online advertising changed

The 2016 EU referendum and Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election focussed minds on the idea of under-the-radar, paid-for 'dark ads' which manipulate small groups of people to vote a certain way. But transparency tools introduced by Facebook and Google, although flawed, made this easier to track.

They suggested political advertising in the UK is drifting towards the US model, with blanket ad buys on sites such as YouTube resembling television advertising designed to carpet-bomb voters with simple messages, rather than the more laborious task of manipulating small groups below the radar.
How the Tories won the online election: pick a line, ignore the facts and repeat | Alex Hern
The Conservatives took advantage of Facebook's refusal to factcheck paid-for political adverts, with one study by First Draft News finding 88% of Tory ads featured questionable claims. And there was a substantial rise in the number of newly-formed third party campaign groups with opaque funding structures spending large five-figure sums on pushing pro-Tory adverts reaching millions of people.

Mainstream media set the agenda but its power has been hit

It was the election where politicians realised they could attack the media with few downsides. Boris Johnson's decision to skip a one-on-one primetime television interview with Andrew Neil provoked fury from Labour, especially after they had agreed to put Corbyn up for scrutiny. But Tory strategists decided - apparently correctly - that a tough interview with Neil could be substantially more damaging than a few stories about Johnson refusing to take part in a television programme. The real concern, according to Tory campaign insiders, was about clips from the interview going viral.

Television stations used to be able to set the terms of engagement because they were one of the only ways for politicians to reach a mass audience. The debacle over the Neil interview, combined with Labour and the Tories working together to keep the Lib Dems and the SNP out of the televised leaders' debates, showed the power may now lie with the politicians, with potential implications for the next election. That's if the broadcasters survive in their current form - with the new Tory government targeting both the BBC and Channel 4.
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What we learned about the media this election

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Was it the media wot lost it? This general election has seen an unparalleled level of criticism of British journalism, a prime minister who showed it was possible to skip tough interviews without suffering at the ballot box, and an online campaign that pushed the limits of what was previously considered acceptable in UK politics.

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At the halfway mark of President Donald Trump's first term, his administration has hired a lobbyist for every 14 political appointments made, welcoming a total of 281 lobbyists on board, a ProPublica and Columbia Journalism Investigations analysis shows.

With a combination of weakened rules and loose enforcement easing the transition to government and back to K Street, Trump's swamp is anything but drained. The number of lobbyists who have served in government jobs is four times more than the Obama administration had six years into office. And former lobbyists serving Trump are often involved in regulating the industries they worked for.

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Tracking White House staffers, Cabinet members and political appointees across the government

Even government watchdogs who've long monitored the revolving door say that its current scale is a major shift from previous administrations. It's a "staggering figure," according to Virginia Canter, ethics chief counsel for the D.C.-based legal nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "It suggests that lobbyists see themselves as more effective in furthering their clients' special interests from inside the government rather than from outside."

We tracked the lobbyists as part of an update to Trump Town, our database of political appointees. We've added the names of 639 new staffers with the administration and the financial disclosures of 351 political appointees who have filled different positions over the past year, and we tracked the careers of 338 who departed government during the same period.

The full extent of the lobbying industry's influence is hard to measure because federal agencies decline to share details of recusals granted to officials who disclose potential conflicts with their new government roles.

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Consider Colin Roskey. Days after leaving a two-decade career as what one former employer called the "smartest" health care lobbyist, he joined the Department of Health and Human Services in January. As deputy secretary for legislation for mandatory health, he headed the portfolio that he tried to influence for most of his career.

HHS declined to reveal any recusals he signed while appointed. A spokesman said that "all employees are expected to abide by the ethics rules."

Just days before joining HHS, Roskey listed among his clients major dialysis providers that receive federal payments through Medicare, including Fresenius Medical Care - an industry juggernaut, with more than 330,000 patients in thousands of dialysis clinics in the U.S. A third of the company's billion-dollar revenue comes from Medicare. A recent revamp in the dialysis industry ordered by Trump, expected to shift millions of dollars from dialysis centers to cheaper home-based options, put Roskey's office at the heart of regulating how much profit or loss some of his former clients will see in coming years. Roskey said in an interview that he recused himself from this matter.

Public records show that Roskey lobbied for at least 27 clients between January 2017 and December 2018 on an array of issues other than dialysis involving public health care programs, from prescription drugs to palliative care.

In early October, Roskey stepped out of government and went straight back to work for his old lobbying firm, Lincoln Policy Group, which specializes in health care policy. "Spending time at HHS will make [Roskey] even more valuable to our team - and we are so excited to have him back," the lobbying firm announced in a statement.

Roskey said he had no knowledge of how the new kidney care regulations will be implemented.

After his monthslong stint with the Health Department, Roskey said he plans to lobby the legislative branch, which is not prohibited by the current ethics rules. "While working with the government I gained knowledge and background, intellectually and professionally, and I intend to unapologetically utilize those skills for my employer and clients," he said.

The senior-level appointment of a key lobbyist raises concerns for ethics experts like Canter. "There's no way [he would've been hired under Obama] because Trump dropped a key provision of the Obama ethics pledge," she said.

Indeed, an Obama-era ethics pledge clause absent in Trump's prevented registered lobbyists from seeking or accepting employment with any executive agency that they lobbied the two years prior.

Federal laws forbid government employees who have served as registered lobbyists in the two years prior to their appointment from handling the particular matters or the specific issue areas that they used to lobby. Similarly, after leaving the government, all appointees-turned-lobbyists are barred from seeking to influence their former agencies and engaging in behind-the-scenes work with other senior officials across the administration.

The revolving door, of course, has been spinning since well before the Trump administration. In 2009, after President Barack Obama took office, ProPublica built a smaller version of Trump Town. During his administration, government watchdog groups also decried the conflicts of interest brought by some political appointees, and The Washington Post tallied 65 lobbyists among Obama's ranks in five years.

One Obama-era alum, for instance, has gone on to lobby for the nation's largest pharmaceutical industry trade group, according to public records. Bridgett Taylor, who occupied Roskey's position until Trump took office, left the government to lobby Congress and federal agencies on matters related to those she oversaw at HHS. Taylor declined to comment. A spokesperson for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, Taylor's employer, said that "her lobbying contacts have been confined to Congress," and that she has not lobbied HHS in her new role.

If it's certainly not new, the enforcement of ethics provisions has lagged under Trump. In governmentwide surveys conducted by the Office of Government Ethics, federal agencies reported only 106 registered lobbyists who joined the administration. In their answers, ethics officers argued that they "don't know" how many registered lobbyists had been hired or that they didn't "track the number of individuals who fell into this category." When asked about referrals for further enforcement of ethics violations, an officer admitted that they "don't maintain a centralized database of the bases of proposed disciplinary actions."

Jeff Hauser, who heads the Revolving Door Project at the nonpartisan Center for Economic and Policy Research, contends that "Trump has organized the executive branch as a mechanism to reward allies and their political power. Lobbyists are hired not because they're great at the specific matter that they lobby for but because their specialty is delivering political results."

Corporations also see value in hiring former government staffers, as they bring connections within the agencies and exceptional knowledge about regulation. Among the staffers who recently left their administration positions, 29 went to work for K Street firms - as registered lobbyist or not. At least 59 former employees have done so over the past three years.

One is Laura Kemper, a former HHS senior official who, within days of leaving her post in March, was hired by Fresenius. Now vice president for government affairs, Kemper heads the company's policy group.

According to lobbying records, she is listed among the in-house lobbyists who have visited Congress, the White House and HHS since March, pushing everything from reimbursement for dialysis services to home dialysis. The records show Fresenius shelled out more than $2.2 million for lobbying activities during the first half of the year.

Kemper had also spent years lobbying Congress and federal agencies on behalf of health care companies before joining HHS in March 2017.

Her pass through the revolving door tests the boundaries of ethics rules. Indeed, Trump's pledge prohibits staffers-turned-registered lobbyists from advocating for the special interests of their corporate bosses before the agencies where they used to work for at least five years. It also restricts former employees from behind-the-scenes lobbying with any senior federal official for the remainder of Trump's presidency. Kemper signed that pledge.

Kemper declined to comment. In a statement, Fresenius said Kemper "has strictly followed her legal and ethical obligations and has not been involved in lobbying the administration or anything related to the Executive Order." Disclosure forms filed by Fresenius "cite the general activity of a team and do not ascribe any particular lobbying activity," according to its statement.

Recently, during an earnings call to investors, Fresenius CEO Rice Powell said that the company has talked to the "appropriate people in Washington," without naming any particular Fresenius or government staffer. "We are in the midst of commenting and asking questions" with HHS officials, he added.

As ProPublica has reported, political appointees who return to lobbying have found ways to tiptoe around ethics rules. Some register as lobbyists but limit their interactions to Congress, leaving colleagues to lobby the executive branch. Ethics restrictions don't apply to congressional lobbying.

One such case is Geoffrey Burr, a lobbyist who joined the Labor Department early in the Trump administration. More recently, he was chief of staff to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. He left the Transportation Department in January and soon became policy director at one of the nation's largest lobbying firms.

According to records, Burr now lobbies for clients with a stake in transportation issues, including The Northeast MAGLEV, the company behind what would be the first high-speed train in the U.S. A January press release announcing his hiring praised Burr's "high-level involvement with Transportation and Labor [that will] provide clients with the strategic guidance they need to navigate business issues with the administration."

Burr signed the ethics pledge and, according to records, lobbies only Congress, abiding by the rule of not contacting the executive branch. Other partners at his firm lobby the Transportation Department and the White House's Office of Management and Budget.

The Transportation Department didn't respond to requests for comment, and Burr declined to talk.

There are also former Trump administration staffers who go back to K Street but don't register as lobbyists - the Lobbying Disclosure Act only requires those who spend 20% or more of their time lobbying to register.

Rebecca Wood and Brooke Appleton held senior Trump administration positions for more than a year at the Food and Drug Administration and the Agriculture Department, respectively. Both left the administration and returned to their former employers - this time, in more senior positions.

Wood now leads the food and drug practice at Sidley Austin, a powerful law and lobbying firm in Washington, where her colleagues lobby the FDA for various clients. Appleton went from being director to vice president for public policy for the National Corn Growers Association; she leads at least six people lobbying the Agriculture Department and other federal agencies.

Appleton declined to comment. Wood said she "advises clients on FDA-related issues and, in doing so, complies with all applicable ethics requirements."

There is nothing illegal about returning to an old employer or being hired by a new one. Nor is there anything wrong with having colleagues who lobby the federal government. But the revolving door does present the possibility of conflicts of interests.

"The most important commodity in D.C. is information," Hauser said. "Former insiders have rare access to strategic intelligence, which is of significant value to corporate entities, and they can do so without registering as a lobbyist."

With the new data just released, Trump Town grew to include 3,859 names, 2,319 financial disclosures and hundreds of other records for Trump's staffers. Our original goal remains intact: shining a light on the people in charge of running the government and how their career histories might influence their decisions.

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Update: We Found a "Staggering" 281 Lobbyists Who've Worked in the Trump Administration

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At the halfway mark of President Donald Trump's first term, his administration has hired a lobbyist for every 14 political appointments made, welcoming a total of 281 lobbyists on board, a ProPublica and Columbia Journalism Investigations analysis shows.