Opinion

In case you missed it, on Monday, Republicans in the narrowly divided U.S. Senate voted to block the approval of new borrowing intended to pay for old debt that they're complicit in racking up.

While entirely unsurprising, the GOP's united front on the debt ceiling is the most transparent kind of political cynicism.

Just over a week ago, the company that calls itself the Cyber Ninjas announced the results of its supposed "audit" of the 2020 election results in Maricopa County, Arizona, the state's major population center. Their findings were disappointing to hardcore Trump conspiracy theorists: Joe Biden's margin of victory actually increased by 99 votes, and there was no finding of systemic errors or election fraud.

This article first appeared in Salon.

A common point in centrist and conservative spaces is that academia has a liberal bias. This charge is levied most often at the social sciences. The logic is easy to follow. There is universal agreement that professors in the social sciences are liberal and vote Democratic. Moreover, it is in social science departments (sociology, anthropology, gender studies and the like) where ideas that challenge inequality are produced. You rarely see a sociologist or someone from African-American studies making claims conservatives find agreeable.

So this must mean their activities are biased. It must mean their research confirms liberal ideas about society, and their teaching will be about indoctrinating students into a liberal worldview. Right? No.

There was a curious hypocrisy in the Senate and House Armed Services Committee grilling of Pentagon brass this week – taking glee in apparent criticism of the White House of Joe Biden, but attacking for disagreeing with that of Donald Trump.

These were the hearings that earned headlines because Republican senators were pressing on gaps between public statements by Biden (or Trump before him) and his generals about whether they were all lined up in support of total withdrawal from Afghanistan. What emerged was that the Pentagon had advised both presidents to keep 2,500 troops longer – until Kabul fell and it became obvious that we needed an emergency effort that airlifted 120,000 Americans and Afghan allies out of the country.

In the 1960s, President Johnson waged one of the most consequential battles in US history: The Great Society. It was a package of legislative reforms that would touch almost every aspect of American life, from healthcare to civil rights to education. Headlines were admirably clear. The New York Daily News: LBJ'S BLUEPRINT: Billions for Schools; Aged; Medicare & War on Poverty. The Los Angeles Times: "LBJ's 'GOOD FIGHT': Pledges War on Hate, Poverty." The Times covered the philosophy underlying it: "President urges new federalism to 'enrich' life" and "Johnson Pledges Great Society; Will Visit 4 Needy Areas Today."

In this coverage, Johnson was described as an agent — a passionate one — engaged in an ideological, even visionary, battle. What Johnson was fighting for was clearly delineated: alleviating poverty, investing in schools and enriching American life. The societal circumstances that merited this battle were also identified. The country needed to be rebuilt. Both individuals and communities were vulnerable.

JD Vance is an author, former Wall Street trader and current senate candidate in Ohio. He was a guest on Tucker Carlson's white-power hour. He railed against people he doesn't like. "The basic way this works is that the Ford Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Harvard University endowment — these are fundamentally cancers on American society, but they pretend to be charities, and so they benefit from preferential tax

He continued: "Why don't we seize the assets of the Ford Foundation, tax their assets, and give it to the people who've had their lives destroyed by their radical open borders agenda?"

Climate campaigners on Friday responded to Sen. Joe Manchin's unrelenting obstruction of his own party's efforts to spend $3.5 trillion to combat the climate crisis and make other major social investments by accusing the right-wing West Virginia Democrat of doing the fossil fuel industry's bidding, and drawing attention to the "modern-day coal baron's" staggering conflicts of interest.

Manchin—Senate Democrats' 50th and potentially decisive vote on the pending Build Back Better and bipartisan infrastructure bills—admitted Thursday that he planned to pass legislation containing at least $25 billion in potential fossil fuel subsidies and then torpedo the more ambitious $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package funding robust investments in climate solutions.

President Joe Biden met with the House Democratic caucus on Friday and confirmed what had already become clear the previous night: Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia have failed in their plan this week.

Multiple reports confirmed that the president's message was clear. The bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed the Senate in August isn't going to pass the House until there's a deal within the Democratic Party on the reconciliation bill — which includes a slew of tax increases and social program spending that progressives are demanding.

The way I see it, our elected officials should wake up every morning and ask not what they can do to sate their political ambitions, but what they can accomplish that most improves the lives of the people they chose to serve.

The trouble with Sinema these days is that she's confused her determination to get reelected with doing what's best for her constituency and our country as a whole.

Late Thursday, the House's progressive caucus did what the long-received wisdom in D.C. believed they would never do: They stood their ground in the face of centrist sabotage.

Months ago, conservative Democrats demanded that President Joe Biden's ambitious infrastructure and jobs agenda be divided into two separate bills. They promised that doing so was just a way to get bipartisan support for some of it. But progressives feared that it was actually a way to destroy the parts of Biden's agenda that are popular with voters but not so popular with right-wing lobbyists.

JD Vance is a bestselling author, Wall Street trader and senate candidate in Ohio. He was a recently on Tucker Carlson's white-power hour, where he railed against people he doesn't like. He said: "The basic way this works is that the Ford Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Harvard University endowment — these are fundamentally cancers on American society, but they pretend to be charities, and so they benefit from preferential tax treatment."

Why don't we seize the assets of the Ford Foundation, tax their assets, and give it to the people who've had their lives destroyed by their radical open borders agenda?

Jay Nordlinger was shocked. Or at least demonstrated shock on Twitter when he quoted Vance before adding: "If this is conservatism — conservatism is going to need a new name, at least in America."

Sen. Joe Manchin said Thursday that securing sweeping climate legislation to safeguard the planet for future generations requires electing more progressives—unlike him—in 2022.

The corporate Democrat's assertion came as he announced to a crowd of reporters that his topline number for the broad reconciliation bill is $1.5 trillion—a fraction of the $3.5 trillion demanded by progressive lawmakers for the 10-year Build Back Better plan that includes investments to strengthen the safety net and tackle the climate emergency.

A reader asked the other day why the Republicans are voting against the full faith and credit of the United States when the GOP comprises so many millionaires and billionaires invested in financial markets. In other words, why would the very obscenely rich support a party that's clearly threatening the very obscene power of the very obscenely rich?

One theory, which I think is the right theory, is they don't want the Republicans to prevail. They think the Democrats will do the right thing for the sake of their country, not their party. The gamble is almost certainly the right one. Bringing the economy to the brink of panic is dangerous, but the actual risk is minimal given the Democrats are the party of governance. They would not call the Republicans' bluff.