Jamal Bowman (D-NY), an outspoken critic of Biden's genocide in Gaza, was successfully ousted by AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups yesterday. AIPAC spent an unprecedented $15 mil on the Democratic Primary in NY's District 16. Including other pro-Israel groups, BBC reported that, "Overall, $24.8m was spent by various groups in the race, making it the most expensive House of Representatives primary in history." There are many lessons and takeaways. Here I emphasize 3 of them by excerpting 2 articles on the significance of the election.
1) The manner in which the Israel-Palestine issue has brought the internecine conflicts between progressive Democrats and moderates to the fore and stoked internal party divisions by supporting members of the Congressional Black Caucus and Progressive Caucus** who adopt pro-Israel policies, while isolating those who refuse to support the now-bi-partisan policy of unconditional support for Israel-- esp. "the Squad"
2) The stealthy nature of the policy support, as many of the ads and rhetoric against Bowman did not even mention Israel, much less any particular policy preference related to it.
3) The important fact that much of the money that went into defeating Bowman (and Cori Bush is next on the hit list) came from the GOP.
The following articles (and links contained therein) discuss these 3 and other serious implications of yesterday's primary in District 16, NY, which looks like a template of things to come. The first piece is from The Intercept and the second from Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
**Fr. AP article linked above: "AIPAC has defended its track record, telling The Associated Press last month that 'it is entirely consistent with progressive values to stand with the Jewish state' and that the group has a history of supporting members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus."
Fr. Intercept (6/26/24):
Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s Tuesday upset defeat by Westchester County Executive George Latimer generated many perspectives on what exactly precipitated his downfall.
The New York Times published the headline “Bowman Falls in House Primary, Overtaken by Flood of Pro-Israel Money” — before swapping it out for “Bowman Falls to Latimer in a Loss for Progressive Democrats.” Other coverage emphasized that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s spending wasn’t the only factor in the race and that Bowman’s flaws made him particularly vulnerable, as did changed district lines that made his reelection even tougher.
Progressive strategists, however, had a much more clear takeaway from the results.
“You don’t drop $15 million on an election if your positions are popular,” said Eva Borgwardt, national spokesperson for the Jewish advocacy group IfNotNow, which endorsed Bowman. “This was an act of desperation from a pro-war lobby that is at odds with the majority of Americans, including American Jews.”
Borgwardt was referring to nearly $15 million spent on the race by AIPAC, the Israel lobby’s flagship in the U.S. Millions more poured in from AIPAC-aligned groups and donors, bringing the outside spending total to around $25 million.
Bowman’s supporters emphasized that AIPAC attacked him not only because of his criticism of human rights abuses in Israel, but also because he has supported progressive policies that are popular among the party’s base.
“Congressman Bowman’s progressive platform — which includes defending Palestinian rights and halting weapons to the Israeli military — is popular among Democratic voters,” said Beth Miller, political director for Jewish Voice for Peace Action, which endorsed Bowman. “AIPAC had to spend a truly unprecedented amount of money in order to buy NY-16.”
“It is noteworthy that many of AIPAC’s ads did not even mention Israel,” she said. “AIPAC understands that they are losing on the issues, because voters and constituents do not want to fund a genocide.”
The amount of spending on the race should be alarming to everyone who cares about democracy, said Sophie Ellman-Golan, director of strategic communications at Jews for Racial and Economic Justice.
“Now we know how much it costs to buy an election,” she said. “That price tag was nearly $25 million.”
AIPAC invested historic amounts of money in the race because it saw that unconditional support for Israel was unpopular among Democratic voters, Ellman-Golan said. “They would not have spent this much money if they were not scared,” she said. “You don’t spend $25 million — an unheard of amount in a primary — if you’re feeling confident in your candidate.”....
“Republican billionaires just bought a safe Democratic seat through a Democratic primary,” said WFP National Director Maurice Mitchell. “That’s something that should alarm everyone in the coalition, not just progressives.”
Justice Democrats’ communications director, Usamah Andrabi, said the takeaway from Tuesday’s race is that Democrats are allowing big money — and Republican donors — to shape elections. (Full article here)
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Fr. Quincey Institute of Responsible Statecraft (6/26/24):
A Manhattan judge on Tuesday modified Donald Trump’s gag order, freeing the former president to comment publicly about witnesses and jurors in the hush money criminal trial that led to his felony conviction, but keeping others connected to the former president’s case off limits until he is sentenced July 11.
Judge Juan M. Merchan’s decision — just days before Trump’s debate Thursday with President Joe Biden — clears the presumptive Republican nominee to again go on the attack against his former lawyer Michael Cohen, porn actor Stormy Daniels and other witnesses. Trump was convicted in New York on May 30 of falsifying records to cover up a potential sex scandal, making him the first ex-president convicted of a crime.
In a five-page ruling Tuesday, Merchan wrote that the gag order was meant to “protect the integrity of the judicial proceedings” and that protections for witnesses and jurors no longer applied now that the trial has ended and the jury has been discharged.
U.S. surgeon general declares firearm violence a public health crisis
Vivek H. Murthy called on the nation to address gun violence with the vigor used to reduce deaths and injuries from tobacco and motor vehicle crashes.The surgeon general’s advisory marked the first time the nation’s leading voice on public health — the same office that in the 1960s highlighted the lethal consequences of cigarette smoking — had issued an urgent pronouncement on deaths related to firearms. The 39-page advisory underscores the significant physical and mental toll of gun violence on communities nationwide.Despite growing public sentiment favoring stronger firearm laws, gun groups, including the National Rifle Association, have long opposed stricter gun measures. In 2021, the NRA launched a $2 million campaign opposing President Biden’s efforts to bolster gun-control measures. The surgeon general’s advisory also met with criticism from the NRA.
Last year, representatives of New Mexico’s oil industry met behind closed doors with the very groups with which they typically clash — state regulators and environmentalists — in search of an answer to the more than 70,000 wells sitting unplugged across the state. Many leak oil, brine and toxic or explosive gasses, and more than 1,700 have already been left to the public to clean up.Oil companies had agreed to work with regulators to find a solution to the state’s more than 70,000 unplugged wells. After months of negotiations, the industry turned against the bill it helped write because it was unhappy with the bill’s final language. The influential New Mexico Oil and Gas Association told its supporters that HB 133 was “a radical and dangerous approach designed to strangle the oil and gas industry” and asked them to send their elected representatives a form letter opposing it.
Conservative-backed group is creating a list of federal workersit suspects could resist Trump plans
Tom Jones and his American Accountability Foundation are digging into the backgrounds, social media posts and commentary of key high-ranking government employees, starting with the Department of Homeland Security. They’re relying in part on tips from his network of conservative contacts, including workers. In a move that alarms some, they’re preparing to publish the findings online.With a $100,000 grant from the Heritage Foundation, the goal is to post 100 names of government workers to a website this summer to show a potential new administration who might be standing in the way of a second-term Trump agenda — and ripe for scrutiny, reclassifications, reassignments or firings.The concept of compiling and publicizing a list of government employees shows the lengths Trump’s allies are willing to go to ensure nothing or no one will block his plans in a potential second term. Jones’ Project Sovereignty 2025 comes as Heritage’s Project 2025 lays the groundwork, with policies, proposals and personnel ready for a possible new White House.
‘Too many old people’: A rural Pa. town reckons with population loss
There is a deepening sense of fear as population loss accelerates in rural America. The decline of small-town life is expected to be a looming topic in the presidential election.May 31, 2024, Main Street in Sheffield, Pa.Deaths outpace births
SHEFFIELD, Pa. — Lee Goldthwaite might have the most stable job in this remote corner of northwestern Pennsylvania.
The caretaker of Sheffield Cemetery is busier than ever directing crews clearing trees to make space for more graves as deaths dramatically outpace births here and in other vast stretches of rural America. Each time he buries a newly deceased resident he wonders how the town that once drew scores of young families will survive.
“We already lost our bank,” Goldthwaite said as he took a break from trimming the grass around headstones. “We lost our liquor store, and we may be about to lose our high school.”
Across rural Pennsylvania, there is a deepening sense of fear about the future as population loss accelerates. The sharp decline has put the state at the forefront of a national discussion on the viability of the small towns that have long been a pillar of American culture.America’s rural population began contracting about a decade ago, according to statistics drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau.
A whopping 81 percent of rural counties had more deaths than births between 2019 and 2023, according to an analysis by a University of New Hampshire demographer. Experts who study the phenomena say the shrinking baby boomer population and younger residents having smaller families and moving elsewhere for jobs are fueling the trend.The Center for Rural Pennsylvania, an agency overseen by the state legislature, estimates that Pennsylvania will lose another 6 percent of its rural population by 2050. Some counties, including Warren County, where Sheffield is located, will experience double-digit population declines.State lawmakers and other leaders now consider the population loss a crisis and are drawing up plans to try to reverse the trend. They say neither Pennsylvania nor the nation can afford to lose small towns and the institutions that power them. Not only are they a touchstone of American life, but they are also key to driving certain sectors of the economy, like agriculture.
Sheffield’s only ambulance was taken out of service about two years ago, around the same time the community’s only day care closed due to low enrollment. Starting this school year, teens are being bused to a distant high school because there are not enough teachers to staff the local one.
Residents are peeved that the local bank branch and liquor store have closed. The organizers of the town’s beloved Johnny Appleseed Festival recently announced they don’t have enough volunteers or money to continue. And many of Sheffield’s churches no longer have full-time priests or pastors, deepening residents’ sense of malaise.
“I wish I had an idea to say, ‘If you do this,’ this place can be turned around,” said Jack Cashmere, 86, a lifelong Sheffield resident. “But I guess you just have too many old people like myself.”
In 1980, Sheffield Area Middle-Senior High School had about 600 students. The current enrollment is just 224. The broader Warren County School District — encompassing most of the county — also saw its school enrollment decline by more than half since 1980.
As the presidential election approaches, many residents in this deeply Republican town say they view Trump as having a better vision for salvaging rural America, even though Biden has steered billions of dollars to initiatives that support rural America.
But at the Lee House, one of two remaining bars in Sheffield Township, many patrons were not optimistic that either Trump or Biden has the answers needed to save the community. The bar, which dates back 150 years and advertises on its front door that smoking is still allowed indoors, now routinely closes at 9 p.m. due to “fewer and fewer people,” said Carla Allen, the bar’s owner.
“I don’t want either of them for president,” said Barb Strike, 54, as she puffed on a Parliament cigarette and sipped a Bud Light. “They don’t care about us because no one in this town is rich enough for them to care.”
Kenneth M. Johnson, the demographer at the University of New Hampshire, said the deck remains stacked against most rural communities, except for those within proximity to larger metropolitan regions or those with industries that rely heavily on immigrant labor. “Barring some outside occurrence, it’s very unusual for counties to recover,” Johnson said.
The rail cars stopped [in the abandoned gold mine shaft]. We stepped out and walked a short distance to a large plastic spigot protruding from the rock. A pearly stream of water trickled from the wall near the faucet’s base, forming rivulets and pools. Wafting from the water was hydrogen sulfide — the source of the chamber’s odor. Kneeling, I realized that the water was teeming with a stringy white material similar to the skin of a poached egg. Caitlin Casar, a geobiologist, explained that the white fibers were microbes in the genus Thiothrix, which join together in long filaments and store sulfur in their cells, giving them a ghostly hue. Here we were, deep within Earth’s crust — a place where, without human intervention, there would be no light and little oxygen — yet life was literally gushing from rock. This particular ecological hot spot had earned the nickname Thiothrix Falls.
Scientists like [Magdalena Osburn, a professor at Northwestern University and a prominent member of the relatively new field known as geomicrobiology] have shown that, contrary to long-held assumptions, Earth’s interior is not barren. In fact, a majority of the planet’s microbes, perhaps more than 90 percent, may live deep underground. These intraterrestrial microbes tend to be quite different from their counterparts on the surface. They are ancient and slow, reproducing infrequently and possibly living for millions of years. They often acquire energy in unusual ways, breathing rock instead of oxygen. And they seem capable of weathering geological cataclysms that would annihilate most creatures. Like the many tiny organisms in the ocean and atmosphere, the unique microbes within Earth’s crust do not simply inhabit their surroundings; they transform them. Subsurface microbes carve vast caverns, concentrate minerals and precious metals and regulate the global cycling of carbon and nutrients. Microbes may even have helped construct the continents, literally laying the groundwork for all other terrestrial life.Like so much about Earth’s earliest history, exactly where and when life first emerged is not definitively known. At some point not long after our planet’s genesis, in some warm, wet pocket with the right chemistry and an adequate flow of free energy — a hot spring, an impact crater, a hydrothermal vent on the ocean floor — bits of Earth rearranged themselves into the first self-replicating entities, which eventually evolved into cells. Evidence from the fossil record and chemical analysis of the oldest rocks ever discovered indicate that microbial life existed at least 3.5 billion years ago and possibly as far back as 4.2 billion years ago.
Among all living creatures, the peculiar microbes that dwell deep within the planet’s crust today may most closely resemble some of the earliest single-celled organisms that ever existed. Collectively, these subsurface microbes make up an estimated 10 to 20 percent of the biomass — that is, all the living matter — on Earth. Yet until the mid-20th century, most scientists did not think subterranean life of any kind was plausible below a few meters.Although these early studies were tantalizing, many scientists remained skeptical because of the possibility that surface microbes had contaminated the samples. In subsequent decades, however, researchers continued to find microbes in rock and water obtained from mines and drill sites all over the world. By the 1980s, attitudes had started to shift. Studies of aquifers clearly indicated that bacteria populated groundwater, even thousands of feet below the surface. And scientists developed more rigorous methods for preventing the accidental introduction of surface microbes, such as disinfecting drill bits and tracking the movement of fluids through the crust to make sure surface water was not mingling with their samples.
“This research really is a form of exploration,” [University of Toronto geologist Barbara Sherwood Lollar] says. “Some of the findings are causing us to rewrite the textbooks about how this planet works. They are changing our understanding of Earth’s habitability. We don’t know where life originated. We don’t know if life arose on the surface and went down or whether life emerged below and went up. There’s a tendency to think about Darwin’s warm little pond, but, as my colleague T. C. Onstott likes to say, it could just as easily have been some warm little fracture.”
