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At 12:01 pm today, Democracy Forward and CREW filed a lawsuit, seeking a halt to DOGE unless and until it comes into compliance with law regulating “federal advisory committees.” Here’s the complaint. Democracy Forward spearheads legal actions for a consortium of pro-democracy groups, several of whom are named plaintiffs along with CREW. The suit shows the value of sophisticated pro-democracy legal actions, though of course with the federal judiciary and Supreme Court riddled with Trump minions, we can’t know if rule of law will hold.

At the heart of the complaint is the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), a 1972 law Congress passed to curb Executive Branch use of secretive and unnecessary “advisory committees.” Congress wanted to make sure that industry and special interests couldn’t unduly make or influence executive policy and operations. FACA imposes procedural and substantive requirements to ensure advisory committees are kept to a minimum; have a balanced membership reflecting all those likely to be affected by any agency working with a committee; and have defined and public objectives, budgets, and operations. By law, advisory committees must provide for public input and make their own records publicly available.

One of the most critical questions of our time is whether the Westphalian system in which sovereign nation states remain the primary form of societal and political organization or if it will be replaced by some form of global government. The U.N. was formed to establish the latter, and unsurprisingly, it has devolved into a trade association for corrupt Third World governments. The time has come for the United States to reassert its status as a sovereign and independent nation and consider withdrawing from the U.N.

Essentially an attempt to revive the failed League of Nations under a new name, the U.N. was founded in June 1945 to prevent war by establishing a deliberative body which could resolve disputes in a peaceful manner. This was based on the belief that it was both feasible and desirable to establish a system where individual nations would depend on multilateral organizations instead of protecting their own national interests.

The adoption of the U.N. Charter was followed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which breathlessly declares it to be “a milestone document in the history of human rights.” It lays out “a common standard of achievements for all people and all nations,” including a list of “fundamental human rights to be universally protected.” Whoever wrote this platitudinous drivel was apparently unaware of Magna Carta or the U.S. Constitution.

It is the night before the second inauguration of Donald Trump as the President of the United States. I thought I would be agitated, but I am not. I am resolved. I feel a steely calm. I expect the coming Trump regime to be very bad, and I expect it will be worse than I can even anticipate. Yet I am as prepared for it as I can be: I fought hard as hell to avoid this, which means I have no regrets about my own role so far; I have been gathering as much reliable information as I can about what the Republican Fascists have in store for the country and the world; I have been slowly finding some organizations to follow and support because they seem to appreciate the gravity of the current moment and to be taking some concrete steps to fight back; I have been gathering my inner circle close to me and have been expanding my local activities and ties. I have also begun to figure out how to write some scholarship about legal topics without hiding or understating the precariousness of rule of law in the United States now and for the foreseeable future.

Tonight, I found myself remembering the hard times and serious challenges I have overcome in my own life, personal, professional, and political. This reminds me of my own values and the strength and courage I have to draw upon. I have also been thinking about those who have endured and struggled against dark political and social circumstances in the United States and elsewhere, historically and today. I am thankful for their examples and for a feeling of camaraderie and solidarity with them, across time and space.

The changes would double the tax on super balances of $3m and over, from 15% to 30%.

The vast majority of Australians can only dream of retiring with a super balance of $3 million. Most people end their working lives with just a fraction of that.

While the superannuation system has enabled the likes of farmers and small business owners to place assets such as farms and properties into their super, the number of those who do that is small and most – if not all – do so as a way of reducing the amount of tax they pay.

This is not what the superannuation system was designed to do.

In the most recent financial year, the Treasury Department estimated the concessions of superannuation earnings and contributions cost the government $51.7bn in foregone revenue. This compares to the cost of the Age Pension of $58.9b.

Introduction

How should direct action campaigners use mainstream media? Here are 2 case studies from Australia – Blockade Australia and Disrupt Burrup Hub. This article is part one of two on the role of media in the strategies of Australian direct action climate groups. Read Part 2 – How Disruptive Climate Campaigners use Social Media.

If no one reports on your blockade of fossil fuel infrastructure, was your disruption effective?

The grassroots of the climate movement often deploy nonviolent direct action as a tactic. Activists target fossil fuel companies and projects in order to reduce emissions and cause cost and delay for big polluters. But it’s not just about material disruption. Most of the time, direct action practitioners are also trying to spread a message. For that, they rely on traditional media, including newspapers, radio, television, and online news websites.

Activists often use the amount and sentiment of media coverage they receive as key metrics of an action’s success –

Introduction

How can direct action campaigners use social media? Here are 2 case studies from Australia – Blockade Australia and Disrupt Burrup Hub.  This article is the second installment in a two-part series focussing on the role of media in the strategies of Australian direct action climate groups. Read part one on traditional media here.

In the 21st century, social media has been utilised for political ends by a diverse range of actors. For example, progressive activists used Twitter to organise and network during the Arab Spring uprisings and Occupy protests of the early 2010s.

More than a decade later, tech billionaire Elon Musk bought the same platform and renamed it as X. He transformed it into a key component of a right-wing online media ecosystem that was a key contributor to Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection. Clearly, social media platforms can be both powerful and volatile.

If these companies were adequately taxed, federal and state governments would have more money to spend on healthcare, education, infrastructure and more money to spend on the arts.

When a local author publishes a book, they sign an agreement with a company for their work to be edited, designed and published, then sold to readers.

For each book sold, the author is entitled to a royalty or a share of the total revenue the publisher received for selling the book.

If they’re lucky, the rights will sell internationally, and the book will be available around the world. In each territory, on each sale, the author will receive a small cut.

When Australia allows fossil fuel companies to extract resources without paying royalties or even any tax, it would be like local authors giving their finished manuscripts to companies such as Penguin Random House or Allen & Unwin and not expecting to see any money from the sales of books sold locally.

It would be like those companies, who profited off local book sales not paying any tax.

Aside from failing to collect adequate tax, Australia also offers generous subsidies – including over $14 billion in fossil fuel subsidies across state and territory governments in 2023.

Meanwhile, Australia provides a fraction of the funding which organisations and individuals need to make art.

Submissions due February 15, 2025


More “Announcement
Call for submissions: The Treasury Historical Association’s 1500 Penn Prize”

At a House Oversight Committee meeting, Nancy Mace willfully misinterpreted the words of Representative Jasmine Crockett and then… ask her to step outside? If a handshake nearly took her out, I’d hate to see what an actual fight would do to her!

Before the Coronavirus pandemic gripped the American consciousness in early 2020, America was seized by a pandemic of another kind: a hysteria among the nation’s elites over President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. The frenzy generated by the progressive-liberal press, Hollywood radicals, progressive politicians (both Democrat and Republican), the minions of the Deep State, academics, and law professors was unprecedented.

It was driven, for the most part, by the Trump Administration’s attempts to curtail illegal immigration by the adoption of a zero-tolerance policy for illegal border crossers; significant restrictions on asylum policies; the use of the National Emergencies Act to shift funds allocated for other purposes to build a border war; the use of the “remain in Mexico” policy for asylum seekers while their claims are evaluated; and the end of the long-standing “catch and release” policy.

But nothing engendered as much hysteria as the president’s bare suggestion that, in 2018—the year of the sesquicentennial of the adoption of the 14th Amendment—the policy of granting automatic birthright citizenship to the children of illegal aliens born in the United States should be ended.

Olivier Armantier, Marco Cipriani, and Asani Sarkar

Treasury yields have been climbing steadily, particularly on the long end of the curve, sparking renewed chatter from macro bears who see this as the harbinger of an impending crisis. If you’ve followed my content for a while, you won’t be surprised when I say: this isn’t the disaster they’re hoping for. Let’s break down why yields are rising, debunk some common macro bear arguments, and explore the dynamics behind this shift.

Why Are Yields Rising?

At its core, rising yields boil down to one thing: investor expectations. Specifically, expectations for future growth and inflation are now higher than they were just months ago. As markets anticipate stronger economic performance, this is being priced into the long end of the yield curve.

But there’s more to it than just investor sentiment. Understanding this phenomenon requires addressing two pervasive myths propagated by those forecasting doom: the “debt crisis” narrative and the “lack of demand for treasuries” argument.

Debunking the Debt Crisis Myth

One popular theory among macro bears is that the U.S. is on the brink of a debt crisis, fueled by the notion that our national debt is unsustainable. This view ignores some fundamental principles of monetary and fiscal policy in the United States.

Mr. Assange was released from custody in June following a 14-year legal battle which only ended when he was forced to plead guilty to a charge of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified documents.

The signatories to the letter say Mr. Assange’s conviction should be set aside, and he should be granted a Presidential pardon, a power often exercised by US Presidents in their final days in office.

“Mr. Assange’s recent conviction under the United States Espionage Act sets a deeply troubling precedent for press freedom globally,” the letter states, adding that the deal which forced him to plead guilty in exchange for his freedom sets a “dangerous precedent (and) endangers journalists worldwide, whilst simultaneously undermining both Australia and the United States’ longstanding commitment to press freedom and democratic accountability.”

The signatories include independent MPs Zoe Daniel, Helen Haines, Monique Ryan, David Pocock, Kylea Tink and Andrew Wilkie, as well as senior members of the Human Rights Law Centre, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance and The Australia Institute.

Last year, the Biden administration brought the pursuit of Julian Assange to an end. But his prosecution still sets a dangerous precedent for press freedom globally,” said Dr Emma Shortis, Director of the International & Security Affairs Program at The Australia Institute and a signatory to the open letter to President Biden.

Abstracts due February 15, 2025


More “Announcement
Calls for papers: Methodological Pluralism in Critical Finance Research”

The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.

Big Tech Turns Red | The Roundtable Ep. 250

America’s universities may be a disgrace, but the deeper problems with our education system lie with grades K-12. Higher education still ranks as a U.S. strength that other countries might admire—but our grade schools might even be inadequate for poor, developing countries.

The most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as The Nation’s Report Card, found that barely a quarter or less of students are proficient in reading, and even less are proficient in math, geography, and U.S. history. U.S. 4th and 8th graders are performing worse not only compared to East Asian countries, but also to such places as Poland, the U.K., South Africa, Turkey, and Sweden, all of which have boosted their scores.

Some of this can be blamed on the pandemic, but not all of it can. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, between pre-pandemic 2019 and 2023, the average score for 4th graders on standardized math tests dropped by 18 points, while scores for 8th graders declined by 27 points. Overall, some 40% of all U.S. public school students fail to meet standards in either math or english, up 8% from pre-pandemic levels.

On Monday, January 13, Mayor Karen Bass tweeted that hundreds of thousands of N95 masks would be made available across the city of LA at libraries, senior centers, and recreation centers. The tweet came nearly a full week after the fires began to consume entire neighborhoods on January 7, and six months after Mayor Bass herself proposed a mask ban for protestors during this summer’s sustained COVID surge. (She went on to catch the virus herself mere days later.)

As local Long COVID activist Angela Vázquez put it, “government has finally entered the chat”.

How Brazilian cities are nurturing transformative capabilities

 — Organisation: UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) — Thursday 16th January 2025

By Anna Goulden

Structural autonomy, political support, and a balance of skills have been key for cultivating the transformative capabilities required to solve public policy problems in Brazilian city governments. This blog explores lessons learned from our research with three city governments in Brazil and what other governments looking to strengthen their capabilities can learn.

São Paulo City Hall, Recife City Hall and Niterói City Hall were studied to help identify how Brazilian city governments conceptualise and deploy their transformative capabilities. The research forms part of developing the Public Sector Capabilities Index which aims to create a first-of-its-kind global tool for measuring and developing city government capabilities.

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CDC infection control body rejects the science on airborne transmission

 — Author: Julia Doubleday — Friday 6th December 2024

For many disabled and immunocompromised people, hospital settings are a significant threat to health and safety. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, nosocomial- or healthcare acquired- SARS-COV-2 infections have been an additional risk for sick and vulnerable people seeking care. As of today, there have still been no updates to national-level guidance to reflect that SARS-COV-2 was determined to be airborne in 2021.

In 2020, such a risk was to be expected; hospitals were overwhelmed with patients, PPE was in short supply, proper isolation wasn’t always possible, and public health guidance about transmission was confusing and, it turns out, incorrect. Early on, the WHO confidently and wrongly asserted that COVID was not airborne; this decision led national health bodies to advise against full airborne precautions in healthcare.

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Post election rundown w/ Walker Bragman

 — Author: Julia Doubleday — Wednesday 27th November 2024

A couple weeks back, Walker and I worked together on an election post-mortem that focused on Biden’s decision to dismantle COVID protections and social programs while ignoring its ongoing toll. You can read it here. Today, we discussed this article and more, as we face down the incoming Trump administration’s anti-science cabinet picks.

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Brunch, Interrupted

 — Author: Julia Doubleday — Wednesday 20th November 2024

This week, The Guardian reported that the 1.5 degree climate target agreed upon at the 2015 Paris talks is now “deader than a doornail.”

This will come as little surprise to the public, which has watched as loathsome politician after grinning salesman after equivocating lawyer has steered us ever closer to catastrophe as years and promises fade.

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Decades ago, upwardly mobile people in the West were living in a happy delusion. As the Greed-is-good 80s gave way to the Dotcom 90s, the ruling class sold their vision of the future: a rising tide lifts all boats. More money for me means more money for all. Let’s all get rich and happy.

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How COVID Helped Trump Win

 — Author: Julia Doubleday — Friday 15th November 2024

This piece was written in partnership with The OptOut Media Foundation, which publishes the Important Context newsletter

On Wednesday morning, November 6, many Democrats woke up to a country they felt they barely knew. Donald Trump, a man they reviled, was once again the president-elect of the United States, having triumphed over Vice President Kamala Harris.

Observers had expected the election to come down to the wire, drawn out over days before a winner could be determined. But that did not happen. The final tally was 312 electoral votes for Trump to just 226 for Harris. The Republican had even won the popular vote by millions and his party recaptured the Senate, won most of the governorships, and also held the House of Representatives. 

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Pretending to be Well

 — Author: Julia Doubleday — Sunday 3rd November 2024

In December 2023, I went to the Emergency Room for the first time since the pandemic began. I went reluctantly, because I knew there would be no airborne infection control. For years, I’d been an advocate working on COVID and Long COVID issues, and I knew all the ins and outs of the political battles to avoid acknowledging airborne transmission. I knew that, although the WHO had finally, belatedly, admitted that COVID hung in the air for hours and transmitted like smoke, this fact was not reflected by infection control guidance anywhere.

Like most COVID-aware people, I knew the ER was the most dangerous place for a person avoiding COVID; packed to the gills with infectious people, staffed by medics with incorrect ideas about transmission, and the one place you were most likely to fall unconscious or be unmasked against your will. Occasionally, a medically vulnerable person was even put on a psych hold for trying to avoid infection.

But like many COVID-aware people who are also disabled or suffering from Long COVID (a large percentage of them), I was now finding avoiding medical care impossible.

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Solid Ground

 — Author: Julia Doubleday — Thursday 24th October 2024

A few years ago, I learned that a person who is drowning doesn’t appear to be drowning. A drowning child generally won’t flail wildly and scream for help; instead, you’ve got to look for the silent kid. All the remaining energy of a drowning person is being used to keep themselves above water, until nothing remains.

When I’m having my better days, I’m able to write. Not just here on Substack, but on twitter, on Instagram, on every fresh newborn Bluesky and ancient moldering Facebook. Occasionally, reluctantly, I make a TikTok video, although I dislike being on camera. When I’m working on a reported piece for The Gauntlet, I’ll have dozens of tabs open- studies, articles, commentary from researchers, my twitter bookmarks (chock-full of more studies, articles, commentary from researchers). In my way, in all the ways I know how, I’m trying to get some help.

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New NIAID Director Scared of Masks

 — Author: Julia Doubleday — Thursday 3rd October 2024

This week, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Jeanne Marrazzo, sat down with Stat News to discuss succeeding Anthony Fauci amid public concerns over ongoing H5N1 and mpox outbreaks.

The conversation yielded a staggering admission from Dr. Marrazzo as she downplayed risks of a bird flu pandemic:

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Fear Itself

 — Author: Julia Doubleday — Thursday 26th September 2024

There’s a feeling when you leave a movie theater, especially in the middle of the day, especially if the movie was particularly dark, strange, or frightening. You emerge from pitch blackness into sunlight, blinking, half-dazed and confused, your mind lingering in the eerie places you’ve just visited.

If a film is especially compelling, you might feel suspended between realities a bit longer. In the grocery store an hour later, watching people pick apples from among apples, you may feel like you’ve returned from Another Place, that you are not so much Of this world, but merely Watching it.

I haven’t been in a movie theater since 2019, but I have that same feeling quite often nowadays. The horror movie I can’t dislodge from my mind is the pandemic; the limbo between theater and reality is this strange interlude we call “Back to Normal”.

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The Gauntlet x Important Context

 — Author: Julia Doubleday — Friday 20th September 2024

Hello!

This week, Substack introduced a new feature, live video.

As a little experiment, Walker Bragman and I tried it out with a wide-ranging, informal chat about our reporting. (My cat Beatrice was also a guest star, and repeatedly attempted to destroy the camera).

We’re hoping to do more of these in the future, depending on whether it’s something our audiences enjoy.

If you find this conversation fun/useful/something you’d like to see us do again, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to The Gauntlet here:

Subscribe now

You can also check out Important Context here, and subscribe at this link.

As always, thanks so much for your support as we work to increase the reach of our research and writing.

All the best, and happy weekend,

Julia

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People can't make "risk assessments" without knowing the risks

 — Author: Julia Doubleday — Tuesday 17th September 2024

Last week, Jason Gale of Bloomberg put out an excellent piece about post-COVID brain damage, titled “What We Know About Covid’s Impact on Your Brain.”

The piece is broad and draws on dozens of studies to paint a concerning picture of Your Brain on COVID. It’s not the first piece to do so in the mainstream press, but it’s one of a small handful over nearly half a decade. Gale’s piece gathers evidence pointing to increased risks of dementia, Parkinson’s disease, cognitive impairment, worsening of previous psychiatric conditions, and significant drops in IQ.

The piece goes on to mention viral persistence, immune system disruption and blood clots as linked to the cognitive impacts of COVID- all three are key targets of ongoing research into Long COVID. It’s a wonderful summary to help people get a picture of the enormous amount of research pointing to brain damage following COVID.

It also begs the question: why is the public learning potentially life-altering information about a virus they’ve almost certainly contracted multiple times now from the economics section of Bloomberg? (Or from The Gauntlet, for that matter?)

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What would an adequate COVID response look like?

 — Author: Julia Doubleday — Thursday 5th September 2024

The problem is stark: we have unmitigated transmission of a deadly and disabling virus, in all public spaces, with zero plan to bring it under control.

We’re seeing millions of infections in each wave, and multiple waves a year; an unsustainable health burden on an already strained healthcare system.

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The tyranny of "normal"

 — Author: Julia Doubleday — Thursday 29th August 2024

As our governments and media pushed us back into virus-laden offices and schools, they did so under the banner of “back to normal.”

“Normally”, in the US, people do not automatically receive paid sick leave.

“Normally,” in the US, people are not entitled to work from home, no matter if their job can be done remotely.

“Normally,” in the US, vaccines, medications, healthcare of any sort; none of it is provided by the government for free.

And “normally,” people do not look out for one another, protect the vulnerable by participating in collective measures, or work together to improve social outcomes by perceiving themselves as part of a larger whole.

All of the early pandemic-era measures were emergency measures; stop gaps to keep the healthcare system from collapsing entirely. But once the state had what it wanted- enough breathing room for its institutions to remain functional, if barely- it scrambled to snatch away what it had distributed, both materially and philosophically.

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The planet the Democrats live on sounds nice

 — Author: Julia Doubleday — Wednesday 21st August 2024

On the first night of the DNC, Georgia Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock took to the stage to give a rousing call for disease control and community care:

The pandemic taught us how. A contagious airborne disease means that I have a personal stake in the health of my neighbor. If she’s sick, I may get sick also. Her healthcare is good for my health… we are as close in humanity as a cough!

He made this declaration about contagious airborne disease in a sea of contagious airborne disease. With nearly 1 million new COVID-19 cases in the US each day as of August 16, approximately 1/34 Americans are currently infectious with COVID-19, a quarter of them fully asymptomatic.

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Out of control COVID means permanent segregation for many disabled people

 — Author: Julia Doubleday — Thursday 15th August 2024

It’s August, and we are once again in the throes of a major COVID wave.

Using wastewater data- the only data that measures the amount of circulating COVID-19 in an era of inaccessible tests and discouraged reporting- infectious disease modeler J.P. Weiland estimates that the US has yet again crossed the million-infections-per-day mark as of August 9, with about 1 in 33 Americans currently infected with COVID-19.

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The Prisoner

 — Author: Julia Doubleday — Wednesday 31st July 2024

Like the rest of the world, I became a Chappell Roan fan this summer. And while, in the six months since my first COVID infection, I’d learned the hard way that I could no longer use the little off brand stairmaster in my apartment, I’d begun to enjoy my gentle evening walks in the neighborhood with Chappell as May passed, and June.

I’d wait until 8 pm or 9, because in DC this late in the climate crisis it won’t drop below 90 much earlier than that. I’d coat myself in high-percentage DEET bug spray, the greasy, deep-woods stuff, none of that all-natural nonsense that well-meaning moms use to protect their kids and the local wildlife (including the mosquitoes).

And then I’d take a walk, a simple thing that had become a not-so-simple thing.

A walk feels less simple when you haven’t been able to walk much at all since November. When for months, walking triggered shortness of breath that lasted days and left you tearfully asking Reddit when it would end (answer: never and soon and wait and see). When for months after the shortness of breath months, exercise triggered migraines that lasted days, weeks, that ended in the emergency room, that ended in IVs full of steroids, that left me feeling drained and defeated and dull.

A kind doctor joked to me, “I want to open a Long COVID clinic- I’d get rich!” At least he believes in Long COVID, I thought to myself, and readjusted my mask. The IV fluids made me feel cold and strange. He brought me a blanket. I felt alone.

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Joe Biden's COVID Hubris is the Nail in His Re-Elect Coffin

 — Author: Julia Doubleday — Tuesday 23rd July 2024

On June 27, Joe Biden’s gave the debate performance that launched a thousand think pieces.

Biden sounded confused, his responses were garbled, meandering; frankly, he exhibited signs of significant cognitive decline since we’d last seen him on the debate stage in 2020. Everyone from the Democratic-Party-fanboy-hosts of Pod Save America to the Democratic-Party-monster-fundraiser George Clooney were publicly calling on Biden to step down.

The Gauntlet is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

But on July 5, 81-year-old Joe Biden was as firm as ever in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, insisting he had no plans to withdraw from the race. He stated:

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Second Crash at Rochester Intersection Shows Need for Interim Safety Measures

 — Organisation: Strong Towns — Wednesday 15th January 2025

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What happened to inequality in 2024?

 — Organisation: The Equality Trust — Wednesday 15th January 2025

2024 was an eventful year, and that wasn’t always a good thing. We know what we need to solve inequality in 2024 – community wealth-building, taxation of the super-rich, democratic ownership, action on the climate crisis, a fair political system, and tackling corporate profiteering – and the UK could do it now if our politicians […]

The post What happened to inequality in 2024? appeared first on Equality Trust.

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Movement Memo – Developing Strategic Capacity and Cultivating Collective Care: Towards Community Power

 — Organisation: The Commons Social Change Library — Wednesday 15th January 2025

Introduction

A report about developing strategic capacity across grassroots groups, and cultivating practices of collective care as an integral component of movement culture. This report explores insights and recommendations from a needs assessment with organisers and is specific to the climate justice movement in Canada | Turtle Island but the wisdom and learning can also be applied to other movements around the world.

About the Memo

In 2023, Canada’s Climate Justice Organizing HUB (the HUB), a project of the Small Change Fund, carried out a needs-assessment process with grassroots organizers across what’s colonially called Canada. In August 2024, they convened for their annual team retreat on “building deeper and wider”, to analyze movement challenges in a more intimate setting. 

This memo includes a summary of key themes and insights that emerged from their collective discussion. They concluded, with examples throughout the memo, that building long-term power in the climate justice movement requires developing strategic capacity across grassroots groups, and cultivating practices of collective care as an integral component of our movement culture.

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The Boys Are Not Alright

 — Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Wednesday 15th January 2025

“The Kids are Alright,” The Who once sang. But about half of American kids are far from alright—in fact, our boys are in real trouble.

The statistics are jarring. Young men without both parents are more likely to spend time in prison than graduate college, according to sociologist Brad Wilcox’s Get Married. In the United States, the second leading cause of death for men under 45 is suicide. Political economist Nicholas Eberstadt contends in Men Without Work that male workforce engagement is at the level it was during the Great Depression.

Political scientist Warren Farrell and counselor John Gray point out in The Boy Crisis that by age nine, children who are not getting enough time with their fathers have telomeres (chromosome indicators which predict life expectancy) 14% shorter than average.

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America's Academic Gulag (w/ MIT Student Activists) | The Chris Hedges Report

 — Author: Chris Hedges — Wednesday 15th January 2025

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

“You can't just sit there and build drones and not talk about who it's serving and who does it help,” says Richard Solomon, PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and member of the Coalition for Palestine at MIT. On this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Solomon and fellow MIT PhD student Prahlad Iyengar detail their battle against the historic institution’s active participation in the genocide in Gaza. Their story exemplifies the repression students face across the country who dare question how their work and labor are used to advance the illegal and morally reprehensible goals of the Israeli military.

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DEI Is Not Dead Yet

 — Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Wednesday 15th January 2025

There’s a certain triumphalism on the Right regarding the declining fortunes of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in American institutions and corporations. Companies which have recently rolled back their DEI programs include heavy weights such as Walmart, Ford, Harley-Davidson, Caterpillar, and Lowe’s. “DEI Is Dying,” read one New York Post op-ed in May of last year. The editors of National Review crowed in May 2024: “DEI on the Run.” Yet as someone who recently completed my employer’s web-based DEI training, it’s going to require a much more concerted effort by businesses and government to excise this cancer from American public life.

The DEI training I took wasn’t mandatory, though it was encouraged by senior leadership, and H.R. told the workforce that its completion would be looked upon positively for promotion purposes.

As I speculated, I got through the approximately 11 hours of video content while still doing my actual job. I wouldn’t be surprised if many of my colleagues thought DEI so important that it demanded their undivided attention.

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What Does It Mean When a Prank 60 Mph Sign Goes Unnoticed?

 — Organisation: Strong Towns — Wednesday 15th January 2025

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