tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/fact-check-us-93283/articlesFact check US – The Conversation2021-02-14T17:15:54Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1540992021-02-14T17:15:54Z2021-02-14T17:15:54ZFact check US: Is the filibuster one of the major obstacles ahead for Joe Biden?<p>When the Democrats won both of Georgia’s Senate contests in January, they pulled off the unlikely feat of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-senate.html">gaining control of the Senate</a>. While it’s split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, the vice-president is Kamala Harris and thus holds the tie-breaking vote. That gives the Democrats a razor-thin majority, but a majority nonetheless. </p>
<p>Without 60 seats, however, Biden and the Democrats don’t have the strength to overcome a filibuster should any Republican senator, even one, decide to block a bill he or she doesn’t like. Once rare, the filibuster has been used with increasing frequency since the early 2000s, making it more and more difficult for any administration to pass legislation. It was one of the reasons that Obama gave up on passing the 2009 <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2010/10/12/8569/anatomy-of-a-senate-climate-bill-death/">Clean Energy and Security Act</a>, which aimed to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Such were the anticipated obstacles from the Senate, even though the bill had been passed the House by a 219-212.</p>
<p>This situation was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/us/politics/tom-udall-farewell-speech-senate.html">denounced by then-New Mexico senator Tom Udall</a> during a farewell speech he gave on December 8, 2020. He called the Senate a “graveyard for progress” and stated that “the reality of the filibuster is paralysis – a deep paralysis”. Some Democrats are dreading the use of this tool for obstruction over the next four years, and calling on Biden to abolish it, such as former Nevada Senator Harry Reid, who told the Associated Press in October 2020 that “the time’s going to come when he’s going to have to move in and get rid of the filibuster”. </p>
<p>Will legislative obstruction be as much of a problem for Biden and his policies as it was for Obama? If so, what options does he have? </p>
<h2>A short history of the filibuster</h2>
<p>The filibuster in its current form is an outgrowth of a <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Filibuster_Cloture.htm">1917 Senate reform</a>. It is a distinctive feature of the Senate and has no equivalent in any other branch of the US government. Once invoked, it allows a senator to speak for as long as they want, without being interrupted.</p>
<p>Filibusters were intended to safeguard the right of minority opinions to be heard. It also allows all senators feel like they are important, because each and every one can in effect prevent a bill from being passed, even when it’s supported by the 99 other senators. After a filibuster, the bill can technically be put back on the table, but the Senate often prefers to move on to the next bill. All the more so that senators typically respect each other’s prerogatives. This means that filibusters do in fact work as a veto on any proposed bill.</p>
<h2>The president’s options when faced with legislative obstruction</h2>
<p>Due to the separation of powers in the United States, the president has no authority over the internal regulations of Congress, and that includes the filibuster. While the Democrats control the Senate and Biden could ask Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, to abolish the filibuster, Biden is an institutionalist. Having spent 20 years in the Senate, he is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/23/us/politics/joe-biden-senate.html">attached to its traditions</a> and appears <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/video-joe-biden-saying-filibuster-about-compromise-moderation-resurfaces-1564276">opposed</a> to any change. That is why he would rather promote his policies in order to persuade Congress to adopt them and avoid wasting precious political capital on a procedural maneuver that’s little known to overwhelming majority of Americans.</p>
<p>Those in the Biden camp who would like to see the filibuster gone believe that because of the make-up of the 117th Congress, there is every likelihood that legislative obstruction will be regularly used. Given that the Republicans have one fewer votes are likely to employ the filibuster as their ace in the hole.</p>
<p>Over the past 20 years, the number of bills that were passed into law has been steadily decreasing. At the same time, partisan polarization has become more pronounced. Passing a piece of legislation is now almost the <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/democracy/reports/2019/12/05/478199/impact-filibuster-federal-policymaking/">exception to the rule</a>. It is extremely difficult for the two parties to work together on joint projects, and most Republicans are categorically opposed to anything that is submitted by Democrats, which will certainly make it harder for Biden to successfully govern.</p>
<h2>Trying to overcome the filibuster</h2>
<p>The storming of the Capitol by Trump’s supporters on January 6, 2020, was an immense shock, however. Republicans are deeply split over the attack, with some members loudly supporting Trump, many keeping silent, and a limited number denouncing his actions. A key defection is Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, who has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/us/politics/mcconnell-trump-capitol-riot.html">distanced himself from the former president</a>. So he might show some goodwill toward President Biden. </p>
<p>As a centrist Democrat, Biden will try to overcome the partisan rift. Barack Obama tried the same approach and was systematically blocked, but this time around some Republicans who oppose Trump may accept Biden’s outstretched hand. Biden is well aware that it will be impossible for him to achieve a 60-vote supermajority with his own party alone, and that requires bipartisanship.</p>
<p>If only a limited number of Republicans cooperate with the Democratic majority, Democrats could make use of procedural methods to counter filibuster attempts, as they did under Obama. First, they could use the “reconciliation” technique that was used to pass the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Care_and_Education_Reconciliation_Act_of_2010">Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010</a>, which amended the earlier Affordable Care Act. Second, there’s the “nuclear option”: the Senate majority leader has the power to block the use of filibuster for certain types of legislation.</p>
<p>In 2013, a similar measure was used to abolish the filibuster for institutional nominations, <a href="https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/10/01/fact-check-gop-ended-senate-filibuster-supreme-court-nominees/3573369001/">except for the Supreme Court</a>. In 2017, the Republicans then extended this limited version of the “nuclear option” to end the filibuster against Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court, knowing full well that Democrats would have blocked it otherwise.</p>
<p>Whether or not President Biden can pass his policies with only 51-50 control of the Senate, it should be noted that the filibuster has led to an almost complete paralysis of the legislative branch. The current Congress could be one of the least productive in history. Moreover, polls indicate that only <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/1600/congress-public.aspx">25% of Americans</a> say they’re satisfied with the work of Congress, and even this constitutes a substantial improvement over earlier polls.</p>
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<p><em>The Fact check US section received support from <a href="https://craignewmarkphilanthropies.org/">Craig Newmark Philanthropies</a>, an American foundation fighting against disinformation.</em></p>
<p><em>Translated from the French by Rosie Marsland for <a href="http://www.fastforword.fr/en">Fast ForWord</a> and Leighton Kille.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154099/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>François Vergniolle de Chantal ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Endless filibustering has paralysed the US Senate, and with it all of Congress. Will this form of obstructionism be one of the main challenges facing Biden, as some Democrats fear?François Vergniolle de Chantal, Professeur de civilisation américaine à l'Université de Paris (LARCA - CNRS/UMR 8225)., Université Paris CitéLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1542132021-02-08T18:24:07Z2021-02-08T18:24:07ZFact check US: Can progressive and centrist Democrats finally agree on health care reform?<p>The Democrats are back in the driving seat. Some are demanding a complete overhaul of the health care system, specifically from progressive Senator Sanders. Sanders has just been named to the strategic position of Senate Budget Committee Chairman. Does this mean that the left and center of the Democratic Party will finally agree on a more comprehensive health insurance system?</p>
<p>Senator <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/12/bernie-sanders-big-budget-plans-458461">Bernie Sanders</a> is already promoting his campaign for a universal, public health insurance model with a vengeance: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I am a very strong advocate of Medicare for All. I introduced legislation in the Senate. I think, at the end of the day, the American people understand that our current health care system is so dysfunctional, so cruel, so wasteful, so expensive that we need to do what every other major country on Earth does, and get health care to all people. What we will be doing is working within the context of what Biden wants.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sanders’ statement comes as no surprise. As a senator from the progressive state of Vermont, he has been fighting for years to implement a public health care system in the United States similar to models in Europe. This has long been a core aim of <a href="http://www.pressesdesciencespo.fr/fr/book/?gcoi=27246100830610">progressives in Wisconsin</a>, from the days of Roosevelt’s New Deal to the debate around Bill Clinton’s proposed health care reform in 1993. That was when progressive Democrats started to advocate for single-payer health care – that all essential health care be covered by a single public system, rather than private insurers.</p>
<h2>Seeking a fairer health care system while the pandemic rages</h2>
<p>For many in the United States, the debate remains the same – it’s still a case of choosing between a “grand illusion” of universal care and a <a href="https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305315">“feasible solution”</a>. However, the Covid-19 pandemic, which has caused nearly 450,000 deaths so far, has pushed supporters of public health care to speak out more forcefully, right when the Biden administration is taking over. </p>
<p>So what can we expect from the new president? As part of the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, Joe Biden was not supportive of Medicare for All during the primaries. He stated that he was in favor of improving the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Barack Obama’s health care reform, which gave coverage to <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/health/chart-book-accomplishments-of-affordable-care-act">20 million Americans</a> who previously had none. Under the act, popularly known as Obamacare, Americans are encouraged to get private health insurance, with public assistance for those who could not afford to do so. Two longstanding public programs with narrow criteria complete the system: Medicare (for those over 65 years old) and Medicaid (for minors and single women).</p>
<p>Biden was in favor of increasing public funding so that all citizens could afford insurance, essentially an Affordable Care Act 2.0. The high public cost of Medicare for All as well as the number of Americans who are relatively satisfied with the current employer-based system meant that the Delaware senator considered larger reform out of the question.</p>
<p>However, with Kamala Harris as his running mate and now vice-president, and an eye on getting progressive Democrats on board, Biden has shifted to the left. One such move was proposing a more substantial reform of Obamacare, introducing a “public option”. Harris had earlier come out in favor of an “open” version of Medicare for All, with the option to take out supplementary private health insurance. The two compromised on a solution with both private and public insurance. However, this kind of reform requires budget legislation that cannot be passed by a simple majority (which the Democrats have in the Senate). They would need a supermajority of 60 votes to get it through, and avoid Republican obstruction (a.k.a., the <a href="https://theconversation.com/fact-check-us-lobstruction-parlementaire-lun-des-obstacles-majeurs-a-venir-pour-joe-biden-153902">filibuster</a>).</p>
<p>What’s more, with the absolute priority currently given to the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s unclear whether Biden will take an extra step toward the far-reaching reform sought by progressive Democrats. Looking at the make-up of Biden’s new administration, one cannot precisely assess the importance that this issue could have on the upcoming political agenda. Out of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2020/biden-appointee-tracker/">19 executive positions</a> in the Department of Health awaiting appointments, and approval by the Senate, only one has been confirmed – Dr. Francis Collins, the new director of the National Institute of Health. Nominations of Xavier Becerra as the secretary, as well as the deputy and assistant secretary candidates, are awaiting confirmation. </p>
<p>By comparison, the 2008–09 Obama administration was set up as a sort of task force, with a number of veterans from the Clinton administration. These advisers, many of whom held positions in the White House and Department of Health, backed the consensus-based health-insurance reform bill. There is nothing of the sort in the current administration.</p>
<h2>A bare majority for Democrats in Congress</h2>
<p>President Biden’s main priority is to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, hence his promise for <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/12/29/biden-promises-100-million-covid-19-vaccinations-in-first-100-days-warning-that-trumps-approach-would-take-years/?sh=6efbc5892a97">“100 days, 100 million vaccinations”</a>. This is also his reasoning behind the recruiting of his chief of staff, Ron Klain, who as part of the Obama administration was responsible for managing the US response to the Ebola epidemic. </p>
<p>Responding to Covid-19 also allows for the triumphant return of experts to the White House, who were both badly treated and side-lined by the Trump administration. Biden’s choice of the ten members of his task force shows a change in tack. And the nomination of Jeff Zients, an economist and a former Obama advisor, to coordinate the federal vaccination program reaffirms this choice. Zients was the one who fixed the rollout of the ACA’s federal health insurance marketplace website.</p>
<p>Assessing the Biden administration’s opportunities for substantial US health care reform requires a careful reading of the recent election results. Despite Trump’s baseless claims, Biden comfortably won, but there wasn’t a “blue wave” in Congress. The Democrats actually lost seats in the House of Representatives and have only the barest majority in the Senate, with Harris as the tiebreaker vote. Any major Medicare for All–type reform bill will inevitably be subject to criticism from the Republicans who warn against so-called “socialized medicine” while dismissing the benefits of universal care. The Biden administration has also committed $1.9 billion to fight the impacts of Covid-19, with more planned.</p>
<p>All this means that it is likely that Biden will choose to improve the ACA, introducing measures by passing budget legislation or budget balancing, which would only require a relative majority in the Senate (50 votes).</p>
<p>As vice-president, Harris will likely will leave her health care reform agenda for a later date. Committing to such a reform without having 60 Democratic votes in the Senate would be a major political risk for the 2022 midterm elections. And there are certainly other issues to tackle, such as securing minority rights or providing a stable situation for the 11 million undocumented immigrants or the 700,000 “dreamers” (children of migrants born in the United States). These political battles are just as deeply felt as Medicare for All and certainly much less risky for Harris, who no doubt hopes to embody the future of the Democratic Party in the post-Biden era.</p>
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<p><em>The Fact check US section received support from <a href="https://craignewmarkphilanthropies.org/">Craig Newmark Philanthropies</a>, an American foundation fighting against disinformation.</em></p>
<p><em>Translated from the French by Rosie Marsland for <a href="http://www.fastforword.fr/en">Fast ForWord</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154213/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>From Vice-President Kamala Harris to Senator Bernie Sanders, voices were raised during the campaign for a more accessible US health care system. What can we expect from the Biden administration?William Genieys, Directeur de recherche CNRS au CEE, Sciences Po Larry Brown, Professeur invité au Laboratoire interdisciplinaire d'évaluation des politiques publiques (LIEPP), Sciences Po, Columbia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1539192021-02-01T18:05:45Z2021-02-01T18:05:45ZFact check US: Could Donald Trump be convicted in his second impeachment trial?<p>On January 13, 2021, President Donald Trump was impeached for the second time, charged with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/us/politics/trump-impeached.html">“incitement of insurrection:</a> in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-donald-trumps-populist-narrative-led-directly-to-the-assault-on-the-us-capitol-153277">January 6 attack on the US Capitol</a>. Less than two weeks later, on January 25, the House of Representatives sent the articles of impeachment to the US Senate, setting up a second trial. </p>
<h2>Grave charges, but serious doubts of bipartisan support</h2>
<p>Given the gravity and clarity of the charges against Trump, some Democrats have expressed hope that the Senate could vote to convict. Rhode Island representative <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/11/politics/house-democrats-impeachment-plans/index.html">David Cicilline</a> stated, "I expect that we’ll have Republican support”. At the very least, the President’s actions represent a serious attack on the Senate, the second wing of Congress. </p>
<p>In his description of checks and balances, (<a href="https://www.gradesaver.com/the-federalist-papers/study-guide/summary-essay-50"><em>Summary Essay 50 of the Federalist Papers</em></a>), the fourth President of the United States, James Madison, stated that the ambition of elected representatives is counteracted by the extent of their own power. Senators’ interests are tied up with the institutions they represent. The physical and symbolic insult and injury to Congress were so egregious as to require a response.</p>
<p>But impeachment requires a two-thirds majority and there is currently no way of knowing how many Republican senators might vote in favor. At the time of certification, prior to the assault on the Capitol, 18 refused to recognize Biden’s victory. That number fell to 8 after the attack but, in the House, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2021/politics/congress-electoral-college-count-tracker/">two-thirds of Republican representatives</a> (139), including minority leaders Kevin McCarthy (California) and Steve Scalise (Louisiana), objected to the election results. On January 13, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/10-house-republicans-voted-to-impeach-trump-heres-what-they-said">only 10 House Republicans voted for impeachment</a>, meaning that 84% voted against the motion.</p>
<p>Could 17 Republicans be persuaded to vote for impeachment in the Senate? As mentioned, the Republicans currently make up exactly half of the Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris being the tie-breaker vote, giving control to the Democrats. Only one Republican, Mitt Romney (Utah), who ran against Barack Obama in 2012, voted to convict Trump in the <a href="https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/05/senate-impeachment-trial-mitt-romney-votes-remove-president-trump/4669734002/">first impeachment last February</a>. This time around, <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/532955-romney-trump-caused-this-insurrection">Romney was again the first</a> to squarely blame Trump for inciting the attack and to take a stand in favor of impeachment.</p>
<p>Other Republican Senators called for Trump’s immediate resignation (which was not forthcoming): Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Susan Collins (Maine), Liz Cheney (Wyoming), Patrick J. Toomey (Pennsylvania), Ben Sasse (Nebraska) and Roy Blunt (Missouri). In addition, two of Trump’s most ardent supporters appear to have thrown in the towel since the January 6 attack: <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/01/07/lindsey-graham-capitol-certification-sot-vpx.cnn">Lindsay Graham</a> (South Carolina), who famously said “enough is enough,” but was seen traveling to Texas with the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2021/01/12/lindsey-graham-travels-with-trump-to-texas-a-week-after-renouncing-him/">president on Air Force One</a> just days later. Far more significant is the position of Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), now the minority leader. He refused to join the objectors in December and forthrightly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PdjAuzszSc">confirmed Biden’s victory on January 6-7</a>.</p>
<p>According to sources close to the senator, McConnell supported Trump’s second impeachment. But in his public statement, he <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/12/politics/mcconnell-impeachment-trump-capitol-riot/index.html">did not specifically state that he would vote guilty</a> in a Senate trial. A total of eight Republican Senators could vote in favor of impeachment. </p>
<p>Conversely, an equal number of 8 Republican senators have defended Trump’s actions. These are the same ones now being accused of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/opinion/trump-consequences-republicans.html">perpetuating lies</a> about electoral fraud in the hope that they will harvest some of the support of the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump: the far-right Josh Hawley (Missouri) and Ted Cruz (Texas), as well as six like-minded senators: Rick Scott (Florida), John Neely Kennedy (Louisiana), Tommy Tuberville (Alabama), Cindy Hyde-Smith (Mississippi), Cynthia Lummis (Wyoming) and Roger Marshall (Kansas). </p>
<p>Which of these two groups most closely represents the private opinions of the majority of Republicans? Likely the latter, especially taking into account the 20 or so Republican senators who are up for reelection in 2022.</p>
<p>Under these circumstances, the Democrats will have to convince at least nine Republican senators to vote to convict Trump to secure a guilty verdict. This may prove difficult, or even impossible, to achieve. On January 26, only <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/01/26/us/biden-trump-impeachment">five voted to proceed with Trump’s impeachment trial</a>, standing with their 50 Democratic colleagues. McConnell, Blunt and Graham voted against, as did the other Republican senators. That does not make the odds of Trump’s being convicted particularly high. </p>
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<p><em>The Fact check US section received support from <a href="https://craignewmarkphilanthropies.org/">Craig Newmark Philanthropies</a>, an American foundation fighting against disinformation.</em></p>
<p><em>Translated from the French by Alice Heathwood for <a href="http://www.fastforword.fr/en">Fast ForWord</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153919/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Blandine Chelini-Pont ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Donald Trump is now the subject of a second impeachment trial. Although Democrats were initially optimistic, it is unlikely to succeed given the position of Republicans.Blandine Chelini-Pont, Professeur des Universités en histoire contemporaine, Aix-Marseille Université (AMU)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1535842021-01-20T18:24:52Z2021-01-20T18:24:52ZFact check US: Did some Americans really get richer during the pandemic?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379537/original/file-20210119-17-1hv7ohy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C2%2C1497%2C927&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The New York Stock Exchange.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Angela Weiss/AFP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last December, the <em>New York Times</em> published an op-ed titled <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/14/opinion/sunday/the-people-who-actually-had-a-pretty-great-year.html">“The People Who Actually Had a Pretty Great Year”</a>, discussing the Americans who haven’t really been impacted by the economic downturn, and have even seen their bank balances rise. It’s food for thought on the impact of Covid-19 on the United States. Has it really been that painless for an entire section of the population?</p>
<p>First of all, it’s worth remembering that whenever a new recession hits, economists go back to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52450854">singing their ABCs</a> when discussing the future shape of the recovery. The Covid-19 crisis in the United States is no exception. As always, the most optimistic <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-economy-idUSKBN2402TF">have been dreaming</a> (<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/06/record-highs-are-justified-because-economy-will-boom-ed-yardeni.html">and still are</a>) of a V-shaped recovery, bouncing back just as quickly as it dropped. Others <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/17/rising-coronavirus-infections-risk-a-w-shaped-recovery-economists-warn.html">fear</a> that repeated lockdowns will cause a W-shaped recovery, rising only to fall again when new restrictions are imposed.</p>
<p>Some economists are concerned about the long-lasting structural effects of this crisis. They say it could irreparably damage the American economy, with small and medium-sized businesses unable to make it through successive lockdowns. <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-economic-recovery-will-be-more-of-a-swoosh-than-v-shaped-11589203608">This would make recovery much slower</a> and require long-term transition for parts of the economy. This would mean a U-shaped recovery, or even a “swoosh” recovery, one that’s even slower than a U. (Here we’ve moved beyond letters, as this crisis is too complex to be summed up by a simple shape.) The most pessimistic are <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/28/insana-likelihood-growing-for-an-l-shaped-economy-with-no-growth.html">betting</a> on an L-shaped recovery, with the economy stagnating for a long time, similar to what happened during Japan’s “lost decade” in the 1990s.</p>
<h2>Multiple American realities and the risk of a K-shaped recovery</h2>
<p>In actual fact, any hope of a V-shaped recovery for the American economy is dwindling. Despite better results in the third quarter of 2020, job creation in the United States well and truly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/issue/todayspaper/2020/12/05/todays-new-york-times">slowed down at the end of the year</a>. More than 10 million jobs were lost, perhaps forever. The idea that the economy will quickly recover because the downturn is due to politicians trying to save lives through lockdown measures, rather than the result of fundamental economic flaws, is yet to be proven.</p>
<p>A “swoosh” recovery seems far more likely. But that doesn’t explain why so many observers and economic stakeholders in the United States seem to think that large parts of the population and of the industry are doing just fine.</p>
<p>There’s actually a <a href="https://www.uschamber.com/series/above-the-fold/what-the-k-shaped-recovery">remarkable contrast</a> between those industries that have suffered the full force of the pandemic and lockdowns, like the air travel, tourism, food service and hotel industries, and those that had already begun to adapt to the demands of digitalization and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, such as the technology sector and parts of retail. Other sectors like <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-covid-economy-carves-deep-divide-between-haves-and-have-nots-11601910595">hardware, interior design and food delivery</a>, as well as any industry based on consumer home goods more generally, have also experienced significant growth. Americans who still had a disposable income during the crisis have breathed life and prosperity into the second category, without ever being able to use the services of the first, thereby accentuating this contrast.</p>
<p>Similarly, there is striking contrast between certain groups. On one side, there are those who profited during the pandemic from the <a href="https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-every-asset-class-currency-and-sp-500-sector-performed-in-2020/">stock markets’ spectacular performance</a> (particularly for tech companies, who came out on top during lockdown) or were able to hold onto their job or quickly find a new one in late spring when local economies reopened. On the other, there are those who were reliant on economic sectors that have taken a beating during the Covid-19 pandemic. The second category is mostly <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-covid-economy-carves-deep-divide-between-haves-and-have-nots-11601910595">made up</a> of disadvantaged parts of the population and minorities, who often don’t have the qualifications nor the necessary skills to ride the wave of the recovery or reinvent their professional identity.</p>
<p>It should also be noted that since last summer, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/12/16/poverty-rising/?campaign_id=134&emc=edit_db_20201217&instance_id=25159&nl=debatable&regi_id=105497811&segment_id=47253&te=1&user_id=cb349ad422cb8f6ecae6011684f6c47a">8 million Americans have fallen into poverty</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/12/07/unemployed-debt-rent-utilities/?campaign_id=134&emc=edit_db_20201217&instance_id=25159&nl=debatable&regi_id=105497811&segment_id=47253&te=1&user_id=cb349ad422cb8f6ecae6011684f6c47a">12 million renters</a> have racked up over $5,000 of debt to their landlords. Job creation was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/issue/todayspaper/2020/12/05/todays-new-york-times">ticking along but has not caught up</a>, and this development takes on a whole new meaning when you remember that the pandemic is likely to accelerate the transition of an entire section of the labor market. This transition effort will not demand the same things from sectors that have been permanently affected by Covid-19.</p>
<p>What’s also clear is that it’s not only wealthy or upper-middle class Americans who benefited. Americans who were able to take advantage of the organizational changes affecting work and companies, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/14/opinion/sunday/the-people-who-actually-had-a-pretty-great-year.html">move</a> to other parts of the country where the cost of living is lower (especially rent), fared significantly better. But not every sector experienced these changes. It was only possible for jobs where remote working was an option and in sectors where companies and the workforce had already adapted to new digital tools, for example.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-recession-stocks-housing-unemployment-1e26bba5-f800-4ff6-a615-7cfeb751ae81.html">Inequalities in professional outcomes</a> emerging from this crisis are undeniable. Covid-19 is only partly responsible, given that the sectors and populations who are doing the best had already started to transition before the pandemic hit. Nevertheless, it has certainly escalated the disparities between certain sectors and groups – enter “K,” a new letter in the debate on what form the recovery will take. This kind of recovery means that part of the economy will be able to adapt and even prosper during the crisis, while the other will likely suffer from ongoing difficulties.</p>
<p>With the country politically divided, the American economy is at risk of following suite.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Translated from the French by Rosie Marsland for <a href="http://www.fastforword.fr/en">Fast ForWord</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>The Fact check US section received support from <a href="https://craignewmarkphilanthropies.org/">Craig Newmark Philanthropies</a>, an American foundation fighting against disinformation.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153584/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeremy Ghez ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>With a rising stock market and a booming economy in some industries, not all Americans have been negatively impacted by Covid-19. Which parts of the population have come out on top?Jeremy Ghez, Professor of Economics and International Affairs, HEC Paris Business SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1525052021-01-06T18:05:56Z2021-01-06T18:05:56ZDid Donald Trump ease tensions with North Korea?<p>Throughout his 2020 campaign, Trump emphasized that President Obama left him a very dangerous situation with North Korea, one that <a href="https://time.com/5903268/donald-trump-north-korea-missiles-debates/">could have even led to war</a>. According to him, he was instrumental in cooling down the tension between the US and the North Korean regime, thanks to the personal relationship that he built with Kim Jong-un. On Twitter, back in 2018, Trump boasted of having <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2018/06/13/washington-espere-desarmer-la-coree-du-nord-avant-la-fin-du-mandat-de-donald-trump_5314452_3210.html">“solved the problem”</a>. Following the first meeting with the North Korean leader in Singapore, he boasted on social media:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“President Obama said that North Korea was our biggest and most dangerous problem. No longer – sleep well tonight!”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet, while it may be true that Trump avoided a major crisis with North Korea, he was not able to prevent the country from developing its nuclear and missile capabilities. At this point, it is the fifth greatest nuclear power in Asia, after China, Russia, India and Pakistan.</p>
<h2>Trump, the paradoxical “peacemaker” in the nuclear-heavy Peninsula</h2>
<p>As is often the case with Trump, there is a measure of truth to his claims. He has been able to position himself advantageously as a peacemaker, and even dream of receiving a Nobel peace prize, like Obama before him. In 2019, he said that he had been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/15/trump-shinzo-abe-nominated-me-nobel-peace-prize">nominated</a> by Japan’s then Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, and endorsed for the prize by South Korean President Moon Jae-in. They praised Trump’s initiative to enter into direct dialogue and hold summits with Kim, which was undeniably daring and unexpected. The June 2018 meeting in Singapore between the two leaders did certainly make an impact, seeming to be a remarkable and promising event, inasmuch as it put an end to the escalating <a href="https://theconversation.com/coree-du-nord-etats-unis-mettre-fin-a-la-diplomatie-des-extremes-82843">verbal conflict that was set off in summer 2017</a>. That was when Trump threatened to unleash “fire and fury,” stating that his general staff did not rule out taking military action against North Korea.</p>
<p>However, as innovative it may have seemed at the time, “summit diplomacy” was no more effective than previous strategies. This includes the Obama administration’s “strategic patience,” which involved waiting for the regime to collapse under increased sanctions to achieve complete, verifiable and irreversible de-nuclearization (CVID). While Trump avoided conflict with North Korea, he was not able to prevent that after carrying out six nuclear tests and many ballistic missile launches, in 2017, North Korea positions itself as a de facto nuclear power and puts forward <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/north-koreas-military-capabilities">credible deterrence capabilities</a>. Not only are they a very real and persistent threat for the United States, which is within range of its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), but also for the US’ two closest allies, South Korea and Japan.</p>
<h2>North Korea’s nuclear tools of deterrence</h2>
<p>North Korea’s reasons for developing their nuclear resources have changed over time, but the various American administrations have failed to try to understand them. When Kim Jong-il’s regime performed its first underground test in 2006, it was justified by the “nuclear threat” and pressure from the Bush administration. North Korea had been labeled part of the “axis of evil,” alongside Iraq and Iran, in President George W. Bush’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtuL3Wg2OUI">famous State of the Union speech</a> in 2002. After the invasion of Iraq and the execution of Saddam Hussein in 2006, Pyongyang strongly suspected Bush of wanting to force a regime change in North Korea.</p>
<p>This suspicion and reciprocal lack of trust explains, in part, the problems of the <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/asie-pacifique/article/2007/02/14/l-accord-sur-le-nucleaire-nord-coreen-suscite-prudence-et-reserve_867231_3216.html">six-party talks</a> set up in 2003. These were a series of multilateral negotiations that brought together six countries neighboring the Korean Peninsula. Eventually, North Korea agreed, in principle, to progressively shut down its nuclear facilities in exchange for the building of a light water reactor and a million tons of heavy fuel oil (HFO). However, it withdrew from the talks in 2009, after receiving 550,000 tons of HFO from the US.</p>
<p>In May 2009, a second round of North Korean nuclear testing occurred after the launch of a satellite that was revealed to be a ballistic missile, setting off a new round of sanctions. It could be thought, as did the Obama administration, that this was the continuation of a policy based on a relatively well-known cycle – provocations, sanctions, negotiations, concessions. When Kim Jong-un came into power in 2011, nuclear development became a way of holding to power and part of the regime’s identity, as he strengthened his operational capacities through accelerated testing campaigns. North Korea’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/coree-du-nord-le-nucleaire-comme-pacte-social-54994">nuclear nationalism</a> is a response to a need that is just as political as it is strategic. On the domestic front, it reinforces the regime’s legitimacy and, therefore, its stability. On the foreign front, it acts as a deterrent toward the US and its South Korean and Japanese allies, all three of which have increased their missile defense capabilities.</p>
<h2>From Obama to Trump, the limitations of a policy of maximum pressure and sanctions</h2>
<p>Since George W. Bush’s election in 2000, the aim of CVID has been the cornerstone of US North Korean policy, up to Presidents Obama and Trump. Their lack of flexibility and the impact of regional factors, including the role of China, shows why these policies have failed in the past, and are likely to fail in the future. While North Korea has shown itself to be open to accepting a process of denuclearization, this would have to take place gradually, apply to the entire Korean Peninsula (i.e. including withdrawal of the American troops stationed there) and include robust security guarantees from the US, specifically a peace treaty.</p>
<p>It should be reiterated that when the 1994 Agreed Framework was signed between the Clinton administration and North Korea’s Kim Il-Sung (grandfather of the current leader), Bill Clinton agreed to build light water reactors to provide the electricity necessary for the country’s development. In exchange, the then-burgeoning nuclear program would be frozen. However, North Korea <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/06/bolton-pompeo-trump-and-kim-all-have-different-ideas-about-what-the-d-in-cvid-stands-for.html">never actually agreed to this type of denuclearization</a>. They would prefer dismantlement, which could involve downgrading and closing certain sites (particularly the Yongbyon complex), rather than giving up nuclear capabilities entirely.</p>
<p>In 2018, the day after the first Singapore summit, Trump triumphantly announced that the <a href="https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/en-direct-sommet-de-singapour-trump-pret-suspendre-les-exercices-militaires-avec-seoul">denuclearization process was going to start “very soon”</a>. However, the agreement signed between the US president and the North Korean leader remained ambiguous on the topic of denuclearization, with each party having a very different definition of it. According to the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/joint-statement-president-donald-j-trump-united-states-america-chairman-kim-jong-un-democratic-peoples-republic-korea-singapore-summit/">joint statement</a>, the aim of this exchange was to “establish new relations” between the two countries and “build a lasting and robust peace regime on the Korean Peninsula”.</p>
<p>To this end, Trump committed to providing “safety guarantees” to North Korea, while Kim Jong-un reaffirmed his “firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula”. Symbolic gestures were made, though nothing else. In response to the moratorium on nuclear testing that Pyongyang imposed of its own volition, Trump suspended and scaled down some joint US/South Korean military exercises, such as Ulchi-Freedom Guardian, which was <a href="http://www.opex360.com/2018/07/10/coree-sud-annulant-lexercice-ulchi-freedom-guardian-pentagone-va-economiser-14-millions-de-dollars/">cancelled</a> in September 2018.</p>
<p>In 2019, a <a href="https://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2019/02/28/01003-20190228ARTFIG00220-sommet-de-hanoi-kim-et-trump-dans-l-impasse-nucleaire.php">new summit</a> in Hanoi revealed the lack of understanding between the two leaders and ended in disaster, with each side protesting its good intentions. Trump stated that Kim Jong-un asked for all sanctions on North Korea to be lifted in exchange for the dismantlement of the Yongbyon nuclear complex, which had already been agreed to. Kim Jong-un, whose main priority is the country’s economic development, claimed to only have asked for a partial lifting of sanctions, those affecting the population most heavily, in exchange for shutting down the complex.</p>
<h2>The illusion of possible success</h2>
<p>Some months later, an impromptu meeting between the two leaders in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), in Panmunjom, upheld the illusion that negotiations could still succeed. On Twitter, Trump repeated the economic advantages that denuclearization would bring, to no avail. Holding onto the potential for dialogue to resume, the Trump administration carefully avoided responding to the North Korean provocations in the form of short-range missile testing all throughout 2019 and up to 2020.</p>
<p>In the end, Trump clearly failed to turn the North Korea nuclear situation into a personal success that could be attributed to his talents as a negotiator and personal relationship with the country’s leader. Despite being in direct contact and having regular correspondence (no less than 25 letters according to American journalist Bob Woodward), their closeness – whether real or exaggerated – was no match for North Korea’s strategic realism. While Trump was able to avoid war with North Korea, the country now has significant nuclear capabilities. Despite sanctions and the pandemic, it has been able to develop new ICBMs. One of these massive missiles was casually revealed at the night-time military parade in Pyongyang on 10 October 2020. Whether it is operational remains to be seen. Perhaps we should expect a new North Korean testing campaign in 2021…</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Translated from the French by Rosie Marsland for <a href="http://www.fastforword.fr/en">Fast ForWord</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>The Fact check US section received support from <a href="https://craignewmarkphilanthropies.org/">Craig Newmark Philanthropies</a>, an American foundation fighting against disinformation.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152505/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marianne Péron-Doise ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Donald Trump avoided a major crisis with North Korea. But the North Korean nuclear issue remains unresolved as the country continues to develop its nuclear and ballistic capabilities.Marianne Péron-Doise, Chercheur Asie du Nord et Sécurité maritime Internationale à l'IRSEM, Enseignant Maritime security, Sciences Po Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1526272021-01-04T18:04:04Z2021-01-04T18:04:04ZFact check US: Will the senatorial election in Georgia determine Biden’s presidency?<p>The victory of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the 2020 US presidential election is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/14/us/elections/electoral-college-results.html">now official</a>. On December 14 the Electoral College confirmed the state-by-state results, giving a clear majority of 306 votes to Biden and Harris. Donald Trump received 232, the same number as Hillary Clinton when she lost to Trump in 2016. After the vote, Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mitch-mcconnell-joe-biden-president-elect-election-victory/">congratulated</a> the president- and vice president-elect. Other senior Republicans followed, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republicans-acknowledge-biden-as-president-elect-following-electoral-college-vote/">finally acknowledging</a> Biden and Harris’s victory.</p>
<p>Despite having stated on <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/26/politics/trump-leave-office-electoral-college/index.html">November 26</a> that he would respect the Electoral College vote, President Trump continues to deny that he lost. On January 2, he went so far as to pressure Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, urging him to <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/03/trump-georgia-election-454122">“find” enough votes</a> to reverse his narrow defeat in the state. Given that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_related_to_the_2020_United_States_presidential_election">Trump has filed and lost at least 59 lawsuits</a> disputing the outcome of the November 3 election, he and his remaining supporters’ latest maneuvers are likely to be similarly futile.</p>
<p>When Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are inaugurated on January 20, their challenge will be to govern a deeply divided country. This will require working with their allies in Congress, and while Democrats lost about a dozen seats in the house, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/house-democrats-biden-election/2020/11/23/c280ad2c-2b4d-11eb-8fa2-06e7cbb145c0_story.html">they will retain their majority</a>. As for the Senate, of 100 seats, 50 are held by Republicans and 48 by Democrats. Two seats in the state of Georgia remain open because no candidate in either race won more than 50% of the vote in the November election. According to Georgia law – <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-georgias-runoff-voting-and-its-racist-roots-150356">a legacy of the state’s resistance to desegregation in the 1960s</a> – in such a case the two leading candidates must face off in a runoff election on January 5.</p>
<p>If the Democrats win these two Senate seats, there would be an equal number of seats for each party, 50. The American constitution states that <a href="https://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/reference/four_column_table/Tie_Votes.htm">in the case of a tie</a> the vice president shall have the deciding vote. This provision would give the Democrats the effective majority since the vice president will be Kamala Harris.</p>
<p>While media insist that <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/stakes-georgia-races-couldn-t-be-higher-s-why-all-n1248797">“the stakes could not be higher”</a> for the Georgia runoffs, the reality is more complex: the Constitution gives a <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/executive_power">narrow but real edge to the president</a>, with or without a majority in Congress, and it gives a significant role to the minority in the Senate. So while this election in Georgia will decide whether the Republicans or the Democrats control the Senate, it will not necessarily determine if Joe Biden and the Democrats are able to govern the country.</p>
<p>To understand why, one must look more closely at the very particular power granted to the Senate by the Constitution. The Constitution defines a <a href="https://www.usa.gov/branches-of-government">federalist system of checks and balances</a> that gives the Senate a major role. In addition to its legislative function, it has the power to give or withhold <a href="https://www.senate.gov/reference/glossary_term/advice_and_consent.htm">“advice and consent”</a> to the president, meaning that he or she needs Senate approval of appointments to key executive-branch positions (cabinet and the heads of federal agencies) and nominations of <a href="https://www.senate.gov/reference/reference_index_subjects/Judicial_Branch_vrd.htm">federal judges</a>.</p>
<h2>Confirmation of candidates for the executive branch</h2>
<p>Historically, candidates for such positions have been overwhelmingly approved by the Senate at the beginning of a president’s first term, with a <a href="https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/dec/14/how-hard-will-it-be-joe-biden-get-his-cabinet-conf/">95% confirmation rate over the past 28 years</a>. However, there are few historical precedents for a first presidential term with a Senate controlled by the opposing party. The last time this happened was in 1989 with the election of George H.W. Bush where, for the first time, a candidate for a first-term president’s cabinet <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Nominations.htm">was rejected</a>. But today is markedly different, with the United States more politically partisan and polarized than ever.</p>
<p>If anything, four years under President Trump have shown that traditions can be broken without much warming. Some Republicans have already expressed their <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/biden-transition-updates/2020/12/03/941597232/why-biden-budget-pick-neera-tanden-already-faces-republican-opposition">opposition to some of Biden’s announced appointments</a>. However, there is hope since a simple majority is enough to confirm a candidate, and Republican leader Mitch McConnell <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/22/mitch-mcconnell-biden-cabinet-nominees-449805">has sent some positive signals</a>. Democrats hope that even if they retain control of the Senate, Republican senators will only oppose a limited number of candidates. And, in the worst-case scenario, Joe Biden could possibly follow Donald Trump’s lead and install “acting secretaries” who do not need confirmation.</p>
<h2>Confirmation of judges</h2>
<p>On the other hand, a Republican-majority Senate could offer little deference to Biden’s judicial nominees. At best, a few moderate judges in the lower courts could be appointed. This would not, therefore, offset the many judicial appointments made by Trump, who appointed almost a quarter of all active federal judges and three Supreme Court justices, most of them young and highly conservative. Mitch McConnell made this a central focus of his strategy during Trump’s time in office since the system of checks and balances gives a great deal of power to the federal courts and the Supreme Court.</p>
<p>This means that regardless of who controls the Senate, the ability of Democrats to implement laws on some issues like electoral regulation, gun control, health care extension, climate change, or even health measures against the coronavirus is likely to be seriously constrained by conservative judges, especially in the Supreme Court. And even with a Democratic majority in the Senate, Democrats will be limited in their ability to appoint judges by the very fact that there are far fewer judicial vacancies, including in the Courts of Appeal or in the District Courts.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/22/joe-biden-court-packing-judicial-reforms-commission-431157">major judicial reform</a> such as expanding the number of judges on the Supreme Court is also unlikely to happen because the president will not have the support of centrist Democrats such as <a href="https://www.rollcall.com/2020/11/09/joe-manchin-kills-dreams-of-expanding-supreme-court-eliminating-the-filibuster/">Joe Manchin</a>. And, of course, if the Republicans control the Senate, no debate on reforms will ever make it to the floor.</p>
<h2>Governing with a majority Senate</h2>
<p>From a legislative point of view, a simple majority of 51 votes is in theory enough for the Senate to pass a law. But in reality, apart from legislation related to budgetary rules, any senator can block a law by using the filibuster. It then takes a “closure” motion with a super majority of 60 votes to remove the filibuster, a procedure widely used in recent decades.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376612/original/file-20201224-57963-19jge75.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376612/original/file-20201224-57963-19jge75.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376612/original/file-20201224-57963-19jge75.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376612/original/file-20201224-57963-19jge75.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376612/original/file-20201224-57963-19jge75.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376612/original/file-20201224-57963-19jge75.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376612/original/file-20201224-57963-19jge75.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376612/original/file-20201224-57963-19jge75.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The sharp increase in methods of filibustering, preventing the passage of legislation through the Senate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brookings Institution</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The procedural rules of the Senate can be changed by a simple majority, as it was in <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/senate-filibuster-reform_n_4316325">2013</a> and <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44819.pdf">2017</a>. Doing away with the filibuster has been widely discussed among Democrats, but with a Democrat in the White House, Republicans will have no interest in doing so. And some Democratic senators such as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/30/us/politics/joe-manchin-interview.html">Joe Manchin</a> have already announced their opposition to a vote ending filibustering, even if there is a Democratic majority.</p>
<p>Whatever the majority in the Senate, Democrats will have to take into account a number of conservative members in their own camp, such as Joe Manchin and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyrsten_Sinema">Kyrsten Sinema</a>. On the other hand, the US legislative system is built to encourage bipartisan compromise, and it is these same senators who will be useful for compromises with the more moderate Republicans. A recent <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo51795068.html"></a> <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo51795068.html">analysis by political scientists James M. Curry and Frances E. Lee</a> challenges the conventional wisdom that a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/opinion/joe-biden-mitch-mcconnell-congress.html">Senate majority is crucial to governing</a>. Their findings suggest that far more happens when one party has a slim majority.</p>
<p>As is often the case in politics, interpersonal relationships are likely to play a major role. The long and amicable relationship between Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/11/08/932744275/how-biden-and-mcconnell-will-work-together">sometimes even described as a friendship</a>, bodes well for issues such as immigration and infrastructure. But it should not be forgotten that McConnell is determined to maintain Republican influence. Will he repeat his <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2010/11/04/131069048/sen-mcconnell-insists-one-term-for-obama">stated goal in 2008</a> to make Obama a one-term president by blocking all legislation or will he find areas to compromise with President Biden?</p>
<h2>The lingering damage after Trump</h2>
<p>For the Democrats, winning the two seats in Georgia, a state that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2020/georgia-senate-runoff-guide/">remains conservative despite changing demographics</a>, will be a challenge but not an impossible one. Trump’s continuing false claims that the elections were rigged might actually help them, <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2020/12/14/etats-unis-comprendre-les-elections-en-georgie-qui-pourraient-faire-basculer-le-senat_6063273_3210.html">deterring some Republicans from voting</a>, especially since he has been highly critical of Georgia’s governor and secretary of state, both Republicans.</p>
<p>But rather than the Georgia Senate runoffs, Trump’s primary focus is on the confirmation of the Electoral College election results by both houses of Congress on January 6. While this is almost always a mere formality, if the election is contested by members of both houses, a vote must be taken in each chamber. A number of Republican representatives have announced that <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/31/politics/electoral-college-house-republicans/index.html">they will do so</a> as well as a dozen senators, including <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senators-challenge-election/2021/01/02/81a4e5c4-4c7d-11eb-a9d9-1e3ec4a928b9_story.html">Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley</a>. They do not have the majority required to upend the election, but a vote would force every Republican to take a stand for or against Donald Trump. This would weaken the party and could even divide it, something McConnell very much <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/530327-mcconnell-urges-gop-senators-not-to-object-to-electoral-college-vote">does not want</a>.</p>
<p>Trump, desperate to remain in the White House despite having lost his bed for reelection, has turned the January 6 ceremony into a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/13/us/politics/trump-allies-election-overturn-congress-pence.html">test of loyalty</a> for all Republicans, including <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/02/us/politics/gop-senators-josh-hawley-election.html">Mike Pence</a>, who as vice president is required by the Constitution to announce the election results in Congress. The president has threatened to try to <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1341547750710800385">end the political careers</a> of Republicans who have recognized the election result by claiming he would support other candidates in the 2022 primaries. He has even called to the streets, asking his supporters to come for a <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1340185773220515840">“wild” protest</a> in Washington DC. While right-wing extremist groups such as the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/for-dc-protests-proud-boys-settle-in-at-citys-oldest-hotel-and-its-bar/2020/12/27/0eb6afcc-3fb0-11eb-8bc0-ae155bee4aff_story.html">Proud Boys</a> have promised to be present, it remains to be seen whether mainstream Republicans will come in any significant numbers.</p>
<p>In the long run, the main difficulty for Biden may not be which party controls the Senate, but the lasting damage caused by Trump’s false claims of election fraud. <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/12/09/944385798/poll-just-a-quarter-of-republicans-accept-election-outcome">Three-quarters of Republicans</a>, or 60 million Americans, say that they continue to believe despite a complete absence of proof that the election was “rigged” or “stolen”. While deeper surveys offer a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/30/upshot/republican-voters-election-doubts.html">more nuanced perspective</a>, the Biden-Harris administration could well be in for a bumpy ride over the next four years. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>The Fact check US section received support from <a href="https://craignewmarkphilanthropies.org/">Craig Newmark Philanthropies</a>, an American foundation fighting against disinformation.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152627/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>It is often said that Joe Biden’s ability to govern will depend on the outcome of Georgia’s January 5 runoff elections, which determine which party controls the senate. The reality is more nuanced.Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy, Assistant lecturer, CY Cergy Paris UniversitéLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1524782020-12-23T20:15:01Z2020-12-23T20:15:01ZFact check US: Has Donald Trump really made a breakthrough in the Latino electorate?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376462/original/file-20201222-17-s66inm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">file umefa</span> </figcaption></figure><p>The US elections delivered plenty of surprises on 3 November. While the results eventually showed that Trump had well and truly lost, we also saw him make inroads on several fronts. More than <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/election/2020/results/president">74 million people</a> cast their ballot for him, compared to 63 million in 2016. That margin of progress came from multiple categories of voters, including rural, lower-middle-class and Latino voters. That last group, in particular, has shocked many observers, especially given the president’s attacks against Latino immigrants. A month and a half later, it’s time to take a closer look at the data and try to analyze the voting behavior of that population.</p>
<p>First of all, let’s look at the numbers. To date, all we have access to are the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/exit-polls-president.html">exit polls</a> conducted for American media outlets, which are interesting tools at the local and national level. They indicate that Trump made no real inroads with Latino voters since 2016. In both 2016 and 2020, two thirds of this group voted Democrat – 63% for Hilary Clinton, then 65% for Joe Biden. Furthermore, according to the <a href="https://electionstudies.org/">American National Election Studies (ANES)</a>, this has been a trend since the late 1980s, with 76% going for Al Gore in 2000, 76% for Barack Obama in 2008 and 73% for Obama (again) in 2012. The Republican candidate who received the most votes was George W. Bush (around 40%), probably because he had a strong base of support in Texas, where 23% of the population is Latino American.</p>
<p><strong>Share of the vote for the Democratic Party by ethnicity</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Democratic share of the vote." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376459/original/file-20201222-50514-jeszm6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376459/original/file-20201222-50514-jeszm6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376459/original/file-20201222-50514-jeszm6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376459/original/file-20201222-50514-jeszm6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376459/original/file-20201222-50514-jeszm6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376459/original/file-20201222-50514-jeszm6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376459/original/file-20201222-50514-jeszm6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Democratic share of the vote.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">American National Election Studies</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why Latino and Black minority votes differ (to a certain extent)?</h2>
<p>The fact that Trump received 32% of the Latino vote was surprising, partly because he has <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/article/2017/02/07/donald-trump-reveille-le-nationalisme-des-mexicains_5075644_3222.html">railed against Latinos on numerous occasions</a>, calling Mexicans “rapists” and “criminals” back in 2015. But the other reason this result was so shocking is that people tend to assume that the Latino voting bloc will vote in the same way as the other big minority in the US, that is, African-Americans. However, the two groups have different reasons for their voting behaviors.</p>
<p>The Latino population is far more diverse than the Black population. It includes both recently-arrived and second-generation immigrants, economic migrants and refugees, those that are “visible” and those that are not. Taking a moment to study the Black vote is therefore useful for understanding the Latino vote.</p>
<p>Ever since the 1960s, more than 90% of Black Americans have been voting Democrat. Such stability is striking considering that this group has been socially divergent since the 1980s, as established by the work of political scientist <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691025438/behind-the-mule">Michael Dawson</a>, who explains this behavior through the prism of “linked fate” that unite Black Americans despite socioeconomic diversity.</p>
<p>Other immigrant groups are not connected by that notion of linked fates. Their shared socio-political characteristics generally fade over time, as members of the population are integrated into American society. This is mainly due to the fact that new arrivals only experience temporary discrimination <em>(see the work of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Who-Governs-Democracy-and-Power-in-an-American-City">Robert Dahl</a> for more on this topic)</em>. In the case of African-Americans, however, this feeling of connection still exists because American society continues to discriminate against them. And prejudices remain, particularly because “visibilization” due to skin color plays a major role. <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/afrocaribbean-immigrants-and-the-politics-of-incorporation/81C4C0E89F50DE6C03D0A28D72BC5F32">Reuel Rogers</a> showed that recently-arrived Afro-Caribbeans also experience discrimination in the US, even though they do not have the same history as Black Americans.</p>
<p>Latino voting behavior can be explained through the “two-tiered pluralism” theory developed by political scientist <a href="http://tupress.temple.edu/book/3295">Rodney Hero</a>, which shows how part of the Latino population feels connected to their Latino identity, experiences race-based discrimination and will therefore have similar voting behavior to African-American voters. This is the case in New York or California, for example, two states that are strongly structured by the fight against racism. According to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/30044225.pdf">David L. Lean, Matt A. Barreto et al</a>, this helps to explain why a Latino identity is stronger factor than other social voting factors, such as income, age, education or religion.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375418/original/file-20201216-17-1u84zd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375418/original/file-20201216-17-1u84zd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375418/original/file-20201216-17-1u84zd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375418/original/file-20201216-17-1u84zd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375418/original/file-20201216-17-1u84zd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375418/original/file-20201216-17-1u84zd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375418/original/file-20201216-17-1u84zd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375418/original/file-20201216-17-1u84zd7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Source: The Latino vote in the 2004 election, David Leal, Matt Barreto et al.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The case of Cuban Americans</h2>
<p>However, some Latinos easily integrate into American society. This is because they do not stand out because of their skin color, meaning that they are not reduced to their race in daily interactions. Bit by bit, their solidarity with other Latinos decreases, and their sense of linked fates disappears. Other voting factors take precedence: depending on their personal situation, voters begin to consider various things – their position toward the welfare state (which they may not necessarily support) or religious beliefs, for instance. Another factor is Cuban-American exceptionalism, which researchers identified in the 1990s. This group votes overwhelmingly Republican (80% in 2004), whereas Mexican Americans, for example, mostly vote Democrat (66% in 2004).</p>
<p>The influence of Cuban voters has become particularly important in US presidential elections because of Florida, which has been a swing state for more than twenty years. In 2020, 56% of Cubans voted for Trump, versus 31% of Puerto Rican voters, continuing the well-known trend. Several studies dating back to 2004 have explored this phenomenon, and explain it through the difficult relationship that Cubans have with the Castro regime (and related beliefs in terms of socialism, private property, oppression, etc.). </p>
<p>It should also be noted that this kind of voting behavior has also been observed in Vietnamese “boat people,” who came to the US and France after the Vietnam War. In France, the <a href="https://www.ined.fr/fr/publications/editions/grandes-enquetes/trajectoires-et-origines/">“Trajectories and Origins”</a> survey by INED and INSEE provides insight into the right-wing positioning of immigrants from Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia (a position that their children and grandchildren do not hold). The common denominator being that these immigrants fled a Communist regime.</p>
<p>In conclusion, these dynamics do not support the Republican party. Trump may have succeeded in mobilizing some Latino Americans who feel “less Latino” and less discriminated, by using highly divisive, anti-immigrant rhetoric. But the Latino population’s increasing strength nationwide is shifting Republican states to the Democrat camp. Such was the case of New Mexico under Obama. This year, Arizona flipped, whose population is 19% Latino. Texas, at 23%, looks to be next.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Translated from the French by Rosie Marsland for <a href="http://www.fastforword.fr/en">Fast ForWord</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152478/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vincent Tiberj has received funding from INJEP, ANR, and the Nouvelle-Aquiatine Region.</span></em></p>More than 30% of Latinos voted for Trump in the recent elections – a significant result, but not a breakthrough by any stretch, and it can be explained by several factors.Vincent Tiberj, Professeur des universités, délégué recherche de Sciences Po Bordeaux, Sciences Po BordeauxLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1517762020-12-16T19:04:59Z2020-12-16T19:04:59ZFact check US: Would a $15 minimum wage really help workers?<p>Since 2009, the United States federal minimum wage has remained at $7.25 per hour. President-elect Joe Biden plans to not only increase it to $15, but also to extend it to workers who are not covered by the current legislation, such as farm and domestic workers, and index it to the median wage. While this would be done incrementally over the next five years, the proposed change is bold and has caused a stir.</p>
<p>The effects of an increase in minimum wage have long been hotly debated. In the 1990s, economists David Card and Alan Krueger showed that such an increase in the New Jersey fast-food industry <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w4509/w4509.pdf">did not in fact reduce employment</a>. Rather than firing staff, restaurants partially compensated for increased payroll costs by raising their prices.</p>
<p>In 2012, the movement <a href="https://fightfor15.org/about-us/">Fight for $15</a> was born out of the fast-food industry where minimum wage is very common. Wage increase is an efficient way to help ward off financial insecurity. However, it can also have a detrimental effect on employment if the increase is too high, in terms of the extra cost for businesses. What’s more, the economic situation from state to state varies greatly, meaning that setting a $15 per hour minimum would not have the same consequences everywhere.</p>
<h2>A measure that dates back to times of financial crisis</h2>
<p>After the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was inaugurated in 1933, introduced laws to protect workers rights and provide a safety net for low-income earners. The basic protections, such as minimum wage and paid overtime, meant that workers received a more equitable part of the added value generated by their work. More recently, in 2014, Barack Obama tried to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/sep/05/barack-obama-us-minimum-wage-republicans-tom-perez">increase the minimum wage</a> to combat the disastrous economic fallout of the subprime mortgage crisis. However, this measure was <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-senate-minimumwage-idUSBREA3T0PT20140430">blocked by the Republican-led Congress</a>.</p>
<p>Donald Trump has <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/10/22/21529733/donald-trump-minimum-wage-debate">flip-flopped</a> several times on this subject. Initially, he was in favor of increasing the federal minimum to $10 per hour. Then, he left the decision to the states, before raging against it during the last presidential <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/10/23/debate-minimum-wage-increase/">debate</a>. In 2019, the Democratic House of Representatives <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/us/politics/minimum-wage.html">voted to increase the federal minimum wage</a> to $15 per hour by 2025. But that also came to nothing, as it was rejected by the Republican-controlled Senate.</p>
<p>However, the wind seems to have changed. Florida, which was won by Trump, also voted on an amendment during the presidential elections to increase minimum wage to $15. <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Florida_Amendment_2,_%2415_Minimum_Wage_Initiative_(2020)">60% of voters were in favor</a>.</p>
<h2>Same minimum wage, different purchasing power</h2>
<p>In 1938, the hourly minimum was set as $0.25, and <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/04/5-facts-about-the-minimum-wage/">increased more or less regularly</a> over the next several decades, eventually reaching $7.25 in 2009. That is where it has stayed ever since. However, while the wage itself has stayed the same, those dollars correspond to an ever- <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=ex3l">decreasing</a> purchasing power due to inflation.</p>
<p>Nowadays, what the minimum wage can buy is even less than at the end of the 1990s. It was actually in the 1960s that minimum wage was worth the most, with a peak in 1968 when it was worth nearly <a href="https://www.epi.org/blog/raising-the-minimum-wage-to-15-by-2025-will-restore-bargaining-power-to-workers-during-the-recovery-from-the-pandemic/">$10 in today’s money</a>. This two-fold observation alone justifies Biden’s plan to increase minimum wage. However, the actual impact that such an increase will have remains to be seen, as each state will be affected differently.</p>
<h2>Few workers are being paid the minimum wage</h2>
<p>In 2019, the <a href="https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2019/home.htm">Bureau of Labor Statistics</a> (BLS) estimated that 392,000 workers receive minimum wage – that is, less than 0.5% of workers paid hourly, and 0.28% of all workers (a percentage that has been regularly decreasing since 2010). That being said, it should be noted that 1.2 million workers are still paid below minimum wage, accounting for 1.47% of workers paid hourly (0.85% of all workers). However, this number does include workers who receive commission and tips and may receive a total salary that is much higher overall. The rest represents workers who are not covered by current legislation (such as farmworkers). In comparison, <a href="https://www.lefigaro.fr/conjoncture/la-part-des-salaries-remuneres-au-smic-au-plus-haut-depuis-11-ans-20191213">13.4% of French workers</a> receive minimum wage, which was last increased in 2019.</p>
<p>In reality, <a href="https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/state#wy">a significantly higher minimum wage than the federal minimum applies</a> in many parts of the United States, due to more advantageous local legislation. As it happens, states, counties and cities can set a higher minimum wage than the federal rate. The general rule is that the highest minimum applies in the geographic area in question. This still means that when no local legislation is more favorable, employers can apply the federal minimum wage.</p>
<p>In California, for instance, minimum wage was increased to $12 per hour on 1 January 2020. The state has been steadily increasing the minimum since 2017, with a <a href="https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_minimumwage.htm">plan</a> to reach $15 per hour on 1 January 2023. In San Francisco, the local government voted to <a href="https://sfgov.org/olse/minimum-wage-ordinance-mwo">increase the minimum wage</a> in 2014, a change that would affect all the city’s workers. In 2018, the target of $15 per hour was reached; since then, the minimum has increased in line with the consumer price index. On January 1, 2020, it was $16.07 per hour.</p>
<p>Right now, some 30 of the 50 states already enforce a higher minimum wage than the federal minimum, and <a href="https://joinhomebase.com/blog/state-minimum-wage-2021/">10 states</a>, three of which are led by Republicans, plan to increase it over the coming years, to $15.</p>
<h2>What impact would $15 per hour have on a federal level?</h2>
<p>According to the <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/minimum-wage-15-by-2025/">Economic Policy Institute</a>, raising the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2025 would increase the salary of 20% of wage-earning Americans. But this increase could also have a negative effect on employment. A <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2019-07/CBO-55410-MinimumWage2019.pdf">report</a> from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) concluded that this extra cost to businesses would indeed cause a drop in people living under the poverty line, but also the loss of 1.3 million jobs nationwide.</p>
<p>The truth is that the risk is not the same across the country. It depends on the state, those that are currently the furthest from $15 per hour being the most at risk. As it happens, states greatly differ in their economic situation. For example, in 2019, California had a minimum wage of $12 per hour, that is, 56% of the median wage (such that half of the employees earn less and the other half earn more). On the other hand, in Louisiana, average labor productivity is <a href="https://www.bls.gov/lpc/state-productivity.htm">21% lower</a> than in California. There, the federal minimum of $7.25 applies, that is, 44% of the median wage.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375141/original/file-20201215-22-s9khoe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375141/original/file-20201215-22-s9khoe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375141/original/file-20201215-22-s9khoe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375141/original/file-20201215-22-s9khoe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375141/original/file-20201215-22-s9khoe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375141/original/file-20201215-22-s9khoe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375141/original/file-20201215-22-s9khoe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375141/original/file-20201215-22-s9khoe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Source: BLS (OES survey), authors provided.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is, however, another argument for increasing the minimum wage at the federal level. The gap between minimum wage and median wage for full-time jobs is much lower in the United States than in most developed countries. For example, in 2019, the federal minimum was only 32% of the median wage, whereas in France, it represented 61% of the median wage.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375140/original/file-20201215-21-1yt6hdf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375140/original/file-20201215-21-1yt6hdf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375140/original/file-20201215-21-1yt6hdf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=223&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375140/original/file-20201215-21-1yt6hdf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=223&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375140/original/file-20201215-21-1yt6hdf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=223&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375140/original/file-20201215-21-1yt6hdf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=280&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375140/original/file-20201215-21-1yt6hdf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=280&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375140/original/file-20201215-21-1yt6hdf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=280&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Source: OCDE, authors provided.</span>
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</figure>
<p>Increasing the federal minimum wage could be an efficient way to assist low-income American workers in a post-pandemic world. The Republican Senate may yet block the Democrats’ proposal of $15 per hour in 2021, as they did in 2019. However, the fact that several Republican states plan to increase their minimum leaves hope for, perhaps, a more modest increase.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Translated from the French by Rosie Marsland for <a href="http://www.fastforword.fr/en">Fast ForWord</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>The Fact check US section received support from <a href="https://craignewmarkphilanthropies.org/">Craig Newmark Philanthropies</a>, an American foundation fighting against disinformation.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151776/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour is a campaign promise by Joe Biden. What do we know about the effectiveness and limitations of this measure?Thérèse Rebière, Maître de conférences en économie, Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM)Isabelle Lebon, Professeur des Universités, directrice adjointe du Centre de recherche en économie et management, Université de Caen NormandieLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1513222020-12-09T19:01:09Z2020-12-09T19:01:09ZFact check US: Can Joe Biden ‘stop the virus’ in the US as he claims?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372547/original/file-20201202-17-36cmoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C24%2C1024%2C654&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Joe Biden shows a mask at a press conference on November 16. He is concerned about Donald Trump's refusal to engage in the power transition process. This, according to him, hinders the fight against the virus. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Roberto Schmidt/AFP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Covid-19 is the latest in a long line of pandemics to hit the US healthcare system since the late 20th century. There’s been HIV/AIDS from 1981, SARS in 2002–03, swine flu in 2009–10, MERS from 2015 and Ebola in 2014–16, each with their own challenges. However, the Covid-19 virus is particularly disconcerting and dangerous. Not only is it highly contagious, but asymptomatic carriers can involuntarily infect dozens of people in just a few days. Unfettered coronavirus transmission combined with the difficulty of imposing lockdowns has made it complicated to implement effective policy. What’s more, the pandemic has become both an important issue and a key to understanding the election of the 46th president of the United States. Joe Biden must fulfill his promises and do everything within his power to halt the pandemic.</p>
<p>On November 9, Biden announced that he had created a task force to <a href="https://theconversation.com/president-elect-bidens-new-covid-19-task-force-gives-the-us-a-fresh-chance-to-turn-around-a-public-health-disaster-149906">“limit the spread of the virus”</a> on January 20, 2021, the date he will be sworn in. Throughout November, he continued to make statements on this topic: “I am not going to shut down the economy, period. I am going to shut down the virus,” he stressed on November 19, rejecting the idea of a national lockdown. This stance is questionable. What means and tools does Biden – and, more widely, the American federal government – really have to fight Covid-19?</p>
<p>It should be noted that government policies against this kind of pandemic deploy three kinds of “protection” for citizens: the production of medical equipment (tests, masks, respirators, hospital beds), behavior regulation to slow down the spread (quarantine, social distancing, forbidding large gatherings), and communication to legitimize these safety measures and the government’s temporarily increased infringement of civil liberties. In the United States, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism">American exceptionalism</a> has led to a perplexing, asymmetrical political response against Covid-19 (with the federal government and state governors in opposition). The death toll of more than a quarter million Americans is there to serve as a reminder of the failures of that response.</p>
<h2>A chaotic political response</h2>
<p>That being said, the federal agencies that form the core of the US public health system – the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Federal Drug Administration (FDA), the Public Health Service (PHS), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – are globally renowned for their scientific expertise. These public institutions are equipped with unequalled powers of analysis, even in times of crisis, when risks are high and time is short. </p>
<p>These agencies should have been on the front line to produce an efficient political strategy, but with Donald Trump considering them the embodiment of the <a href="https://aoc.media/analyse/2020/10/29/trump-lobamacare-et-le-deep-state/">so-called “deep state”</a> in the healthcare sector, they and their highly qualified staff have been subject to his erratic will. Trump, publicly denying the reality of the epidemic despite the information at his disposal, exacerbated the weakness of the federal government. Returning it to a position of strength will be a major challenge for the Biden administration.</p>
<p>In the meantime, faced with the federal government’s erratic response and a lack of national standards, each state governor has developed its own version of protective measures. The way regulations were implemented in the blue and red states has certainly been enlightening. Democratic governors Gavin Newsom (California) and Andrew Cuomo (New York), for example, quickly rolled out social-distancing measures, whereas Republican governors in the South and Midwest used the pretext of individual freedoms and prioritizing the economy to avoid doing so.</p>
<p>This chaotic political response against the pandemic has led to an irregular spread of the virus across the country. The 2020 elections have exacerbated these disparities even further. David Mayhew’s theory of <a href="https://www.amazon.fr/Congress-Electoral-Connection-David-Mayhew/dp/0300017774">“electoral connection”</a> gives some insight as to why, when political tensions are high, the desire to be re-elected takes precedence over effective public policy. For Republicans, this translated as unwavering loyalty to Trump, even when it was revealed that he’d <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/09/trump-coronavirus-deadly-downplayed-risk-410796">concealed how deadly Covid-19 was</a>. </p>
<p>And let us not forget the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/15563275_It's_the_Institutions_Stupid_Why_Comprehensive_Health_Insurance_Always_Fails_in_America">“it’s the institutions, stupid”</a> factor – that is, the fragmented organization of the US healthcare system, which explains why creating effective national policy in this area has always been difficult. These reasons also explain why creating a large-scale program to fight Covid-19 remains a challenge for the new leadership.</p>
<h2>The executive order way</h2>
<p>Research into the transition between the Obama and Trump administrations have shown that Republican officials explicitly ignored the “briefing books” (<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Risk-Undoing-Democracy/dp/0393357457">diligently drawn up by their predecessors</a>). Similarly, the Trump administration largely ignored the “pandemic guidebook” created by the National Security Council. </p>
<p>President-elect Joe Biden, who has shown his desire to be surrounded by experts rather than ideologues, will certainly not repeat the same mistake. The ongoing debate around whether to give <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/18/biden-coronavirus-team-deborah-birx-437923">Deborah Birx</a>, the Trump administration coronavirus coordinator, a role in Biden’s future Covid-19 task force shows how important the transfer of information between the two administrations is. Birx is not a Trump appointee, and held the role of US global AIDS coordinator under President Barack Obama. Furthermore, her experience has allowed her to develop relationships with state governors and key senior officials in the aforementioned health agencies.</p>
<p>This expertise would certainly be an asset to the Biden task force, which intends to rebuild from scratch the government’s efforts against the coronavirus. Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key player in the fight against Covid-19 and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, will almost certainly be part of that effort, although we won’t know in what capacity until 20 January: Fauci still holds a position in the Trump administration. The fact that Biden has chosen <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/11/biden-klain-chief-staff-436168">Ron Klain</a>, who has experience in managing the Ebola virus epidemic under the Obama administration, to be his chief of staff shows strong political will. This should bode well for an effective, realistic national communication strategy that will legitimize the use of social distancing measures. This would prevent PPE shortages and help implement a country-wide, efficient, coordinated vaccination policy. However, overly picky interpretation of bureaucratic regulations in force could still cause road bumps.</p>
<h2>A politically polarized country</h2>
<p>On the other hand, state governors and other municipal must issue decrees for a significant number of precautions (closing public schools, venues and administrations, mask mandates, etc.) to be brought into force. In the current polarized climate, a number of <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/13/republican-governors-reject-biden-mask-orders-436385">red state governors</a> have stated that they will not impose mask mandates, specifically those of South Dakota and Nebraska. These Republicans argue that the recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aren’t legally binding, and that mask-wearing should remain a personal choice.</p>
<p>If the Democrats hold the political majority in both houses, Congress could play a major role to assist the executive branch in implementing a large-scale public health program by supporting executive orders and unblocking necessary public funds. However, the current gulf between both parties and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/31/opinion/trump-coronavirus-economy.html">Republican fealty</a> toward Trump makes the idea of using wide-reaching bipartisan measures against the pandemic a distant fantasy. So Biden’s only option is to use executive orders. This will allow him to promote and support mask, test and vaccine production, and create greater contact-tracing capacity. As dictated by the separation of powers in the US Constitution, however, mask mandates and other such measures will remain the prerogative of governors and local authorities.</p>
<p>On January 5, 2021, two run-off elections will take place in Georgia that will determine whether the Democrats will regain control of the Senate. The party’s candidates are campaigning to expand access to healthcare, whereas the Republicans are repeating attacks about <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/15/georgia-runoffs-senate-health-care-436534">“socialized medicine”</a> despite the pandemic’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/georgia-coronavirus-cases.html">deadly toll in their state</a>. </p>
<p>Against this political backdrop, it is likely that electoral politics will prevail over Biden’s effort to forcefully eradicate Covid-19. The road to the end of the pandemic looks to be long and painful, even with the ever-present hope of a vaccine to save the day.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Translated from the French by Rosie Marsland for <a href="http://www.fastforword.fr/en">Fast ForWord</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>The Fact check US section received support from <a href="https://craignewmarkphilanthropies.org/">Craig Newmark Philanthropies</a>, an American foundation fighting against disinformation.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151322/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Does the president-elect have the means to solve the health crisis? How much leeway does he have when it comes to public health?William Genieys, Directeur de recherche CNRS au CEE, Sciences Po Larry Brown, Professeur invité au Laboratoire interdisciplinaire d'évaluation des politiques publiques (LIEPP), Sciences Po, Columbia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1505552020-12-06T21:29:18Z2020-12-06T21:29:18ZFact check US: Is there an ‘antifa threat’ in the United States, as Donald Trump claims?<p>Ever since the antiracism protests that followed the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/george-floyd-investigation.html">May 25 death of George Floyd</a> at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, President Donald Trump has repeatedly asserted that that Antifa (short for “antifascist”) groups threaten American democracy. On September 30, he once again called them (in his usual style) <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-marine-one-departure-093020/">“a very bad group”</a>, which he says should be considered a “terrorist organization”.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366706/original/file-20201030-15-4j7fci.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366706/original/file-20201030-15-4j7fci.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366706/original/file-20201030-15-4j7fci.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=115&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366706/original/file-20201030-15-4j7fci.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=115&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366706/original/file-20201030-15-4j7fci.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=115&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366706/original/file-20201030-15-4j7fci.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=144&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366706/original/file-20201030-15-4j7fci.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=144&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366706/original/file-20201030-15-4j7fci.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=144&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<h2>The origins of the antifascist movement</h2>
<p>The term refers more to an amorphous movement than an association, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-antifa-trump.html">flexible network of activists</a> who share a general philosophy, sometimes try to coordinate their activities, but generally operate spontaneously, responding to events at a highly local level. There’s no hierarchy, official status or precise system of organization. </p>
<p>Local groups are independent and do not announce their actions ahead of time. The number of members varies, increasing or decreasing depending on the circumstances. Sometimes they can work with loosely structured organizations such as Black Lives Matter, other times they work by themselves. Their sometimes violent actions have been rejected by many protest organizers working for causes that Antifa groups care about – authoritarianism and antifascism, racism, homophobia and xenophobia, for example.</p>
<p>All this means that it is difficult to establish the exact genealogy of the Antifa movement. The oldest group in operation, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_City_Antifa">Rose City Antifa</a>, was created in Portland, Oregon, in 2007, with the aim of shutting down a neo-Nazi music festival. While Trump singled out the Antifa movement after his election, they gained prominence after the tragic events in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 11, 2017. That day a rally by white supremacists and neo-Nazis also attracted counter-protestors, including Antifa activists. They were demonstrating peacefully when James Alex Fields Jr., a white supremacist, drove his car into the crowd, killing one person and injuring more than a dozen others. </p>
<p>Fields’s actions were deemed a terrorist attack and he currently in prison serving two life sentences without the possibility of parole. In response to the deadly violence perpetrated by Fields, Trump claimed that there were <a href="https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/apr/26/context-trumps-very-fine-people-both-sides-remarks/">“very fine people on both sides”</a> and in the first presidential debate <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/30/politics/proud-boys-trump-white-supremacists-debate/index.html">refused to condemn</a> violent right-wing groups. His remarks were widely criticized.</p>
<h2>Are they really a threat?</h2>
<p>At least one death has been attributed to a person affiliated wth the Antifa movement. On August 29, a member of the far-right group “Patriot Prayer” who was part of a pro-Trump caravan in Portland, Oregon, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/31/video/portland-protests-shooting-investigation.html">died after being shot</a>. The man accused of the killing, Michael Reinoehl, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/us/michael-reinoehl-antifa-portland-shooting.html">was shot by US marshals</a> five days later. Overall, however, data show that Antifa activists have been involved in <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/who-are-antifa-and-are-they-threat">relatively few violent incidents</a> compared to white supremacists, who have conducted at least <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/2020_10_06_homeland-threat-assessment.pdf">40 lethal attacks since 2018</a> according to the Department of Homeland Security.</p>
<p>Despite this, Trump and his attorney general, William Barr, have accused the Antifa movement of being the main instigators of violence, looting and public unrest. This is what serves as justification for the administration’s labeling them as “a domestic terrorist group”. </p>
<p>For both legal and political reasons, such accusations are immediately met with scepticism and criticism. Because the United States has no <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/07/us/domestic-terror-law.html">domestic terror law</a> – something opposed by both progressive and conservative public officials – the only possibility would be to place the Antifa movement on the list of “foreign terrorist organizations”, something that has no basis in fact. The alternative would be take thousands of activists to court, thus criminalizing political beliefs and violating fundamental rights guaranteed by the US Constitution.</p>
<h2>A polarized country</h2>
<p>So does the Antifa movement represent a real threat to American democracy? Let us look more broadly at the partisan, political conflict that is being felt across the country. The Antifa movement is part of a polarization of political views that is eroding one the foundations of the American republic, the mutual recognition of the legitimacy of both political sides.</p>
<p>The groups against which the Antifa movement positions itself, including <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/five-myths-about-antifa/2020/09/11/527071ac-f37b-11ea-bc45-e5d48ab44b9f_story.html">white supremacists, neo-fascists and right-wing nationalists</a>, have been involved in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_terrorism#Post-2001">numerous violent actions and killings</a>. However, the Antifa movement’s own actions can contribute to the legitimization of violence, escalate conflicts rather than defuse them, and expose peaceful protesters to danger.</p>
<p><a href="https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/10076/2533">Calls for violence</a>, whatever the source, can also be used by right-wing extremists to justify their own actions. There have even been cases of white nationalists infiltrating Antifa ranks to <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/06/02/twitter-shuts-down-white-nationalist-group-posing-as-antifa-after-donald-trump-jr-shares-its-tweet/">act as provocateurs</a> in order to incite violence. </p>
<h2>One variable in a complex equation</h2>
<p>While Antifa activists can help create an environment that encourages this violence, they rarely plan and even more rarely control the violence that sometimes breaks out at protests – a fact that even the FBI has recognized. They are just one variable in a context that is ripe for sometimes violent interactions between opposing groups.</p>
<p>In an <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/2020_10_06_homeland-threat-assessment.pdf">October 9 report</a>, the Department of Homeland Security called the white-supremacist movement the “most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland”. By comparison, the Antifa movement has no structure or centralized hierarchy and thus it does not constitute a threat to American democracy, much less the United States.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Translated from the French by Rosie Marsland for <a href="http://www.fastforword.fr/en">Fast ForWord</a> and Leighton Walter Kille of The Conversation France.</em></p>
<p><em>The Fact check US section received support from <a href="https://craignewmarkphilanthropies.org/">Craig Newmark Philanthropies</a>, an American foundation fighting against disinformation.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150555/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mario Del Pero ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>The anti-fa movement gained momentum in the United States following the election of Donald Trump. However, its members do not constitute a threat in the sense of the American president.Mario Del Pero, Professeur d’histoire internationale, Sciences Po Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1511422020-12-01T18:48:02Z2020-12-01T18:48:02ZFact check US: Will Trump’s chaotic transition weaken American democracy?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371989/original/file-20201130-13-12vax5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">file t syg</span> </figcaption></figure><p>The 2020 US presidential election has been filled with tension and suspense, but the end result is now no longer in doubt: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-president.html">Joe Biden won by 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232</a> and will become the 46th US president at noon on January 20.</p>
<p>That Biden took home 306 electoral votes is ironic, as that’s was the precise number that Trump won in 2016 and that he himself called a <a href="https://www.factcheck.org/2016/11/trump-landslide-nope/">“landslide”</a> despite losing the popular vote by 2.8 million. 2020 was a different matter: Trump not only lost the popular vote, this time by 6 million, but he was also bested in battleground states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that were key to his 2016 win.</p>
<p>Despite Biden’s clear victory, Trump has refused to concede, repeatedly claiming with no supporting evidence that Democrats engaged in “massive voter fraud” and that he should have won. Since the election, he and his lawyers have launched dozens of lawsuits seeking to overturn the results, the vast majority of which have been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/20/us/politics/trump-election-lawsuits.html">tossed out of court</a>.</p>
<p>When the states of Michigan and Georgia certified their elections on November 23, effectively locking in Biden’s victory, the head of the General Services Administration authorized the start of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/11/23/21611906/biden-transition-gsa-trump-emily-murphy-acertain">presidential transition process</a>. Still, Trump continues to contest the election results.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1324386685858287616"}"></div></p>
<p>As his legal remedies were being exhausted, the president has tried unsuccessfully to use the weight of his office to end official certification of the vote in some key states. For example, he summoned Republican elected officials to Washington in order to get them to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/19/wayne-county-rescind-certifying-election/">pressure state legislatures</a> to overturn the election results on the pretext of fraud.</p>
<p>In a now-infamous press conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington, DC, Trump’s team of lawyers, led by former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, claimed that there was a conspiracy hatched by Venezuela, George Soros, China, “Antifa” activists, and the Democratic Party. </p>
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<p>That Trump is refusing to concede based on such far-fetched conspiracy theories is highly irregular, to say the least.</p>
<p>A wide range of journalists, scholars and politicians – including a number of <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/517935-romney-unthinkable-and-unacceptable-to-not-commit-to-peaceful-transition-of">high-ranking Republicans</a> – have highlighted the danger that a contested presidential transition could pose to American democracy. To put things into perspective, it’s useful to look at history to understand how far presidents on the losing side of an election have gone and what is specific about the current situation.</p>
<h2>Historical precedents for tense elections</h2>
<p>Tense or contested elections have happened before. The 2000 presidential race between Gore and Bush saw results delayed until December 13, when Al Gore finally conceded defeat after the Supreme Court decision to stop counting ballots in Florida.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371362/original/file-20201125-15-1qdcvxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371362/original/file-20201125-15-1qdcvxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371362/original/file-20201125-15-1qdcvxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371362/original/file-20201125-15-1qdcvxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371362/original/file-20201125-15-1qdcvxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371362/original/file-20201125-15-1qdcvxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371362/original/file-20201125-15-1qdcvxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371362/original/file-20201125-15-1qdcvxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cover of the book <em>Fraud of the Century</em> by Roy Morris Jr. on the 1876 election (Simon and Schuster, 2003).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another moment of tension is <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2020/11/03/how-a-lame-duck-trump-could-imperil-the-united-states-and-what-congress-can-do-to-stop-him/">Herbert Hoover’s 1932 loss to Franklin Delano Roosevelt</a>. Although the circumstances are very different, there are interesting <a href="https://theconversation.com/divided-we-stand-looking-back-to-the-1920s-to-understand-the-united-states-today-108028">similarities between the two eras and two presidents</a>. Like Trump, Herbert Hoover was a wealthy businessman who came late to politics. He opposed his party’s establishment, ruled alone and shattered the prevailing ideological consensus. He also supported an isolationist, protectionist and nativist policy, with mass deportations of immigrants.</p>
<p>Hoover also tried to scare voters about his opponent’s so-called socialism and lost the election because of his inability to resolve the crisis that followed the crash of 1929. Despite this, he continued to promise that an economic recovery was underway, using the long period between election and inauguration to sow discord, undermine the economy and limit the options for his successor. This period of tension eventually resulted in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twentieth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution">20th amendment</a>, adopted in 1933, which moved the beginning and ending of the presidential term from March 4 to January 20. </p>
<p>Still, two major differences distinguish 1932 from the 2020 elections: the Republican Party had suffered a crushing defeat in both houses of Congress and Hoover never contested the election results.</p>
<p>We have to go back to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1876_United_States_presidential_election">1876</a> to find elections that were subject to multiple allegations of electoral fraud, with disputes over 20 electoral votes in four states. Congress eventually stepped in to resolve the ensuing constitutional crisis through a bipartisan electoral commission. It gave birth to the infamous <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/compromise-of-1877">Compromise of 1877</a> under which the Southern Democrats acknowledged the Republican candidate as president on the condition of pulling the remaining federal troops out of the South. This ended the Reconstruction era as well as the hope of integration of blacks in the southern states. It eventually paved the way for the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Jim-Crow-law">“Jim Crow laws”</a> that, among other things, made voting difficult for black Americans.</p>
<h2>Democratic norms of transition of power</h2>
<p>The 1963 <a href="https://www.gsa.gov/cdnstatic/Presidential_Act_of_1963.pdf">Presidential Transition Act</a> facilitates the orderly and peaceful transition of power of the executive branch. Amended several times, it states that the <a href="https://www.gsa.gov/governmentwide-initiatives/presidential-transition-directory/external-transition-resources/guiding-legislation-presidential-transition-directory">General Services Administration</a> (GSA) must provide the president-elect’s transition team with resources and access to government services. This year the GSA’s administrator, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_W._Murphy">Emily Murphy</a>, waited until November 23, three weeks after the major media had named Biden as the winner, before signing the paperwork.</p>
<p>While the transition has now formally started, Trump has continued to dig in his heels, and it is possible that he may refuse to give the traditional <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-defeated-presidential-candidates-deliver-concession-speeches-180976252/">concession speech</a>. The speech is a common practice among presidents since 1896 and has been seen as a way to ease tensions and unify the country, as was the case for Al Gore in 2000. There is also speculation that Trump could be the first president not to attend the inauguration of his successor since Andrew Johnson in 1869. In form as in substance, there is little to no historical precedent for his actions.</p>
<p>Donald Trump’s primary focus is to remain a force in politics and the media. To do so requires diminishing the authority of the existing press and politicians, so he has built up over time an alternative narrative blaming them for fraud and corruption. The goal is to delegitimize his opponent, place himself as a victim of the evil forces of the “deep state” and the “fake news”, and take on the role of the hero – that he is strong and not weak, a winner and not a loser. This narrative reversal is an attempt to protect Trump’s “brand” and keep his supporters in line. Despite the complete absence of proof, <a href="https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_us_111820/">70% of Republicans</a> say that they believe that Joe Biden won by fraud (though that may be more <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/30/upshot/republican-voters-election-doubts.html">wishful thinking than deep conviction</a>).</p>
<h2>Looking forward</h2>
<p>While the United States’ democratic institutions and checks and balances, including the judiciary, have survived this test, the 2020 elections highlighted important weaknesses in the country’s electoral system: the lack of uniform standards for election certification, the uncertainty about the legal competence of obscure <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/23/us/politics/election-michigan-board-state-canvassers.html">canvassing boards</a>, and the theoretical power of some <a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/legislatures-override-electors/">state legislatures to appoint their own electors</a> in defiance of the popular vote.</p>
<p>What has saved American democracy so far has been the integrity of local officials, such as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/16/georgia-brad-raffensperger-lindsey-graham-elections-ballots">Secretary of State in Georgia</a>, who have followed the rule of the law and norms as practiced. One may wonder, however, what might have happened with a tighter result, as in 2000, or with a more competent authoritarian. This is especially worrisome if you consider the millions of Americans who, more interested in victory than democracy, seemed indifferent to or even supportive of Trump’s sustained assault on long-held norms.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The Fact check US section received support from <a href="https://craignewmarkphilanthropies.org/">Craig Newmark Philanthropies</a>, an American foundation fighting against disinformation.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151142/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>The transition between Donald Trump and Joe Biden has formally begun, yet the outgoing president still refuses to concede. How far can he go and has such a situation been experienced in American history?Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy, Assistant lecturer, CY Cergy Paris UniversitéLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1505542020-12-01T18:48:00Z2020-12-01T18:48:00ZFact check US: Could the Supreme Court still save Donald Trump?<p>The 2020 US election has been a tense affair. Polls leading up to the contest indicated that the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, might win handily. On Election Day, however, Trump scored an early win in Florida and had initial leads in some of the key battlegrounds that tipped things his way in 2016. But as state election officials counted the immense number of mail-in ballots, demonstrating courage, discipline and integrity, the balance, as expected, shifted in Biden’s favor and he was ultimately declared the winner on November 7, with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-president.html">306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232</a>.</p>
<p>Even in the weeks leading up to November 3, Trump had been making broad and baseless accusations of <a href="https://theconversation.com/fact-check-us-will-mail-in-voting-result-in-massive-fraud-146230">“massive fraud”</a>, claiming that the Democrats wanted to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g6NgoqEDOI">“steal the election”</a> and saying that he would “take his case” to the Supreme Court if didn’t win. Trump’s attitude demonstrates just how little he knows about the American judicial system – not just the need to produce evidence when claims of fraud are made, but also the checks and balances inherent to the US Constitution, in particular the judiciary.</p>
<p>Trump has never been much for mystery. When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/09/18/100306972/justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-champion-of-gender-equality-dies-at-87">passed away on September 18</a>, he quickly selected the conservative judge Amy C. Barrett to replace her and pushed for her confirmation before the election. This went against the principle established by the Republicans themselves in 2016 – that a new justice should be named after the presidential election so that voters could make their voices heard. Trump’s intent was clear: he wanted to ensure that there would be six Republican-leaning justices so that, should a case come before the court that could affect the outcome of the election, he could in theory count on their support. </p>
<p>The historical precedent was the 2000 presidential election, when the Court’s highly controversial <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/00-949"><em>Bush v. Gore</em></a> decision stopped the recount in Florida and in effect gave the presidency to George W. Bush. But while the 2020 election was certainly tense, it wasn’t at all the same situation as two decades earlier. The situation in 2000 involved just 537 votes at the recount stage in one state. In 2020, Trump suffered clear losses in a series of swing states, with no evidence of significant irregularities, much less “massive fraud”.</p>
<h2>The need for a “federal question”</h2>
<p>The primary role of the Supreme Court is as an appellate court, ruling on disputes that have already passed through federal or state courts. It has original jurisdiction only in issues between states or pertaining to ambassadors. </p>
<p>According to the US Constitution, elections are organized at the state level, and it is for them to decide matters such as the number of polling stations, early voting, the threshold at which a recount may be requested, and so forth. Election disputes and litigation thus must first be heard before the states’ courts – first in trial courts, then appellate courts and, if necessary, to the state supreme court. For a case to be handled by the federal courts, there needs to be a “federal question” that involves the Constitution or federal law. For the Supreme Court to grant a request to review a case, at least four justices must accept it. </p>
<p>In 2000, the Supreme Court was criticized for accepting <em>Bush v Gore</em>, thus getting entangled in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/20/us/bush-v-gore-a-special-report-election-case-a-test-and-a-trauma-for-justices.html">“political thicket”</a>. The justices could have left the issue to the mechanisms provided by the Constitution and federal law (USC §5 & 6). The reasoning of the conservative majority of justices was that the recount dispute in Florida had to be settled to meet the “safe harbor deadline”. In its ruling, the court wrote that the principle of “equal protection of the laws” as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment had been violated by the use of different methods of recounting in different counties. The Republican Party’s request to stop the recount was therefore granted. In their dissenting opinion, the minority justices harshly critiqued the ruling, “which has forever damaged the Court’s legitimacy”.</p>
<h2>What about 2020?</h2>
<p>This time around, Chief Justice John Roberts is acutely aware that should a case come before the conservative-leaning court that could affect the Electoral College balance, Trump – while having received <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/11/us/bidens-popular-vote-lead-grows-to-5-million-as-counting-continues.html">6 million fewer votes than Joe Biden</a> – might be elected to a second term. Regardless of the legal grounds, if any, the decision would rightly be seen as partisan and ideological – and the credibility and legitimacy of the court would be dealt yet another severe blow. The risk was real because with Barrett on the court, Roberts no longer holds the deciding vote and is not necessarily in a position to prevent four of his conservative colleagues from accepting the case and five of them from ruling in the incumbent president’s favor – if such a case existed, which has so far turned out not to be the case.</p>
<p>Since Trump’s election loss, Republicans have launched dozens of lawsuits in federal courts and various swing states and nearly all have been <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-election-overturn/2020/11/28/34f45226-2f47-11eb-96c2-aac3f162215d_story.html">promptly dismissed</a>, including at least nine in Pennsylvania and four in Michigan. In Texas, both a federal court and the state’s supreme court denied two Republican requests to throw out nearly 130,000 ballots that had been cast at drive-through polling sites in Harris County, which is heavily Democratic. In federal court, US District Judge Andrew Hannon, appointed by President George W. Bush, denied the request from GOP candidates, ruling that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue.</p>
<p>Despite all the machinations and overheated rhetoric, states have been steadily certifying their election results: <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-55006188">Georgia</a> on Nov. 20, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/biden-transition-updates/2020/11/23/938015808/michigan-a-state-where-biden-leads-to-certify-election-results">Michigan</a> on Nov. 23, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/us/pennsylvania-certifies-election-biden.html">Pennsylvania and Nevada</a> on Nov. 24, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/30/us/politics/wisconsin-arizona-election-results.html">Arizona and Wisconsin</a> on Nov. 30. When recounts are conducted, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/could-recount-flip-key-battleground-history-says-don-t-count-n1246596">mistakes are rare</a> and even then, don’t always work out as the plaintiffs wanted. After a recount in two Wisconsin counties for which Trump paid $3 million, it was Biden who came out ahead, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/28/joe-biden-gains-votes-in-wisconsin-county-after-trump-ordered-recount">gaining 257 additional votes</a>.</p>
<h2>The hard truth</h2>
<p>While the president has continued to claim that the election was “rigged” and “stolen”, reality seems to be sinking in. In an <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/29/trump-acknowledges-the-supreme-court-.html">November 29 interview with Fox News</a>, Trump asserted that it was “on to SCOTUS”, but added, “the problem is, it’s hard to get into the Supreme Court”. </p>
<p>At this point, it is highly unlikely that the Supreme Court would accept a case that could tip the balance of the 2020 election, even if such a case existed. And even if, say, Trump’s <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/11/chris-christie-trump-legal-team-national-embarrassment-lawyer-sidney-powell.html">“elite strike force team”</a> were somehow able to move Pennsylvania to his column, that still wouldn’t be enough. Thus barring completely implausible developments, Donald Trump’s time in the White House will end at noon on January 20, 2021. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article was translated from the French by Rosie Marsland for <a href="http://www.fastforword.fr/en">Fast ForWord</a> and Leighton Walter Kille of The Conversation France.</em></p>
<p><em>The Fact check US section received support from <a href="https://craignewmarkphilanthropies.org/">Craig Newmark Philanthropies</a>, an American foundation fighting against disinformation.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150554/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne E. Deysine ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Since his election loss, the president has been threatening to go to the Supreme Court in attempt to overturn the results. Unfortunately for him, the court may not be the perfect arbiter of his dreams.Anne E. Deysine, Professeur émérite juriste et américaniste, spécialiste Etats-Unis, questions politiques, sociales et juridiques (Cour suprême), Université Paris Nanterre – Université Paris LumièresLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1505622020-11-29T17:56:35Z2020-11-29T17:56:35ZFact check US: Is it true that ‘In a country other than the US, Joe Biden would not be in the same party as the Democratic left’?<p>This summer, US representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – popularly known as “AOC” – stated that in any other country but the United States, <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/01/aoc-first-year-in-washington.html">she and Joe Biden wouldn’t be in the same political party</a>, and that the Democratic Party might be “too big of a tent”. To understand her statement, let’s look at the stance of one of the new icons of the American left.</p>
<h2>American leftists: inside/outside</h2>
<p>In June 2018, Ocasio-Cortez burst onto the political stage by winning the Democratic primary of New York State’s 14th district. At the time she was a member of the Democratic Party as well as the <a href="https://www.dsausa.org/">Democratic Socialists of America</a> (DSA), founded in 1982, an organization of approximately 45,000 activists. She went on to win the election, becoming the youngest member of Congress in American history, and has come to symbolize the <a href="https://www.dsausa.org/statements/npc-statement-on-2018-elections/">new generation of young politicians</a> driven by the fight for social and economic justice. Three other young women, also elected in 2018, have ties to the DSA as well: Ilhan Omer, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley, and together they’ve been called <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/15/politics/who-are-the-squad/index.html">“the Squad” in the media</a> and been repeatedly attacked by Donald Trump.</p>
<p>In Congress, Ocasio-Cortez has maintained the style of DSA activists. The movement is marked by its “inside/outside” stance with regards to the Democratic Party, similar to that of Bernie Sanders who, while never part of the DSA, won their support. A former independent, Bernie Sanders aligned with the Democrats when he became a senator in 2007, since Senate committees are allocated along party lines.</p>
<p>Like Sanders, DSA-affiliated activists such as Ocasio-Cortez have several options to choose from: remain independent, form their own party or seek to gain traction for their ideas among Democrats. For example, they and other progressive Democrats support an environmental plan called the <a href="https://information.tv5monde.com/info/climat-le-green-new-deal-d-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-peut-il-changer-la-donne-322761">“Green New Deal”</a>, as well as the public health care plan supported by Sanders, “Medicare for All”, developed by <a href="https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/906703">Doctors for Single Payer</a> and trade unions. Donald Trump exploits the DSA as part of his repeated claims that the Democratic Party is “socialist” and deliberately conflating them with antifa (antifascist) groups that have assertively faced off with alt-right white supremacists.</p>
<p>In a July 2020 <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/01/aoc-first-year-in-washington.html"><em>New York Magazine</em> interview</a>, Ocasio-Cortez reaffirmed her affiliation with the Democratic Party while stating that in any other country, she and Joe Biden wouldn’t be in the same party – an assertion picked up by the magazine linked to the DSA, <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/01/aoc-joe-biden-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-same-party"><em>Jacobin</em></a>. She still plays by the rules, however: Along with John Kerry, she is the co-leader of the <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13052020/biden-ocasio-cortez-kerry-climate-task-force">Climate Task Force</a>, a think tank formed by Biden during his campaign. Similarly, when Sanders conceded the primaries in the spring of 2020, he firmly called for his supporters to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/15/bernie-sanders-joe-biden-irresponsible-not-support">support Biden</a> and not to repeat the division of 2016.</p>
<h2>The reasons behind the Democrats’ centrism</h2>
<p>Single-round, winner-takes-all voting is the main reason why the DSA supports the Democrats in national elections. Under a proportional, multi-representative system (where parties present lists and candidates are elected according to the number of votes won, as in the European elections), the stakes would be very different. In spite of <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/19/us-democracy-two-party-system-replace-multiparty-republican-democrat/">constant criticism</a>, the chance of reforming the bipartisan system appears nonexistent. Concrete change must therefore come from within the system, even for those on the left.</p>
<p>It is also important to highlight the role that private funding plays in moderating the stance of the Democratic Party. It is telling that Joe Biden chose Kamala Harris as his running mate over Elisabeth Warren. Both are the equally brilliant, but as a presidential candidate Warren ran on a progressive platform of higher taxation for the rich and greater regulation of the financial markets. Aside from being a woman from an ethnic minority, Harris has a reputation as a firm centrist. Biden is from Delaware, a state with <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/10/dont-blame-delaware/502904/">low corporate tax rates</a> and with more companies officially headquartered there than inhabitants, and Harris also has the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/business/dealbook/kamala-harris-finance-tech.html">support of Wall Street</a>. Since the 1980s the Democratic Party has done little to support improved workers’ rights and increased unionization. One striking example was then-President Barack Obama’s broken promise to support the <a href="https://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/economy/news/2009/03/11/5814/the-employee-free-choice-act-101/">Employee Free Choice Act</a>, which would have reformed complex unionization procedures to the benefit of workers.</p>
<p>Additionally, the Democratic Party electorate is <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/26/what-the-2020-electorate-looks-like-by-party-race-and-ethnicity-age-education-and-religion/">far more disparate than that of the Republican party</a>, which has the advantage of being far more homogeneous and geographically concentrated. A <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w26247">study by the University of Texas</a> shows that the Electoral College system, in spite of its demographic proportionality, favors less populated, more rural states over more urban states with higher populations. If the Democrats want to win national elections, they must win over more moderate voters in small states. This is what played out in the 2018 midterm -elections, when a number of Democratic governors were <a href="https://www.thirdway.org/report/in-the-midwest-dem-districts-are-marching-to-the-suburbs">elected in Midwest states</a> precisely because of their moderate-centrist discourse.</p>
<h2>From center right to center left: responding to distress</h2>
<p>Things have changed within the Democratic Party, however. <a href="https://www-cairn-info.lama.univ-amu.fr/revue-etudes-2019-10-page-7.htm">As Laurence Nardon writes</a>, it has left its neoliberal period, characterized by the Clintons, whose supporters are now part of the establishment within the Democratic National Committee (DNC).</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton was the last candidate of the New Democrats era. The change began in 2008, when the financial crisis forced Barack Obama to propose increased protection and regulation. Windfalls of Roosevelt’s 1930s New Deal were revived with <a href="https://theconversation.com/fact-check-us-is-obamacare-dysfunctional-and-too-expensive-as-trump-claims-149083">Obamacare</a>, an act that extended health care coverage to millions of Americans. At the same time, Obama provided no real answer to social movements such as Occupy Wall Street (denouncing the impunity of financial markets) and <a href="https://fightfor15.org/">“Fight for 15”</a>, which centers on increasing the minimum wage to 15 dollars an hour.</p>
<p>The social tragedy brought about by the current pandemic has sped up the Democratic Party’s transformation. In the face of unchecked wealth concentration, spiraling private debt and <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/11/unemployment-rose-higher-in-three-months-of-covid-19-than-it-did-in-two-years-of-the-great-recession/">devastating unemployment</a>, it is no longer possible, even for centrist Democrats, to ignore the need for greater regulation and redistribution. It is true that Joe Biden has not adopted the “Medicare for All” plan promoted by Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, preferring to expand public health insurance without interfering with the private system, and the only thing he has taken from the “Green New Deal” is its focus on clean energy. But the <a href="https://joebiden.com/joes-vision/">president-elect’s program</a> is the most socially focused that the United States has seen in the last 30 years. </p>
<p>Joe Biden and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might indeed be in different political parties in any other country than the United States, but they are both in the Democratic Party, and changing times have moved them closer together rather than farther apart. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article was written in collaboration with Léo Durin of the Lille graduate school of journalism (ESJ Lille). It was translated from the French by Alice Heathwood for <a href="http://www.fastforword.fr/en">Fast ForWord</a> and Leighton Walter Kille of The Conversation France.</em></p>
<p><em>The Fact check US section received support from <a href="https://craignewmarkphilanthropies.org/">Craig Newmark Philanthropies</a>, an American foundation fighting against disinformation.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150562/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>The US electoral system and campaign-funding mechanisms have pushed the Democratic Party toward the center of the political spectrum. But progressive ideas are gaining ground within the party.Blandine Chelini-Pont, Professeur des Universités en histoire contemporaine, Aix-Marseille Université (AMU)Donna Kesselman, Professeure, Membre de l’IMAGER (EA 3958), Université Paris-Est Créteil Val de Marne (UPEC)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1505642020-11-26T16:08:19Z2020-11-26T16:08:19ZHas America become poorer under Donald Trump, as Joe Biden claims?<p>During the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8Z9Kqhrh5c">first televised presidential debate</a> and on <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/20/joe-bidens-claim-that-almost-half-americans-live-poverty/">several occasions</a> during the campaign, President-elect Joe Biden stated that during Donald Trump’s time in office, the United States became poorer, weaker and more violent.</p>
<p>Biden’s assertions about poverty are based on a <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5743308460b5e922a25a6dc7/t/5f87c59e4cd0011fabd38973/1602733471158/Covid-Projecting-Poverty-Monthly-CPSP-2020.pdf">University of Columbia study</a> that analyzed and modeled the monthly poverty rate of American families before, during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. The results indicate that, even in a best-case scenario, the monthly poverty rate increased from 15% to 16.7% between February and September 2020. In other words, poverty is on the rise, and has risen considerably since Trump took office in January 2017 due to the unprecedented health crisis that has struck <a href="https://www.banquemondiale.org/fr/news/press-release/2020/10/07/covid-19-to-add-as-many-as-150-million-extreme-poor-by-2021">countries throughout the world</a>.</p>
<h2>Multiple definitions of poverty</h2>
<p>At the same time, it is important to remember that there is no international consensus about the definition of poverty. The two major organizations, the <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/understanding-poverty">World Bank</a> and the <a href="https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development-goals/goal-1-no-poverty.html">United Nations Development Program</a>, agree on the causes of poverty but not on its definition. The former uses a monetary approach, focusing on the level of income needed to sustain one adult. Monetary poverty is defined as a level of consumption of less than $1.90 per day. The latter uses three notions: extreme poverty, meaning insufficient income to cover basic nutritional needs, defined as a minimum number of required calories (1,800 calories per person per day according to the WHO); general poverty, relating to basic, non-nutritional needs; and human poverty, defined according to indicators such as illiteracy, poor maternal health, preventable diseases and so on.</p>
<p>Access to resources is the common denominator in these definitions. More resources mean less poverty. In the United States, the Census Bureau provides poverty data. Let’s consider how poverty rates changed under Donald Trump, based on these various definitions.</p>
<h2>Trump took office during an economic expansion</h2>
<p>Prior to Trump’s taking power, unemployment had risen spectacularly during the 2008 financial crisis, which took place at the end of George W. Bush’s presidency and lasted into the beginning of Barack Obama’s first term. After 2012, it dropped steadily. Of course, unemployment means fewer resources.</p>
<p>Obama’s record was marred by the financial crisis he inherited (3.3 million more people were impacted), an opioid epidemic in rural areas and an inability to control rising healthcare costs, despite the passage of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/fact-check-us-is-obamacare-dysfunctional-and-too-expensive-as-trump-claims-149083">Affordable Care Act</a>. Poverty rose across demographics but African Americans, who are <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/02/27/examining-the-black-white-wealth-gap/">10 times poorer</a> than whites, were the hardest hit, further exacerbating inequalities. Among the poorest populations, life expectancy dropped, due to factors such as suicide, overdose, alcoholism and violent crime.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366111/original/file-20201028-23-djwwc9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366111/original/file-20201028-23-djwwc9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366111/original/file-20201028-23-djwwc9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366111/original/file-20201028-23-djwwc9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366111/original/file-20201028-23-djwwc9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366111/original/file-20201028-23-djwwc9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366111/original/file-20201028-23-djwwc9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Changes in unemployment since the 2008 financial crisis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.statista.com/chart/17878/unemployment-rate-in-the-united-states/">Stastita</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When Trump took office in January 2017, the American economy was back on track. The country had entered a period of expansion that would be described as the longest in its history. In December 2019, unemployment was at 3.5%, its lowest rate in half a century. Yet in the same year, the poverty rate in the United States was around 18%, with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ranking the United States <a href="https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm">fourth on its poverty rate index</a>. At the time, more than one in ten Americans suffered from food insecurity and 37 million Americans resorted to federal food assistance for low- and no-income people. This instability was largely due to the fact that half of all American households do not have sufficient savings to deal with unexpected expenses.</p>
<h2>Increased inequality is harder on minorities</h2>
<p>What was the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic? According to a <a href="https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/102605/2020-poverty-projections-assessing-three-pandemic-aid-policies-projections-of-heroes-act-policies-by-race-and-by-state-august-through-december.pdf">2020 study</a> by the Urban institute, rising poverty in the United States did not impact all Americans equally. In households where at least one person lost his/her job due to the health crisis, the rate of poverty between August and December is estimated at 15.6%, as compared to the annual projected rate of 9.1%. African American and Hispanic households with at least one job loss were disproportionately affected: the poverty rate in these communities should be close to 20% for the August-December period 2020, deepening disparities.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366114/original/file-20201028-21-iwms4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366114/original/file-20201028-21-iwms4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366114/original/file-20201028-21-iwms4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366114/original/file-20201028-21-iwms4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366114/original/file-20201028-21-iwms4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366114/original/file-20201028-21-iwms4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366114/original/file-20201028-21-iwms4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Unemployment skyrocketed in March 2020 due to the health crisis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf">Bureau of Labor Statistics</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.feedingamerica.org/research/coronavirus-hunger-research">Feeding America</a>, the largest network of food banks in the United States, nearly one in six Americans suffered from food insecurity in 2020, including 18 million children. The network reported that 98% of its distribution outlets have seen a rise in demand since the beginning of the crisis, in March 2020, and 37% are facing imminent resource shortages. The <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5743308460b5e922a25a6dc7/t/5f87c59e4cd0011fabd38973/1602733471158/Covid-Projecting-Poverty-Monthly-CPSP-2020.pdf">study</a> on which Joe Biden bases his assertions also indicates that the increase in poverty rates is higher among African Americans, Hispanics and children.</p>
<p>The government assistance and unemployment payments set out in the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/3548/text">CARES act</a>, the relief plan adopted in March 2020, enabled over 18 million people to escape monthly poverty in April, but this figure dropped to around 4 million people in August and September after additional aid for the unemployed expired. Since these measures were not extended, the monthly poverty rate was higher in September 2020 than at the start of the year.</p>
<p>The United States is undoubtedly poorer at the end of Donald Trump’s time in office. Having undermined its social safety net, the president deprived the country of crucial weapons in the fight against poverty, at a time when an unprecedented health crisis set it soaring.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article was written in collaboration with Ons Kaabia, University of Sousse, Tunisia; Farhat Hached, Sousse Faculty of Medicine; and Laura Alliche and Paul Boyer, Tours University Public School of Journalism (EPJT). It was translated from the French by Alice Heathwood for <a href="http://www.fastforword.fr/en">Fast ForWord</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>The Fact check US section received support from <a href="https://craignewmarkphilanthropies.org/">Craig Newmark Philanthropies</a>, an American foundation fighting against disinformation.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150564/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Olfa Kaabia ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Stunned by the health crisis, the United States is marked by a sharp rise in inequality. Between the beginning and the end of his mandate, Donald Trump will indeed have seen the country become poorer.Olfa Kaabia, Professeure Associée en Finance, INSEEC Grande ÉcoleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1492362020-11-02T19:31:15Z2020-11-02T19:31:15ZFact check US: Could Donald Trump find a way to cling to power?<p>By now it’s a familiar pattern: Donald Trump undermines the legitimacy of the US election, implying that mail-in voting – now prevalent due to the health crisis – will lead to <a href="https://theconversation.com/fact-check-us-will-mail-in-voting-result-in-massive-fraud-146230">“massive fraud”</a> and won’t commit to a <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-election-results-transfer-power_n_5f6bd70fc5b653a2bcaf9455">peaceful transfer of power</a>. Yet according to a study by the conservative <a href="https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud">Heritage Foundation</a>, mail-in voter fraud is practically non-existent – only 1,298 cases have been detected over the past 20 years (with an average of one to two cases per state), a vanishingly small number that would have no impact on the outcome.</p>
<p>Given the potential threat to the smooth running of the 2020 elections and a peaceful transfer of power, the bipartisan <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/08/03/nation/transition-integrity-projects-full-report/">Transition Integrity Project</a>, created by Rosa Brooks of the Georgetown Law Center and Nils Gilman of the Berggruen Institute, have explored six possible scenarios. Their goal was to identify preventive measures, minimize public disorder and guarantee the integrity of the election.</p>
<p>According to the group, unless Joe Biden wins both the popular vote and the electoral college by a significant margin, Trump could well attempt to interfere directly or indirectly with the electoral process. It is also not out of the question that he might go so far as to contest the results of the election and refuse to concede. This could play out in the courts and potentially lead to unrest and violence, particularly by extreme right-wing groups encouraged by the president’s implicit support.</p>
<h2>Scenario 1: no clear winner on November 3</h2>
<p>If the results are close or do not include the majority of mail-in ballots, Trump could initially appear to be the winner in some key states, since Republicans tend to vote more in person (estimated at 70%) than Democrats (between 25% and 45%). But the final results will not be known on the night of November 3, nor even on the morning of November 4, given the time needed to count mail-in ballots – a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/01/us/politics/trump-ballot-counting-election.html">long-held practice</a>. If the election is close, the uncertainty could last days, as it did in the Democratic primary for the Kentucky State Senate: Held on June 23, final results were not returned until June 30, or that of New York, where the final tally took three weeks. During such a period, the risk of misinformation would therefore be high, which explains the importance of having a large numbers of poll workers and election officials on hand.</p>
<p>Final results may also be slowed if the Republicans chose file suits in key states. Regulations surrounding mail-in vote counting <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/election-results-timing/">vary from state to state</a>: Some require ballots to arrive by Election Day, while others allow them to be tallied after November 3 as long as they were postmarked on or before Election Day.</p>
<h2>Scenario 2: a call for violence</h2>
<p>A second possibility is for Trump to claim victory via social media on election night, prior to the final, certified results. Incessantly repeating <a href="https://apnews.com/article/3f6b2adcf0b66066195f307e18173b6f">baseless claims of “voter fraud”</a>, Trump could seek to indirectly or directly mobilize his supporters to besiege polling stations in traditionally Democrat neighborhoods and potentially go so far as to attempt to destroy uncounted ballots. Such practices are unlikely, yet the risk is real. Even if the individuals involved were identified and charged, penalties would come later and would not restore the destroyed ballots.</p>
<p>To prepare for this scenario, election officials and local police forces are already being mobilized. Social media, including Facebook, have finally faced up to the dangers of online organization by far-right white-supremacist groups that the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/06/us/politics/homeland-security-white-supremacists-russia.html">Department of Homeland Security has described as “a persistent and lethal threat”</a>. Such groups’ radicalization was recently demonstrated by the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/us/domestic-terrorist-groups.html">attempted kidnapping of the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer</a>. Facebook and Twitter have removed several hundred accounts and pages pushing conspiracy theories and will continue doing so. Having banned political advertising in the summer, Twitter announced that it would <a href="https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/2020-election-changes.html">remove or label tweets calling the election before the official results available</a>, including those by candidates.</p>
<h2>Scenario 3: running out the clock</h2>
<p>In the third scenario, Republicans could file suits contesting the results to delay their certification.</p>
<p>As of today, <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/election-litigation/">more than 400 cases</a> on voting procedures and conditions have been filed. Rulings are handed down daily on issues such as the requirement to have a ballot certified by a witness and reception deadlines for mail-in ballots. It is already clear that there will be several dozen additional suits surrounding the counting and potential invalidation of votes. Republicans will try to have as many votes as possible rejected in key states, and the Democrats will file actions to have them reinstated. </p>
<p>This year it is not simply a matter of recounting votes, as it was in 2000, when the Supreme Court, in its controversial decision <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore"><em>Bush v. Gore</em></a> eventually put a stop to the recount. This time, courts will be asked to decide which ballots should be rejected – on the bases of lateness, the lack of a witness signature, or discrepancies between the voter signature on the ballot and that on record – and which should be counted. For example, Texas Republicans are attempting to have 127,000 votes thrown out in Harris County, which includes Democratic-leaning Houston. The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/01/us/politics/texas-harris-county-votes-republicans.html">Texas Supreme Court has denied the attempt</a>, but a hearing at the federal level is scheduled for Monday.</p>
<p>If litigation is referred to the Supreme Court, the court may not hear it; if it does, its ruling may not be as easily accepted as in 2000, since many Americans see the current Supreme Court as overtly partisan.</p>
<h2>Scenario 4: resistance from Republican-led states</h2>
<p>In cases where the results are close but tip in Biden’s favor, the political makeup of the state in question becomes critical. In certain states where the reins of power are held by both a Republican governor and Republican legislators, as in Florida and Ohio, representatives could send Republican electors to the Electoral College, even after a Biden victory. In states where power is shared between a majority Republican state congress and a Democrat governor, as in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, two competing lists of electors could be sent to Washington.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/3/15">“Electoral Count Act”</a> of 1887 (3 U.S.C. §5), amended in 1948, specifies that the governor certifies the election results and that any dispute must be resolved within the state 41 days after election day at the latest (this year, December 14). So in three key states – Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan – the Democrat governor should have the last say, particularly since the law does not provide for an appeal.</p>
<h2>Scenario 5: an Electoral College tie</h2>
<p>Congress will open and record the votes of the Electoral College in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021. But this time when, as per the <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xii">12th amendment of the US Constitution</a>, “the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates,” the procedure may not be a simple formality. Because each house is controlled by a different party, each may approve their own list, or both houses may reject the electors from some states. The legal framework is so vague that no one outcome can be certain.</p>
<p>In case of a tie, the 12th Amendment states that “the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President” and that “the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote”. As things stand, this method of adding up state representations rather that the individual votes of the 435 representatives would give the Republicans a majority to reelect their candidate. But everything hinges on the elections in the House and Senate, also on November 3, since the final decision would be up to the members of the new Congress, to be installed on January 3, 2021. Incidentally, the current Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is an unparalleled strategist who has already mapped the districts the Democrats must win on November 3 in order to have not only a seat majority but also a majority of blue states in the House of Representatives.</p>
<h2>The human factor</h2>
<p>This election cycle is an invitation to reflect on the limits of the law and the importance of the human factor. Whereas the law provides for conflict resolution in a range of scenarios, it is based on the implicit assumption that the main political players will respect the rules of the game. Unfortunately, this is not guaranteed to be the case in 2020. </p>
<p>Based on a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/presidential-polls-trump-biden">wide range of polls published at the time of writing</a>, there’s every chance that Joe Biden will be declared the winner by a large enough margin to prevent Trump from casting doubt on the results and inciting chaos. Should he lose the election yet refuse to recognize the results, the women and men of the Republican Party have a legal and moral responsibility, at both the state and federal levels, to refuse to follow him.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The Fact check US column is supported by <a href="https://craignewmarkphilanthropies.org/">Craig Newmark Philanthropies</a>, an American foundation fighting disinformation.</em></p>
<p><em>Translated from the French by Alice Heathwood for <a href="http://www.fastforword.fr/en">Fast ForWord</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149236/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne E. Deysine ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>If there’s not a clear winner of the November 3 election and the current president refuses to leave office, here are six scenarios that could play out.Anne E. Deysine, Professeur émérite juriste et américaniste, spécialiste Etats-Unis, questions politiques, sociales et juridiques (Cour suprême), Université Paris Nanterre – Université Paris LumièresLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1491942020-10-31T10:13:22Z2020-10-31T10:13:22ZFact check US: Is the US economy recovering, as Donald Trump claims?<p>His eye on the upcoming election, Donald Trump keeps repeating that the US economy is on an upswing and the “phenomenal job” of his administration did is responsible. “So we built the greatest economy in history… we close it down because of the China plague… and now we’re reopening, and we’re doing record business,” he alleged during the <a href="https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/09/30/presidential-debate-read-full-transcript-first-debate/3587462001/">first presidential debate</a> with Joe Biden on September 29. According to Trump, his administration put 10.4 million Americans back to work in just four months.</p>
<h2>Some positive signs</h2>
<p>In terms of the short-term job numbers, the claim is correct: The <a href="https://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.us.htm">Bureau of Labor Statistics</a> indicates an upturn since May, bringing hope that the current recession, which is of historic proportions, may be short-lived.</p>
<p>This hope is fueled by some encouraging economic news. Before the 2019 outbreak of the pandemic, the country experienced an <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-higher-wages-of-growth-11600298577?mod=MorningEditorialReport&mod=djemMER_h">increase in median household income</a> that to a certain extent also benefited poorer Americans. So the current economic woes should not overshadow the progress made – a result, claim Trump supporters, of the administration’s deregulatory measures and the controversial <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Cuts_and_Jobs_Act_of_2017">“Tax Cuts and Jobs Act”</a> of 2017.</p>
<p>The rebound in stock values raised morale in some quarters, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/28/business/stock-market-coronavirus.html">at least temporarily</a>. Americans’ net worth in 2020 <a href="https://www.axios.com/americans-net-worth-increase-stock-prices-b35a85c3-e162-474b-a291-586bf888405b.html">increased by nearly 7% in the second quarter</a> – the biggest rebound in the country’s history. It is now known that some well-off Americans used the money they received from the federal government’s stimulus package to <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/21/many-americans-used-part-of-their-coronavirus-stimulus-check-to-trade-stocks.html">invest in stocks</a> rather than make purchases, which is the point of any stimulus package.</p>
<p>Trump’s job-creation claim is also misleading: According to the same source, 22 million jobs were lost when the pandemic hit in the spring, so that the net result is still a loss of nearly 12 million jobs. The figure also masks the fact that many other jobs may be <a href="https://www.businessinsider.fr/us/trump-economy-hardship-recovering-quickly-statistics-coronavirus-stimulus-unemployment-evictions-2020-8">temporarily or even permanently lost</a>. According to <a href="https://www.axios.com/unemployment-open-jobs-every-state-48fd702c-146b-4d62-8088-16aa7c3463dc.html">recruitment agency Indeed</a>, job postings in New York and California, two states that at the heart of the US economy, are down 30% compared to 2019.</p>
<h2>The end of the longest economic boom</h2>
<p>After a short-lived upswing, other regions are seeing a drop in job offers again. US worker mobility helped correct labor-market imbalances in the past, but it is less effective in the face of a nationwide pandemic. The possibility of a lasting job-creation slowdown seems more than likely; hard-hit sectors include aviation, which has been hit with <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielreed/2020/10/01/airline-layoffs-american-united-southwest/#519e51ad6d27">waves of layoffs</a>, and tourism, as illustrated by Disney’s laying off <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/30/disney-leads-companies-announcing-layoffs-big-airline-job-cuts-loom.html">28,000 employees</a>.</p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.axios.com/september-jobs-report-coronavirus-7346c656-4278-4152-a455-7d3371f25891.html">UBS economist Brian Rose</a>, as many as 5 million Americans may have lost their jobs permanently. In October, the US economy created <a href="https://www.axios.com/september-jobs-report-coronavirus-7346c656-4278-4152-a455-7d3371f25891.html">fewer than 700,000 jobs</a>, a sure sign of the ongoing labor-market slowdown observed since May. This shows the limited impact of the stimulus package.</p>
<p>So the president’s pre-election enthusiasm should not obscure the fact that in view of the uncertain economic outlook, the road to a true recovery could be very long. Using a stimulus package in an attempt to the public is less effective at a time of deep political division and a health crisis caused by a deadly virus. Those who were hoping for a <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/v-shaped-recovery.asp">V-shaped recovery</a>, with a swift rebound when the health restrictions have been lifted, now fear <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/z-u-or-nike-swoosh-what-shape-will-our-covid-19-recovery-take/">it will be more of a “swoosh”</a>, with a massive drop followed by a slow and uncertain recovery.</p>
<p>Even worse is the prospect of a <a href="https://www.uschamber.com/series/above-the-fold/what-the-k-shaped-recovery">K-shaped recovery</a>, with the wealthy coming out on top thanks to their accumulated capital and the stock market, and more vulnerable sectors and minority groups durably impacted by the pandemic. This is confirmed by the <a href="https://www.axios.com/retail-sales-recovery-coronavirus-pandemic-5de2395f-5c61-4bbf-9d1e-11dc208e4b58.html">Census Bureau’s figures</a> on retail and food services. Similarly, the <a href="https://www.visualcapitalist.com/understanding-the-disconnect-between-consumers-and-the-stock-market/">disconnect between stock markets and the US consumer-confidence index</a> suggests that many Americans, particularly those who are most vulnerable, may not benefit from a recovery.</p>
<p>The economic crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic brought an <a href="https://www.nber.org/cycles/june2020.html">abrupt end</a> to the longest economic expansion in US history – <a href="https://www.nber.org/cycles/cyclesmain.html">128 months of growth</a>, eight more than the previous record, between the Cold War and 9/11. If the recovery is slow and uneven – and <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/business/us-economic-recovery-coronavirus">data indicate that that may well be the case</a> – it could profoundly damage the president’s chances of reelection.</p>
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<p><em>The Fact check US column is supported by <a href="https://craignewmarkphilanthropies.org/">Craig Newmark Philanthropies</a>, an American foundation fighting disinformation.</em></p>
<p><em>Translated from the French by Sally Laruelle for <a href="http://www.fastforword.fr/en">Fast ForWord</a></em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149194/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeremy Ghez ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Six months into the Covid-19 crisis, the president is boasting that the US economy is back on its feet. While the figures show that some job losses have been cut, there is little room for optimism.Jeremy Ghez, Professor of Economics and International Affairs, HEC Paris Business SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1490832020-10-29T20:34:53Z2020-10-29T20:34:53ZFact check US: Is Obamacare ‘dysfunctional and too expensive’, as Trump claims?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366373/original/file-20201029-13-4tmzx8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">file j gerk</span> </figcaption></figure><p>During the first debate of the 2020 presidential campaign, Donald Trump attacked his challenger, Joe Biden, asserting that “Obamacare is too expensive; it doesn’t work”. The attack was unsurprising given Trump’s obsession with this major health care reform, formally known as the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/111th-congress/house-bill/3590/text">Affordable Care Act</a> (ACA).</p>
<p>Work on the law that would become the ACA was initiated in 2009 by the Obama administration with the goal of extending health insurance to more than 20 million Americans out of the 45 million who didn’t have coverage. It was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIwM0gkLF0s&ab_channel=TheObamaWhiteHouse">signed into law</a> on March 23, 2010. While the law did not succeed in reining in the cost of the US health care system – in 2010, the reform was estimated to cost $940 billion over 10 years, revised to $1.76 trillion just two years later – it has reduced the percentage of Americans without health insurance substantially. In 2013, 20.3% of US citizens had no health insurance. Today, that figure has fallen to slightly above 10%.</p>
<h2>Obama’s political legacy</h2>
<p>The criticism of the Affordable Care Act is part of Donald Trump’s persistent attempts to erase Obama’s political legacy, which is in some ways that of Joe Biden as well. After taking office, Trump quickly launched an effort to <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Timeline_of_ACA_repeal_and_replace_efforts">“repeal and replace”</a> the ACA. While the Republicans controlled both the House and Senate at the time, the strategy failed. The proposed law passed the House by only a slim majority on May 4, 2017, and was rejected in the Senate on July 28. The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/us/politics/obamacare-partial-repeal-senate-republicans-revolt.html">deciding “no” vote was cast by John McCain</a>, the former Republican presidential candidate who has since passed on.</p>
<p>Despite his failure to repeal the ACA, <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Federal_policy_on_healthcare,_2017-2020">Trump kept attacking</a>. He cut federal taxes aimed at financing the development of the new health insurance system, encouraged Republican governors not to implement the reform in their states, and challenged the act in Federal court on numerous occasions. The Supreme court will have its say on the subject on November 10, when it rules on <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/usc-brookings-schaeffer-on-health-policy/2020/10/13/a-supreme-court-decision-to-strike-down-the-aca-would-create-chaos-in-the-health-care-system/"><em>California v. Texas</em></a>. The case concerns a suit bought by the Trump administration and a group of attorney generals challenging the law’s constitutionality. </p>
<p>Given the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, there is a real risk that the ACA will be overturned. However, the Covid-19 pandemic and the lack of any plausible alternative by Republicans weigh against such a ruling.</p>
<h2>A broad consensus</h2>
<p>Trump’s difficulties in overturning the ACA have their roots in the reform’s long development process, built on the political consensus of both Democrat and Republican health care policy experts. The law was developed by <a href="http://www.pressesdesciencespo.fr/fr/book/?gcoi=27246100830610">health insurance policy experts</a> both within government and outside (including think tanks and foundations), rather than career civil servants, worked for years to develop the program. In practice, the act is a subtle blend of extending the existing public programs of Medicare (targeting over-65s) and Medicaid (for isolated women and children), and drafting help from private insurers and employers. While certainly complex, the reform allowed for a gradual coverage extension of the health care safety net to a far greater number of US citizens and residents.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">President Barack Obama signs the Affordable Care Act on March 23, 2010.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Prior to the ACA, 20.3% of American citizens had no health insurance. Today, that figure has been cut in half, to just over 10%. Overall, around 25 million Americans have access the health system thanks to the Affordable Care Act. </p>
<p>On the other hand, expense of the reform has exceeded initial previsions: anticipated to cost $940 billion in 2010, in 2012, the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office revised the estimate to $1.76 trillion. And it has not succeeded in reducing health care spending in the United States, which still has by far the world’s most expensive health care system, spending more than <a href="https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm">$11,000 per capita annually</a>, 160% more than the OECD average. In all, 17% of the country’s GDP is spent on health care, yet 1 out of 10 Americans has no health coverage – and this is with the ACA in force. By comparison, France only spends 11% of its GDP for its health care system, which is universal.</p>
<h2>A hybrid system</h2>
<p>Part of the challenge of the ACA is its hybrid nature, a mix of public programs and private insurance. This is the basis for Trump’s claim that it “doesn’t work” and his demand that it be repealed and private insurance returned to the center of the system. This would take America back to the pre-reform status quo, when 20 million US citizens – seen as unprofitable or too risky by private insurers – were unable to obtain health coverage.</p>
<p>The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted some of the limitations of the ACA and the US health care system – those who have lost their jobs lose access to employer-provided insurance. This has reopened the debate around <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/25/upshot/medicare-for-all-basics-bernie-sanders.html">“Medicare for All”</a>, promoted by then-candidate Bernie Sanders during the primaries and supported by the progressive wing of the Democratic party.</p>
<p>Politically astute, Biden has been reaching out to Democrats who could support a gradual broadening of Medicare eligibility (Medicare-like, which lowers the threshold from 65 to 60 years of age) while retaining the structure of the consensus-based ACA. At a <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/blog/meet-press-blog-latest-news-analysis-data-driving-political-discussion-n988541/ncrd1029811">October 13 meeting in Des Moines</a>, Biden said, “I think one of the most significant things we’ve done is pass the Affordable Care Act”. Should Biden win the presidential election, it is therefore likely the ACA will live on.</p>
<p>While the Affordable Care Act has not been able to rein in US health care spending, it has reached its objectives in terms of increasing the number and percentage of Americans with access to health care.</p>
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<p><em>This Fact Check was written with the help of Manon Bernard from the Tours Public School of Journalism (EPJT). It was translated from the French by Alice Heathwood for <a href="http://www.fastforword.fr/en">Fast ForWord</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Fact check US is supported by <a href="https://craignewmarkphilanthropies.org/">Craig Newmark Philanthropies</a>, an American foundation fighting disinformation.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149083/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Genieys ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>The US president has relentlessly attacked the ACA since taking office. While more costly than hoped, the law has cut the number of Americans without insurance in half, more than meeting its goals.William Genieys, Directeur de recherche CNRS au CEE à Sciences Po, Sciences Po Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1489662020-10-27T18:40:31Z2020-10-27T18:40:31ZFact check US: Would Joe Biden’s energy plan really cause the loss of 10.3 million jobs in the oil and gas industry?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365858/original/file-20201027-19-1o7gpi2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C9%2C1024%2C671&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fishermen on the shore by decommissioned oil rigs in Port Aransas, Texas (March 11, 2019).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Loren Elliott/AFP</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On August 31, the <a href="https://www.donaldjtrump.com/media/yes-joe-biden-will-eliminate-fracking-jobs/">Trump campaign blog claimed</a> that Joe Biden’s <a href="https://joebiden.com/clean-energy/">clean-energy plan</a> would cause the loss of 10.3 million jobs related to the oil and gas industry – that is, <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_01102020.htm">6.5% of US jobs</a> in 2019. <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2018/02/12/petrole-de-schiste-comment-la-production-a-ete-decuplee-en-dix-ans-aux-etats-unis_5255531_4355770.html">While fracking</a> has helped the United States become the world’s <a href="https://www.latribune.fr/opinions/tribunes/petrole-americain-ce-que-l-on-nous-fait-croire-837645.html">leading crude-oil producer last year</a>, that figure is still exceedingly high. </p>
<p>To put it in perspective, for 10.3 million jobs to disappear, the <em>entire</em> oil and gas sector, along with all associated activity, would have to shut down. Such claims reflect the hyperbole of the 2020 presidential campaign.</p>
<h2>Where did this number come from?</h2>
<p>That figure is based on a <a href="https://www.api.org/%7E/media/Files/Policy/Jobs/Oil-and-Gas-2015-Economic-Impacts-Final-Cover-07-17-2017.pdf">2017 study</a> produced by the American Petroleum Institute (API), a <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Petroleum_Institute">trade and lobbying association</a>. Going beyond promoting the oil and gas industry, the API has distinguished itself in recent years by funding groups and initiatives that <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/02/oil-industry-fighting-climate-policy-states/606640/">fight efforts to address climate change</a>. In January 2021, the French energy group Total chose to <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/d18e0129-c42a-4698-aa22-8ee70fd49130">leave the API</a>, citing its opposition to US membership in the Paris climate agreement and its support for officials and groups that minimize or deny climate change.</p>
<p>The API’s study asserts that nearly 2.8 million jobs were directly linked to fossil fuels, including the many freelance workers employed in extraction. The rest are indirect and induced jobs – 5.3 million in sectors sustained by the spending of oil and gas companies (indirect) or that of their workers (induced), as well as 2.2 million generated by the capital investments of companies profiting from these activities.</p>
<p>Some states are certainly highly dependent on the oil and gas industry. In Texas, for example, almost 2 million jobs are in some way related to oil and gas (12.2% of overall employment across the state); in Oklahoma, 16.6% of all jobs are related. According to the API’s study, each job in the petrol and gas industry generates 2.7 jobs in other branches of the economy. This ratio is in line with <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/updated-employment-multipliers-for-the-u-s-economy/">results</a> published by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), estimating the number of additional jobs for each job in the extraction industry at 3.9 in 2019.</p>
<h2>Many jobs would remain</h2>
<p>When all was said and done, not only did Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, but the Democrats also won control of <a href="https://theconversation.com/bidens-job-gets-easier-after-senate-wins-in-georgia-but-dont-expect-a-progressive-revolution-152176">both the House and the Senate</a>. So does this mean that 10.3 million jobs in the US oil and gas industry will be eliminated if Biden’s energy plan becomes law? Absolutely not and for at least two reasons.</p>
<p>The API’s figures assumes the elimination of jobs that will continue to exist no matter what the US energy sector looks like in the future. Out of the 2.8 million direct jobs, more than 1 million are linked to the distribution of gas and petrol; others are linked to the manufacture of lubricants, or paving mix and asphalt blocks for roads. </p>
<p>Of course, switching to cleaner energy sources would not mark the end of roads or fuel stations; they would simply adapt to consumers’ needs – for example, offering battery-charging facilities or hydrogen fuel. Looking at the associated activities, only 6 million out of the 10.3 million jobs are specifically contingent on oil and gas production. That leaves 4.3 million jobs that will continue untouched.</p>
<h2>A net-zero emissions economy by 2050</h2>
<p>Biden’s plan does not call for a stop to the extraction of fossil fuels, nor a ban on fracking. Instead, it suggests progressively replacing them with renewable energies that will <a href="https://qz.com/1918202/the-meaning-behind-joe-bidens-job-creating-climate-plan/">generate new jobs</a>. His <a href="https://joebiden.com/clean-energy/">program</a> for a net-zero emissions economy by 2050 provides for $2,000 billion in spending, with the aim of reorienting the automobile industry’s technological strategy, increasing electricity production from clean energy, and repair ecosystems that have been damaged by resource extraction – mainly by abandoned, unplugged gas and oil wells. According to the plan, ecosystem rehabilitation alone would generate <a href="https://thebipartisanpost.com/all-articles/analyzing-joe-bidens-build-back-better-plan">250,000 direct jobs</a>.</p>
<p>Employment losses in the fossil-fuel sector must be weighed against the new jobs that would be created by the swiftly growing renewable-energy sector. The claim that 10.3 million jobs would be lost – even that 6 million would be – is thus very far off the mark. </p>
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<p><em>Fact check US is supported by <a href="https://craignewmarkphilanthropies.org/">Craig Newmark Philanthropies</a>, an American foundation fighting against disinformation.</em></p>
<p><em>This article was translated from the French by Alice Heathwood for <a href="http://www.fastforword.fr/en">Fast ForWord</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148966/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Republicans claim that Biden’s clean-energy program would mean massive job losses in the oil-and-gas sector. The figures cited are not supported by the facts.Thérèse Rebière, Maître de conférences en économie, Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM)Isabelle Lebon, Professeur des Universités, directrice adjointe du Centre de recherche en économie et management, Université de Caen NormandieLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1472112020-10-19T17:17:06Z2020-10-19T17:17:06ZFact check US: Would the Democrats ‘ruin the suburbs’ as Donald Trump claims?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364590/original/file-20201020-17-4ouh4m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C156%2C3264%2C1890&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Housing developments in northeastern Colorado Springs, Colorado., are typical of the car-oriented suburbs developed in the United States after World War II.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Shankbone/Wikipedia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the first presidential debate <a href="https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-joe-biden-1st-presidential-debate-transcript-2020">Donald Trump asserted</a> that if Joe Biden were elected, “our suburbs would be gone.”</p>
<p>In his campaign rallies, Trump has repeatedly accused the Democrats in general, and Biden in particular, of wanting to “abolish” and “destroy” the suburbs. On <a href="https://factba.se/transcript/donald-trump-speech-melbourne-fl-february-18-2017">August 11</a>, he stated:</p>
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<p>“They want to put low-cost housing in the suburbs, and that would mean abolishing, ruining the suburbs. It has already begun. It’s been going on for years.”</p>
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<p>In a tweet, he addressed suburbanites by associating their lifestyle with the “American dream”, and “low-income housing” as a nuisance, echoing the myth that impoverished Americans are somehow undeserving of assistance.</p>
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<p>Trump was referring to his administration’s abandonment of a provision of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, signed by President Lyndon Johnson, and <a href="https://www.allianceforhousingjustice.org/post/understanding-affh">strengthened under the Obama administration</a>. The provision is intended to protect Americans from illegal housing discrimination and thus promote integration. The regulation conditioned the receipt of federal funds on the removal of barriers erected by local zoning, particularly a requirement to build single-family homes, which necessarily excludes multi-unit housing.</p>
<p>In his speeches and other communications, the president has presented himself as the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh6iQP_TQz4">“savior of the suburbs”</a> and the American dream. To understand Donald Trump’s strategy, we must first take a brief historical look at the American notion of the suburbs.</p>
<h2>The original sin of the suburbs</h2>
<p>The term “American suburbs” conjures up the image of a solid middle-class or well-to-do population, mostly white, who live almost exclusively in single-family homes with landscaped yards. Suburbs as we conceive of them today began to be developed after World War I, when cars started to become more available, but are most associated with the period following the World War II. It was then that the federal <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill">GI bill</a>, enacted in 1944, provided a range of benefits to demobilized soldiers, including education and housing. Financial support from the federal government and the accessibility of cheap land outside city centers led to the creation of new housing models that came to symbolize the “American dream”, such as <a href="https://ushistoryscene.com/article/levittown/">Levittown</a>.</p>
<p>It is important to note that the creation of these new residential areas is also intimately linked to the racial discrimination that existed at that time both in the south and in the north. With Blacks moving from the south to escape discrimination and find work, in turn many northern whites sought to leave urban centers, a phenomenon known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight">“white flight”</a>.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0885412204263509">research has found</a>, Blacks often found themselves systematically excluded from the suburbs through individual and institutional discrimination, including real estate, banking and federal laws. In <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/the-color-of-law-a-forgotten-history-of-how-our-government-segregated-america/"><em>The Color of the Law</em></a>, published in 2017, historian Richard Rothstein demonstrates that housing segregation was a result of government policy at all levels – federal, state and local. The Levittowns were the most famous suburban subdivisions in history and served as models for other suburbs. They were symbols of both the “American dream” and American discrimination. The first was built in 1947 and was originally open to whites only. Even today, Blacks make up only <a href="https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/levittown-demographics-real-estate/">1% of the current population</a>. Housing discrimination, in the suburbs as well as inner cities, was not the result of pure market forces. Instead, it was designed into the system.</p>
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<h2>An end to discrimination?</h2>
<p>The passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968 reduced housing discrimination. According to demographer William Frey, it helped reduce this type of discrimination by approximately a third between 1970 and 2010. Today, <a href="https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/05/22/demographic-and-economic-trends-in-urban-suburban-and-rural-communities/">55% of the US population</a> lives in areas that could be considered suburbs, including about a third of ethnic minorities. Despite the fact that 45% of US residents live in rural or urbanized areas, many consider the United States to be a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-us-has-become-a-nation-of-suburbs-101501">“nation of suburbs”</a>.</p>
<p>Behind these figures lies an even more complex reality. Academic research has found that urban areas also have forms of segregation, that <a href="https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/07/racial-segregation-takes-new-forms-study-shows">racial segregation is taking new forms</a> and that <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0049089X17305422">forms of “white flight” still persist</a>. Forms of segregation within suburban communities, between suburbs, where people of different “races” live continue.</p>
<p>In 2019, Ben Carson, secretary of state for Housing and Urban Development since 2017, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/face-carson-backtracks-push-neighborhood-zoning/story?id=72425652">criticized zoning that imposed single-family homes</a>. He asserted that it made housing “too expensive” and exacerbating the homelessness crisis. In August 2020, however, he asserted the exact opposite in an <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/well-protect-americas-suburbs-11597608133">opinion article</a> published the <em>Wall Street Journal</em>. It was co-signed by the president and titled “We will protect the suburbs.”</p>
<p>Trump claims that abandoning the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Act (AFFH) will protect American freedom. The irony is that the AFFH Act was itself a deregulation designed to relax zoning rules and allow for the free construction of low-cost housing.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360564/original/file-20200929-20-1a707ql.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360564/original/file-20200929-20-1a707ql.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=133&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360564/original/file-20200929-20-1a707ql.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=133&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360564/original/file-20200929-20-1a707ql.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=133&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360564/original/file-20200929-20-1a707ql.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=167&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360564/original/file-20200929-20-1a707ql.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=167&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360564/original/file-20200929-20-1a707ql.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=167&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<h2>A binary, racialized, nostalgic and mythified vision</h2>
<p>Citing the city of Westchester, New York as an example, Trump constructs a binary narrative that <a href="https://factba.se/transcript/donald-trump-interview-laura-ingraham-fox-news-august-31-2020">contrasts the “beautiful” suburbs</a> with “cheap housing” that “comes with a lot of other problems, including crime.” The Westchester version of the suburbs is one he knows well since he <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/nyregion/trump-westchester-housing.html">owns several properties there</a> and has been sued more than once by the federal government for violating existing desegregation policies. Trump’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/us/politics/donald-trump-housing-race.html">own father was sued repeatedly</a> by the federal government for discriminating against Blacks. One can therefore understand “low-cost housing” as “housing occupied for people of color” even if, in reality, <a href="https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/HousingSpotlight2-2.pdf">many whites benefit from it</a>.</p>
<p>Donald Trump contrasts his idealized vision of the suburbs as bucolic safe havens with the harsher view of large Democrat-led cities as places of violence, riots and corruption:</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360566/original/file-20200929-16-1lec071.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360566/original/file-20200929-16-1lec071.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=278&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360566/original/file-20200929-16-1lec071.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=278&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360566/original/file-20200929-16-1lec071.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=278&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360566/original/file-20200929-16-1lec071.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=350&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360566/original/file-20200929-16-1lec071.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=350&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360566/original/file-20200929-16-1lec071.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=350&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>Here he is drawing from an American founding myth, already present in Jefferson, that contrasts cities (places of vice) with rurality (places of virtue). This sanitized vision of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23416170?seq=1">“small-town America”</a> has given way to the idealized American suburb, illustrated by the association of the suburbs with domesticity, beauty, and personified in the vulnerable housewife, in need of protection. In an <a href="https://factba.se/transcript/donald-trump-interview-laura-ingraham-fox-news-august-31-2020">interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News</a>, he said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Women, more than anything else, they want safety. They must have safety. There’s a level of violence that you don’t see. So you have this beautiful community in the suburbs, including the women, right? Women, they want safety.”</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360568/original/file-20200929-14-1wowlkk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360568/original/file-20200929-14-1wowlkk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=322&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360568/original/file-20200929-14-1wowlkk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=322&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360568/original/file-20200929-14-1wowlkk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=322&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360568/original/file-20200929-14-1wowlkk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360568/original/file-20200929-14-1wowlkk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360568/original/file-20200929-14-1wowlkk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>The very term <em>housewives</em> is an <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/07/26/895228366/trumps-trying-to-appeal-to-real-housewives-and-white-suburbs-but-they-re-declini">anachronism</a> that harkens back to the 1950s. Its pejorative connotation within modern feminism makes it all the more attractive to Trump, who sees in it a symbol of an era when America was great because people knew their role and place within the hierarchy.</p>
<p>All this is part of a campaign strategy based on the theme of <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-law-and-order-campaign-relies-on-a-historic-american-tradition-of-racist-and-anti-immigrant-politics-145366">“law and order”</a> that aims to arouse the fear of conservatives who still dream of an idealized (necessarily) white America, that they believe existed before the upheavals of the 1960s, before the era of civil rights and feminism. The 1968 Fair Housing Act, strengthened under the Obama administration, was intended to ensure that all communities, including the suburbs, are more diverse. That is not “destroying” the suburbs and it is certainly not “abolishing” them.</p>
<p>Trump’s claims are thus false. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Fact check US is supported by <a href="https://craignewmarkphilanthropies.org/">Craig Newmark Philanthropies</a>, an American foundation fighting against disinformation.</em></p>
<p><em>This article was translated from the French by Alice Heathwood for <a href="http://www.fastforword.fr/en">Fast ForWord</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147211/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Donald Trump has accused the Democrats of wanting to “abolish” and “destroy” the suburbs through a regulation aimed at diversifying housing, a claim unsupported by the facts.Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy, Assistant lecturer, CY Cergy Paris UniversitéLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1466982020-10-11T16:44:09Z2020-10-11T16:44:09ZFact check US: Is Joe Biden really ‘lax on security’?<p>“Law and order”. One of the most-shared tweets of the US president in recent months was a three-word slogan, repeated loudly and often, that has gradually become his <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/08/27/905916276/how-trumps-law-and-order-message-has-shifted-as-he-seeks-a-second-term">sole platform</a> for re-election. Accordingly, Donald Trump has taken to criticizing Joe Biden for being <a href="https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/all-things-trump/biden-claims-redirecting-money-police-isnt-defunding-police-trump">“soft on crime”</a>. Vice President Mike Pence, meanwhile, has called the Democratic candidate a <a href="https://www.wpr.org/wisconsin-speech-pence-calls-biden-trojan-horse-socialism">“Trojan horse” for Socialism</a> who wants to defund the police.</p>
<p>To the contrary, Biden’s record shows that throughout his career he has authored and supported a wide range of security laws. While not always supported by his party’s left wing, Biden’s positions put the Democrats firmly to the center right on security matters.</p>
<h2>History repeats</h2>
<p>In 2016, Trump could talk of nothing but immigration, which he painted as a scourge impoverishing America. Four years later, his target has changed. This time, the danger is coming from within in the form of rioters, supposedly burning and pillaging the country’s major cities, while the Democrats are powerless to stop these <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-trumps-america-immigrants-are-modern-day-savage-indians-99809">savage hordes</a> from setting the entire United States ablaze.</p>
<p>This isn’t a new strategy for the Republicans. In fact, it dates back to 1968, when the GOP won considerable power in Congress by capitalizing on racial tensions and rising crime. When Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/martin-luther-king-jrs-assassination-sparked-uprisings-cities-across-america-180968665/">riots large and small broke out</a>. Some white Americans listened to the words of <a href="https://www.al.com/news/erry-2018/08/937bc749e09952/george-wallace-1968-presidenti.html">George Wallace</a>, the hard-right governor of Alabama who was making an independent run for president. Wallace promising bring back order <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/from-wallace-to-trump-the-evolution-of-law-and-order/">“by any means necessary”</a>, and Richard Nixon was quick to copy Wallace’s security program, adding the concept of a <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nixon-calls-on-the-silent-majority">“silent majority”</a> in the country.</p>
<p>Trump’s 2020 campaign strategy is no different. The president is trying to unite uneasy white voters who feel the same fears that once gripped their parents or grandparents. Just as Nixon did, Trump exaggerates the scale of the violence, highlighting its most frightening aspects in an attempt to draw support from the so-called silent majority.</p>
<p>Biden is far from an ideal scapegoat the question of security, however. Since 1982, the Democratic candidate has focused on the issue, and hasn’t hesitated to reach out to Republicans. In 1984, he forged an alliance with the conservative Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Strom Thurmond, to pass a <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/09/17/the-untold-story-joe-biden-pushed-ronald-reagan-to-ramp-up-incarceration-not-the-other-way-around/">far-reaching anti-crime bill</a>, beefing up federal sentencing for drug trafficking, and recommending all suspects’ goods be confiscated prior to verdict. In 1986, Biden was the chief author of a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-an-early-biden-crime-bill-created-the-sentencing-disparity-for-crack-and-cocaine-trafficking/2019/07/28/5cbb4c98-9dcf-11e9-85d6-5211733f92c7_story.html">law designed to fight drug addiction</a> with tougher sentencing for trafficking and possession. African-Americans were the most impacted by this law.</p>
<h2>Joe Biden’s solid security record</h2>
<p>In 1988, Biden co-sponsored another anti-drug law, increasing prison sentences for drug trafficking and transportation, and creating the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp">Office of National Drug Control</a>, which continues to coordinate and manage federal efforts in the fight against drugs. In 1989, at the height of punitive anti-drug policy and mass incarcerations, Biden even went on television to criticize President George H.W. Bush’s proposal to increase these efforts, saying, “Quite frankly, the President’s plan is not tough enough, bold enough, or imaginative enough to meet the crisis at hand”.</p>
<p>In 1994, Biden’s law against violent crime – often referred to as the <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/20/18677998/joe-biden-1994-crime-bill-law-mass-incarceration">Biden Crime Bill</a> – <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/joe-biden-pushed-police-now-confronts-challenge-police/story?id=71177383">put more than 100,000 extra police officers onto American streets</a> and considerably increased federal support for the fight against crime and the war on drugs. His <a href="https://bioguideretro.congress.gov/Home/MemberDetails?memIndex=b000444">Senate biography</a> presents his legislative record in flattering terms: “Senator Biden is a key leader in the war against crime and drugs. He has played a decisive role in the development of almost every major crime bill over the last two decades.”</p>
<p>Out of all these laws, the 1994 crime bill has caused controversy among Democrats over the past few months. For many progressives, Biden’s crime law <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/08/biden-crime-mass-incarceration-police-prisons">contributed to mass incarceration</a>. While it is true that the bill proposed increased imprisonment as a tool in the fight against crime, statistics reveal a <a href="https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/03/fact-check-1994-crime-bill-didnt-bring-mass-incarceration-black-people/3250210001/">more nuanced picture</a>. Put simply, both then and now, <a href="https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbse&sid=5">92 out of 100 prisoners</a> are incarcerated in state rather than federal, prisons. While the law encouraged states to be more severe, few follow the federal advice. In other words, the reasons for mass incarceration are to be found in local, rather than federal, policies.</p>
<h2>Winning over the right</h2>
<p>Lastly, it is interesting to note the context in which Biden developed this legislation. In 1994, violent crime had been consistently rising since the 1960s and had become an urgent priority. As Michael Waldman, a professor at NYU School of Law, pointed out in a piece for <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/09/joe-biden-crime-bill-and-americans-short-memory/597547/"><em>The Atlantic</em></a> : </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It’s not only the Democratic Party that’s changed, it’s the country and the context that’s changed. Crime between 1960 and 1990 tripled… The level of social disruption and panic that caused is hard to explain now, because since then the crime rate has been dropping.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Politically, the 1994 law was an opportunity for the Democrats and President Bill Clinton, recently elected, to take back issues of policing and justice from the Republicans. Up until then, it had been their exclusive terrain. The 1988 presidential election, in which George H.W. Bush triumphed against Michael Dukakis, was largely played out on these grounds, with Bush accusing Dukakis of being “soft on crime”. In 1992, the Democrats were extremely worried that history would repeat itself. Biden’s proposal allowed them to claim that the Democrats would impose harsher federal prison sentences and encourage states to do the same. The law included funding for <a href="https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/1994/dec/15/federal-crime-bill-passes/">more prisons</a> and the hiring of 100,000 extra police officers.</p>
<p>Biden’s attitude was therefore in line with the general sentiment within the Democratic party, which wanted to tackle the growing problem of crime. Since then, however, Biden’s views on the issue have evolved. For example, he stated that the mandating of extra sentences for crack was <a href="https://eu.delawareonline.com/story/news/2019/01/21/biden-says-he-regrets-1990-s-crime-bill-calls-big-mistake-mlk-day-event/2639190002/">“a big mistake”</a>. He has often stated that while he hasn’t “always gotten things right,” he has “always tried”. These days, Biden focuses on more popular measures, such as the <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/heidi-stevens/ct-heidi-stevens-violence-against-women-act-joe-biden-dnc-0821-20200821-ryjkj24lkndpjafghfiyepl77u-story.html">Violence against Women Act</a> and supporting treatment for drug addiction. Despite its shortcomings, however, the 1994 bill still reflects Biden’s proactive stance on crime.</p>
<p>Once officially invested by his party, Biden dedicated his first speech, in Pittsburgh, to the question of security, as a counterpoint to Trump’s claims at the Republican convention that Biden’s America would be “lawless”. In his speech, the Democratic candidate accused Trump of “stoking violence” and asked Americans a simple question: <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2020/08/31/joe-biden-tente-de-retourner-contre-donald-trump-l-argument-de-la-securite_6050513_3210.html">“Do you feel safe in Trump’s America?</a>.</p>
<p>During his campaign Biden has reiterated his support for <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/06/11/defund-the-police-joe-biden-cops/">increased police resources</a>, in particular for the development of initiatives to strengthen community relations and <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/08/politics/joe-biden-defund-the-police/index.html">equip officers with body cameras</a>. Trump’s claims, repeated in his campaign ads, that Biden wants to "defund the police” are therefore false. Some activists from the Black Lives Matter movement have called for this, but it not Biden – quite the opposite. </p>
<p>This is obvious when you consider how Joe Biden is perceived by those in the left wing of the Democratic Party – that he persists in prioritizing security concerns over the demands of communities, and regardless of the wave of mistrust of the police among supporters of Bernie Sanders. Biden has made a clear choice: to stand firm in his own ideas and trust that the very threat of Trump’s returning to the White House will be enough to win the support of the turbulent left wing of the Democratic party.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Jean‑Eric Branaa’s biography “Joe Biden” was published by Nouveau Monde on 7 October.</em></p>
<p><em>The Fact check US section is supported by <a href="https://craignewmarkphilanthropies.org/">Craig Newmark Philanthropies</a>, an American foundation fighting against disinformation.</em></p>
<p><em>Translated from the French by Alice Heathwood for <a href="http://www.fastforword.fr/en">Fast ForWord</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146698/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jean-Éric Branaa ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Donald Trump claims to the the law-and-order candidate and accuses his rival of being “lax on security”. Joe Biden’s legislative record proves such accusations to be false.Jean-Éric Branaa, Maître de conférences politique et société américaines (Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas), Auteurs historiques The Conversation FranceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1467112020-09-29T21:18:53Z2020-09-29T21:18:53ZFact check US: What is the impact of Russian interference in the US presidential election?<p><em>This article looks at the Russian’s contribution to the spread of fake news about the US elections.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>To understand concerns about the upcoming 2020 US elections, it is crucial to look back at the 2016 electoral cycle. As early as January 2017, a <a href="https://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/national/read-the-declassified-report-on-russian-interference-in-the-us-election/2433/">joint report by the CIA, FBI and NSA</a> confirmed that there had been Russian interference in the 2016 election.</p>
<p>Russia’s objective, according to this document, was to undermine the confidence of Americans in their electoral system and to denigrate Hillary Clinton. In the run-up to the 2020 election, <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/511078-top-intelligence-official-warns-of-foreign-influence-ahead-of-2020">William Evanina</a>, director of the National Counter-intelligence and Security Center, accused China, Iran and Russia of posing a threat to the US election next November. He stated that China does not want Trump to be re-elected because it considers him “unpredictable”, Russia is wants to see him elected. One way to try to influence the US electoral process is to interfere with the information circulating about the campaign, and its an art at which the Russians have become experts.</p>
<p>Between January 2015 and August 2017, Facebook linked <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-115shrg27398/pdf/CHRG-115shrg27398.pdf">80,000</a> publications to the Russian company Internet Research Agency through more than 470 different accounts. At the same time, a total of <a href="https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2018/2016-election-update.html">50,258 Twitter accounts</a> were linked to <a href="https://theconversation.com/russian-disinformation-in-the-time-of-covid-19-142309">Russian bots</a> – fake accounts programmed to share false information – during the 2016 election period. The bots are responsible for more than <a href="https://firstmonday.org/article/view/7090/5653">3.8 million tweets</a>, about 19% of the total tweets related to the 2016 US presidential election. Approximately <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/02/20/2020-russian-trolls-disrupt-social-media-how-to-fight-back-column/4749642002/">80% of these bots behaved in a way that supported Donald Trump</a>, mostly using the hashtags #donaldtrump, #trump2016, #neverhillary and #trumppence16.</p>
<p>Why might Russia have worked to support Donald Trump in 2016? One of the hypotheses is Vladimir Putin’s contempt for Hillary Clinton, which dates back to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia/putin-says-u-s-stoked-russian-protests-idUSTRE7B610S20111208">December 2011</a>, when riots took place in Moscow following the announcement of Putin’s candidacy for the Russian presidency in March 2012. The Kremlin accused the then Secretary of State of encouraging the protests and interfering in the Russian electoral process.</p>
<h2>Russia’s interests in 2020</h2>
<p>For the 2020 election, Russia appears to be once again favouring the election of Trump, this time over <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/17/politics/trump-retweets-known-russian-disinformation-biden-derkach/index.html">Joe Biden and the Democratic party</a>, which it perceives as being unfriendly to Russian interests. It should be remembered that as vice president, Biden played a role in the <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IF10779.pdf">policy of sanctions against Russia in 2014</a> following the annexation of the <a href="https://corpus.ulaval.ca/jspui/handle/20.500.11794/27745">Crimea</a>.</p>
<p>In light of this information, what is awaiting the United States in this new electoral cycle? At the end of August 2020, Facebook has already dismantled <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2020/09/august-2020-cib-report/">three botnets propagating false information</a>. Two were Russian and one Pakistani. Since 2017, Facebook has dismantled a dozen of these networks linked to the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf">Internet Research Agency</a>, which recently created a new site, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/russia-leverages-fake-personas-u-s-writers-to-spread-disinformation">Peace Data</a>, which claims to be a global press organization. On their site one finds <a href="https://journalism.wisc.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/41/files/2018/09/Uncover.Kim_.v.5.0905181.pdf">false information</a> about both Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the main objective being to <a href="https://www-tandfonline-com.acces.bibl.ulaval.ca/doi/full/10.1080/09546553.2018.1555996">further divide Americans</a>.</p>
<p>In addition to closing five accounts related to Russia, <a href="https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1300848632120242181">Twitter</a> announced that Peace Data would be banned from its platform. On September 10, Microsoft alerted Joe Biden’s campaign that Russian hackers tried to access the servers of the American communication agency <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-cyber-biden-exclusive/exclusive-russian-state-hackers-suspected-in-targeting-biden-campaign-firm-sources-idUSKBN2610I4">SKDKnickerbocker</a>, hired by many Democratic candidates. It was through a similar ploy that Hillary Clinton’s e-mails were made public during the 2016 campaign. But while the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/03/politics/democrats-sanctions-russian-meddling/index.html">Democrats</a> urge the White House to acknowledge Russian interference and impose sanctions, Trump turns away from the issue and <a href="https://www.kten.com/story/42599156/trump-pushes-misleading-claim-china-is-stoking-protests-to-help-biden-win-election">accuses</a> China of encouraging demonstrations and racial divisions.</p>
<p>While we do not yet have sufficient data and hindsight to fully analyse this presidential campaign, the threat posed by the bots must be seriously considered. According to Harvard sociologist <a href="https://www.cmu.edu/ideas-social-cybersecurity/research/coronavirus.html">Kathleen M. Carley</a>, a fake news story travels six times faster on social media than a verified story. Fake news are being shared quickly and <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html">continuously</a> through a network of fake accounts programmed for this purpose. Quantity is more important than the quality of the message conveyed, because one of the objectives is to drown the real news in a constant stream of fake news.</p>
<p>If individuals do not subscribe to a false story, the bots stop sharing it. However, if <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html">community members share and strongly adhere to a fake news story</a>, the bots will make sure to relay it as often as possible in a short period of time to multiply its reach across social media’s networks. At the same time, if a fake account is deactivated, another one will be created to replace it. It is therefore an endemic movement that is regenerated even as the platforms try to eradicate them.</p>
<p>In the current political context, where <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/13/president-trump-has-made-more-than-20000-false-or-misleading-claims/">President Trump himself frequently shares fake news</a>, the work of the bots is made easier. As <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/joshua-yaffa">Joshua Yaffa</a> explains, the Russian bots did not need to create the polemic surrounding the mail-in vote or the Black Lives Matter protests: they only had to massively share the news exacerbating tensions created by the Americans themselves.</p>
<p>In April 2018, <a href="https://www.engadget.com/2019-02-04-russia-spam-account-problem-reddit-propaganda.html">Reddit</a> banned nearly 1,000 Russian bots. Meanwhile, <a href="https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/hamilton-68-a-new-tool-to-track-russian-disinformation-on-twitter/">the Hamilton 68 Project</a> was set up to identify and list bots and fake accounts, and to teach citizens how to spot these fake accounts. The topics usually covered by Russian bots are listed on their website so that the general public can better understand how they work.</p>
<h2>The multiple relays of fake news</h2>
<p>Bots are however not limited to social media discussions. <a href="https://www.cmu.edu/ideas-social-cybersecurity/research/coronavirus.html">YouTube</a> videos can also be used as propagation vectors, as well as humorous images commonly called <a href="https://www.cmu.edu/ideas-social-cybersecurity/research/coronavirus.html">memes</a>.</p>
<p>In 2018, Russia went even further in the presidential election in <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2020-08-11/putin-kremlins-plot-against-democracy">Madagascar</a>. Russian agents created a new newspaper there and hired students to write articles in favour of the outgoing president. They bought advertising inserts, paid people to go to demonstrations and paid journalists to cover the demonstrations.</p>
<p>Currently, there is no evidence that these more advanced methods are being used in the United States. However, there is evidence that the Russians have become masters in the art of creating bots dedicated to spreading false information.</p>
<p>In this way, Russian interference continues to fuel tensions among Americans, adding uncertainty and undermining public confidence in the democratic electoral process.</p>
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<p><em>Fact check US is supported by <a href="https://craignewmarkphilanthropies.org/about-us/">Craig Newmark Philanthropies</a>, which promotes trustworthy journalism.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146711/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sophie Marineau ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Russian interference deeply marked the 2016 American presidential election. Four years later, let’s analyze the form and impact of disinformation coming from Russia.Sophie Marineau, Doctorante en histoire des relations internationales / phD candidate History, International relations, Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1462302020-09-22T08:52:39Z2020-09-22T08:52:39ZFact check US: Will mail-in voting result in ‘massive fraud’?<p>US president Donald Trump says it over and over again: allowing mail-in voting would encourage fraud and benefit Democratic candidate Joe Biden.</p>
<p>What is clear is that the increase in the number of ballots sent by mail due to the Covid-19 crisis will certainly pose logistical problems, and the counting process will be long and complex. In this context, it is not fraud that is to be feared but rather a delay in the announcement of the results. This in turn could lead to exploitation of the political situation by the current president.</p>
<p>So how does mail-in voting really work in the United States and what difficulties may arise during the November 3 election?</p>
<h2>Electoral rules</h2>
<p>Beyond the possible problems of routing postal ballots through the Post Office, it is above all the processing of these ballots that will complicate the American election. While some states (Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon and Utah, plus Washington, DC) have long practiced absentee voting almost exclusively, because of the Covid-19 crisis, most states will make mail-in ballots a priority this year. However, according to the <a href="https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/counting-the-vote-during-the-2020-election/">Bipartisan Policy Center</a> (BPC), some states have not put in place adequate measures to deal with the increase in demand for mail-in voting – for example, having a sufficient number of election officials available.</p>
<p>Each state has different electoral rules, including those regarding the counting of absentee ballots. However, the key requirement of the system is checking signatures. There is no national identification card in the United States, and according to a recent study by the <a href="https://btweb.trontv.com/gui/index.html?v=1.1.1.3036&localauth=localapi3c1e7bdb25acff4d:#/library">Brennan Center for Justice</a> in New York City, up to 11% of US citizens – more than 21 million people – do not have a government-issued photo identification such as a drivers licence.</p>
<h2>The voter signature-verification puzzle</h2>
<p>When verifying mail-in ballots, the <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/vopp-table-16-when-absentee-mail-ballot-processing-and-counting-can-begin.aspx">first step</a> is checking that the signature on the envelope containing the ballot to see that it matches the elector’s signature recorded at the time of registration. In some states, this database has not been updated and the signature may no longer correspond to that of the elector’s current signature, which may have evolved over time. Some states may also require other measures such as the signature of a witness or a notary.</p>
<p>According to the BPC, only 20 states notify the voters of any issues on the returned ballot envelope, (such as a missing or mismatched signature) and then allow voters to correct any signature deficiencies by returning a form to their county election committee (a process called “curing”).</p>
<p>Overall, the rejection rate for absentee ballots appears to be low: According to the <a href="https://www.eac.gov/documents/2017/10/17/eavs-deep-dive-early-absentee-and-mail-voting-data-statutory-overview">US Election Assistance Commission</a>, it is less than 1%. But a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/21/heres-problem-with-mail-in-ballots-they-might-not-be-counted/"><em>Washington Post</em> analysis</a> of voting in the state of Georgia in the 2018 midterm elections shows that it can be as high as 3%, while the BPC found a rate of 9.6% in New Jersey in a May 2020 special election. </p>
<p>However small the numbers may be, it disproportionately affects minority and primary voters, who often vote for Democratic candidates. it is important to keep in mind that Donald Trump won the 2016 election by less than <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/donald-trump-will-be-president-thanks-to-80000-people-in-three-states/">80,000 votes in three states</a> (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan).</p>
<p>The second step in the process: ballots are removed from the envelope, sorted and placed in batches, sometimes using a ballot scanner. These <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_machine">“high-speed tabulation” machines</a> reduce counting time wherever they are used, but the manual part of the process is still time-consuming. To make sure votes will be counted in time, some states (Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas) will allow these ballots to <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/vopp-table-16-when-absentee-mail-ballot-processing-and-counting-can-begin.aspx">be processed prior to Election Day</a>. But 15 states, including Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, will have to wait until November 3 to count any mailed ballots. Whatever the state, all ballots must be counted by December 14, when the future president must be officially designated.</p>
<p>Contrary to claims by the president, it is not the risk of fraud that is the problem but questions related to logistics and the state laws that affect them. Moreover, for fraud to have an impact on the elections’ outcome, it would have to be massive and organized, which would make it visible. </p>
<p>To reassure voters, some states, such as North Carolina, have set up a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/03/north-carolina-warns-voting-twice-is-illegal-after-trump-urges-people-to-do-so.html">tracking system</a> that makes it possible to follow your ballot, as one follows an online order. To counter the risk of voting twice, some states allow an elector to cast a provisional vote while waiting to determine whether it should be counted. The president has only muddied the waters further by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/us/politics/trump-people-vote-twice.html">encouraging his supports to vote twice</a> to test the system.</p>
<h2>Suspense and tensions following election day</h2>
<p>It is therefore possible, and even probable, that there will be no final results on election night, or even on the morning of November 4. But there will certainly be unofficial results the night of the election. Preliminary results are usually based on precinct reporting and are likely to be much less reliable than in previous elections. This is all the more likely since, according to the BPC, 50% to 70% of the ballots could be mail-in ballots. A majority of these will likely be used by Democrats, particularly in key states. According to Fox News, in the key state of Florida, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/democrats-dominate-mail-in-ballot-requests-swing-states">47.5% of absentee ballots are cast by Democrats and only 32% by Republicans</a>. In Pennsylvania and North Carolina, the number of Democratic mail-in ballots is three times higher than Republican numbers. Only Michigan would be the exception, with more Republican mail-in ballots.</p>
<p>If these numbers hold, it is likely that the Democratic vote will be underestimated in the preliminary results. In the absence of a clear result on election night, Donald Trump could try to claim victory and dismiss as fraudulent definitive numbers that indicate that Biden won the election.</p>
<p>Last June, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Integrity_Project">Transition Integrity Project</a>, a group of academics, journalists, experts and former public servants, conducted several simulations. Their conclusion was that only a landslide for Joe Biden would result in a relatively orderly transfer of power. All other scenarios involved a major political crisis and potentially street violence. So while Trump points at mail-in ballots as a potential source of fraud, Biden and Democratic officials at the national, state and county levels are doing everything they can to ensure that every mailed ballot counts.</p>
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<p><em>Fact check US is supported by <a href="https://craignewmarkphilanthropies.org/about-us/">Craig Newmark Philanthropies</a>, which promotes trustworthy journalism.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146230/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>President Trump has repeatedly said that mail-in voting will result in substantial voter fraud. However, the real issues are related to logistics and the support by each state.Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy, Assistant lecturer, Université Paris Nanterre – Université Paris LumièresLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.