The fight is only just beginning. Democrats were eager to impress that message upon a crowd that gathered outside the U.S. Capitol on Thursday afternoon after emerging from a sit-in on the House floor demanding action on gun control that lasted more than 24-hours.
“Don’t give up, don’t give in,” the Democratic congressman and civil-rights leader John Lewis said as onlookers waved rainbow-colored signs that read “Disarm Hate.” The crowd began to sing the civil-rights protest anthem “We Shall Overcome,” with lyrics slightly modified to suit moment: “We shall pass a bill someday.” A woman recording a video on her cellphone remarked aloud, “This is history, baby,” to no one in particular.
The sit-in was an unusual moment of protest inside the United States Congress. The willingness to make such a bold, publicity-ready move suggests the Democratic Party feels emboldened to demand action on gun control in the wake of a tragic mass shooting at an Orlando nightclub earlier this month. In the end, however, Democrats did not succeed in securing a vote on the gun-control measures they had hoped for in staging the protest.
Faced with that failure, Democrats insist this is only the beginning. “We’re going to continue to work,” Lewis said in a brief interview outside the Capitol. “Many people are supporting our efforts,” he said. “People all over America and around the world are supporting our efforts to do something about gun violence.”
The sit-in may also indicate that House Democrats are increasingly willing to make use of confrontational tactics to make their voices heard. “It’s not just about guns,” the Democratic congressman James Clyburn said in an interview. “This particular issue is about guns, but this is just the start … I wouldn’t get hung-up on sit-ins, but I would call it activism.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi seemed reluctant to declare that this will be the way Democrats try to get their message on future issues. “No, I think you have to just take it on a day-to-day basis,” she said at Thursday’s press conference. She called the sit-in a reflection of the “the complete insistence that we cannot go through another moment of silence without taking action” on gun violence.
The sit-in seemed to intensify the divide between Democrats and Republicans on guns. House Speaker Paul Ryan denounced the action as a “publicity stunt,” during an interview with CNN. “This is not about a solution to a problem,” he said. “This is about trying to get attention.” House Republicans expressed frustration over the Democrats’ action, describing the event as a political distraction and a way to obstruct the business of legislating.
In an interview, the Republican congressman Mark Meadows said that while it is “certainly within every member’s right to be able to articulate their concerns,” he disagreed with the tactics deployed by Democrats. As Yoni Appelbaum noted, “even having phones switched on, much less snapping photos, tweeting updates, or periscoping the proceedings, is a violation of the rules of the House”—all common sights during the sit-in.“I think it poses a very bad precedent and quite frankly other nations are watching what is happening,” Meadows said.
The Democrats’ agenda faced criticism from progressives as well. Democrats were agitating for a vote on measures to expand background checks for gun purchases and prevent suspected terrorists from buying the weapons. As The Intercept’s Zaid Jilani wrote, the “unusually bold and moving tactic was undercut by the fact that its chief goal is a political gimmick that would do little to stop gun violence, while expanding the use of a deeply flawed anti-terror watchlist.”
In spite of various criticisms, many House Democrats appeared defiant and energetic Thursday afternoon. “The American public has been crying out for help on this issue, for their families, for their kids, and we said ‘We hear you, we’re listening to you and, we’re going to do something about it,’” the Democratic congresswoman Rosa DeLauro said in an interview. “We may leave here today, but everybody is going home to a district where they’re going to take this fight on, and in addition to that we get back on July 5th and nothing changes. We’ve only just begun.”
Other Democrats reveled in the fact that they had been able to broadcast to a wide audience using social media. Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic congressman from Texas who live-streamed the Sit-in on Facebook, said, “In a one-hour period, when I was streaming, we received 10,000 comments.” He pointed to his social-media metrics as evidence of the event’s resonance. “There was obviously a lot of pent-up urgency and excitement about this.”
For now, it seems unlikely that House Democrats will win the votes they seek on gun control. But their agitation on the issue will probably continue, and maybe increase. —Clare Foran
Roll Call photographer Tom Williams tweeted several images of the scene outside the Capitol this afternoon. House Democrats addressed on-lookers after concluding their sit-in at roughly 1 p.m.
.@repjohnlewis @repjoecrowley @Clyburn speak on the East Front after the #NoBillNoBreak sit-in to end #gunviolence pic.twitter.com/MRsqXf5MHr
— Tom Williams (@pennstatetom) June 23, 2016
It was an odd juxtaposition, this sit-in. Led by Representative John Lewis, a veteran of the civil rights movement, it drew its spirit from the non-violent protests at lunch counters and bus terminals across the South that ignited national interest and eventually led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Throughout the day Wednesday, black Democrats shared stories of people shot and killed in their communities, driving home the point that gun violence is not merely a problem of policy—it is also a matter of race and justice.
But some have pointed out the incivility of the proposal the sit-in supports, the so-called “no-fly, no-buy” bill.
Thanks for sitting in. Let's ditch racist no-fly-buy bill and make this a movement for the real fight against guns. https://t.co/W8geMD6sgJ
— Jeff Sharlet (@JeffSharlet) June 23, 2016
As the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes the Senate version of the “no-fly” bill, argued in a letter, government terrorist watch lists have long been criticized for targeting Muslims with little evidence:
Publicly available information and the ACLU’s experience with people who know or credibly suspect that they have been watchlisted raises serious concerns that the government applies the watchlists in an arbitrary or discriminatory fashion, particularly against American Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities. An internal August 2013 government document, for example, shows that Dearborn, Michigan—home to the country’s largest concentration ofArab-Americans—was second only to New York City in the number of people on the government’s “known or suspected terrorist” watchlist. This was despite the fact that, as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan noted at the time, not a single person from Dearborn had ever been prosecuted for terrorism.
Granted, Democrats also want other things, including stronger background checks and a ban on assault weapons. But while the central chant of “no-fly, no-buy” may incrementally help solve one civil-rights crisis—the slaughter of people of color by guns—some say it unfortunately worsens another.
House Democrats are now hugging, shaking hands, and taking photos on the floor. The sit-in is now over, and they plan to address supporters outside the Capitol in the next few minutes.
Georgia Representative John Lewis, who helped lead the House sit-in, is addressing his fellow members on the floor right now. “We’re gonna win the struggle,” Lewis said, calling for members and constituents to organize. To his colleagues, he said: “You got it out there, you got in the way, you got in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble. So we must never give up or give in. We must keep the faith and come back here on July 5, more determined than ever before."
It sounds like House Democrats might be wrapping up their sit-in. They held a meeting earlier today on steps forward. “We’re going back to our congressional districts...and we will not allow this body to ever feel as comfortable as they have felt in the past silencing our voices,” South Carolina’s James Clyburn just said on the floor. They'll return on July 5, he notes, and “we will be operating on a new sense of purpose."
House Speaker Paul Ryan's disdain for Democrats' sit-in is clear: “I don't think this should be a very proud moment for democracy or for the people who stage these stunts.”
Ryan, speaking at his weekly press briefing Thursday morning, seemed agitated, criticizing Democrats for violating the norms of the House. He told reporters that he was worried about the precedent the sit-in could set, and hit Democrats for sending fundraising missives off the sit-in.
“If this is not a political stunt, then why are they trying to raise money off this—off of a tragedy?” Ryan said.
Social media has played a critical role in the House sit-in. Democrats used platforms, such as Periscope, to live stream from the chamber floor when C-SPAN was unable to air the protests. Similarly, the hashtag #NoBillNoBreak and #HoldTheFloor took off on Twitter. Politico’s Carla Marinucci reports:
Reported by @Twitter: In the last 24 hours, #NoBillNoBreak and #HoldTheFloor have been Tweeted 1.4M times.
— Carla Marinucci (@cmarinucci) June 23, 2016
It appears some Democratic members of the New Hampshire House of Representatives are staging a sit-in of their own in the state capitol. Local reports say about dozen legislators are participating.
In solidarity with our friends in DC, #NHHouseDems are sitting in today in Concord. #DemocraticSitIn #NHPolitics pic.twitter.com/WuAjJkhomE
— NH House Dem Caucus (@NHHouseDems) June 23, 2016
While Periscope was the Democrats' streaming app of choice on Wednesday amid a broadcast blackout, the New Hampshire legislators are recording their broadcast using Meerkat.
The mood inside the House gallery feels subdued this morning as Democrats continue speeches and a sit-in demanding a vote on gun control measures.
It was a long night, and members of Congress who stuck around are clearly exhausted. At least a few lawmakers dozed off, according to Ted Deutch, a Democratic congressman from Florida. “There were definitely some people sleeping,” he said, adding that he wasn’t going to name any names. “I have not pulled an all-nighter in quite a while,” Deutch said. “It’s certainly my first one on the House floor.”
Jan Schakowsky, a Democratic congresswoman from Illinois, said she was stepped on while sitting on the floor. When asked if it was by a Republican, she said yes. “I don’t know if it was intentional, but there certainly was no apology,” she said, though she noted that she wasn’t hurt. “He was in a hurry to get over to his side ... and there was a certain amount of contempt.” Democrats have been “inspired, in part, by the kind of cynicism we saw last night from the Republicans,” she said.
What happens next? “It could be another hour, it could be five hours, ten hours, that I don’t know,” Deutch said. “I really don't know what the plan is,” Schakowsky said, “[but] what I do know is this is really just the beginning.” She added: “We own this issue now. This is now the issue for the Democratic caucus. I don’t know what form it will take…but we are not giving up.”
Americans don’t realize how fast the country is moving toward becoming a better version of itself.
I have seen the future, and it is in the United States.
After a several-year immersion in parts of the country that make the news mainly after a natural disaster or a shooting, or for follow-up stories on how the Donald Trump voters of 2016 now feel about Trump, I have a journalistic impulse similar to the one that dominated my years of living in China. That is the desire to tell people how much more is going on, in places they had barely thought about or even heard of, than they might have imagined.
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In the case of China, that impulse matched the mood of the times. In the years before and after the world financial crisis of 2008, everyone knew that China was on the way up; reporters like me were just filling in the details. In the case of the modern United States, I am well aware that this message runs so counter to prevailing emotions and ideas as to seem preposterous. Everyone knows how genuinely troubled the United States is at the level of national politics and governance. It is natural to assume that these disorders must reflect a deeper rot across the country. And indeed, you can’t travel extensively through today’s America, as my wife, Deb, and I have been doing in recent years, without being exposed to signs of rot, from opioid addiction to calcifying class barriers.
A new study finds that Trump voters weren’t losing income or jobs. Instead, they were concerned about their place in the world.
For the past 18 months, many political scientists have been seized by one question: Less-educated whites were President Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters. But why, exactly?
Was their vote some sort of cri de coeur about a changing economy that had left them behind? Or was the motivating sentiment something more complex and, frankly, something harder for policy makers to address?
After analyzing in-depth survey data from 2012 and 2016, the University of Pennsylvania political scientist Diana C. Mutz argues that it’s the latter. In a new article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, she added her conclusion to the growing body of evidence that the 2016 election was not about economic hardship.
A CNN interview this weekend provided a case study in the mendacious ways this White House defends itself.
Kellyanne Conway has become a media legend for her snowblower method of dissimulation: scoop up everything and hurl it into the air, with no concern for where the stuff lands. So it was perhaps not surprising that when Dana Bash asked Conway an unwelcome question on CNN this weekend, Bash got buried under particulate matter.
The exchange, which has gotten a lot of play in the past 24 hours, is a case study of the Trump White House’s methods in action.
First, some background. Conway’s husband George is a highly distinguished and successful lawyer. He also operates a Twitter account on which he often posts cutting remarks about the Trump presidency. George Conway’s comments do not deal with policy, but with more fundamental issues of character and integrity. For example, on the morning of Sunday April 22—just minutes before Kellyanne Conway’s appearance on CNN—George Conway retweeted the following:
What if the problem isn’t the president—it’s the presidency?
I. A Broken Office
Donald Trump often appears to be a president in rebellion against his office. A president, we have come to expect, hastens to the scene of a natural disaster to comfort the afflicted. After Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, President Trump arrived tardily and behaved unseriously, tossing rolls of paper towels at storm-battered residents as if he were trying to drain three-point shots.
We have come to expect that when the national fabric rends, the president will administer needle and thread, or at least reach for the sewing box of unity. After white supremacists marched through Charlottesville, Virginia, shouting “Jews will not replace us,” President Trump’s instinct was to emphasize that there were good people among the neo-Nazis.
“Alexa, play Jeopardy!” my son will bark. And she follows his command.
When I was a kid, in the early 1980s, I programmed a little in a language called BASIC. Recalling that long-ago era, I see myself, bowl cut and braces, tapping at the keyboard of some ancient computer:
10 PRINT “[Whatever]”
20 GOTO 10
And when I hit “return,” up jumps a digital column of whatever I’d entered between the quotation marks to fill the screen:
[Whatever]
[Whatever]
[Whatever]
And so on. Later in my life, there were more advanced computing experiences—my parents eventually got me a TI-99/4A with Extended BASIC—but 20 GOTO 10 lingers. Those early days at the computer enabled me, for the first time, to issue commands. I was—suddenly, shockingly—a person to be obeyed. My commands didn’t carry any grand force, as do commands in, say, a military context, but issuing them did make me happy. The Nobel laureate Elias Canetti described the dynamic well some 60 years ago in Crowds and Power:
A look at the available evidence
It only took five minutes for Gavin Schmidt to out-speculate me.
Schmidt is the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (a.k.a. GISS) a world-class climate-science facility. One day last year, I came to GISS with a far-out proposal. In my work as an astrophysicist, I’d begun researching global warming from an “astrobiological perspective.” That meant asking whether any industrial civilization that rises on any planet will, through their own activity, trigger their own version of a climate shift. I was visiting GISS that day hoping to gain some climate science insights and, perhaps, collaborators. That’s how I ended up in Gavin’s office.
Just as I was revving up my pitch, Gavin stopped me in my tracks.
When Kanye West and Shania Twain express admiration for the president’s communication style, they forget what’s at stake.
As Donald Trump’s approval ratings hover around 40 percent, two glimmering celebrity names appeared to come to his defense this weekend. Shania Twain, the Canadian country-pop pioneer, told The Guardian that if she could have participated in the U.S. election, she would have voted for Trump because “even though he was offensive, he seemed honest.” Kanye West, the rap institution who paid a controversial visit to Trump before his inauguration, tweeted about his fandom for Candace Owens, a conservative commentator who thinks Trump is the “savior” of Western civilization.
Both statements led to a predictable cyclone: liberals howling that musicians they once loved were “canceled,” and conservatives who’d shown little interest in these stars showering praise on them as brave truth-tellers. Twain apologized; West kept tweeting. Taken together, the two episodes lay bare the seductive danger of treating politics as entertainment, and politicians as entertainers.
The New York governor recently repeated a common, but dubious, explanation for the epithet.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently attracted criticism from immigration advocacy groups for describing himself as “undocumented” during a bill-signing ceremony in Albany. “You want to deport an undocumented person, start with me, because I’m an undocumented person,” he said.
What drew less attention was how he explained that provocative conclusion. “I came from poor Italian Americans who came here,” Cuomo said. “You know what they called Italian Americans back in the day? They called them ‘wops.’ You know what ‘wop’ stood for? ‘Without papers.’”
Cuomo’s attempt to express solidarity was a bit overheated, to say the least: He isn’t really undocumented, of course, and as the son of a former governor, he wasn’t exactly marginalized growing up. But his historical justification for the parallel is similarly dubious. While his Italian immigrant forebears may indeed have had the epithet wop slung at them, there is no evidence that the word originated as an acronym for “without papers.”
This week’s state visit cements Emmanuel Macron’s reputation as one of the president’s closest friends.
He’s been known as the “French Obama” to some, and the Roman god “Jupiter” to others. But this week, French President Emmanuel Macron has earned himself a new nickname: “Trump Whisperer.”
The French president was anointed with the new moniker on the eve of his visit to Washington, where this week he becomes the first foreign leader to be hosted by President Donald Trump for a formal state visit. Considered the highest expression of friendship between the United States and a foreign state, the three-day visit includes all the trappings of a national event. In Macron’s case, this means a red-carpet welcome with a 21-gun salute, a state dinner at the White House (preceded by a rare private dinner with the president and the first lady at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate), and the opportunity to address both houses of Congress.
The peppy mixed messaging of I Feel Pretty is only the latest reminder: American culture doesn’t fully know what it’s talking about when it talks about attractiveness.
Every once in a while I’ll rewatch an old episode of Friends, because it’s familiar and soothing and there. The other day, Netflix served up one of those flashbacks the show would sometimes air to poke light fun at the friends and at the visual absurdities involved with being alive in the ’80s: Rachel in chintz, Ross and Chandler in tragicomic Flock of Seagulls bouffants, etc. Watching the meta-nostalgia, I was reminded of the existence of a minor character who nonetheless plays a major role in the show’s universe: Fat Monica.
Fat Monica is technically just a younger—and slightly larger—version of Standard Issue Monica; what becomes wincingly clear, though, as the Friends flashbacks play out, is that Fat Monica differs from the other Monica not just in scale, but in kind. Padded by her former girth, Monica Geller—the person who categorizes her hand towels and designates committees for the planning of birthday parties and is, in general, in thorough control of her life and her Type A-tastic self—undergoes a transformation: Her voice gets higher. Her movements become jerking and awkward. She giggles a lot, uncomfortably. Remember when, in those late-series episodes of Family Matters, Steve Urkel would go into that flashing box and emerge as the suave Stefan Urquelle? Fat Monica’s metamorphosis is a little like that, but in reverse: The transformation depletes her dignity rather than compounding it. She becomes bashful. Childish. Foolish. Watching the proceedings, you start to wonder whether Monica Geller, for the purposes of the flashback scenes, was given a fat suit or a lobotomy.
In 2012, Kansas passed one of the largest income tax cuts in the state’s history. Today, it serves as a cautionary tale.
“We will have among us a young adult population that doesn't know how to ‘hashtag adult.’”
Seventy years ago, Albert Einstein presaged atomic war.
