 | | The sun was partially obscured by smoke from wildfires burning in the Western United States and Canada this week.Bryan Anselm for The New York Times |
|
The sirens have gotten pretty hard to ignore. |
But, despite the raging crises, the gears of American government seem as stuck as ever — partly because of the intensity of Americans' polarization, and partly because Republican members of Congress have remained opposed even to some measures that polls show bipartisan majorities of voters support, like stricter limits on power plant and vehicle emissions. |
Significant action on climate change is imaginable only through executive action by President Biden and a party-line budget reconciliation bill, as Coral Davenport, a climate reporter for The Times, told me this month, and even such measures may not be ambitious enough to meet the nation's climate goals. |
Many millions of Republicans are still declining to get coronavirus vaccines, and condemning the Biden administration's vaccination push. They have done so even as vivid accounts from medical workers in the hardest-hit states make clear how terrible a toll the Delta variant is taking on unvaccinated people. |
The trouble is that, in a polarized era, "political elites have every incentive to politicize these things early on, and so people who are paying attention to politics pick up on the frame elected officials and the media are using," said Jaime E. Settle, an associate professor of government and director of the Social Networks and Political Psychology Lab at the College of William & Mary. |
Even catastrophic and highly visible events like the wildfires and the heat waves don't necessarily move the needle, because "what happens is that people interpret these events from the framework they started with," Settle said. So if a person starts out disbelieving the established science of human-driven climate change, they are likely to look at the recent evidence of climate change "and say, 'Well, that's not evidence' or, 'It is evidence but humans are not to blame for it.'" |
Joanne Freeman, a professor of history and American studies at Yale who studies political polarization and political violence, said today's environment felt reminiscent of previous eras of extreme division, including the 1790s, the 1850s and the 1960s. |
"Something those periods share is when things are that polarized, there's a lack of trust in pretty much anything — a lack of trust in information, a lack of trust of each side in the other, a lack of trust in national institutions and their ability to handle things," Freeman said. "Even though these things are happening right in front of us, so many people are distrustful of the information they get. You can't get past that fundamental distrust to get to facts or even to get to things of extreme urgency." |
She added, "If you don't trust lawmakers and you don't trust the press and you don't trust people in positions of authority outside of the little sphere in which they're acting, how in the world can you pull people together to address something bigger?" |
As my colleague Alex Burns wrote this month, seismic events that would almost certainly have changed American politics in past eras are simply not making a dent now. We may soon find out "whether the American electorate is still capable of large-scale shifts in opinion." |
As for the possibility of changing a person's views — or acceptance of facts — through personal conversations, Settle said the challenge is that we tend to base our arguments on what would change our minds, not on what would change someone else's. And we don't even have good forums in which to have these conversations. |
"There's a small but growing body of research on how you might be able to set up online interactions to make them better," she said, "but the kind of organic options we currently have on social media and comment threads are just a disaster." |
 | | A group of Democratic senators is pressing the F.B.I. for more information about how it worked with the Trump White House on the background investigations into Brett Kavanaugh before his Supreme Court confirmation.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times |
|
The F.B.I. may not have investigated tips about Kavanaugh. |
Nearly three years after Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court, the F.B.I. has disclosed more details about its efforts to review his background, leading a group of Senate Democrats to conclude that the vetting was shaped largely by the Trump White House. |
In a letter dated June 30 to two Democratic senators, Jill Tyson, the F.B.I. assistant director, addressed the investigation into Kavanaugh's past, which had been prompted by allegations of sexual misconduct. Tyson wrote that the most "relevant" of the 4,500 tips the agency received during that time had been referred to White House lawyers in the Trump administration, whose handling of them remains unclear. |
The letter left uncertain whether the F.B.I. itself followed up on the most compelling leads. The agency was conducting a background check rather than a criminal investigation, meaning that "the authorities, policies and procedures used to investigate criminal matters did not apply," the letter said. |
Tyson's letter was a response to a 2019 letter from Senators Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Chris Coons of Delaware to the F.B.I. director, Christopher Wray, posing questions about the F.B.I.'s review. |
In an interview, Whitehouse said the response showed that the F.B.I.'s handling of the accusations against Kavanaugh had been a sham. The letter, he said, suggested that the F.B.I. ran a "fake tip line that never got properly reviewed, that was presumably not even conducted in good faith." |
Whitehouse, Coons and five of their Democratic colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee replied to the F.B.I.'s letter on Wednesday with demands for additional details on the agreement with the White House that governed the inquiry. They also pressed for more information on how incoming tips were handled. |
"Your letter confirms that the F.B.I.'s tip line was a departure from past practice and that the F.B.I. was politically constrained by the Trump White House," the senators wrote. Among those signing the letter were Dick Durbin of Illinois, the committee's chairman, and Cory Booker of New Jersey. |
Donald McGahn, the White House's general counsel at the time, and the F.B.I. did not immediately respond to requests for comment. |
Despite widespread concern over the claims — which were followed by other allegations of sexual misconduct, all of which Kavanaugh denied — Trump steadfastly backed the judge. And while both Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, the professor who said she was assaulted, were grilled by senators on the Judiciary Committee, the White House carefully controlled the investigations into Kavanaugh's past. |
Trump's staff tried to limit the number of people the F.B.I. interviewed, and only after an outcry from Democrats did the administration say the agency could conduct a more open investigation. |
Ultimately, the F.B.I. interviewed 10 witnesses, according to its letter. Ford and Kavanaugh were never interviewed. |
Read the full story here. |
Climate Hub: Ideas with the power to change the future |
As world leaders gather for consequential climate change negotiations, join us at The New York Times Climate Hub in Glasgow for nine days of live journalism and ideas to inspire action, in person and online. |
Understand the science; learn about the challenges and innovations; engage with live talks, debates and exhibitions; and find out how you can create real change. |
| Were you forwarded this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. |
| Is there anything you think we're missing? Anything you want to see more of? We'd love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. |
|
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home