Everyday Erinyes #354

 Posted by at 3:46 pm  Open Thread, Politics
Jan 222023
 

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

The number – and the names – we have lost to pancreatic cancer in the last couple od decades is staggering. Mercifully, I can’t offhand remember many of the names besides Alex Trebek, but I also cannot get over the “Oh my god, no not again” feeling when I see the words next to someone’s name. With this article I have a better idea of why, and maybe even a little hope.
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Stopping the cancer cells that thrive on chemotherapy – research into how pancreatic tumors adapt to stress could lead to a new treatment approach

Hypoxia, or a state of low oxygen, can encourage tumors to spread. This microscopy image visualizes the microenvironment of a breast tumor.
Steve Seung-Young Lee, Univ. of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health via Flickr, CC BY-NC

Chengsheng Wu, University of California, San Diego; David Cheresh, University of California, San Diego, and Sara Weis, University of California, San Diego

As with weeds in a garden, it is a challenge to fully get rid of cancer cells in the body once they arise. They have a relentless need to continuously expand, even when they are significantly cut back by therapy or surgery. Even a few cancer cells can give rise to new colonies that will eventually outgrow their borders and deplete their local resources. They also tend to wander into places where they are not welcome, creating metastatic colonies at distant sites that can be even more difficult to detect and eliminate.

One explanation for why cancer cells can withstand such inhospitable environments and growing conditions is an old adage: What doesn’t kill them makes them stronger.

At the very earliest stage of tumor formation, even before cancer can be diagnosed, individual cancer cells typically find themselves in an environment lacking nutrients, oxygen or adhesive proteins that help them attach to an area of the body to grow. While most cancer cells will quickly die when faced with such inhospitable conditions, a small percentage can adapt and gain the ability to initiate a tumor colony that will eventually become malignant disease.

We are researchers studying how these microenvironmental stresses affect tumor initiation and progression. In our new study, we found that the harsh microenvironments of the body can push certain cancer cells to overcome the stress of being isolated and make them more adept at initiating and forming new tumor colonies. Moreover, these cancer cells may adapt even better in the inhospitable and stressful conditions they encounter while trying to establish metastases in other areas of the body or after they are challenged by treatment with chemotherapy or surgery.

The microenvironment of a cell can significantly influence its function.

Cancer cells overcoming isolation stress

We focused on pancreatic cancer,
one of the most lethal cancers and one that is notoriously resistant to chemotherapy and often not curable with surgery. Almost 90% of pancreatic patients will succumb to cancer recurrence or metastasis within five years after diagnosis.

We wanted to study how tumor formation is affected by what we call “isolation stress,” when cells are deprived of nutrients or oxygen supply because of poor blood vessel formation or because they cannot benefit from making contact with nearby cancer cells. To study how cancer cells respond to these situations, we recreated different forms of isolation stress in cell cultures, in mice and in patient samples by depriving them of oxygen and nutrients or by exposing them to chemotherapeutic drugs. We then measured which genes were turned on or off in pancreatic cancer cells.

We found that pancreatic cancer cells challenged with conditions that mimic isolation stress gain a new receptor on their surface that unstressed cancer cells don’t typically have: lysophosphatidic acid receptor 4, or LPAR4, a protein involved in tumor progression.

When we forced the cancer cells to produce LPAR4 on their surfaces, we found that they were able to form new tumor colonies two to eight times faster than average cancer cells under isolation stress conditions. Also, preventing cancer cells from gaining LPAR4 when they were stressed reduced their ability to form tumor colonies by 80% to 95%. These findings suggest that the ability of cancer cells to gain LPAR4 when they are exposed to stress is both necessary and sufficient to promote tumor initiation.

Microscopy image of pancreatic cancer metastases arising from multiple different cell clusters
Tumors contain multiple different types of cancer cells with unique genetic mutations. This image shows a variety of pancreatic cancer cell clusters, each of a different color, within a tumor.
Ravikanth Maddipati, Abramson Cancer Center at the Univ. of Pennsylvania, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health via Flickr, CC BY-NC

How does LPAR4 help build tumors?

We also found that LPAR4 helps cancer cells achieve tumor initiation by giving them the ability to produce a web of macromolecules, or an extracellular matrix network, that provides them an adhesive foothold within an otherwise inhospitable environment. By producing a halo of their own matrix, cancer cells with LPAR4 can start building their own tumor-supporting niche that provides a refuge from isolation stresses.

We determined that a key component of this extracellular matrix is fibronectin. When this protein binds to receptors called integrins on the surface of cells, it triggers a cascade of events that results in the expression of new genes promoting tumor initiation, stress tolerance and cancer progression. Eventually, other cancer cells are recruited into the fibronectin-rich matrix network, and a new satellite tumor colony starts to form.

Considering that tumor cells with LPAR4 can create their own tumor-supporting matrix on the fly, this suggests that LPAR4 may allow individual tumor cells to overcome isolation stress conditions and survive in the bloodstream, the lymphatic system involved in immune responses or distant organs as metastases.

Importantly, we found that isolation stress is not the only way to trigger LPAR4. Exposing pancreatic cancer cells to chemotherapy drugs, which are designed to impose stress upon cancer cells, also triggers an increase of LPAR4 on cancer cells. This finding might explain how such tumor cells could develop drug resistance.

Keeping cancer cells stressed

Understanding how to cut off the cascade of events that allows cancer cells to become stress-tolerant is important, because it provides a new area to explore for future treatments.

Our team is currently considering potential strategies to prevent cancer cells from utilizing the fibronectin matrix to gain stress tolerance, including drugs that can target the receptors that bind to fibronectin on the surface of tumor cells. One of these drugs, being developed by a company one of us co-founded, is poised to enter clinical trials soon. Other strategies include preventing cancer cells from gaining LPAR4 when they sense stress, or interfering with the signals that promote the generation of the fibronectin matrix.

For patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, there is a pressing need to discover how to improve the effectiveness of surgery or chemotherapy. Like combating weeds in your garden, this may require attacking the problem from multiple directions at once.The Conversation

Chengsheng Wu, Postdoctoral Scholar in Pathology, University of California, San Diego; David Cheresh, Professor of Pathology, University of California, San Diego, and Sara Weis, Senior Scientist in Pathology, University of California, San Diego

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, this is what is meant by “survival of the fittest.” Pancreatic cancer is a survivor because it is so adaptable – it treats chemo the way Mithridates (at least according to legend) treated poison. It is also a dreadful scourge. Unfortunately, the two qualities are not incompatible. If you have any tips to give the scientists working on this, the whole world will deeply appreciate it.

The Furies and I will be back.

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Everyday Erinyes #353

 Posted by at 4:31 pm  Politics
Jan 152023
 

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

I said last week I wasn’t finished with the subject of the Speakership of the House of Representatives. I expect thet after today I will be – for a while. I assume what inspired this article is the fact that the GOP majority in the house is so slender – more so even than our was for the last two years. And McCarthy is no Pelosi. Also, the Republican Party is in rupture, not only in the House, but statewide in most states (if not all of them) and nationally.

As the author points out, deaths happen. Resignations happen, for whatever reasons. And, with this majority, it’s a good bet indictments are going to happen. I don’t know to whom, I don’t know for what crimes, I certainly don’t know for how many. But even if the House decides to stand by its felons, some crimes currently under investigation are such as to constitutionally disqualify the felon from public office.
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Speaker of the House faces political peril from member deaths and resignations – especially with a narrow majority

GOP House leader Kevin McCarthy wants to be speaker of the House.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Charles R. Hunt, Boise State University

The arm-twisting, dealmaking and vote hunting around Kevin McCarthy’s quest to be named House speaker have put on full display the fact that razor-thin majorities in both the House and the Senate are becoming a fact of life at the federal level.

In multiple ballots conducted on Jan. 3, 2023 to elect the speaker of the House, McCarthy failed to get the required number of votes. Additional balloting is expected in the race for speaker.

Slim margins might make for dramatic television, but they create legislative and institutional uncertainty that has very real consequences for how Congress is run and how policy gets made.

Because the GOP’s 10-seat House majority is so small, McCarthy has had to placate the moderate wing, the right wing and the far-right wing of his conference – all at the same time – in his quest for the speaker’s gavel.

The GOP’s slim majority may actually get slimmer. This is because of seat vacancies caused by the early departures of members of Congress. These vacancies happen with regularity, and could have major impacts on the Republicans’ legislative agenda over the next two years.

A slim majority means that the Republican leadership can’t afford to lose support from even small groups of members within their party. But each congressional session, some members depart Congress early, leaving vacancies that can complicate party leaders’ efforts to placate their competing factions or blocs. Imagine, for example, that a moderate Republican member dies or resigns in the next few months. Will that person be replaced with another moderate? A Trump-aligned Republican? A Democrat?

With such a small advantage, the potential effect of this replacement is huge – not just for McCarthy, but for Congress as a whole, and the American people, whose lives are affected by legislation passed by Congress.

A flag-draped casket is in the middle of a large, stately hall, surrounded by people.
Visitors file past the flag-draped casket of Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, as he lies in state in Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol on March 29, 2022.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images

How do vacancies occur?

The 117th Congress, which met from Jan. 3, 2021, to Jan. 3, 2023, set a modern record with 15 vacancies, a rate unmatched going back to the 1950s. This was partly because of six member deaths, including Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, the longest-serving House member at the time. A number of these vacancies occurred in the first days of the 117th, when several Democratic House members, including Cedric Richmond of Louisiana and Marcia Fudge of Ohio, took positions in the new Biden administration.

High-profile vacancies in recent history were due to other causes. Some members were forced to resign because of scandal, like Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., who was convicted in 2022 for lying to the FBI about illegal campaign contributions. Others cut short their current term, leaving Congress after losing their primaries, as Rep. Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican, did in 2014. House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican from Ohio, resigned after facing threats of being ousted from leadership in 2015.

And although the 117th was a banner Congress for vacancies, the historical data demonstrates that they happen all the time. Based on my analysis, there are usually at least a handful of vacancies per two-year congressional cycle.

Resignation is the most common reason for departure in recent Congresses. However, at least one member – and often more than one – has died in all but one Congress in the past 70 years. The number of deaths that regularly occur among members is more than sufficient to change how the majority party functions in a closely contested Congress like this one.

This potentially leaves party leaders captive to some particular interest, either in their party or in the opposition party.

How are vacancies filled?

Although U.S. Senate vacancies are often – though not always – filled through an appointment by the governor of that state, the Constitution mandates that House vacancies be filled by special elections scheduled by the governor.

These elections usually happen within a few months of the vacancy. What this means is that there are real possibilities for the size of a party’s majority to shrink, or grow, between election years. And even if a majority party shift doesn’t happen, a district could still replace a moderate departing representative with an extremist, or vice versa.

Special elections have received significant focus from the media and the public in recent years. That’s mainly because their results, when compared with the most recent result for that seat, can be bellwethers for how the next set of congressional elections will turn out.

For example, a number of special elections throughout 2022 — including the Alaska race to replace Young — showed even or Democratic-leaning results compared with 2020, giving early indications that the “red wave” many experts predicted would not actually materialize.

Speaker of the House John Boehner, a Republican, announced his resignation from Congress on Sept. 25, 2015, and gave this speech.

What does this mean for the 118th Congress?

A vacating member, and the special election that decides a successor, is not just an electoral crystal ball. It can have major implications for the balance of power in Congress; any GOP leader will have to manage these implications.

On the right, there is the 44-member House Freedom Caucus and, more specifically, the “MAGA Squad” – think Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz and Andy Biggs. To the left, there’s a swath of more moderate Republicans from such states as New York and Ohio with no intention of letting far-right firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene control the agenda.

These are two factions of Republicans who want vastly different action in the 118th Congress. The moderate bloc understands that, with a Democratic Senate and Joe Biden as president, compromise with Democrats may be necessary for legislative achievement.

Meanwhile, the far-right bloc has made other priorities clear, such as relentlessly investigating Biden, his administration and his family. Managing these competing demands will be hard enough for the new House speaker and unexpected vacancies could make the task even harder.

Beyond the tensions among Republicans, Democrats will be ready to pounce on any opportunity to divide and conquer. The recent revelations surrounding incoming Rep. George Santos, a Republican from New York, who allegedly fabricated huge portions of his résumé and personal story during his campaign, represent one such potential opportunity. If Santos is forced to resign, a Democratic victory in a special election in his Long Island swing district could cut the GOP’s majority from 10 to eight.

Even if special elections don’t change a party’s control over certain seats, vacancies can and will throw the 118th House of Representatives into chaos by shifting the balance of power from one ideological bloc to another. More chaos, that is, than it is already enduring.The Conversation

Charles R. Hunt, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Boise State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, personally, I look forward to legal actions which will shrink the Republican majority, possibly even turn it into a minority. And he made the concession that it takes just one person now to move to vacate the chair.

The Furies and I will be back.

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Everyday Erinyes #352

 Posted by at 4:12 pm  Politics
Jan 082023
 

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

Well, the “Freedom Caucus” has purchased Kevin McCarthy’s soul and re-sold it to the devil, and gotten him to commit himself to some serious chaos even before committee chairs are named. The one bright spot is that another condition he agreed to is that a single representative can call for and get a vote of no confidence … which, if it succeeds, means we will again be without a Speaker. And having no Speaker is better than having Kevin McCarthy as Speaker.

This article was written before the final vote, but it is still valuable now – particularly if one of those votes f no confidence succeeds.
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Kevin McCarthy voted Speaker of the House on 15th vote — we had some questions about the chaotic week in Congress and got a few answers

More jaw-jaw needed to end the GOP speaker war, Mr. McCarthy?
Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Rachel Paine Caufield, Drake University

Editor’s note: This article was published prior to a 15th vote in the House of Representatives that saw Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California elected as House Speaker in the early hours of Jan. 7, 2023. It still has lots of super interesting information and analysis in it though, so please do read on.

It is fair to say that the beginning of the 118th U.S. Congress has not gone entirely to plan.

In the space of four days, members-elect of the House of Representatives have held more than a dozen votes over who would take on the role of speaker. Yet, as of Jan. 6, 2023, the position remains unfilled.

As a result, representatives have not been sworn in to start the job they were elected to do. The sticking point: A dwindling group of holdout conservatives in the GOP are refusing to toe the line and fall behind the party leadership’s preferred candidate, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California.

The Conversation had a plethora of questions over what this means for governance, and the authority of the speaker – whoever that may be. So we put them to Rachel Paine Caufield, an expert on all thing Congress at Drake University.

Can the House do any other business while there is no speaker?

In short, no. The only business being done in the U.S. House of Representatives at the moment is voting for the role of speaker.

No other business can proceed until a speaker is in place. And this is for one very simple reason: No representatives can be sworn in until there is a speaker. So right now we have no formal representatives serving in the House of Representatives, and as a result no one has the legal authority in the House to carry out the work of government.

Other usual House activity, such as briefings on issues including security, is also not happening. Would-be representatives can’t be briefed yet because they have not been sworn in.

They can still meet with constituents. But they can’t make any formal request of government, because they are just representatives-elect until they are sworn in – and that applies to both new members of the House as well as returning members.

Does it affect the Senate?

The Senate can still operate, and there are certain things the Senate alone is responsible for, such as ratifying treaties and confirming judicial nominees.

But any legislation needs to go through both the Senate and the House – so no laws can be passed until a speaker is in place.

Can unofficial business be done in the House?

Certainly representatives are meeting while this situation is going on. My guess would be that the Democrats – who are unified in their support of Hakeem Jeffries as their nominee for speaker – are having conversations about future legislative activity.

People chat while seated on brown benches.
GOP conservative holdouts Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz (right).
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

For the Republicans, the priority right now is how to navigate this impasse over the speaker position. But don’t think that some of those discussions are not also about legislation. The holdouts in the GOP are looking for concessions on things such as term limits for representatives – and that is a legislative issue; they will need to pass law on it.

But for the most part, the fight over the speakership is the only issue in town.

What is the U.S. missing out on in terms of House business?

If you look at the House calendar for the first few weeks of the year, there isn’t an awful lot on it.

In the first few days, normally you would have the selection of the speaker and swearing in of members. And then they would traditionally break. There wasn’t expected to be a huge amount of legislation being pushed straight out of the gate.

One thing that is being delayed is a revision of the rules of the House of Representatives – something that happens at the beginning of each session of Congress. A rules package decides what the rules of the House will be in that session; then representatives get down to legislative business.

You have to keep in mind that legislative activity is heavier at the end of sessions – and we just finished a session of Congress in December. If legislation doesn’t pass in the House and the Senate in a single two-year session, then it dies – so there is no leftover business from last year; everything starts over again.

As a result, you traditionally don’t see a lot of dramatic legislative activity early in a House session.

But what happens if the impasse continues?

The one pressing thing the House has coming up that is not being dealt with is a vote over the raising of the debt ceiling.

Congress needs to raise the debt ceiling this spring; otherwise the U.S. will default on its obligations.

But the House still has four or five weeks until this really is a pressing issue – and brinkmanship is common when it comes to the debt ceiling, so expect that to be a protracted debate and negotiation in any case.

Can this situation continue?

Yes. The U.S. Constitution identifies only three congressional roles that need to be filled – the speaker of the House is one, the other two being the president of the Senate (the constitution designates that the vice president of the U.S. fills this role), and the Senate president pro tempore, a ceremonial position to serve as the president of the Senate if the vice president can’t fulfill his or her Senate duties.

So there does need to be a speaker in place. The Constitution requires only that the House shall elect a speaker, but doesn’t specify how or lay out a time frame – they can vote for weeks or even months.

By tradition, the speaker is elected by a majority of the House – so right now that would mean 218 representatives, assuming all are present and voting. Although the House rules currently specify that a majority is needed, that can be changed – it isn’t in the Constitution. The GOP could lower the vote majority needed to 213 to push McCarthy over the line, although they wouldn’t go lower as that could allow the Democrats to select Jeffries, who already has the support of all 212 Democrats in the House.

Hang on! If representatives aren’t sworn in, who can change the House rules?

That could come down to the clerk’s office that is currently presiding over the House session. In the same way that the clerk’s office is allowing representatives-elect to nominate speakers, they could allow a motion putting forward a change in the House rules.

It has never happened before, and it would raise a number of procedural questions – but theoretically it is possible.

Who can be a House speaker? We have heard a lot of names

The Constitution has no rules whatsoever about who can and cannot be the House speaker. Representatives-elect can nominate – and even elect – someone who is not a member of the House to be speaker. That is why you have seen Donald Trump be nominated by one member; someone even joked about former speaker Newt Gingrich.

There are requirements for serving as a member of the House of Representatives – you have to be over the age of 25, a U.S. citizen for at least seven years and live in the state from which you were elected. But as a speaker doesn’t have to be a member of the House, these rules don’t apply. So you could, theoretically, nominate a 7-year-old German child.

Could Trump really be the speaker?

Constitutionally, yes. Practically, no. There seems to be very little appetite for this among GOP members in the House – he only received one vote, and may not want the job in any case.

How has this all affected the authority of the role of Speaker?

The short answer is we don’t know yet. The fact that it has taken this many votes and still we don’t have a speaker in place in itself will have an effect. It indicates a divided majority party that will be difficult to lead – that in itself will diminish the power of the role.

Any concessions struck to reach a deal over the speakership could further erode the speaker’s authority. What is being negotiated by holdouts in the GOP are largely measures to empower individual members at the expense of party leadership.

This isn’t that uncommon. Over history the power of the speakership has ebbed and flowed.

A black and white photo shows a man standing it 1900s period dress.
‘Uncle’ Joe Cannon – a powerful speaker.
HUM Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

One of the most powerful speakers in U.S. history, “Uncle” Joe Cannon, was removed in 1910 by his party for that reason – they thought the speaker had too much power. In 1974, the influx of so-called “Watergate babies” – a group of northern liberal Democrats elected as part of a backlash after Watergate – led to an effort to diminish the power of committee chairs in the House. The rules changes left a vacuum that was filled by the speaker, with the result that the power of the position increased.

That all said, what is being discussed is unheard of. The main concession – a change to the “motion to vacate the chair” rule so that any one member, or a small number of members, can initiate a process that is effectively a vote of no confidence – has never been tried before.

Another request by the GOP holdouts is to open the rules on the house floor so that any member can propose amendments to any bill. There are 435 members, and all have pet projects and constituent needs. Such a change would be chaos. In effect, it would mean that 435 people will be involved in the making of the legislative sausage right on the house floor.

Will any concessions be binding?

They don’t necessarily have to be adopted by future speakers, no. Some will have to be adopted in a new rules package for the House, but the rules package is changed every new session, so they won’t be binding forever. Indeed, some Democratic representatives have indicated that if concessions are made, they would potentially challenge the rules package or vote against some of the most extreme measures that holdouts are demanding.

Some of the concessions being discussed won’t need a rule change at all. They are, in effect, agreements between different factions in the Republican Party. For example, a concession that the GOP leadership will not use its SuperPac to favor candidates in open Republican primaries – that is something that can’t be dictated by House rules; it is more an issue of trust.The Conversation

Rachel Paine Caufield, Professor of Political Science, Drake University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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AMT, I’m not finished with this subject. Give me another week before expecting a request from me.

The Furies and I will be back.

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Everyday Erinyes #351

 Posted by at 5:12 pm  Politics
Jan 012023
 

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

Going into a New Year, a new Congress, and a new election cycle, after the end of a cycle which has produced some of the – to be charitable – weirdest candidates ever seen in the United States (at least in our lifetimes), I thought it might be a good idea to take a critical look at suggestions for how to find, draft, and elect candidates who will work for us. Let me say right now, I am not totally on board with the scoring system the author proposes – I see the possibiity (or probability, especially for Republicans) of ambitious legislators drafting and introducing large amounts of nonsense legislation in order to get high marks. Not everyone is, or should be, a creator. We also need analysts – and above all, votes. Good, sound votes. But it is a place to start.
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Workhorses, not show horses: Five ways to promote effective lawmaking in Congress

There are ways to get things done under the U.S. Capitol dome.
AP Photo/Patrick Semansky

Craig Volden, University of Virginia and Alan E. Wiseman, Vanderbilt University

Americans dislike Congress, especially when it fails to act on pressing problems. They are then surprised by legislative accomplishments on climate change, gun control and maintaining competitiveness with China.

But Congress does much more on a daily basis than deal – or fail to deal – with high-profile issues.

We have spent more than a decade exploring the thousands of bills and hundreds of laws produced by members of Congress each year. We find that individual representatives and senators vary dramatically in how interested they are in lawmaking and how effectively they advance their proposals. And we see opportunities to build a better Congress.

We have devised and generated a “Legislative Effectiveness Score” for each member of the House and Senate for each two-year Congress for the past 50 years. These scores are based on 15 metrics, capturing how many bills each lawmaker sponsors, how far they progress toward law and how substantively significant they are. The scores are politically neutral, with members of both parties scoring higher upon advancing whatever policies they think are best.

Voters can use these scores to see how their political representatives have fared in this measure, perhaps finding them among the 23% of representatives or 19% of senators who were highly effective in the most recently completed Congress. And researchers use them to determine the factors that make lawmakers effective in Congress.

Based on our work, we have identified five ways that legislators, reformers and voters can help promote effective lawmaking in Congress.

Two men in suits and a woman in a light jacket talking.
Lawmakers willing to work with those from the other party are the most successful at advancing their bills through Congress. GOP Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah, left, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia talk during a joint session of Congress.
Win McNamee/Getty Images

1. Lawmakers can focus their legislative agendas on their interests, committee assignments and constituency needs

Members of Congress face many demands on their time. They are almost always campaigning or raising money for the next election. Their time on Capitol Hill is punctuated with committee meetings and calls to votes on the House or Senate floor.

Such pressures leave little time to formulate new policies, build coalitions and advance their proposals. Effective lawmakers do not have more time than others – they simply align these various activities toward a common goal of lawmaking.

Effective lawmakers introduce bills that combine their own interests and passions with the needs of their constituencies and their committee assignments.

Thus, time spent away from Washington, in their home states and districts, is focused on identifying the policy needs of their constituents and highlighting their policy successes; time in committee is spent making and refining their policy proposals; time milling around between votes is used to build coalitions.

For the effective lawmaker, all these different activities form a coherent whole.

2. Legislators can view lawmaking as a team sport

No member of Congress can accomplish anything by himself or herself. Effective lawmakers recognize this and build a successful team.

Our analysis found that effective lawmakers avoid the pitfall of hiring loyal campaign staffers to handle the legislative work of their offices. Starting on Day One, they hire – and subsequently retain – legislative staff who have extensive experience on Capitol Hill.

They then join with like-minded colleagues to take advantage of the added resources provided by legislative caucuses, such as additional staff support and independent policy analyses, apart from the help provided by party leadership.

Moreover, for effective lawmakers, their team is not limited to their political party. Those willing to co-sponsor bills written by members of the other party find more bipartisan support for their own efforts. Our analysis demonstrates that such bipartisan lawmakers are the most successful at advancing their bills through Congress.

3. Lawmakers can specialize and develop policy expertise

Members of Congress need to be generalists to vote knowledgeably on diverse policy topics on any given day. Many take that generalist view to their lawmaking portfolio, sponsoring legislation in each of the 21 major issue areas addressed by Congress.

But we find that the most effective lawmakers dedicate about half of their time, attention and legislative proposals to a single issue area. By becoming an acknowledged experts in issues of health or education or international affairs, for example, lawmakers become central to policy formulation in their area of interest.

4. Reforms can reinforce good lawmaking habits

Individual lawmakers in Congress could adopt any of the practices above to become more effective. But institutional reforms could help reinforce such good behaviors.

The Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress has put forward dozens of reform proposals in the House of Representatives over the past three years. Based on our extensive research, we believe the proposals that would attract and retain experienced staff, promote bipartisanship or encourage the development of expertise through committee-centered lawmaking can increase the lawmaking effectiveness of Congress as a whole.

The hands of several people holding ballots and counting them.
Election workers in Pittsburgh recount ballots on June 1, 2022, from the recent Pennsylvania primary election.
AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar

5. Voters can reward effective lawmaking

Without electoral rewards for effective lawmaking, members of Congress may focus on being show horses rather than legislative workhorses.

The role of voters starts with the initial selection of candidates. Voters might consider whether candidates demonstrate policy expertise and speak about the benefits of bipartisanship, for example. They might consider our analysis showing that effective state legislators and women tend to be more effective lawmakers in Congress, on average.

Among incumbents, voters do strongly prefer effective over ineffective lawmakers at reelection time. However, when voters lack credible information about how effective their representative is, it is much easier to vote simply based on partisanship or other considerations.

On the whole, Congress can function much better. Effective lawmakers from the past have shown the path forward. Our analysis of 50 years of data offers lessons that any representative or senator can adopt, as well as reforms and electoral pressures that can nudge them in the right direction.The Conversation

Craig Volden, Professor of Public Policy and Politics, University of Virginia and Alan E. Wiseman, Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Political Economy, Professor of Political Science and Law, Vanderbilt University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, I realize bipartisan action is pretty well necessary for change (in fact, for any change – positive of negative). At this point in time, however, broad bipartisanship is not going to be helpful … because any idea all, or even a good majority, of Republican legislators agree on is going to be guanopsychotic. Seriously. It was recently pointed out that there is a debate on whose fault it is that George Santos got elected, and the two candidates for blame are – the Democrats and the Media. No one seems to think Republicans are to blame – because everyone has come to expect that lies are simply who Republicans are. (See today’s video thread.) Of course that will hurt them in the long run, and when it does, the hurt will be long lasting. But, for now, we are stuck with it.

The Furies and I will be back.

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Everyday Erinyes #350

 Posted by at 2:29 pm  Open Thread, Politics
Dec 252022
 

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

It’s still the holiday season, and I am still – sort of – on break. Not on break from posting the blog, but on break from the kind of news that warns us and may scare us into some kind of action. This story may scare us, but only because a development so major can open up so many possibilities for noth good and evil. Still, it’s exciting, and it’s inspiring to think about the good which can be done.

And for sure this technology is going to be used. By humans. Who can and do make mistakes (as the article makes very clear.) But innocent mistakes – even when catastrophic – are a different matter from deliberate misuse, generally done for money or power. That absolutely must be reckoned with.
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Did He Jiankui ‘Make People Better’? Documentary spurs a new look at the case of the first gene-edited babies

He Jiankui seemed unprepared for the furor set off by his bombshell announcement.
The He Lab/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

G. Owen Schaefer, National University of Singapore

In the four years since an experiment by disgraced scientist He Jiankui resulted in the birth of the first babies with edited genes, numerous articles, books and international commissions have reflected on whether and how heritable genome editing – that is, modifying genes that will be passed on to the next generation – should proceed. They’ve reinforced an international consensus that it’s premature to proceed with heritable genome editing. Yet, concern remains that some individuals might buck that consensus and recklessly forge ahead – just as He Jiankui did.

Some observers – myself included – have characterized He as a rogue. However, the new documentary “Make People Better,” directed by filmmaker Cody Sheehy, leans toward a different narrative. In its telling, He was a misguided centerpiece of a broader ecosystem that subtly and implicitly supported rapid advancement in gene editing and reproductive technologies. That same system threw He under the bus – and into prison – when it became evident that the global community strongly rejected his experiments.

Creation of the ‘CRISPR babies’

“Make People Better” outlines an already well-documented saga, tracing the path of He from a promising young scientist at Rice and Stanford to a driven researcher establishing a laboratory in China that secretly worked to make heritable genome editing a reality.

He’s experiment involved using the CRISPR-Cas9 technique. Sometimes compared to “molecular scissors,” this precision tool allows scientists to make very specific edits to DNA in living cells. He used CRISPR to alter the CCR5 gene in human embryos with the goal of conferring immunity to HIV. These embryos were brought to term, resulting in the birth of at least three children with altered DNA.

The revelation of the births of the first gene-edited babies in November 2018 resulted in an international uproar. A laundry list of ethical failings in He’s experiment quickly became evident. There was insufficient proof that editing embryos with CRISPR was safe enough to be done in humans. Appropriate regulatory approval had not been obtained. The parents’ consent was grossly inadequate. And the whole endeavor was shrouded in secrecy.

Trailer for the documentary ‘Make People Better.’

New context, same story

Three figures play a central role in “Make People Better”‘s study of He Jiankui. There’s Antonio Regalado, the reporter from MIT Technology Review who broke the original story. There’s Ben Hurlbut, an ethicist and confidante of He. And there’s Ryan (the documentary withholds his full identity), a public relations representative who worked with He to make gene editing palatable to the world. He Jiankui himself was not interviewed, though his voice permeates the documentary in previously unreleased recordings by Hurlbut.

Regalado and Hurlbut have already written a considerable amount on this saga, so the documentary’s most novel contribution comes from Ryan’s discussion of his public relations work with He. Ryan appears to be a true believer in He’s vision to literally “make people better” by using gene editing to prevent dreadful diseases.

But Ryan is aware that public backlash could torpedo this promising work. His reference point is the initial public hostility to GMO foods, and Ryan strove to avoid that outcome by gradually easing the public in to the heritable gene editing experiment.

This strategy turned out to be badly mistaken for a variety of reasons. He Jiankui was himself eager to publicize his work. Meanwhile, Regalado’s tenacious journalism led him to a clinical trials registry where He had quietly posted about the study.

But ultimately, those factors just affected the timing of revelation. Both Ryan and He failed to appreciate that they had very little ability to influence how the experiment would be received, nor how much condemnation would result.

Blind spots

While some documentaries strive to be flies on the wall, objectivity is elusive. Tone, framing, editing and choice of interview subjects all coalesce into a narrative with a perspective on the subject matter. A point of view is not itself objectionable, but it opens the documentary to critiques of its implicit stance.

An uncomfortable tension lies at the center of “Make People Better.”

On the one hand, the documentary gives substantial attention to Hurlbut and Ryan, who emphasize that He did not act alone. He discussed his plans with dozens of people in China and around the world, whose implicit support was essential to both the experiment and his confidence that he was doing nothing wrong.

On the other hand, the documentary focuses on understanding He’s background, motives and ultimate fate. Other figures who might have influenced He to take a different path fade into the background – sometimes quite literally, appearing for only seconds before the documentary moves on.

Indeed, as a biomedical ethicist, I believe there is good reason to put responsibility for the debacle squarely on He’s shoulders. Before the news broke in 2018, international panels of experts had already issued advisory statements that heritable gene editing was premature. Individuals like Hurlbut personally advised He as much. The secrecy of the experiment itself is a testament: He must have suspected the international community would reject the experiment if they knew what was going on.

If He had gone through proper, transparent channels – preregistering the trial and consulting publicly with international experts on his plans before he began – the whole saga could have been averted. He chose a different, more dangerous and secretive path from the vast majority of researchers working in reproductive biotechnology, which I suggest must be acknowledged.

The documentary does not reflect critically on its own title. The origin of the phrase “make people better” is surprising and the film’s most clever narrative moment, so I won’t spoil it. But does heritable gene editing really make people better? Perhaps instead, it makes better people.

The gene-edited babies were created via in vitro fertilization specifically as a part of He’s experiment. They would not have existed if He had never gotten involved in gene editing. So, some would argue, He did not save any individual from contracting HIV. Rather, he created new people potentially less likely to contract HIV than the general population.

I contend that this doesn’t mean gene editing is pointless. From a population health perspective, gene editing could save lives by reducing the incidence of certain diseases. But this perspective does change the moral tenor of gene editing, perhaps reducing its urgency.

What’s more, editing CCR5 is a dubious means to improve human well-being, since there are already effective ways to prevent HIV infection that are far less risky and uncertain than heritable gene editing. Scientific consensus suggests that the best first-in-human candidates for heritable gene editing are instead devastating genetic disorders that cannot be ameliorated in other ways.

The future for He Jiankui

Perhaps due to the timing of its filming, the documentary does not dwell on He being sentenced to three years in Chinese prison as a result of the experiment, nor mention that he was released early in 2022.

Evidently, He is not content to fade quietly into obscurity. He says he is slated in March 2023 to give a talk at the University of Oxford that may shed more light on his motives and actions. In the meantime, he has established a new biotech start-up focused on developing gene therapies. To be clear, this work does not involve editing embryos.

Still, it appears prison has not diminished He’s ambition. He claims that he could develop a cure for the degenerative genetic disease Duchenne muscular dystrophy – if he receives funding in excess of US$100 million.

To me, this ambition reflects a curious symmetry between Regalado and He in “Make People Better.” Both are driven to be first, to be at the forefront of their respective fields. Sometimes, as with Regalado, this initiative can be good – his intrepid reporting and instinct to publish quickly brought He’s unethical experiment to a rapid close. But in other cases, like He’s, that drive can lead to dangerous science that runs roughshod over ethics and good governance.

Perhaps, then, the best lesson a viewer can take from “Make People Better” is that ambition is a double-edged sword. In the years to come, it will be up to the international community to keep such ambition in check and ensure proper restrictions and oversight on heritable genome editing.The Conversation

G. Owen Schaefer, Assistant Professor in Biomedical Ethics, National University of Singapore

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, may I ask that you keep looking over the shoulders of the scientists develop and using this echnology, and keep them on the strait and narrow? Or at the very lest, nudge their associates to blow the whistle when they stray off of the path. And help our legislators understand how best to regulate this technology – and us understand how best to advise them.

The Furies and I will be back.

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Everyday Erinyes #349

 Posted by at 3:25 pm  Politics
Dec 182022
 

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

Heaven knows we have a Second Amendment problem in the United States. But the magnitude of our Second Amendment problem partly stems from, and also distracts from, the huge First Amendment problem we also have – which we have had for a long time, but which has been made painfully obvious by the rise of the internet and social media.

To put it bluntly, hate speech leads to violence, and wide availability of guns leads to that violence being gun violence. To paraphrase the reasoning attributed to Karl Popper, a society cannot be a tolerant society if it tolerates intolerance. It’s easy to say – but it’s extremely hard to legislate and regulate. That’s why I was immediately drawn to this article about what regulating social media need to look like.

Because we cannot afford THIS.
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What social media regulation could look like: Think of pipelines, not utilities

Is the law coming for Twitter, Meta and other social media outlets?
new look casting/iStock via Getty Images

Theodore J. Kury, University of Florida

Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, and his controversial statements and decisions as its owner, have fueled a new wave of calls for regulating social media companies. Elected officials and policy scholars have argued for years that companies like Twitter and Facebook – now Meta – have immense power over public discussions and can use that power to elevate some views and suppress others. Critics also accuse the companies of failing to protect users’ personal data and downplaying harmful impacts of using social media.

As an economist who studies the regulation of utilities such as electricity, gas and water, I wonder what that regulation would look like. There are many regulatory models in use around the world, but few seem to fit the realities of social media. However, observing how these models work can provide valuable insights.

Families across the U.S. are suing social media companies over policies that they argue affected their children’s mental health.

Not really economic regulation

The central ideas behind economic regulation – safe, reliable service at fair and reasonable rates – have been around for centuries. The U.S. has a rich history of regulation since the turn of the 20th century.

The first federal economic regulator in the U.S. was the Interstate Commerce Commission, which was created by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. This law required railroads, which were growing dramatically and becoming a highly influential industry, to operate safely and fairly and to charge reasonable rates for service.

The Interstate Commerce Act reflected concerns that railroads – which were monopolies in the regions that they served and provided an essential service – could behave in any manner they chose and charge any price they wanted. This power threatened people who relied on rail service, such as farmers sending crops to market. Other industries, such as bus transportation and trucking, would later be subjected to similar regulation.

Individual social media companies don’t really fit this traditional mold of economic regulation. They are not monopolies, as we can see from people leaving Twitter and jumping to alternatives like Mastodon and Post.

While internet access is fast becoming an essential service in the information age, it’s debatable whether social media platforms provide essential services. And companies like Facebook and Twitter don’t directly charge people to use their platforms. So the traditional focus of economic regulation – fear of exorbitant rates – doesn’t apply.

Fairness and safety

In my view, a more relevant regulatory model for social media might be the way in which the U.S. regulates electricity grid and pipeline operations. These industries fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and state utility regulators. Like these networks, social media carries a commodity – here it’s information, instead of electricity, oil or gas – and the public’s primary concern is that companies like Meta and Twitter should do it safely and fairly.

In this context, regulation means establishing standards for safety and equity. If a company violates those standards, it faces fines. It sounds simple, but the practice is far more complicated.

First, establishing these standards requires a careful definition of the regulated company’s roles and responsibilities. For example, your local electric utility is responsible for delivering power safely to your home. Since social media companies continuously adapt to the needs and wants of their users, establishing these roles and responsibilities could prove challenging.

Texas attempted to do this in 2021 with HB 20, a law that barred social media companies from banning users based on their political views. Social media trade groups sued, arguing that the measure infringed upon their members’ First Amendment rights. A federal appellate court blocked the law, and the case is likely headed to the Supreme Court.

A woman in a suit testifies before a congressional committee.
President Biden named Lina Khan, a prominent critic of Big Tech companies, as chair of the Federal Trade Commission in 2021. The agency investigates issues including antitrust violations, deceptive trade practices and data privacy lapses.
AP Photo/Saul Loeb

Setting appropriate levels of fines is also complicated. Theoretically, regulators should try to set a fine commensurate with the damage to society from the infraction. From a practical standpoint, however, regulators treat fines as a deterrent. If the regulator never has to assess the fine, it means that companies are adhering to the established standards for safety and equity.

But laws often inhibit agencies from energetically policing target industries. For example, the Office of Enforcement at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is concerned with safety and security of U.S. energy markets. But under a 2005 law, the office can’t levy civil penalties higher than US$1 million per day. In comparison, the cost to customers of the California power crisis of 2000-2001, fueled partially by energy market manipulation, has been estimated at approximately $40 billion.

In 2022 the Office of Enforcement settled eight investigations of violations that occurred from 2017 to 2021 and levied a total of $55.5 million in penalties. In addition, it opened 21 new investigations. Clearly, the prospect of a fine from the regulator is not a sufficient deterrent in every instance.

From legislation to regulation

Congress writes the laws that create regulatory agencies and guide their actions, so that’s where any moves to regulate social media companies will start. Since these companies are controlled by some of the wealthiest people in the U.S., it’s likely that a law regulating social media would face legal challenges, potentially all the way to the Supreme Court. And the current Supreme Court has a strong pro-business record.

If a new law withstands legal challenges, a regulatory agency such as the Federal Communications Commission or the Federal Trade Commission, or perhaps a newly created agency, would have to write regulations establishing social media companies’ roles and responsibilities. In doing so, regulators would need to be mindful that changes in social preferences and tastes could render these roles moot.

Finally, the agency would have to create enforcement mechanisms, such as fines or other penalties. This would involve determining what kinds of actions are likely to deter social media companies from behaving in ways deemed harmful under the law.

In the time it would take to set up such a system, we can assume that social media companies would evolve quickly, so regulators would likely be assessing a moving target. As I see it, even if bipartisan support develops for regulating social media, it will be easier said than done.The Conversation

Theodore J. Kury, Director of Energy Studies, University of Florida

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, Heather Cox Richardson closed her Letter for December 14 with this: “[I]n June, the Supreme Court handed down the sweeping New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen decision requiring those trying to place restrictions on gun ownership to prove similar restrictions were in place when the Framers wrote the Constitution. Already, a Texas judge has struck down a rule preventing domestic abusers from possessing firearms on the grounds that domestic violence was permissible in the 1700s.” (Emphasis mine)

Originalism. If it isn’t checked, it will kill us all. And the founders would absolutely not have wanted it. They were not idiots – they knew that circumstances would change, and that government of, by, and for the people would need to change with them. They said so – including in the Constitution itself – if not, why would they have included in it a provision for amending it?

I do have one thought regarding the setting of the amounts of fines for non-compliance. Setting dollar amounts clearly doesn’t work – values change and fines simply become an accepted “cost of doing business.” We need to start settimg fines not as “no more than X dollars” but instead as “not greater than Z percent of the defendant’s total net worth,” or some other indicator. “Y percent of the degendant’s gross annual profits in the most recent year” might work.

The Furies and I will be back.

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Everyday Erinyes #348

 Posted by at 3:02 pm  Politics
Dec 112022
 

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

I think we were all a bit shaken by the revelations of a planned violent coup in Germany, and the arrests which hve forestalled it for now (though more arrests are expected) – though probably by different details. And that’s partly why I wanted to share this article – because it gives us a chance to share insights on what stood out to us about the story. I note in passing that their movenent includes the German word for “citizen” (which like ours derives from the word for city), and the people inthis movement seem to share some unheallthy attitudes with our self-styled “sovereign citizens.”
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What is the Reichsbürger movement accused of trying to overthrow the German government?

Claire Burchett, King’s College London

Police have arrested 25 people accused of planning to overthrow the German government in a series of raids across the country.

The group is accused of trying to instate Heinrich XIII – a descendant of German royalty – as their leader. Among those arrested were members of the Reichsbürger (which translates as citizens of the Reich), a disparate movement of groups and individuals, including some with extreme-right views.

Reichsbürger adherents have been stopped from attempting violent action before, but this latest incident and its alleged members have caused greater concern.

A former member of the German parliament, who was also a judge until shortly after her arrest, was among the group. Birgit Malsack-Winkemann was a parliamentary deputy for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), but left the party in 2021.

Several former soldiers were also arrested in connection with the coup plot. This is a cause for great concern for law enforcement, as such ties give possibly dangerous extremists access to weapons and trained individuals.

Earlier in 2022, Heinrich XIII was reported in the German press as being close to the Reichsbürger scene and a believer of conspiracy theories, prompting his family, the House of Reuss, to publicly distance themselves from him.

He does not, however, have a high profile, apart from a 2019 speech at the WorldWebForum conference in Switzerland, which contained an antisemitic and historical revisionist message. The involvement of an aristocrat speaks to the monarchist motivations of some Reichsbürger, who wish to reinstate a Kaiser as head of state.

What do the Reichsbürger believe?

The Reichsbürger do not have a centralised structure but are estimated to have at least 21,000 supporters. Their key belief is that the current German state (the Bundesrepublik or Federal Republic), its institutions and democratically elected representatives are not legitimate.

Supporters of the movement refuse to adhere to state authority, such as by paying taxes. They became notorious in the early years of the pandemic for refusing to comply with COVID-19 restrictions.

Some adherents to the movement consider that official German passports and ID cards are illegitimate. While some prefer to use an official certificate of citizenship (called a gelber Schein or yellow certificate), others manufacture their own illegal passports and driver’s licenses. These will often include former German states as places of birth, such as the kingdoms of Bavaria or Prussia. In 2021, a German civil servant was removed from office after he applied for a passport with the Kingdom of Bavaria listed as his birth state.

Members of the group generally believe that some previous version of the German state is in fact the legitimate form – though there is some inconsistency as to which.

Some supporters believe Germany’s true form existed between 1871 and 1918, when the German Reich was established following unification and before the first world war. Others cite the constitution of the interwar Weimar Republic as that of the true Germany. And others still focus on 1937 to demonstrate what they perceive as the legitimate boundaries of German territory, which then included the former Kingdom of Prussia, now Poland and Russia, but not Austria, which was annexed in 1938.

A map of the German Reich, 1871-1918
One vision of the ‘true’ Germany amongst this extremist group dates back to before the first world war.
Wikipedia, CC BY-SA

A uniting belief among the Reichsbürger is that the current German state lacks sovereignty. They think the western allies (France, the UK and US) supposedly retained control after their occupation of West Germany ended in 1955. Therefore, some believe that the current German state is a puppet regime which does not support the interests of the German people.

They sometimes refer to it as Deutschland GmbH (Limited), implying it has no power over itself and exists only to enrich its controllers. The name BRD GmbH is also used, referring to the abbreviated name for post-war West Germany.

Revisionist history and antisemitism

The focus on historical revisionism and erasure of German sovereignty can encourage a conception of Germany as a blameless country with uncomplicated pride. By focusing on pre-war borders and overlooking post-war history, the Reichsbürger can ignore Germany’s defeat in the second world war, as well as its process of coming to terms with its Nazi and colonial past, notably the Holocaust and the 1904 Herero and Nama genocide in Namibia. The removal of these dark moments in German history enables the movement’s supporters to focus on their own perceived victimisation as subjects of a German state which they do not recognise.

A similar revisionism is common in the wider German far right, notably some members of the populist AfD party. Repudiation of the Holocaust’s importance and an emphasis on “positive” moments in German history encourages Holocaust relativisation and antisemitism.

However, unlike the AfD, which has adapted its rhetoric to fit into the political mainstream, some Reichsbürger followers entirely disregard current German laws banning Holocaust denial and the dissemination of Nazi propaganda. The group is linked to overt antisemitism and the spread of antisemitic conspiracy theories about the power of “high finance” as well as outright Holocaust denial. In March 2020, German police seized neo-Nazi propaganda during raids on the homes of some Reichsbürger members.

However, the historical revisionism can confuse the picture. Although many of its adherents are antisemitic and glorify the colonial past, the Reichsbürger is not specifically defined as a group of right-wing extremists. In truth, only a small portion of the movement can be defined as such.

At its core, right-wing extremism is largely defined as anti-democratic. While many Reichsbürger refuse to endorse the legitimacy of Germany’s current democratic state, the lack of unified vision within the movement makes it unclear which system would be preferable, the constitutional monarchy of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the democratic experiment of Weimar Germany or the dictatorship of Nazi Germany. However, in the case of the most recent plot, the key role of Heinrich XIII implies that the goal was the restitution of a constitutional monarchy in the style of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s regime.

Growing threat?

Some Reichsbürger followers are evidently beginning to engage in political violence. The latest arrests follow multiple other incidents. In 2016, a police officer was killed during a raid on a member of the movement’s illegal collection of weapons. In August 2020, members of the Reichsbürger attempted to enter the German parliament as part of a protest against COVID-19 restrictions.

The presence of former military figures and a former parliamentarian among the most recently arrested group suggest the Reichsbürger are not without potential influence. The AfD has long denied any links to the movement, but has been shifting further and further to the right in recent years. In 2019, the German interior ministry reported that it had identified some isolated connections between the Reichsbürger and the AfD.

The Reichsbürger could be viewed as a fringe group but their ideas clearly appeal to some enough to convince them a coup is a worthwhile undertaking. And links to more influential organisations would make them more dangerous – which is why this matter has been taken so seriously by the authorities.The Conversation

Claire Burchett, PhD candidate in European Politics, King’s College London

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, particularly in the light of MAGAt officials in way too many states who appear to think that everything in the way of relations will all be just lovely if we just don’t talk about them, many of us have looked to Germany as an example of a nation which responsibly required study of the Holocaust, and took responsibility, if not for the horror, at least for trying to prevent its occurrence. As someone who has looked to Germany in that way, my first reaction was not exactly disappointment – it was more like, “Good God, if doing the right things doesn’t succeed in diminishing, or even helping to contend with, the ugliness that thrives in people’s hearts, then what will?!” Is there even an answer at all? Help us to brainstorm – not that we can come up with a solution, but perhaps we can at least learn something.

The Furies and I will be back.

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Everyday Erinyes #347

 Posted by at 4:12 pm  Open Thread, Politics
Dec 042022
 

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

I’ve been saying that democracy requires trust. That doesn’t just mean that citizens should (and should confidently be able to) trust the government – it also means that we need to ba able to trust each other, and the government needs to trust us. There are governments which can function without all of this mutual trust (Hungary, Turkey), but they canot keep it up forever (Russia), and in any case, a government which can function without trust is not worth having. That’s no way to live. I realize there are people who think those governments are worth having, and I don’t trust them. Do you?
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Healthy democracy requires trust – these 3 things could start to restore voters’ declining faith in US elections

Election workers sort ballots at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center on Nov. 9, 2022, in Phoenix.
John Moore/Getty Images

Sarah Bush, Yale University and Lauren Prather, University of California, San Diego

The 2022 U.S. midterm elections ran relatively smoothly and faced few consequential accusations of fraud or mismanagement. Yet many Americans don’t trust this essential element of a democracy.

It’s dangerous for peace and stability when the public doubts democratic elections. Disastrous events like the insurrection by supporters of President Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol in January 2021 make that clear.

But there are subtler effects of such doubt. Trump isn’t the only instigator of this distrust, which he sowed with his false assertions that the 2020 presidential vote was “rigged” and that he was the legitimate winner of the election.

Study after study – in both the U.S. and around the world – make clear that trust in elections predicts whether a person votes and decides to participate in politics in other ways, like attending peaceful demonstrations or even discussing politics. If people don’t think that elections are fair, then they don’t see the point in taking the steps that maintain democracy.

Healthy democracies are countries where regular elections lead to peaceful transfers of power. Citizens are essential to this process, especially as their votes and peaceful protests hold politicians accountable. Their beliefs about election credibility determine whether they are willing and able to play this role.

Four voters standing at voting booths, backs to the camera.
Voters cast their ballots at the Madison Senior Center on Nov. 8, 2022, in Madison, Wisconsin.
Jim Vondruska/Getty Images

Winners trust elections – losers don’t

The consequences of the Capitol riot continue to loom large. The congressional hearings investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection have revealed the extent of then-President Trump’s desire to challenge the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s victory. In behind-the-scenes footage from his address on Jan. 7, 2021, to the nation, Trump said, “I don’t want to say the election is over.”

Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, were hardly the first time he sowed distrust in American elections. While campaigning in 2016, he warned the election could be “rigged” and called on his supporters to be “Trump Election Observers.” Trump built on the claims of earlier Republican politicians who for years stoked fears about what they called “voter fraud,” even though nonpartisan experts demonstrate such fraud is rare in American elections.

Although GOP politicians have done the most to sow distrust in American elections, some Democrats have also questioned the fairness of elections. In 2018, Stacey Abrams acknowledged losing the race for governor of Georgia to incumbent Brian Kemp, but said “the game was rigged against the voters of Georgia.”

Waning trust in elections not only turns off voters, but it also leads to other problems. Trump supporters deliberately overwhelmed local election officials before the midterms with information requests related to 2020 voting records. Other voters were “angry and confused,” uncertain about how to vote by mail and voting machines.

This situation is made worse by polarization in the United States. Many members of the American public will incorrectly question the accuracy of the midterms. As political scientists who study elections and democracy, we anticipate that post-election distrust will be especially high among the voters who supported candidates who lost.

Polarization widens the gap in trust between election winners and losers because partisans rely on different news sources, and some of them may even start to care more about their party winning than about democracy.

In 2016, for example, our surveys of Americans showed that Hillary Clinton’s supporters went into the presidential election thinking it would be significantly more credible than Trump’s supporters thought it would be. Prior to the election, Clinton’s supporters gave the election an average of 7.5 on a 10-point scale of credibility; Trump supporters gave the election an average of 5.4 on a 10-point scale of credibility.

After the election, Trump supporters were much more confident than Clinton supporters in the credibility of the election. Trump supporters gave an average 8.4 vs. Clinton supporters’ 5.4 on the same 10-point scale.

There was an even larger partisan gap after the 2020 presidential election, with Biden’s supporters expressing twice as much confidence in the election than Trump supporters. And the aftermath of that election is well known – the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Fostering faith

Can Americans’ trust in elections be rebuilt?

Answering that question is complicated by the country’s decentralized system of election management. Researchers have found that trust can be enhanced when whole countries reform their electoral systems to make them fairer and more transparent. Although American elections are democratic, it is difficult to highlight specific qualities – or implement reforms that would make elections even better – because election administration varies from state to state.

Poll worker training and other measures that make it likely that voters have a positive experience on election day can improve Americans’ trust in their elections. This will likely happen at a local level.

Another way that countries help the public understand election quality is through positive reports from trusted election observers, both domestic and international. More than 80% of national elections in the world have international monitors present. But, according to a study by the Carter Center and the National Conference of State Legislatures, 15 American states do not allow nonpartisan election observers to monitor polling stations. These states generally do allow partisan election observers, so that means citizens will be able to rely only on party-aligned reports – which citizens may not trust.

One valuable reform that would enhance the public’s trust would be to make it possible for nonpartisan groups to observe American elections more widely. In fact, many of the leaders in this practice abroad – like the Carter Center and the nonpartisan National Democratic Institute – are based in the U.S.

There is precedent for monitoring in American elections by such groups as the nonpartisan League of Women Voters. The U.S. government has also invited observers from international organizations, such as the Organization of American States and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, to monitor elections under Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Trump.

Giving monitors access to more state elections and publicizing their work is a step toward rebuilding Americans’ trust in elections. We know this from national surveys of the American public we conducted around the 2016, 2018 and 2020 elections. We consistently found that telling Americans that monitors reported the elections were fair increased citizens’ trust.

Police and someone holding a US flag, fighting.
What happens when people don’t trust elections? They can get violent, as they did on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol.
Shay Horse/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Politicizing election administration

Steps like allowing nonpartisan monitors and publicizing their positive assessments can only go so far toward reversing Americans’ declining trust in elections.

If politicians continue to express doubt about the fairness and legitimacy of American elections, whether warranted or unwarranted, the damaging effect of their messages will be difficult to correct.

And some elected officials are taking steps to actively undermine not just perceptions of election credibility, but election integrity itself. For example, the nonpartisan organizations States United Democracy Center and Protect Democracy in August 2022 identified 24 bills that have been enacted across 17 states that politicize and interfere with professional election administration.

The politicization of election administration threatens to further erode public trust in election integrity. Democracy depends on the public’s active participation in elections and acceptance of their results.The Conversation

Sarah Bush, Associate Professor, Political Science, Yale University and Lauren Prather, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of California, San Diego

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, this article is an excellent start. It addresses trust in the government and its institutions,and that is necessary – but ot suffivient. And, of course, the other two legs of mutual trust are much harder to establish and strengthen. How does one go about buiding, from outside, trust in people who apparently don’t even trust themselves?

The Furies and I will be back.

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