Elie Mystal In this week’s Elie v. U.S., The Nation’s justice correspondent connects the dots between the Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Case and Trump’s whites-only refugee policy. The post Another Banner Week for White Supremacists appeared first on The Nation.
People of faith have a mission to serve. The ‘Yes in God’s Backyard’ movement offers a way. By Robbie Sequeira for Stateline Growing up in a religious family, Florida Republican state Sen. Alexis Calatayud has seen how many church communities are no longer anchored to a single building in the way they used to be. Her small prayer groups take place over chats these days, not necessarily in person or sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in pews. With churches in her Miami-Dade County district grappling with shrinking membership and aging buildings, Calatayud thinks those institutions can do good with their unused land, by acting as anchors of new housing rather than as bystanders in neighborhood redevelopment. “When you look at someone sitting on a small church, on a 10-acre property with a dwindling congregation, the question becomes, ‘How can this entity continue to be the beating heart of the community?’” Calatayud said in an interview. Florida Sen. Alexis Calatayud, R-Miami, explains her affordable housing bill at the state Capitol in Tallahassee in March 2023. “I think it’s to create a village, where we can create more housing and even centralize other needs in the community on that land.” This year, Florida enacted a measure, sponsored by Calatayud, allowing multifamily residential development on land that is both owned by a religious institution and occupied by a house of worship, so long as at least 10% of the new units are affordable. Some housing advocates believe the zoning override has the potential to unlock roughly 30,000 parcels statewide. Florida’s new law is part of a growing movement known as YIGBY — Yes in God’s Backyard. Touted by many faith leaders, lawmakers and developers, the movement imagines a connection between a religious mission to serve and the very real hurdles of building affordable housing. If the U.S. is to meet the nation’s demand for new apartments, developers are going to need land, experts say, and parcels owned by faith-based organizations are starting to become a part of the solution for some states. At the same time, some skeptics question whether the movement could strip local communities of having a say in neighborhood development. Places of worship are found in every corner of the United States. Land owned by faith-based organizations makes up 84 million square feet in New York City, for example, with enough land for 22,000 units on just the vacant lots and surface parking lots of those organizations, according to the Furman Center of New York University. Elsewhere, HousingForward Virginia says faith-based organizations own 74,000 acres in the state, nearly twice the size of Richmond. California enacted what is considered the first statewide YIGBY law in 2023. It cleared the way for churches and other places of worship, as well as nonprofit universities, to create affordable housing on their land. It allows landowners to bypass public hearings, discretionary votes by city councils or planning boards, and certain environmental reviews so long as they meet affordability requirements, with at least 75% of the homes affordable for low-income households. Several states — Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York and Texas — have considered YIGBY legislation this year, though none has passed. And a bill filed last month in Congress would allow rental properties to be built on currently unused church land with federal assistance. Opponents of the Colorado bill frame it as state overreach on local zoning decisions and worry about a potential pathway for religious landowners to bypass Fair Housing Act protections for housing applicants who may not share that faith, according to a position paper opposing Colorado’s YIGBY legislation. Related | Locals oppose ‘insane’ plan to sell 500K acres of public lands for housing in Nevada and Utah Beverly Stables, a lobbyist for the Colorado Municipal League, told Stateline that local governments worry YIGBY bills could undermine constitutional home-rule authority and saddle towns with unfunded state mandates. “Our members have worked successfully with schools and churches on housing projects already,” she said. “The question is, what problem are we really trying to solve?” The Rev. Patrick Reidy, an associate professor of law at Notre Dame who has studied the relationship between housing and faith-based organizations, says states and cities are eager to partner with faith-based organizations to use their land. It’s not an easy decision for faith leaders to switch the purpose of their land from a devoted congregation space to housing, he said. “The decision to change the way church land has been used historically for decades or even centuries is not easy for a place of worship to make, so lawmakers should meet faith communities where they are,” said Reidy, who also is co-director of Notre Dame’s Church Properties Initiative. “It’s more an understanding that the way places of worship approach housing is from a moral mission to serve, so things like financing, zoning and legal know-how to create housing requires some walk-through for faith-based organizations,” Reidy said. “The real challenge is learning to speak each other’s language.” ‘Right in the middle’ Every afternoon at 3:22, members of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Madison, Wisconsin, pause what they are doing and pray. Whether they are working, at home, watching baseball’s Milwaukee Brewers or sitting in a temporary worship space, they pray at that exact time. It isn’t random: “322” is the address where the German Lutheran church has stood downtown at East Washington Avenue and North Hancock Street — just a block from the state Capitol — for 170 years, the Rev. Peter Beeson said. Congregation members no longer worship there because the site could be set for the biggest transformation in its history: trading in stained-glass windows and church pews for a 10-story high-rise that will combine a worship space with more than 100 affordable apartments. Beeson told Stateline that the congregation moved out of the building in the fall of 2023 for a groundbreaking later that same year. “Our current building was built in 1905, and was nearing the end of its useful life, with many additions and renovations over the years,” Beeson said. “And it made sense to sacrifice our existing
The questions keep coming for Speaker Mike Johnson about why he has not sworn in Rep.-Elect Adelita Grijalva of Arizona. Johnson has increasingly shown signs of cracking, as for once the mainstream press has gotten a hold of some Republican hypocrisy and is not letting it go. On ABC’s This Week, Jon Karl asked Johnson, “When are you going to swear in Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva?” The speaker responded by trying to blame Chuck Schumer for his decision to keep the House closed, “As soon as we get back to legislative session, when Chuck Schumer allows us to turn the lights back on.” Karl asked Johnson was he hasn’t done it already, and the speaker tried to blame Nancy Pelosi, “Because this is the way the institution works. To — I’m following the Pelosi precedent, by the way. When my dear friend from Louisiana, Julia Letlow, was elected to fill the seat of her deceased husband because of COVID, Nancy Pelosi took days to swear her in. By the way –” Karl asked, “Are you saying — let me stop you. Are you saying that Nancy Pelosi refused to swear her in earlier?” Johnson tried to change his story, “No, I’m saying — that’s — my very point is, this is the normal process -”- Karl was ready for Johnson’s example, “Because my understanding is that was the date that actually the representative-elect, Letlow, at the time requested. That she had obviously — her — her –” Keep reading and watch the video of Johnson’s new excuse for not swearing in Grijalva. Read more
In what appears to be a case of extreme political hardball, the Trump administration has frozen funding for two of the most important infrastructure projects in the country, both based in New York City: the construction of new tunnels to carry trains under the Hudson River, known as the Gateway project, and the extension of Manhattan’s Second Avenue Subway. The White House’s decision, announced during the government shutdown, seems designed to put pressure on Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leaders in the Senate and House respectively, who both happen to represent New York State. But the specific way in which Donald Trump has decided to block the projects—by imposing an onerous regulatory-review process—is a troubling omen of how he might broadly undermine development across the country. A figure who campaigned on promises to slash government bureaucracy and unleash prosperity has now become the nation’s NIMBY in chief. If anyone should appreciate the downsides of excessive red tape, it’s Trump. Forty years ago, the New York City parks department was struggling to rebuild Central Park’s decrepit Wollman ice-skating rink. But a state anti-corruption statute known as the Wicks Law precluded the city government from hiring a single general contractor to do the job. Instead, the parks department was required to bid the plumbing, electrical, and ventilation jobs separately, lest they all be awarded to some corrupt municipal official’s incompetent brother-in-law. As a result, the new rink’s construction had run behind schedule and over budget. Most dispiriting, when the project was ostensibly completed in 1986, the ice wouldn’t stay frozen. Mayor Ed Koch was rightfully enraged. Then swooped in a local builder named Donald Trump, who made the mayor an offer he couldn’t refuse: Hand the rink over to the Trump Corporation, and the private company would rebuild it once more, for a much lower fee and no profit. What Trump understood was that, as a private developer, he could bypass the demands of the Wicks Law and accomplish what government had proved incapable of doing. And he did: The rink opened under budget and before the next holiday season, and Trump became known as a man who got things done. One skater, interviewed following the new rink’s celebratory opening, said of the future president: “Anybody who can get anything done right and done on time in New York is a bona fide hero. He should get a ticker-tape parade.” Now New York City is again trying to get something done, and this time, Trump is the obstacle. The problem revolves around diversity mandates. The federal government has long required that companies hired with federal funds direct at least 10 percent of the subcontracts for any given project to “disadvantaged business entities,” typically small businesses owned by minority or female executives. Because New York’s tunnel projects, as with essentially all major U.S. infrastructure, rely substantially on federal funding, the firms employed to build them have been subject to that requirement. [Marc J. Dunkelman: How progressives broke the government] Given Trump’s well-established antipathy toward diversity initiatives, you might have expected him to reverse any policy designed to benefit minority and female-owned businesses moving forward. Instead, in the case of the New York City projects, his administration has replaced one set of rules with an even more burdensome process that requires changing contracts for work that has already begun. As soon as the shutdown began on October 1, the Department of Transportation announced that it would investigate whether New York’s application of the rules favoring minority and female-owned businesses was contrary to new rules that the Trump administration had announced the day before. Until the review was complete, Washington would not uphold its financial obligations to the two projects. And thus, it seemed, the whole stack of financing, with preparatory work and manufacturing already under way, was at risk. Whether the “disadvantaged business entities” rule is good policy—whether the costs that it imposes on extending public transit to underprivileged communities, for example, outweigh the benefits to those communities—is up for debate. But when the various state agencies building these megaprojects signed the contracts to begin construction, they were unquestionably in compliance with the guidance they had received from Washington. Typically, when the government changes its guidance, the update applies only prospectively; projects that broke ground before the change are grandfathered in. But that’s not what Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy asserted. The government entities overseeing the tunnel projects, he announced, would need to follow the newly issued rules even though their contracts had already been signed. Until he was satisfied that they were in compliance, the agencies would be cut off. The implications of Trump’s stance are remarkable. After all, the Second Avenue Subway and Gateway projects are not the only ones to have heeded the federal law first passed decades ago to direct contracts to disadvantaged businesses. All of the major federal transportation projects being pursued in red and blue states alike have taken pains to comply. The Trump administration seems to be claiming the right to shut down every federally subsidized transportation project across the country. (On Wednesday, Trump told reporters that the Gateway project had been “terminated.”) America pays orders of magnitude more for infrastructure projects than other wealthy countries do. And a growing body of research reveals that the ultimate source of those added costs is process. Any given project faces so many legal hurdles—environmental reviews, community demands, preservation standards, and more—that contractors are compelled to charge higher prices for fears of delays, changes, and unforeseen hurdles. Trump seems to have won office in part by convincing some voters that he would do for the whole country a version of what he had done with Wollman Rink: sidestep burdensome regulations and simply get the job done. As president, however, he isn’t reprising his old role as a fixer. He is using the power of the White House not to get things done but to load projects down with bureaucracy. Instead of cutting through red tape,
The Senate on Thursday morning will hold its seventh vote on the GOP- and Democratic-led stopgap funding bills that could reopen the government. Senate Republicans need to flip at least five more Democrats to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to turn the lights back on. Despite three defections thus far, the last six votes on…
Laura Flanders The negotiator for the pro-Palestine student protests at Columbia University who was abducted by ICE explains why he is suing the Trump administration for $20 million. The post Mahmoud Khalil Warns That the US Is Failing the Palestine Test appeared first on The Nation.
Democrats know that they have the upper hand on the government shutdown. The arguments that Democrats have made for Republicans to come to the table and end their shutdown have been centered on the issue of healthcare, but there is also a deeper principle at work that resonates with a majority of Americans. Ever since the Republican tax cuts for the rich, paid for by cutting healthcare legislation, the issue of fairness has been lingering beneath the surface. Why should the American people have to pay for tax cuts for those who already have the most by losing their health insurance, or at best face exponentially rising costs? During an interview on CNN’s This Morning, Hakeem Jeffries put that question into policy terms when he explained why a one-year extension of the Obamacare subsidies was not good enough. CNN’s John Berman asked, “Are you suggesting that when it comes to Obamacare subsidies, you are for permanence or broke? If they’re not made permanent, you won’t change your position on the shutdown?” Jeffries answered: No, what I’m suggesting is that we need to have a meaningful bipartisan discussion, that our position as articulated in the legislation that we’ve introduced is a permanent extension of the Affordable Care Act tax credits. But we’re open to having a conversation in good faith to try to address this Republican health care crisis. It’s ironic, however, that Republicans just a few months ago passed their one big ugly bill, which included permanent tax breaks for their billionaire donors, the wealthiest and the most well-off people in the United States of America. Read more and watch the full interview below. Read more
Republicans are waging war on health care—but the people they’re hurting most are their own voters. That’s not hyperbole. “More Than Half of [Affordable Care Act] Marketplace Enrollees Live in Republican Congressional Districts,” reads the headline at health policy outlet KFF—and even that undersells it. You hear “more than half” and think 51%, maybe 52%. In reality, it’s 57%. That’s not a slim majority. And it gets even more striking. “At least 10% of the population in all congressional districts in Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina are enrolled in the ACA Marketplaces,” KFF writes. Those are all states that went for President Donald Trump last year. Florida alone has 28 House districts. And Texas and Utah almost qualify, with all but three House districts between them having 10% or greater ACA enrollment. Meanwhile, not one state that Democratic nominee Kamala Harris won has a single district where more than 10% of residents are enrolled in the ACA marketplace, aka Obamacare. Datawrapper Content The South is especially dependent on the ACA marketplace since many Republican-led states in the region have refused to expand Medicaid, forcing millions of their own residents onto ACA plans. It’s no wonder even MAGA Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has broken with her party’s hatred of expanded ACA subsidies. Yet the GOP keeps swinging a sledgehammer at the very people keeping them in office. It’s uncanny how precisely Trump and his party manage to harm their base. And it’s part of the eternal irony of American politics: Democrats fight for programs that disproportionately help voters in red states. From rural broadband to farm subsidies and rural education, liberals are once again sharing the wealth generated by blue states like California and New York—the same states that red America loves to demonize. They set out to own the libs, but they’re owning themselves. Democrats are fighting to protect those subsidies, even though many of its beneficiaries will vote Republican again. They’re doing it because it’s the right fight, morally and economically. But it’s also maddening. At this point, I don’t care about them anymore. They voted to hurt the people and causes I care about. They can live with the higher premiums they voted for.
Editor’s Note: This article is part of “The Unfinished Revolution,” a project exploring 250 years of the American experiment. For thousands of years, the view that only rulers conferred rights or privileges on everyone else was taken for granted in traditional societies around the world. In the ancient empires of Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, only those whom rulers regarded as their peers had value, or what the Romans called dignitas. Hindu societies enshrined the ruler as one who embodies the divine order of the gods, and established a hierarchical rank for everyone else. The caste system even defined some people as “outcaste,” with no right to move freely and little recourse from lifelong servitude. The anonymous Babylonian scribes who wrote the legal code of Hammurabi some 4,000 years ago seem to have regarded human value as a quality that the king could grant to certain people and deny to others. This code assigned privileges, and what we call “rights,” according to a strictly hierarchical view of social power. The archaeologists who discovered Hammurabi’s code must have been surprised, at first, to see that it offered certain protections from mutilation, torture, and execution. But it became clear that these were dependent on one’s social rank. The king—who authorized the code—assigned punishments based on the social status of the offender and the victim. Ancient kings and emperors enforced their power through terror and violence. They claimed to derive their own prerogatives from the gods—from Marduk, in Babylonia; Ra, in Egypt; Jupiter, in Rome. Ancient philosophers held similar views. More than 2,000 years ago, when Plato wrote his famous treatise on “The Laws,” he declared that human laws merely articulate the will of the gods, and extend privileges to people like himself, members of the aristocratic class in Athens. Aristotle took a different approach, invoking what would later be known as biological determinism. Observing that among wild animals, different creatures possess different innate abilities, he argued that the same is true of humans—for instance, that disparities in intelligence and physical strength predispose people to be natural-born rulers or slaves. The Declaration of Independence, by contrast, speaks of the rights to life and liberty as sacred gifts that “Nature” and “Nature’s God” have given freely to all humanity. These principles were inspired partly by the Enlightenment, the philosophical movement that emerged in Europe after hundreds of years of horrifying religious war. But they originated in the Book of Genesis, which declares that every human being has value. As Thomas Jefferson knew when he wrote the Declaration, the idea of innate rights to life and liberty was a bold innovation. The “truths” for which the Founders risked their lives were not in fact “self-evident.” That makes preserving them all the more important. By suggesting that ultimate value resides in the individual, regardless of their sociopolitical status, the Bible defied some of the world’s most enduring conventions of rank and worth. Genesis declares that adam (Hebrew for “man” or “humankind”) was created in the image of God, thus affirming the intrinsic value of all human beings—a fundamental theme for “peoples of the book,” Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. The Bible describes how, for several hundred years, the ancient Israelites governed themselves by tribal councils, maintaining a measure of equality. In a crisis, when tribal councils failed to reach consensus, Israel’s people agreed to choose a king, “like the other nations.” But they also developed methods to resist autocratic power. Those who wrote the Bible well remembered the oppression that Israel’s people had experienced in Egypt and Babylonia. Biblical chronicles that tell of the great King David’s triumphs also show that when he acted wrongly, the prophet Nathan rebuked him, speaking on behalf of the Lord, and ordered him to repent and reform. In that culture, moral law remained as binding for the king himself as for his subjects—David obeyed the prophet’s command. Other kings of Israel, too, were reprimanded by prophets when they failed to act morally. Jesus of Nazareth amplified the theme of innate rights by advocating generosity and love toward all people. Jefferson admired the Bible’s ethical principles, but was skeptical of its metaphysics. He famously took a razor to the New Testament, excising the miracles while leaving intact the teachings of Jesus, whom Jefferson venerated as a philosopher and the author of “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.” [From the November 2020 issue: James Parker on reading Thomas Jefferson’s Bible] In drafting the Declaration, Jefferson cited the “sacred and undeniable” truth that “all men are created equal.” He also drew on the idea of natural law that ensured human rights—a concept that had been popularized in mid-18th-century Europe with the Enlightenment. The final version of the document, of course, referred to humans’ natural rights as “self-evident.” Above all, the Founding Fathers agreed that because these are innate rights, they can only be recognized, and not conferred, by human beings. They went on to state, “To secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This contradicted prevailing views not just from ancient times but also from their own day. From the fifth to the 18th centuries, Europe’s Catholic and Protestant kings claimed to rule by “divine right,” insisting that the lower status of everyone else, whether aristocrat, merchant, servant, or slave, was simply God’s will. (To this day, the British Crown’s ancient motto proclaims: “God and My Right.”) This was also an ideal that Jefferson himself did not live up to. Glancing out his study window at Monticello, he would have seen people whom he had bought as property working in his fields, people denied rights of any kind. It took another war to extend those rights to Black Americans, and the work of protecting the rights defined in the Declaration is an ongoing project. But over the course of its first 250 years, the United States became the strongest and most prosperous
Steve Brodner And Lincoln too. The post Fat Elvis Flies Again appeared first on The Nation.
