Biden and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
Thanks to @BidenTracking for all the work they do, most of the following has been pulled from their Twitter feed. I recommend following them on Twitter for updates. The analysis is my own.
Yesterday, June 7, 2021 was a more than typically bad day for the Biden administration.
Remember the outrage when helicopters were used to suppress the BLM protests in DC last summer? Well, the Biden administration is now using the exact same tactic against the Enbridge Line 3 water protectors. The helicopter was from Customs and Border Protection, a Federal agency under the control of the Department of Homeland Security.
While we’re on the topic of the border, the proposed Biden budget increased funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The same ICE who has been transferring detained immigrants out of New York/New Jersey separating them from their legal representation. As their attorneys stated in a letter released yesterday (italics added):
As the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP) and Rapid Response Legal Collaborative legal service providers, who represent dozens of people detained in ICE custody in the New York and New Jersey area, we write to express our alarm and concern about the recent and sudden transfers of several clients we represent to ICE detention centers in Louisiana, Alabama, and Pennsylvania. These transfers, which happened without notice to the attorneys of record or to even the clients themselves, have serious implications for our clients’ ability to access counsel, evidence, and witnesses for their cases, and to contact and be supported by their family 2 members and other loved ones. In many cases, people we represent simply disappeared, with ICE deportation officers refusing to even respond to reasonable inquiries from counsel about their whereabouts
In other immigration news, Kamala Harris, who was put in charge of the immigration crisis, just visited Guatemala and said:
I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border. Do not come. Do not come. The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our border.
It is difficult to see how this rhetoric differs from Trump at all. It does differ from what she said in a 2019 interview with NPR:
I disagree with any policy that would turn America's back on people who are fleeing harm. I frankly believe that it is contrary to everything that we have symbolically and actually said we stand for. And so I would not enforce a law that would reject people and turn them away without giving them a fair and due process to determine if we should give them asylum and refuge.
When it comes to breaking campaign promises, the Vice President can handle herself as well as the president.
In other immigration news, from the AP, “A unanimous Supreme Court ruled Monday that thousands of people living in the U.S. for humanitarian reasons are ineligible to apply to become permanent residents.” Which side of this case did Biden take? Not the side of the immigrants. As Andrew Chung writes, “Biden, who has sought to reverse many of his Republican predecessor Donald Trump's hardline immigration policies, had opposed the immigrants in this case, placing the president at odds with immigration advocacy groups and some of his fellow Democrats.”
Also the Supreme Court “agreed on Monday to decide whether a lawsuit can go forward in which a group of Muslim residents of California allege the FBI targeted them for surveillance because of their religion.” The Biden administration is fighting against this lawsuit on the basis that it might reveal state secrets. Coming from an administration that continues to seek extradition of Julian Assange, this comes as no surprise.
Speaking of the Biden Justice Department, it also came out yesterday that they will continue to defend Donald Trump against E. Jean Carroll who has filed a defamation lawsuit against him and accused him of raping her. If we believed a single word Biden said, this would seem like an odd decision, considering last fall in an ABC town hall Biden attacked Trump for his use of the Justice Department to defend himself saying,
But turning this into a vehicle for your -- as if it's your own law firm. You don't own that Justice Department. You pick the best people you can, and you hope that what they're going to do is they're going to enforce the law as they see it. But can you remember any Republican president going out there - or (inaudible) Democratic president, go find that guy and prosecute him. You ever hear that? Or, by the way, I'm being sued because a woman's accused me of rape. Represent me. Represent me. Personally represent me in the state of New York on my not allowing my tax returns. What's that all about? What is that about?
While the White House was not consulted in this decision, it has not made a statement on it. Considering Biden’s history of sexual assault, this silence is fitting. It may be he’ll need to use the Justice Department as his own law firm before his term has ended.
What else is Justice Department up to? On Monday, Biden announced, “that the Department of Justice (DOJ) will continue to defend a law that excludes Puerto Ricans from the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, while calling on Congress to extend eligibility to the U.S. territory's residents.” SSI is a program that is “designed to help aged, blind, and disabled people, who have little or no income.” Even though Biden claims it goes against the values of his administration, he has done nothing to stop it. As the Hill states, “Administrations have chosen in the past to not defend the constitutionality of certain federal laws that they opposed.” Biden has not chosen to do so, instead treating the people of Puerto Rico as second class citizens.
This is a lot of awful for just one day in the Biden administration. Biden has not exceeded expectations as AOC said in April. Nor has a Biden presidency been “a rather pleasant surprise” as Noam Chomsky stated. I disagree with every word of what Congressional Progressive Congress leader Pramila Jayapal said in May, “President Biden has risen to the moment, and I really do give him an ‘A’ in what he’s done so far. It’s been bold, it’s been progressive, it’s been what the country needs.” This is not bold, this is not progressive. This differs very little from what a second term of Trump would have looked like, Biden says nice words but carries out the same disastrous neoliberal policies. Biden understood this when he told Carlos Rojas he should vote for Trump.
The Biden administration is going to continue the same policies of Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Obama, and Trump. There is no significant difference between the two parties when it comes to economics, immigration, and war. They serve the corporations and the capitalist system, not the people. The working class must unite against this oligarchy and work towards a socialist revolution. Without this, there is little hope for a better future. As Rosa Luxemberg, inspired by Engels (or Kautsky), told us, “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.”