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Make America Great Again hat burns on the ground after a protest by Boston's far-right group Super Happy Fun America.
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Nobly Fighting the Woke-ocracy, One Garbled, Delusional Outburst At A Time

As we await (please) the indictment of Orange Man Walking, he and his rabid, victimized forces are busy raving about abuses of power by an Evil Deep State of WOKE trains, banks, schools, D.A's, gay/ black/ radical left miscreants who "HAVE STOLLEN (sic) OUR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, AND WITH IT, THE HEART OF OUR OUR (sic) COUNTRY." But to defeat nefarious wokeness, they first must define it. Their latest effort: "So woke is...umm...sort of...like...the idea of..." SAD!

With a truck circling Mar-A-Golf quoting smirky Tucker's "I hate him passionately," new legal losses daily arriving, and new scathing hashtags gaily trending - #TrumpCrimeFamily and #GuiltyAsFuck - Trump and his "mayonnaise legions" continue to double down on the notion that any attack on him is an attack on our already crumbling Republic, never mind his lifetime of sordid grifts and crimes whose reckoning is long past due. In ceaseless, panicked posts, he's been painting a floridly dystopian portrait of a fictional nation "NOW THIRD WORLD & DYING, AMERICAN PATRIOTS ARE BEING ARRESTED & HELD IN CAPTIVITY LIKE ANIMALS, WHILE CRIMINALS & LEFTIST THUGS ARE ALLOWED TO ROAM THE STREETS, KILLING & BURNING WITH NO RETRIBUTION, MILLIONS ARE FLOODING THROUGH OUR OPEN BOARDERS (sic), MANY FROM PRISONS & MENTAL INSTITUTIONS. CRIME & INFLATION ARE DESTROYING OUR VERY WAY OF LIFE." Worst, here he is, the eternal victim and "FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA," set upon by D.A. Alvin Bragg, a woke "Soros Racist in Reverse," and America must "PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!" he's being asked to play by the same rulebook as the rest of us, also please send money.

In his latest (literally) dark diatribe, the "fluorescent tangerine imbecile" went all Pol Pot, declaiming that if/when elected he'll form a "Truth & Reconciliation Commission to expose the hoaxes" of the Deep State"; he'll also prosecute government leakers and move 100,000 government jobs out of DC to "places filled with patriots who love America." His sycophants in power, victims just like him, have duly echoed his grievances: Talk of an indictment for what is in fact a gazillion crimes and misdemeanors is "unAmerican," "an outrageous abuse of power," sheer political vengeance that "follows the lead of Socialist dictators." Oversight head James Comer babbles that Bragg is "grossly overstepping his authority by two levels of government" and the House is coming for him. Rand Paul says Bragg should be "put in jail," and what obstruction of justice? Andy Biggs warns, “If they can come for Trump, they will come for you." On the MAGA forum "The Donald," frantic fans are promising "Civil War 2.0," complete with a "Patriot Moat" around Mar-A-Lago. But with Jan. 6 trials and convictions ongoing - and Trump's absence from that event and its consequences often bitterly noted - the response is a tad muted. From Ali Alexander, a key organizer of rallies to overturn the election, "Now I'm retired. I'll pray for him though!"

The GOP's desperate focus on the villainous Bragg, a "woke" Democrat they equate with being "weak on crime," is part of an overarching War on Woke that's become the incoherent cornerstone of all their political machinations - their pot/kettle House hearings on government's "weaponization," their multiple state laws to control books, kids, women in a life-or-death Culture War, their racist efforts to protect innocents from slavery-recognizing Woke Mobs - "Woke supremacy is as bad as white supremacy" - and their hopes to win elections through ugly, divisive, repeated use of a dog-whistle that means, "This is really about smearing black, gay and other marginalized people who live the inequity we don't want to acknowledge, but if I said that I'd be called a bigot." The rhetoric is everywhere. Ron Woke-ity-Woke DeSantis, its loudest purveyor, calls his state "the place where woke goes to die," daily pushes fascist legislation to prove it, and warns if he loses his war against "the woke mind-virus" and a vast segment of our population, "We're going to be living under an oppressive woke-ocracy." Pompeo rants about "the poisonous lie of equity wokeness and identity politics," Pence about "a pernicious woke agenda designed to control the American people," Trump about "woke tyranny." During March Madness, the Heritage Foundation can even steer you safely to the most un-woke teams.

In the most ludicrous manifestation of Woke lunacy, the right chose to blame excessive wokeness for last month's collapse of Silicon Valley Bank - did tellers wear Black Banks Matter t-shirts? - because we all know the gilded halls of capitalist finance have long been rife with radical, probably gay Trotskyites and it definitely had nothing to do with a 2018 banking deregulation law signed by Trump and lobbied for by bank president Gary Becker - a white man like the vast majority of Wall Street executives, investment bankers and other overlords of financial power. Still, an inane deluge charged the bank failed because they acknowledged diversity issues. Fox' Jesse Watters: "This stupid bank (is) a woke Biden bank...They were holding seminars (on) National Pride Month." James Comer: "We see it now coming out they were one of the most woke banks." DeSantis: "They were so concerned with DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) and all kinds of stuff (that) diverted from them focusing on their core mission." Wall Street Journal op-ed: "They had 1 Black, 1 LGBTQ+ and 2 Veterans on the board...The company may have been distracted by diversity demands." The crazed conclusion: "This is cultural and economic Marxism, there is no other way of putting it. This is where we are - this long march of Socialism through our institutions."

"Long march of Socialism?" Try long distortion of language to co-opt and re-purpose terms - "elite," "freedom," "pro-life," "Critical Race Theory" - to obscure their own bigotry. The right's attempt to lay the burden of a bank's failure, an innate, common, often cruel hazard of capitalism, on marginalized people follows a historically familiar playbook for faux populists famously perfected by the Nazis: Blame the powerless, who are secretly powerful. In their conflation of efforts to render society kinder, fairer and more empathetic with perfidy, writes Aaron Rupar, they prove the GOP remains "the party of hate," intent on maintaining white patriarchal rule at any cost. Evidence of GOP efforts to "cancel" black, brown, poor, gay, trans etc home rule is overwhelming, from ID laws to redistricting to MAGA-izing school boards to literally erasing policies they don't like in Dem cities of color. The House voted to undo the D.C. City Council's re-write of its own criminal laws. State officials in Texas just announced they're taking over Houston's school system - 62% Latino, 22% Black, 8th largest in the country - to fight “woke education.” A new "Jim Crow bill” will take some judicial and police power from black-majority Jackson, Miss. city officials and give it to GOP state legislators in a move Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba blasts as “plantation politics.” Etc etc.

Still, words do matter. Before the right twisted it into a weapon to bludgeon Legos with disabilities and The Little Mermaid, “woke” had an actual meaning. It originated as Black vernacular for “alert to racial discrimination”; to “stay woke” was to be "aware of the deceptions and tactics used to enforce racism.” Today, a majority of Americans can muster the brain-power to define woke as being "informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices," which for us is kinda the same as being informed, educated on, and aware of living on Planet Earth. For the right, woke has become "MAGA-ese for non-white," but they're caught in a pesky Catch-22: Because even they know they're not supposed to say that out loud, they struggle mightily to define what it is they hate. On Fox, it's murky: "It could be a feeling, it could be a sense." (Twitter: "It could be a land shark, a trans werewolf, a smell, whatever scares you.") It's Pence on Trump: "Nobody is above the law, but nobody is beneath the law either." It's the guy asked by The Good Liars what CRT is: "I dunno, but it definitely shouldn't be taught in schools." It's right-wing sage Bethany Mandel, author of a book about woke indoctrination, asked what woke is: " So, umm..." It's Trump, asked to request a prayer on a Pastors For Trump National Prayer Call, coming up blank, then claiming "the radical left" broke the phone connection. God works in mysterious ways. We hope She's working on an indictment next.

Oblivious people in Florida, including kids of color, hold signs decrying Critical Race Theory to bolster Ron DeSantis.Propaganda 101: Ron DeSantis gets (hires?) unknowing kids of color to support his fascist agenda for the cameras.Getty Image

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The world's first 100,000-ton low-carbon methanol plant was recently put into operation in China.
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Climate Groups Reject 'Risky, Untested' Technofixes in IPCC Report

Longtime critics of "false solutions" to the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency responded to a United Nations report released Monday by reiterating their warnings about relying on underdeveloped and untested technologies that could enable major polluters to continue producing massive amounts of planet-heating emissions.

Noting the 2015 Paris agreement's two primary temperature targets for this century, the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states that "all global modeled pathways that limit warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot, and those that limit warming to 2°C, involve rapid and deep and, in most cases, immediate" greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions in all sectors this decade.

"We must heed the IPCC's urgent messages, without falling into the trap of assuming that carbon dioxide removal will save the day."

Modeled mitigation pathways, the report continues, "include transitioning from fossil fuels without carbon capture and storage (CCS) to very low- or zero-carbon energy sources, such as renewables or fossil fuels with CCS, demand-side measures and improving efficiency, reducing non-CO2 GHG emissions," and carbon dioxide removal (CDR).

As the document details:

CCS is an option to reduce emissions from large-scale fossil-based energy and industry sources provided geological storage is available. When CO2 is captured directly from the atmosphere (DACCS), or from biomass (BECCS), CCS provides the storage component of these CDR methods. CO2 capture and subsurface injection is a mature technology for gas processing and enhanced oil recovery. In contrast to the oil and gas sector, CCS is less mature in the power sector, as well as in cement and chemicals production, where it is a critical mitigation option. The technical geological storage capacity is estimated to be on the order of 1000 GtCO2, is more than the CO2 storage requirements through 2100 to limit global warming to 1.5°C, although the regional availability of geological storage could be a limiting factor. If the geological storage site is appropriately selected and managed, it is estimated that the CO2 can be permanently isolated from the atmosphere.

"Implementation of CCS currently faces technological, economic, institutional, ecological environmental and socio-cultural barriers," the report notes. "Currently, global rates of CCS deployment are far below those in modeled pathways limiting global warming to 1.5°C to 2°C. Enabling conditions such as policy instruments, greater public support, and technological innovation could reduce these barriers."

The report further says that "biological CDR methods like reforestation, improved forest management, soil carbon sequestration, peatland restoration, and coastal blue carbon management can enhance biodiversity and ecosystem functions, employment and local livelihoods. However, afforestation or production of biomass crops can have adverse socioeconomic and environmental impacts, including on biodiversity, food and water security, local livelihoods, and the rights of Indigenous peoples, especially if implemented at large scales and where land tenure is insecure."

While the world's top scientists—and the governments that signed off on the report—recognized issues with CCS and CDR, climate campaigners expressed frustration that such technologies were featured as partial solutions.

"It's very alarming to see carbon dioxide removal featuring so centrally in the IPCC report," declared Sara Shaw at Friends of the Earth International (FOEI). "We can't rely on risky, untested, and downright dangerous removals technologies just because big polluters want us to stick to the status quo."

"A fair and fast phaseout of oil, gas, and coal needs to happen in this decade, and it can, with the right political will," she stressed. "We must heed the IPCC's urgent messages, without falling into the trap of assuming that carbon dioxide removal will save the day."

Fellow FOIE leader Hemantha Withanage explained that "in my country, Sri Lanka, the impacts of climate change are being felt now. We have no time to chase fairy tales like carbon removal technologies to suck carbon out of the air."

"The IPCC evidence is clear: Climate change is killing people, nature, and planet," he said. "The answers are obvious: a fair and fast phaseout of fossil fuels, and finance for a just transition. The fantasy of overshooting safe limits and betting on risky technofixes is certainly not a cure for the problem."

Lili Fuhr at the Center for International Environmental Law agreed that "the takeaway of the IPCC synthesis is irrefutable: An immediate, rapid, and equitable fossil fuel phaseout is the cornerstone of any strategy to avoid catastrophic levels of global warming."

"Building our mitigation strategies on models that instead lock in inequitable growth and conveniently assume away the risks of technofixes like carbon capture and storage and carbon dioxide removal ignores that clarion message and increases the likelihood of overshoot," Fuhr warned. "The most ambitious mitigation pathways put out by the IPCC set the floor, not the ceiling, for necessary climate action.

Research shows that overshooting Paris temperature targets, even temporarily, could dramatically raise the risk of the world experiencing dangerous "tipping points," as Common Dreamsreported in December. The IPCC report notes that "the higher the magnitude and the longer the duration of overshoot, the more ecosystems and societies are exposed to greater and more widespread changes in climatic impact-drivers, increasing risks for many natural and human systems."

As Corporate Accountability director of climate research and policy Rachel Rose Jackon put it Monday: "Breaching 1.5°C is not an option. Governments will be effectively signing millions of avoidable death warrants for those who contributed least to the crisis."

While arguing that the IPCC document "demands a last and final reckoning" that leads to Global North governments "doing their fair share," the campaigner also emphasized that "the report should have actually named the solutions that will keep us below 1.5°C instead of leaving the door open for an inadequate suite of industry-backed removals and dangerous distractions."

Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter targeted U.S. lawmakers and President Joe Biden in a statement Monday.

"The IPCC is sending one key message above all else: We must stop burning fossil fuels, drilling for fossil fuels, and building new infrastructure to deliver fossil fuels," Hauter said. "Unfortunately, policymakers continue to lock in new dirty energy schemes—most notably the Biden administration's approval of a massive new oil drilling project in Alaska."

"Tragically, Congress and the White House continue to waste money on carbon removal technologies that have been a failure. Relying on these scams instead of taking actions to stop fossil fuel expansion will only lead to further climate catastrophe," she added. "President Biden's actions to expand oil and gas drilling and ramp up fossil fuel exports undermine his professed climate goals and invite further catastrophe. The IPCC's message is clear, and political leaders must answer the call with actions to match the moment."

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Senate Dems Urge Treasury Chief to Crack Down on Rich Tax Dodgers
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Senate Dems Urge Treasury Chief to Crack Down on Rich Tax Dodgers

Four U.S senators this week called on Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to use her existing authority to go after American billionaires and multimillionaires who "use trusts to shift wealth to their heirs tax-free, dodging federal estate and gift taxes."

"They are doing this in the open: Their wealth managers are bragging about how their tax dodging tricks will be more effective in the current economy," stressed Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).

"While we look forward to continuing to partner with you on legislative solutions," the senators wrote to Yellen, "the Treasury Department can and should exercise the full extent of its regulatory authority to limit this blatant abuse of our tax system by the ultrawealthy."

Their letter to the Treasury leader, dated Monday and first reported by CBS MoneyWatch Tuesday, highlights that "only the wealthiest American families" are asked to pay transfer taxes such as the estate tax, gift tax, and generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax.

As the letter lays out:

Tax avoidance through grantor trusts starts with the ultrawealthy putting assets into a trust with the intention of transferring them to heirs. Grantor trusts are trusts where the grantor retains control over the assets, and the structures of some of these grantor trusts allow the transfer of massive sums tax-free. Tax planning via grantor trusts, including grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs), is a kind of shell game, with a wealthy person and their wealth managers able to pass assets back and forth in ways that effectively pass wealth to heirs while minimizing tax liability.

Some of the wealthiest families further compound this tax avoidance with perpetual dynasty trusts, which can be used to shield assets from transfer tax liability indefinitely. For example, aggressive valuation discounts can artificially reduce the value of assets transferred into a trust below the GST tax exemption threshold, after which the assets can grow in perpetuity within a trust exempt from transfer tax.

"The ultrawealthy at the top of the socioeconomic ladder live by different rules than the rest of America, especially when it comes to our tax system," the letter charges. "As the richest Americans celebrate and take advantage of these favorable tax opportunities, middle-class families struggle with inflation and Republicans threaten austerity measures and the end of Social Security and Medicare."

To help force the richest Americans to "pay their fair share" in taxes, the senators are calling on Treasury to revoke a pair of tax code rulings from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS); require GRATs to have a minimum remainder value; reissue family limited partnership regulations; clarify that intentionally defective grantor trusts (IDGTs) are not entitled to stepped-up basis; and put out clarifying regulations on certain valuation rules for estate and gift taxes.

The senators also sent a series of questions—about potential administrative action, how much is estimated to be held in grantor trusts, and how much could be raised from cracking down on abuse—and requested a response from Treasury by April 3.

Their letter comes after President Joe Biden earlier this month introduced a budget blueprint for fiscal year 2024 that would hike taxes on the rich—proposed policies praised by progressive experts and advocates as "fair, popular, and long overdue."

Yellen last week appeared before the Senate Finance Committee—of which Warren and Whitehouse are members—to testify about the administration's proposal. She said in part that "our proposed budget builds on our economic progress by making smart, fiscally responsible investments. These investments would be more than fully paid for by requiring corporations and the wealthiest to pay their fair share."

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Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell arrives to testify before the Senate Banking Committee
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'An Abomination': Powell Cut Mention of Regulatory Failures From Bank Bailout Statement

The Federal Reserve was the primary regulator of both Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, whose back-to-back collapses sparked panic in financial markets and concerns about cascading impacts on the U.S. economy.

But despite immediate questions about the possible supervisory failures that allowed the banks' crises to fester, Fed Chair Jerome Powell personally intervened over the weekend to block any mention of regulatory slipups in a joint statement on the federal government's response to the situation.

The New York Timesreported late Thursday that some Biden administration officials "wanted to include that lapses in bank regulation and supervision had contributed to the problems that helped fell" Silicon Valley Bank, whose collapse marked the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history.

But Powell, an ex-investment banker originally nominated by former President Donald Trump, "pushed to take the line on regulation out of the statement because he wanted to focus on the actions being taken to shore up the financial system," according to the Times, which cited an unnamed person familiar with the matter.

The resulting statement issued Sunday by the Fed, the Treasury Department, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) appeared to conform to Powell's demand, not mentioning what Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and watchdogs have described as glaring failures in supervision by the central bank.

The joint statement vaguely highlights "reforms that were made after the financial crisis that ensured better safeguards for the banking industry"—but neglects to mention that the Fed and Congress rolled back some of those rules in subsequent years, decisions that experts say set the stage for SVB and Signature Bank's collapse.

"That sounds a lot like putting the institutional interests of Fed and personal interests of the chair above financial stability," Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) said in response to news of Powell's intervention, which—according toThe American Prospect's David Dayen—ended up delaying the release of the statement for "an indeterminate period of time."

Dayen also reported Friday that the Fed "tried to influence" President Joe Biden's statement on the bank failures and bailout that followed.

Jeff Hauser, director of the Revolving Door Project, wrote on Twitter that "Biden should have never renominated Powell," calling the Fed chair "an abomination."

While Biden's Sunday statement doesn't specifically mention regulatory failures, the president—who renominated Powell in late 2021—said in prepared remarks the following day that "there are important questions of how these banks got into these circumstances in the first place."

"During the Obama-Biden administration, we put in place tough requirements on banks like Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, including the Dodd-Frank Law, to make sure the crisis we saw in 2008 would not happen again," Biden said. "Unfortunately, the last administration rolled back some of these requirements. I'm going to ask Congress and the banking regulators to strengthen the rules for banks to make it less likely that this kind of bank failure will happen again and to protect American jobs and small businesses."

Biden was referring to a 2018 measure passed by the then-Republican-controlled Congress with the support of dozens of Democrats—and with a public endorsement from Powell.

Emboldened by the Republican-authored law—which weakened regulations for banks with between $50 billion and $250 billion in assets—the Fed under Powell's leadership proceeded to go well beyond the measure's mandates "by relaxing regulatory requirements for domestic banking institutions that have assets in the $250 to $700 billion range," then-central bank governor Lael Brainard noted in October 2018.

Brainard went on to caution, presciently, that the Fed's deregulatory actions would "weaken the buffers that are core to the resilience of our system" and result in "increased risk to financial stability and the taxpayer."

"Make no mistake: your decisions aided and abetted this bank failure, and you bear your share of responsibility for it."

As Dayen wrote Friday, "Silicon Valley Bank had billions in unrealized losses on its balance sheet that it hoped to avoid having to surface."

"It also had a tightly correlated, mostly uninsured depositor base, all largely from one industry and connected to each other, that represented significant flight risk if there were any signs of trouble," he added. "The rapid growth at the bank and its significant mismatch for liquidity purposes should have had the system flashing red."

Dennis Kelleher, the president of Better Markets, expressed a similar sentiment earlier this week, noting that "the Fed has much more and superior knowledge, information, expertise, and access to banks than short sellers, rating agencies, and the media, yet they all appear to have done a much better job at identifying the very serious risks at SVB than the Fed."

In a letter to Powell on Thursday, Warren—one of the Fed chair's most outspoken critics in Congress—laid out in detail what she characterized as the central bank's "astonishing list of failures" that contributed to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

"As chair of the Fed, you have led and vigorously supported efforts to weaken the regulations that would have subjected banks like SVB and Signature to stronger liquidity requirements, more robust stress testing, and routine resolution planning obligations," the Massachusetts Democrat wrote. "Make no mistake: your decisions aided and abetted this bank failure, and you bear your share of responsibility for it."

In response to the Times' reporting, Warren tweeted Friday that "the Fed chair's outrageous attempt to muzzle the rest of the government about his role in contributing to this current crisis is completely inappropriate—and it won't work."

"Congress needs to step in to fix these mistakes before things get even worse," added Warren, who introduced legislation earlier this week that would repeal a key section of the 2018 bank deregulation law.

This story has been updated to include Sen. Elizabeth Warren's reaction to the reporting on Fed Chair Jerome Powell's intervention.

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Paris protests
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'The Fight Continues' in France as Macron Government Survives No-Confidence Vote

Fresh protests erupted in Paris and other French cities on Monday after President Emmanuel Macron's government narrowly survived a pair of parliamentary no-confidence votes over bypassing the lower house of Parliament to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.

The first parliamentary vote of no confidence, called by a small group of centrist lawmakers, fell nine votes short of the 278 needed to pass, Agence France-Presse reports. A second no-confidence vote, brought forward by the far-right National Rally, was also rejected.

The French Senate, which is dominated by right-wing parties, approved the higher retirement age last week. However, faced with the prospect of a vote shortfall in the National Assembly, Macron's government then invoked special constitutional powers to push through the retirement age hike.

The deeply unpopular policy has sparked widespread protests, some of which have drawn hundreds of thousands of people into the streets despite government bans on gatherings in locations including Place de la Concorde and the area of Avenue des Champs-Elysées in Paris.

Protests renewed following Monday's votes, with thousands of demonstrators marching in Paris alone. Videos posted on social media showed police charging protesters, spraying them with pepper spray, and beating them. One video showed officers brutalizing a person who appeared to be a photojournalist while an onlooker repeatedly shouted "it's the press!"

"We are not resigned," the Aubervilliers parliamentary group of the left-wing populist party La France Insoumise (LFI), or France Unbowed, tweeted Monday. "The fight against retirement reforms continues. All together in the street until the retirement of this unjust and illegitimate reform!"

LFI's parliamentary group in Haute-Garonne—which includes the southern city of Tolouse—tweeted that "Macron is more isolated than ever."

"The fight continues tonight," the party group said, previewing a Monday evening demonstration.

French unions are calling for a nationwide general strike on Thursday.

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Activists hold up panels spelling out "End Endless War" during a demonstration outside of the U.S. Capitol building to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War on March 15, 2023. ​
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Biden Shows Support as Senate Advances Repeal of Iraq War Authorizations

As the U.S. Senate on Thursday teed up a vote to end the congressional authorizations for the Gulf and Iraq wars, President Joe Biden formally backed the bipartisan bill.

The progress on finally repealing the 1991 and 2002 authorizations for use of military force (AUMFs) comes just ahead of the 20th anniversary of the George W. Bush administration's costly and devastating invasion of Iraq.

The bill ( S. 316/H.R. 932) was reintroduced in February by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), and has GOP co-sponsors in both chambers. On Thursday, 19 Republican senators joined with all Democrats present to advance the measure.

The legislation has not yet been approved by the House of Representatives, which is narrowly controlled by the GOP. However, if it reaches the president's desk, he supports it, according to the statement of administration policy released Thursday.

While former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump used the 2002 authorization to justify strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, respectively, the new Biden administration document notes that "the United States conducts no ongoing military activities that rely primarily on the 2002 AUMF, and no ongoing military activities that rely on the 1991 AUMF, as a domestic legal basis."

"Repeal of these authorizations would have no impact on current U.S. military operations and would support this administration's commitment to a strong and comprehensive relationship with our Iraqi partners," that policy statement adds. "President Biden remains committed to working with the Congress to ensure that outdated authorizations for the use of military force are replaced with a narrow and specific framework more appropriate to protecting Americans from modern terrorist threats."

Demand Progress Education Fund policy adviser Cavan Kharrazian said in a statement that "we are glad President Biden is supportive of getting these outdated AUMFs off the books, and that he is committed to work with Congress on presumably replacing the 2001 AUMF with a narrower framework."

"However, any serious attempt by President Biden to work with Congress on war powers reforms requires the administration to halt unauthorized participation of U.S. armed forces in hostilities that contravene the War Powers Act," Kharrazian stressed. "This includes ending U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition's war on Yemen, ceasing the use of U.S. forces to protect Syrian oil fields and battling Iranian-backed militias, and putting an end to legally dubious military operations in the Horn of Africa."

The campaigner continued:

Moreover, the administration must commit to full legal transparency regarding the use of military force. Both this administration and previous administrations have failed to provide Congress with timely reporting on the 2001 AUMF, as required by 50 U.S. Code § 1550. Additionally, President Biden has failed to respond to lawmakers' inquiries about the administration's legal justifications for the expansive use of the 2001 AUMF and Article 2 authorities. Without such transparency, Congress is unable to fully exercise its oversight and legislative duties over war and peace.

It's encouraging to see an administration committed to addressing outdated AUMFs. However, a genuine commitment will involve respecting congressional authority over war by proactively ending unauthorized military activities and implementing comprehensive transparency measures.

In a series of tweets, the Quaker advocacy group Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) welcomed the administration's position and highlighted fresh comments from Kaine and Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), a co-sponsor, who gathered outside the U.S. Capitol on Thursday with members of the American Legion.

"There's no reason—none—to have a war authorization against a strategic partner, and so that's the first reason why we need to do this," Kaine said of Iraq, adding that the repeal must also occur to honor U.S. service members.

Kaine called out previous failures by Congress to end the AUMFs, and noted that leaving them in place enables abuse. While confirming he has not spoken with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) about the bill, the senator expressed optimism that it will pass—saying of the lower chamber, "there's a wonderful bipartisan coalition there as well."

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