March, 16 2020, 12:00am EDT
As Lawmakers Fall Ill, Congress and State Legislatures Must Enact Continuity Plans
Remote voting measures must be enacted before the crisis worsens and legislatures close.
WASHINGTON
Demand Progress calls on Congress and state legislatures to institute continuity of governance plans immediately, before the COVID-19 crisis worsens and the legislatures become unable to act. Many members of Congress have been exposed to the virus, it was announced that two New York state lawmakers had contracted the virus, and it's likely many others have contracted it as well. Overseas, the European Union Parliament in Strasbourg was closed and reconvened in Brussels, and about 10 percent of Iranian parliamentarians have tested positive, while two have died.
Federal and state legislatures must be able to act over the course of what could be a lengthy crisis to ratify emergency and non-emergency legislation and to provide crucial oversight of the government's response -- but they generally do not have procedures in place to allow them to do so, and the window during which to put them into place is closing.
- Congress is in the midst of holding hearings on its spending bills that must be adopted this summer or the government will shut down; similarly, any hope of a third emergency coronavirus bill will require both chambers to function fully.
- State legislatures are in similarly dire straits, with many convening only for a few months at the beginning of the year to enact a swath of spending and authorizing bills, including addressing likely budget shortfalls and emergency spending requirements wrought by this pandemic. Many potential election law changes -- like vote-by-mail -- that could be required to ensure full participation in elections because of the crisis are likely to require state statutory changes.
The Achilles' heel to Congress and state legislatures alike is the requirement that voting in committees and on the floor must take place in person. While the House Speaker and Senate Majority Leader have the emergency power to convene Congress in an alternate location, a decision available to some but not all state legislatures, legislators are not permitted to deliberate and vote remotely, i.e., through electronic means like video-conferencing.
The nature of the coronavirus makes in-person meetings dangerous to legislators and staff, and as its grip tightens, it will become difficult if not impossible for members to travel to their respective capitol buildings. Accordingly, the only way for legislatures to legislate will be through remote deliberations and voting, and only if they change their rules in advance to make this permissible.
There are reasonable concerns about the nature of electronic voting in the context of primary and general elections, but the same concerns do not hold true for legislatures. The use of basic teleconference software that is widely and commercially available, like Zoom, makes it possible to see and hear each member that is participating, to record the proceedings, and to publish the video online. Accordingly, the use of roll call voting makes it possible for other members of the chamber, the press, and the public to hear the matter that is being deliberated upon and to see each respective member as they vote yea or nay. Should there be an error in the recorded vote, it makes correction possible as well.
We would not endorse remote deliberations in normal circumstances. However, given the nature of the emergency, it is far preferable for legislatures to be able to deliberate, vote, and hold government to account in a remote proceeding than for the legislatures to shut down entirely.
Demand Progress calls upon the U.S. House and Senate to convene immediately to allow for an emergency, temporary suspension of the provisions of their rules that prohibit remote deliberations, and urges all state legislative bodies to examine relevant rules, statutes, and constitutional provisions and take all steps possible to enable legislatures to meet and vote through online means should the circumstance arise where it becomes necessary.
Such efforts can, and must, be accomplished while protecting government transparency and the integrity of relevant proceedings and votes. It is inaction that could undermine the legitimacy, if not the very existence, of our government: Governance systems could collapse, critical needs could go unmet, and the President and governors could feel pressure to, or simply seek to, expand sweeping emergency powers even as no legislative oversight function operates. Or they could lose the necessary prod of legislatures to act and the authority by which to do so and thereby cause many needless deaths and worse.
"The failure of legislatures to prepare for coronavirus is preparation for our legislatures to fail," said Daniel Schuman, policy director, Demand Progress. "The U.S. House and Senate and the 99 state houses must ensure that they can continue in the face of the deadly coronavirus, and that includes the ability to hold remote votes and deliberations so they can continue to pass life-saving legislation and oversee executive efforts to fight this scourge."
"As lawmakers fall sick, legislative sessions across the country are being cut short out of legitimate fear of the pandemic," said David Segal, executive director, Demand Progress, and a former Rhode Island state representative. "This crisis will only worsen: It's naive to assume that it will be possible to reconvene in a few weeks, so legislatures must make necessary changes to procedures now. If they do not then governments will be thrown into chaos and we can expect to witness the spectacle of lawmakers voting in hazmat suits over coming months as they struggle with budgets, election laws, and other critical concerns."
Demand Progress amplifies the voice of the people -- and wields it to make government accountable and contest concentrated corporate power. Our mission is to protect the democratic character of the internet -- and wield it to contest concentrated corporate power and hold government accountable.
LATEST NEWS
Bernie Sanders Condemns Israel's Destruction of Gaza Universities
"There are no protests on the college campuses in Gaza," said the Vermont senator. "You know why? Because every one of the 12 universities in Gaza has been bombed and destroyed."
May 08, 2024
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday denounced the Israeli military's total decimation of Gaza's universities during floor remarks on protests that have broken out on American college campuses over the past several weeks.
"There are no protests on the college campuses in Gaza," said Sanders (I-Vt.), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. "You know why? Because every one of the 12 universities in Gaza has been bombed and destroyed."
Sanders' remarks came during a floor debate over a Republican resolution ostensibly aimed at condemning antisemitism on college campuses. GOP lawmakers and President Joe Biden have repeatedly smeared campus protests against Israel's assault on Gaza as antisemitic and ignored the prominent role Jewish students have played in the nationwide demonstrations.
After Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) attempted to pass the GOP antisemitism resolution via unanimous consent, Sanders—who is Jewish—rose to block the measure, criticizing it as insufficient and proposing an alternative that condemns antisemitism as well as all other "forms of bigotry in this country, whether on college campuses or elsewhere, including Islamophobia, homophobia, racism, and the growing attacks against the Asian American community."
Sanders' proposed resolution also expresses support for "the right of students and all Americans to peacefully protest," whereas Scott's measure attacks recent campus protests as "hotbed[s] of blatantly antisemitic rhetoric and action."
"The fact of the matter is that 67% of Americans, according to recent polls, support the United States calling for a cease-fire, and 60% oppose sending more weapons to Israel," Sanders said. "And that's what the protesters are talking about: They are asking why it is we are complicit in the humanitarian disaster taking place in Gaza."
Watch Sanders' remarks:
LIVE: Today I offer a simple resolution:
NO to antisemitism.
NO to Islamophobia.
NO to racism and bigotry in all its forms.
YES to free speech and protest under the 1st Amendment, whether on a college campus or across our nation. https://t.co/czTwnQnz6b
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) May 7, 2024
According to the United Nations, more than 80% of the Gaza Strip's schools have been damaged or reduced to ruins by Israeli forces since October, including all of the enclave's universities.
Last month, a group of U.N. experts said that "it may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as 'scholasticide.'"
"The persistent, callous attacks on educational infrastructure in Gaza have a devastating long-term impact on the fundamental rights of people to learn and freely express themselves, depriving yet another generation of Palestinians of their future," the experts added. "Students with international scholarships are being prevented from attending university abroad."
American campus protests against Israel's assault on Gaza have offered some measure of hope to Palestinian students whose lives have been thrown into chaos by the U.S.-backed war.
Hala Sharaf, a second-year medical student who moved to Cairo to resume her studies amid Israel's assault, toldAl Jazeera that the U.S. student campus demonstrations "have made us feel so hopeful for rejecting what America and Israel are doing to us."
"The student protests in America make me feel like I'm not alone," said Sharaf. "My message to them is to keep the focus on Gaza. Don't forget about Gaza."
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The report—due Wednesday under the terms of a White House directive—has been indefinitely postponed, according to congressional aides.
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Before Tuesday's reporting that the Biden administration will delay a highly anticipated report on whether Israel is using U.S. military aid in compliance with international law, a coalition of advocacy groups circulated a letter urging the White House to share the document with the public once it's published.
In February, President Joe Biden issued National Security Memorandum (NSM)-20, which requires Secretary of State Antony Blinken "to obtain certain credible and reliable written assurances from foreign governments" receiving U.S. arms "that the recipient country will use any such defense articles in accordance with international humanitarian law" and then provide Congress with periodic reports "to enable meaningful oversight."
The first report is due by Wednesday. However, four congressional aides
toldPolitico Tuesday that publication would be postponed indefinitely.
"It is not clear if your administration intends to... make this report available to the public," coalition members Amnesty International USA, Defending Rights & Dissent, Freedom of the Press Foundation, National Press Photographers Association, Radio Television Digital News Association, and Reporters Without Borders said in a letter to Biden drafted ahead of Politico's reporting.
"We strongly urge you to make the report available to the public and the press to the greatest extent possible," the groups added.
Access to the document, the coalition argued, "will allow the press to more fully and accurately report on how elected leaders are making decisions about military aid to foreign countries" and "will help Americans make informed judgments about our leaders' decisions on foreign military aid."
"We strongly urge you to make the report available to the public and the press to the greatest extent possible."
The letter comes as Israel uses U.S.-supplied arms and ammunition to wage what hundreds of international legal experts and others say is a genocidal war on Gaza. These include 155-millimeter artillery shells and 2,000-pound guided "bunker-buster" bombs, which Israel says are necessary to target Hamas' underground tunnels.
Aided by artificial intelligence-based target selection systems, Israel Defense Forces commanders are ordering strikes they know will cause large numbers of civilian casualties. In a bid to assassinate a single Hamas commander, the IDF dropped at least two 2,000-pound bombs on the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp on October 31, killing more than 120 civilians.
Even the U.S. military—which since 2001 has killed hundreds of thousands of people during the open-ended so-called War on Terror—avoids using 2,000-pound bombs in densely populated areas due to the tremendous damage they cause.
One prominent U.S. military historian called Israel's Gaza onslaught "one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history," comparing it to the Allied firebombing of Dresden during World War II, which also killed tens of thousands of civilians.
The letter also comes as the Biden administration reportedly believes that Israel's nascent ground invasion of Rafah does not cross the president's "red line" warning that any "major operation" in the southern city—where more than 1 million Palestinians forcibly displaced from other parts of Gaza are sheltering alongside around 280,000 local residents—would damage U.S.-Israeli relations.
The International Court of Justice found in January that Israel is "plausibly" perpetrating genocide in Gaza, where Israeli bombs, bullets, and blockades have left more than 123,000 Palestinians—most of them women and children—dead, injured, or missing since October 7, and hundreds of thousands more suffering full-blown famine.
While the Biden administration has accepted the Israeli government's claims that it is not breaking international law when using American weapons, a number of House Democrats have challenged Israel's assurance, citing "mounting credible and deeply troubling reports and allegations" of human rights crimes committed by IDF troops in Gaza, and by soldiers and settlers in the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Officials at the United States Agency for International Development also concluded in a confidential April memo to Blinken that Israel is violating NSM-20 by blocking humanitarian aid from entering the besieged Gaza Strip as children there starve to death.
Furthermore, a leaked State Department memo revealed last month that officials at four of the agency's bureaus concluded that Israel's assurances of legal arms use are "neither credible nor reliable."
In addition to NSM-20, federal legislation including the Arms Control Export Act and Leahy Laws also proscribe U.S. arms transfers to human rights violators—although there are many examples of these statutes being ignored for the benefit of key allies including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other nations.
"The public has a profound interest in understanding how the U.S. ensures that its military aid doesn't go to human rights abusers," Caitlin Vogus, deputy advocacy director at Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement Tuesday.
"If the Biden administration can stand behind its decisions about defense assistance, it should have no reason to withhold the report that members of Congress will see from the press and the public," Vogus added.
While Biden has criticized Israel's "indiscriminate bombing" of Gaza and is reportedly holding up two shipments of precision-guided bombs to send a message to Israeli leaders, the president continues to affirm his steadfast support for Israel and has recently approved the transfer of more warplanes, 2,000-pound bombs, and other arms to its key Middle Eastern ally. The administration is also pushing Congress to approve the sale of $18 billion worth of F-15 fighter jets to Israel.
Earlier this year, a group of mostly Democratic members of Congress asked Blinken to explain what they called "highly unusual" moves by the Biden administration to bypass lawmakers in order to fast-track emergency military aid to Israel. Biden—who recently signed off on $14.3 billion in new armed aid to Israel atop the $4 billion it already gets from Washington each year—has also come under fire for approving more than 100 weapons sales to Israel since October.
Human rights defenders slammed Biden's reported decision to postpone publication of the report due on Wednesday.
"It's obvious why Biden is burying the NSM-20 report on Israel: He won't hold Israel accountable," Georgetown University adjunct professor Josh Reubner asserted on social media. "There's no way to conclude that Israel hasn't violated assurances it won't use U.S. weapons to break international law or block aid. Of course it's doing both."
Palestinian American author and political analyst Yousef Munayyer asked: "Hey, Joe Biden, what are you hidin'?"
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"The White House must leave no stone unturned in its effort to stop the Israeli government's offensive on Rafah—the hundreds of thousands displaced there do not have more time," said the head of Win Without War.
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Anti-war voices on Tuesday welcomed Politico's reporting that U.S. President Joe Biden's administration is delaying "shipments of two types of Boeing-made precision bombs to send a political message to Israel," which on Monday launched a long-awaited invasion of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
"The U.S. has yet to sign off on a pending sale of Boeing's Joint Direct Attack Munitions—both the munitions and kits that convert them to smart weapons—and Small Diameter Bombs," according to Politico, which cited unnamed congressional and industry sources. "While the Biden administration has not formally denied the potential sale, it is essentially taking action through inaction—holding off on approvals and other aspects of the weapons transfer process."
The piece followed Axiosreporting Sunday that Israeli officials said the administration "last week put a hold on a shipment of U.S.-made ammunition" and The Wall Street Journal's Monday revelation that it "has held up delivery of Joint Direct Attack Munitions."
"If President Biden is taking the overdue but necessary step... he cannot leave his intentions open to miscommunication or spin."
The White House has neither confirmed nor denied Politico's report, which came as Biden again conflated campus protests against Israel's war on Gaza with antisemitism. Since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched the U.S.-backed offensive in October, Biden has faced mounting pressure to cut off arms to the country and use his influence to end the bloodshed.
"Reports that the Biden administration is delaying the sale of at least two types of bombs to the Israeli government, in reaction to its disastrous conduct of the war in Gaza, are highly welcome. That conduct is again on international display in Rafah this week, where the Israeli military has begun an invasion that, as we at Win Without War have previously warned, could lead to further horrific war crimes," the group's executive director, Sara Haghdoosti, said in a statement Tuesday.
"Now that this news has leaked, senior administration officials must publicly confirm this policy shift," she said. "If President Biden is taking the overdue but necessary step to condition weapons sales in line with U.S. law and policy and to force changes in Israeli government strategy, he cannot leave his intentions open to miscommunication or spin from those, including Prime Minister Netanyahu, who are continuing this conflict for their own political benefit. The White House must leave no stone unturned in its effort to stop the Israeli government's offensive on Rafah—the hundreds of thousands displaced there do not have more time."
Over a million Palestinians from across Gaza have crowded into Rafah since October, as Israeli forces have killed at least 34,789 people, wounded another 78,204, and destroyed civilian infrastructure in the strip, which has been under Hamas control for nearly two decades. The International Court of Justice has said Israel is "plausibly" committing genocide in the besieged enclave.
While multiple congressional Republicans condemned the Biden administration's supposed move to delay the delivery of the bombs to Israel, critics of the Israeli assault joined Haghdoosti in welcoming the development—which comes on the heels of Congress and the president approving billions more in military aid for Israel.
"Glad to see it. I wish they would've started sending this message thousands of lives ago, as so many urged," Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy, said on social media.
Brian Finucane, senior adviser to the Crisis Group's U.S. program, agreed the move is "good if true" and "an easy step the Biden administration should have taken months ago."
Refugees International president Jeremy Konyndyk, called it an "overdue but welcome development" that "hopefully... signals a pivot to beginning to impose more overt conditionality on U.S. arms transfers."
Politico separately reported Tuesday that according to congressional sources, "the Biden administration's report on whether Israel has violated U.S. and international humanitarian law during the war in Gaza has been delayed indefinitely."
The Israeli War Cabinet—made up of Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Benny Gantz, former chief of the general staff for the Israel Defense Forces—opted to attack Rafah on Monday despite Hamas agreeing to a cease-fire and hostage release deal. Biden previously said that Israel invading the crowded city was a "red line" and is now facing calls to stand by that position.
"The Israeli government has once again proven that it will respect no red lines and that it will go to any lengths to slaughter Palestinians and push them off their land," said Council on American-Islamic Relations national executive director Nihad Awad.
"The Biden administration can no longer enable these genocidal war crimes or Benjamin Netanyahu's brazen flouting of the United States," Awad added. "We urge the Biden administration to condemn the Israeli government's latest crimes, suspend military funding, and use American leverage to secure an immediate end to the genocide."
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