Category: reason

President Joe Biden has nominated Neera Tanden, a former adviser to Hillary Clinton and president of the Center for American Progress, to serve as head of the U.S. Office on Management and Budget. But that nomination is on the rocks after Sen. Joe Manchin (D–W.Va.) said he would vote against Tanden due to her history of tweeting aggressively at lawmakers.

“I have carefully reviewed Neera Tanden’s public statements and tweets that were personally directed towards my colleagues on both sides of the aisle from Senator [Bernie] Sanders to Senator [Mitch] McConnell and others,” said Manchin. “I believe her overtly partisan statements will have a toxic and detrimental impact on the important working relationship between members of Congress and the next director of the Office of Management and Budget. For this reason, I cannot support her nomination.”

Many commentators pointed out that Manchin had no trouble voting to confirm Richard Grenell, who had also engaged in troll-ish behavior on Twitter, to be former President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Germany. Some have suggested that Tanden is being subjected to a racist and sexist double standard—that she is being held to account because she is a woman of color. According to Politico:

Janet Murguía, the president and chief executive of the Latino advocacy organization UnidosUS, said she had a call with her team Monday morning where the issue of Biden’s Cabinet picks hitting roadblocks sparked a protracted conversation and growing alarm.

“It’s been incredibly disturbing to see a pattern or a trend emerging where people of color and women seem to be at the bottom of the list in terms of hearings and getting their confirmations finalized,” Murguía said in an interview. “It’s highly offensive to see this foot-dragging going on when we have such an incredible need to put these different leaders in place in these different agencies.”

The problem with this line of argument is that there are many legitimate reasons to oppose Tanden for OMB. Incidentally, this is why Republicans need to be more careful about labeling all criticism of political figures as “cancel culture.” Holding politicians accountable for political statements and actions they have taken in the past is perfectly valid and fair.

Tanden, for her part, has a long history of questionable views. For one thing, she is utterly unconcerned about the deficit in times of crisis. In fact, she previously said if wild government spending were unpopular with voters, then the feds should get “oil rich countries” in the Middle East to pay off our debts in exchange for military help.

“We have a giant deficit,” wrote Tanden in a 2011 email. “They have a lot of oil. Most Americans would choose not to engage in the world because of that deficit. If we want to continue to engage in the world, gestures like having oil rich countries partially pay us back doesn’t seem crazy to me.”

At the time the email was written, “engage in the word” meant U.S. military intervention in Libya, a disastrous foreign policy that produced years of warfare and strife. Tanden is a figure of the Clinton approach to the Middle East; there are good reasons to vote against giving such people any role in overseeing government budgets and policy. It’s neither racist nor sexist to keep the intellectual supporters of U.S. disasters in Iraq and Libya out of power.

FREE MINDS

Slate has indefinitely suspended Mike Pesca, host of “The Gist” podcast, after he argued in Slack conversations with colleagues that there might be some occasions when it is permissible for a white person to use the word nigger. Pesca specifically did not use the word himself during this discussion, though he argued that there are might be legitimate journalistic reasons to do so. According to Defector:

The conversation continued sporadically for a few more hours before Pesca made his final point: “I don’t think it’s proper to use it in casual conversation and I’m in no position to tell Black NY Times workers that they shouldn’t be worried it’s going to pop out of a colleague’s mouth at some point. If you want my opinion it’s that there are some limited reasons why a non African American journalist or professor to use the word when conveying a quote in the name of clarity or factualness […] But it’s not a comfortable point to even pursue right now. If I had the opposite opinion I know a hundred ways I could make the opinion I actually have seem horrible and racist, and you know what, maybe it is.”

“I feel outraged,” a Slate staffer told me when asked about Pesca’s participation in the conversation. “I cannot believe I had to watch him enthusiastically provoke people on whether or not it is appropriate to use a racist slur.” Other Slate staffers that spoke to Defector expressed frustration and anger at Pesca’s insistence on having that particular conversation. “I don’t want to be in a workplace where people feel emboldened to have this argument. People’s humanity is not an intellectual debate,” one said.

The conversation was prompted by the news of the firing of New York Times journalist Donald McNeil, who was accused of upsetting teenagers with his use of the word during a Times-sponsored trip to Peru.

Now Pesca finds himself in a similar situation: His podcast is suspended pending an investigation by his bosses at Slate. “This was not a decision based around making an isolated abstract argument in a Slack channel,” said a spokesperson for the magazine.

But then it’s not clear why Pesca was suspended at all.

This slur, by the way, has appeared numerous times on Slate‘s website. A search for the word returns 375 results, including an article from July 10, 2020, “Big Scrabble’s decision to eliminate offensive words has infuriated players like never before.” The author of that piece, Stefan Fatsis, argued that it was absurd to consider the use of offensive words in Scrabble as a form of hateful speech. Although he did not use the word himself, he did quote Randall Kennedy, the author of Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, and referenced the book’s title in the article.

It’s one thing to use the word maliciously—it’s quite another for journalists and educators to quote it in certain contexts, including discussions about the meaning of words.

My takeaway from this event: SAY NOTHING ON SLACK EXCEPT, "hey."

— Damon Linker (@DamonLinker) February 23, 2021

FREE MARKETS

Reporters might finally get their hands on former President Donald Trump’s tax returns, according to CNN:

The Supreme Court cleared the way for a New York prosecutor to obtain former President Donald Trump’s tax returns, dealing a massive loss to Trump who has fiercely fought to shield his financial papers from prosecutors.

The documents will be subject to grand jury secrecy rules that restrict their public release.
The ruling is a bitter loss for Trump, even if the tax records are shielded from public disclosure, after he consistently argued that the subpoena issued by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance was overbroad and issued in bad faith.

QUICK HITS

• The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 has passed the 500,000 mark.
• Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) isn’t the only politician from the state who skipped town after the terrible winter storms: Embattled Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton went to Utah with his wife for “previously scheduled meetings.”
• The Conservative Political Action Conference is slated to begin later this week in Orlando, Florida. The theme is “uncanceled,” though the conference has already canceled one speaker over his offensive statements.
• Nancy Rommelmann in The Dispatch: “Words as Weapons: How Activist Journalists are Changing the New York Times.”

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I am honored to testify as an outside witness for Judge Garland’s confirmation hearing. I support Judge Garland’s swift confirmation, but will flag three current DOJ policies that he should maintain. You can watch the video of the hearing here.

Here are my prepared remarks:

Chairman Durbin, Ranking Member Grassley, thank you for inviting me to testify. My name is Josh Blackman and I am a constitutional law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston.

I support the confirmation of Judge Garland. He should be swiftly confirmed. In my brief time today, I will discuss three current DOJ policies that I hope Attorney General Garland will maintain. First, DOJ lawyers should not give legal effect to so-called “rulemaking by guidance.” Second, Attorney General Garland should carefully scrutinize consent decrees, especially those reached through so-called “sue and settle.” Third, DOJ should not resume the settlement practice of giving “third party payments” to nonparties; that money should be restored to the Treasury. These three issues may seem fairly low-profile, but each practice will have a huge impact on the separation of powers. And these issues should be important to people on both sides of the aisle. I hope that Attorney General Garland will retain current DOJ policy with respect to these three issues.

First, the Department of Justice should not enforce “rulemaking by guidance.” In the past, federal agencies avoided the formal rulemaking process, and instead issued various guidance documents. For example, substantive changes to the law were made through “dear colleague letters,” “frequently asked questions,” and even online bulletins–what I called government by blog post.  These guidance documents are not supposed to have the force of law. However, courts grant Auer deference to this “subregulatory dark matter.” In 2018, Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand instructed DOJ lawyers to not treat violations of guidance documents as violations of the law. And President Trump signed Executive Orders 13891 and 13892, which ordered other agencies to adopt the principles from the Brand Memo. Unfortunately, President Biden rescinded those two executive orders on his first day in office. At present, the Brand Memo is still codified in DOJ regulations. I hope that Attorney General Garland will maintain the Brand Memo.

Second, Attorney General Garland should carefully scrutinize consent decrees. These agreements include intricate requirements that DOJ could never impose through regulation or litigation. And these consent decrees can exist in perpetuity. During this time, federal judges and court monitors can oversee state and local governments. Such agreements raise distinct federalism concerns. Indeed, many of these agreements arise from a practice known as “sue and settle.” Organizations and local governments would sue a like-minded agency, knowing there was no adversity, and reach favorable settlements. Fortunately, Attorney General Sessions took actions to restrict these consent decrees. The Justice Department imposed restrictions on consent decrees, including limits on duration, sunset provisions, and means for termination. Critically, under Attorney General Sessions’s guidelines, a consent decree could not be used to achieve a policy goal that could not be obtained through litigation. I hope Attorney General Garland will maintain this policy. 

Third, the Department of Justice should return any excess settlement funds to the United States Treasury, rather than make “third party payments” to progressive groups. These payments have been criticized as “settlement slush funds.” The federal government has allowed billions of dollars to be given to third-party non-profit organizations. These special interest groups were not parties in the litigation, and were not victims of the misconduct. Indeed, Senator Grassley has observed that the Justice Department directed funds at organizations that Congress had defunded. In this way, the executive branch bypassed the Constitution’s appropriations process. In 2017, Attorney General Sessions prohibited the inclusion of “third party payments” in settlements. Any excess funds from settlements would be restored to the United States Treasury. Attorney General Garland should maintain this policy. 

Thank you for your time, and I will be happy to answer any questions.

The other witnesses will be:

Mr. Wade HendersonInterim President And CEO
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
Washington, D.C.

 

Ms. Andrea Tucker
Parent Of Students At J.O. Wilson Elementary School
Washington, D.C.

 

The Honorable Ken StarrJudge (Retired)
Waco, Texas

 

Ms. Donna Bucella
Former Director, Executive Office For United States Attorneys (EOUSA) And Former U.S. Attorney For The Middle District Of Florida
Irving, Texas

 

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If you want to build cryptocurrency applications, there are few better places to be than Miami these days. Set aside the great weather and established financial industry for a moment. By moving to Florida, fintech firms can not only enjoy the benefits of a custom-built regulatory sandbox and low, low income tax rate of zero percent (among other pro-growth economic policies). They also have a cryptocurrency champion to boot in the form of Bitcoin-loving Miami Mayor Frances Suarez.

Suarez has generated quite the buzz for his forward-looking proposals to allow Bitcoin payments for municipal employee salaries, fees, taxes. His office is exploring ways to put part of the city reserves in cryptocurrency, too. And Miami was the first city government to host the full Bitcoin white paper on its official website in solidarity with the community’s movement against the abuse of copyright laws.

Having political leadership so welcoming to new technology is a great sign that innovation is safe here. Compare this posture to some of the rhetoric and laws flowing from governments in Silicon Valley. No wonder techies are fleeing California. The New York finance guys are right behind them. It’s still early, but we shouldn’t be surprised to see these refugees heed Florida’s friendly call. Many are flocking here for the industry’s biggest Bitcoin conference in Miami in June. They might just decide to stick around.

But Miami isn’t the only den of cryptocurrency activity in Florida. Actually, the Sunshine State has pioneered Bitcoin in many ways.

Jacksonville was the site of the first real life purchase of goods for Bitcoin in 2010: the infamous 10,000 BTC pizza. Jacksonville is another banking hub, so it’s great to see Mayor Lenny Curry collaborating with Suarez on how to bring more Bitcoin business to Florida. My own city, Pensacola, has been home to Satoshi’s Forest since 2013, which was one of the first charity groups to use and promote Bitcoin. And my hometown, the Tampa Bay area, hosted the St. Petersburg Bitcoin Bowl in 2014.

It is fantastic to see leaders in Florida embrace the promise of cryptocurrency. Legislators want to build on the momentum of Florida’s fintech sandbox and new Digital Service by updating our money transmission rules to attract even more cryptocurrency activity. Florida, in general, has been very open to technology and innovation.

This does not mean that our leadership is a big fan of “Big Tech.” Our Republican-run government representatives have been pretty vocal about their problems with the management of popular social media platforms, particularly when it comes to content controls.

Last month, rhetoric ratcheted up to proposed legislation in the form of two bills aimed at reining in big technology companies through new data privacy and content moderation regulations.

Although cloaked in Republican messaging about Silicon Valley run amok, the privacy bill itself is in line with other state data privacy laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act and Washington Privacy Act. It outlines how large companies and specialized data brokers must inform users of their data policies, allows users to request and review their stored data, and creates a new cause of action for users who find their data being used in ways contrary to stated company terms. It wouldn’t give everyone “privacy” online, but it’s pretty vanilla as far as tech policy goes.

More assertive is the “Transparency in Technology Act,” which as of the time of this writing is not available in full text but rather as a bulleted list of legislative goals. A press release from Governor Ron DeSantis says the measure would require companies to “publish standards used to ban posts, de-platform and shadow ban users,” “provide equal access for established news organizations and qualified political candidates to reach users free from manipulation by algorithms,” “stop arbitrarily censoring and/or deplatforming users,” “give users the power to opt out of algorithms,” and “stop frequent changes to terms of use, clearly communicate and obtain prior consent to changes.”

Policy proposals to control content moderation decisions are usually either legally or logistically unworkable—left-leaning leaders and activists often to exert soft power against platforms to promote their moderation goals partly for this reason. But when it comes to the constitutionality of the measure, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh reports that the Florida content control controls might be on firmer legal ground than you’d think.

This is a separate question from enforceability. Just last week, Facebook made the dramatic decision to cut off Australian news links from being posted to their website rather than pay a proposed tax for media outlets. If platforms decide they’d rather not play by these content moderation rules, they can take their ball and go home. For all the complaining that people do about social media, they often stay on the platforms. They would probably be pretty upset if Facebook cut off Florida in response to this law.

It’s not that the problems such measures aim to address aren’t real. Major social media platforms are designed so that the central administrator has complete discretion over what we can see and do on their platforms. Typically, if you don’t like how a service provider operates in a market, you can leave and pick another. There are lots of social media platforms, after all. The problem is that these central administrators can be targeted by powerful bodies to control content. A culture of mono-moderation has emerged from this that doesn’t allow much real user choice. As the Parler debacle illustrates, if alternative platforms do not exercise their discretion in the way that pleases other upstream providers, they too can be cut off.

We can’t ignore the political dimension. Florida is a Republican state that voted for Trump by a healthy margin. Many Florida voters are alarmed by what they saw as a coordinated media and platform campaign to censor or bury stories unflattering to the Biden campaign. Of course they expect their leaders to “do something,” especially when those leaders are quickly ascending to national prominence and perhaps presidential ambitions. Besides, it’s not like Democrats aren’t doing the same exact thing to try to legally force platforms to moderate content in the way they would prefer.

But the problem of platform censorship is not at core a policy problem. It is a technological problem, as Reason senior producer Zach Weissmueller’s fantastic video “How to Fight Deplatforming: Decentralize” well illustrates.

Because big online platforms are centralized, they will be targeted by powerful groups to influence how the content is controlled. Any political solution that cements or neglects the core problem of centralization will not capably address the deplatforming problem.

So what can lawmakers who are concerned about the power of social media platforms do? Well, in the Sunshine State, we should just do more of what we’re already doing and create a hospitable environment for the people who are building decentralized technologies.

It might look like Florida’s embrace of cryptocurrency and distain for big tech platforms is a contradiction. Actually, it makes perfect sense. Decentralized technologies like cryptocurrency provide an alternative to the more centralized arrangements that have until now dominated the internet.

Many cryptocurrency projects seek to deal with the deplatforming project head on. One great example is LBRY, which is a blockchain-based and censorship-resistant YouTube alternative. Anyone can upload their videos to the LBRY blockchain, which is accessible by explorers like Odysee that third parties build to let users connect with content. No one can censor the LBRY blockchain, but applications like Odysee can set their own content standards for what users can access. Don’t like Odysee’s standards? Use or build a competitor. This model allows for both censorship-resistance at the blockchain layer and diversity in content moderation at the application layer.

Politicians that are upset at content moderation standards shouldn’t waste their time on quixotic efforts to micromanage platform policy that will probably be outweighed by stronger efforts on the left anyway. They would better achieve their goals by creating an environment where such decentralized technologies can make that old model irrelevant.

As the futurist Buckminster Fuller once remarked, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” Trying to legislate a content moderation policy that is more hospitable to dissident voices is merely fighting the existing reality. Creating an environment where techies can build these new decentralizing tools is how we make centralized platforms obsolete—or at the very least, just one of many viable options.

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Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen, whose work I trust and admire, posted this at the Consumer Law & Policy blog a week ago; I e-mailed plaintiff’s counsel to see if they were willing to pass along their side of the story, but got on response:

Our latest case about the right to speak anonymously is in federal court in Chicago, flowing from a dispute between a prominent vlogger named Cristina Villegas and a plastic surgeon named David Shifrin who, Villegas complained, “botched my nose job.” Villegas posted a 23-minute-long YouTube video which recounts the inadequacies that she perceived in the doctor’s work; toward the end, she says that, hoping to forestall a public airing of her complaints, he offered to refund her entire surgery fee (in the high four figures) if she would refrain from talking about the issue. She proclaimed that it was more important to get to tell her story.

Villegas’ Instagram account has nearly 500,000 followers, and her YouTube channel has more than 1,600,000 followers; as of today, her “botched nose job” video has had over four million views. Shifrin has taken no action to prevent her from telling her story directly; he has not, for example, sued Villegas claiming that she made any false statements of fact in her vlog. You would think that, if Villegas has been less than accurate in her portrayal of Shifrin’s work on her nose, it was Villegas with her millions of followers who inflicted real harm on his business. Presumably, though, Shifrin recognized that Villegas’ vlogging business is substantial enough that she can probably afford to defend herself.

Instead, he has apparently tried to salvage his reputation by going after what might have been a weak link: members of the public who, incensed by what they saw in the vlog, took to Google and Yelp to side with Villegas and denouncing Dr. Shifrin. Because both Google and Yelp ask reviewers to recount their own personal experiences with businesses, those companies began to remove the reviews or, at least to downgrade them to “not-recommended” status. But that was not enough to satisfy Shifrin, who filed suit in state court against 78 such reviewers, charging them with violation of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”) and a variety of state-law torts, all of which amount to defamation.

The CFAA claim is predicated on the proposition that any violation of the terms of service in accessing a web site amounts to “exceeding authorized access” and hence is a violation of the CFAA, allowing not only a claim for damages but, indeed, a criminal prosecution. The defamation claim is based on the proposition that, contrary to what Villegas said on her vlog, Shifrin really cares about his patients, doesn’t botch surgeries, and never “bribes” his patients to keep silent. The defamation claim is also predicated on the theory that each of the reviews is necessarily false because each was  posted in places that were supposed to provide a forum only for Shifrin’s actual patients.

This lawsuit came to our attention because Shifrin filed a motion for early discovery and then served subpoenas on Yelp and Google. The Illinois state courts have squarely rejected the widely accepted Dendrite standard, which requires a plaintiff to present evidence before he is allowed to use court process to identify defendants claimed to have engaged in wrongful speech.   In rejecting Dendrite, the Illinois Supreme Court said that state procedures provide equivalent protections, but I found that explanation dubious—without a  recognition that First Amendment rights are at issue, would trial courts really be careful to insist that there be a tenable claim against each of the anonymous defendants?

What transpired in the Cook County Circuit Court in this case shows that, as a practical matter, a merely conclusory allegation in a complaint can be sufficient basis in Illinois for stripping anonymous online speakers of their First Amendment right to speak anonymously. Plaintiffs in this case were careful to avoid notifying Yelp or Google that a motion had been filed seeking to compel them to provide discovery; plaintiffs avoided any mention of the First Amendment right to speak anonymously in their ex parte motion for early discovery; and their motion made no effort to show that each of the 78 anonymous speakers had made false statements of fact about one or more of the plaintiffs and hence their authors did not deserve to remain anonymous.  Yet the state trial judge granted the motion for discovery.

However, because Shifrin included a federal law claim, his state-court lawsuit was subject to removal to federal court for Northern Illinois, where the application of the Dendrite standard remains an open question. Consequently, we have removed the case on behalf of two Yelp reviewers, and we are preparing a motion to quash the subpoena to Yelp.   A motion to quash the subpoena to Google might follow if we hear from a Google reviewer whom we are willing to represent (or, perhaps Google follow Yelp’s example by asserting its users’ rights?).

In addition to the important question about discovery of anonymous online speakers, this case presents a significant question about the meaning of the CFAA.  Ever since the controversial prosecution of Lori Drew for creating a fake MySpace profile with tragic results, many of us have focused  on the nightmarish implication from the Government’s theory in that case: that any violation of a web site’s terms of service might make an Internet user susceptible to prosecution under the CFAA. Those hypotheticals are implicated by  Van Buren v. United States, which was recently argued before the Supreme Court; Orin Kerr would say they are at the center of the case.  This case presents an opportunity to secure a clear “no” answer to that question.

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2/23/1905: Lochner v. New York argued.

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If his selection of Antony Blinken as secretary of state is any indication, President Joe Biden’s promised return to normality will extend to his administration’s foreign policy.

A veteran of the U.S. State Department and Democratic Party foreign policy establishment, Blinken, 58, will bring competence and professionalism to the job of America’s top diplomat. But he offers little hope for “a new and fresh foreign policy that doesn’t involve global military primacy, continued intervention overseas, and [a] massive military footprint,” says Kelley Vlahos, a senior adviser at the Quincy Institute, a noninterventionist foreign policy think tank.

As then–Vice President Biden’s national security adviser, Blinken supported the Obama administration’s disastrous Libya campaign, despite Biden’s opposition to that intervention. In 2015, Blinken, then assistant secretary of state, favored the Obama administration’s policy of shipping arms to and sharing intelligence with Saudi Arabia to support its war in Yemen, which has proven to be a humanitarian catastrophe. Blinken also served as Biden’s chief policy adviser in 2002, when Biden, then a senator representing Delaware, voted in favor of using military force in Iraq.

“In short, Blinken has agreed with some of the biggest foreign policy mistakes that Biden and Obama made, and he has tended to be more of an interventionist than both of them,” Daniel Larison, a senior editor at The American Conservative, noted in a November article for the Quincy Institute publication Responsible Statecraft.

Blinken has expressed some regret over his support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, and he has criticized the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet he also has faulted the Obama administration for doing “too little” in Syria. “Without bringing appropriate power to bear, no peace could be negotiated, much less imposed” there, Blinken and Robert Kagan wrote in a 2019 essay published by the Brookings Institution. “Today we see the consequences, in hundreds of thousands of civilians dead, in millions of refugees who have destabilized Europe and in the growing influence of Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah.”

Vlahos suspects Blinken has not absorbed the lessons of America’s foreign policy adventures during the last couple of decades. For “a lot of people who have offered some regrets [about] specific foreign policy mistakes, whether it be Libya or Vietnam or Iraq,” she says, it is “because they cannot deny the consequences. The consequences are so awful, and public opinion has already decided.”

A few progressive intervention skeptics have offered a rosier assessment of Blinken. Matt Duss, who advises Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) on foreign policy, described Blinken as “a good choice,” saying on Twitter he has “the knowledge and experience for the important work of rebuilding U.S. diplomacy.” Mainstream press coverage of Blinken’s nomination likewise emphasized his diplomatic experience, contrasting it with Trump’s own “ricocheting strategies and nationalist swaggering,” as The New York Times put it.

Eric Gomez, director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute, thinks supporters of a less militarized foreign policy can find a silver lining in Biden’s pick for secretary of state. “A lot of what Trump did while in office,” Gomez says, “hurt all the parts of the tool kit that weren’t the military or weren’t sanctions. He was heavily dependent on U.S. threats of force. Having a more effective and resourced and utilized diplomatic corps, and using those peaceful, nonmilitary parts of U.S. foreign policy, is not sufficient, but it is necessary. We have to have those.”

At the same time, Gomez cautions, a more efficiently run State Department means Biden could enact a foreign policy vision that has little to do with restraint or rolling back America’s role as global policeman. If there’s cause for optimism about Biden’s foreign policy, he argues, it’s that more pressing domestic concerns will prevent the incoming president from doing anything very dramatic.

“Any coming Biden administration foreign policy will be restrained by circumstance, but not design,” wrote Gomez and Cato senior fellow Brandon Valeriano in a November American Conservative essay. “The domestic, political, and economic environment in the United States will significantly constrain the Biden administration’s ability to adopt ambitious foreign policy goals.”

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