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This Arkansas newspaper is fighting the state's anti-BDS law

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After the House passed its fraught anti-bigotry resolution on Thursday, Democrats on Capitol Hill sounded ready to move on from the controversy sparked by their outspoken colleague, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). But one way the controversy over Israel will keep going is through “anti-BDS” laws, largely pushed by Republicans.

Arkansas is one of 26 states that have passed anti-BDS laws, with help from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. All fairly identical, these laws require state contractors to sign a pledge vowing not to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement, a consumer boycott of Israeli-made products, designed to punish the country for its treatment of Palestinians. (Israel calls the campaign anti-Semitic.) The backer of the 2017 Arkansas law was Republican state senator Bart Hester, who says he was moved by his evangelical faith and the religious affinity between Christians and Jews.

But newspaperman Alan Leveritt is one of the contractors resisting the pledge. The owner and publisher of Little Rock’s alternative paper, Arkansas Times, not only refused to sign it, but he’s actually suing the state.

The paper doesn’t take a stance on the boycott, and Leveritt doesn’t support it himself. But he doesn’t think the state has the right to tell his paper — or any other business —whether it can participate in a political movement. Plus, his biggest advertiser is a state college, which said it could no longer advertise unless the Times took the pledge.

“They do not have a right to punish me for exercising my constitutional right,” Leveritt told VICE News. “To be silent in this instance. It’s just to be silent… we don’t take a position on this. Our job is to write about Arkansas. We’re a lot more interested in Medicaid expansion here in Arkansas than we are what’s going on in Jerusalem.”

Leveritt is represented by the ACLU, which has successfully fought anti-BDS laws in other states, citing the First Amendment. But a federal judge in Arkansas ruled that boycotts aren’t protected speech and threw the case out. That left Leveritt with a choice: give in, or keep fighting and risk his paper’s bottom line. For now, he’s fighting, appealing the case to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. But he’s not sure how much longer he can afford the fight.

“I’ve got responsibilities to these people here at this organization,” he says. “I’m not looking to be a martyr. But I am willing to appeal and go through this process and let this go on for the next year. And I’ll do the best I can.”

This segment originally aired March 7, 2019, on VICE News Tonight on HBO.

You would be much happier on permanent daylight saving time

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Daylight saving time happens at 2 a.m. on March 10th this year. It’s that yearly ritual where we spring forward and lose an hour of sleep so we can gain an hour of daylight in the evenings. Researchers say that extra hour of sunshine saves lives on the roadways, reduces crime, increases leisure activity and may save a little electricity.

There are two bills in the Washington State legislature that would make daylight saving time year-round. In California, voters passed a measure in November that would allow the legislature to make DST year-round there. A similar effort is also underway in Oregon.

The revolt against falling back and springing forward is not limited to the West — a bill that would keep Florida on daylight saving time passed the state legislature and is awaiting congressional approval, and farmers in Massachusetts two years ago pushed that state to explore moving to the Atlantic time zone.

Anxiety about daylight saving time is new. Implemented first during World War One as a means of saving energy, and then revived during World War Two, daylight saving time wasn’t widely adopted until the late 1960s. Since then only Arizona and Hawaii have opted out of the change.

But western states are now poised to make the biggest impact in this debate. California, Oregon, and Washington make up a large and symbolic clump of the U.S., and although none of the states have made it all the way through the congressional process to make daylight saving year round, there is new consensus that they should.

This segment originally aired March 8, 2019, on VICE News Tonight on HBO.

Ilhan Omar’s Victory for Political Sanity

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Would House Democrats censure one of their own for daring to suggest that the deep-pocketed fossil fuel lobby buys influence in Congress? What about a member who said the same about Big Pharma? And yet, Democratic leaders on Wednesday were on the cusp of implicitly rebuking U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar for criticizing the pro-Israel lobby’s power. “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country,” she said a recent event.

This was destined to be another example of the impossibility in Washington of deviating from unflinching support of Israel’s policies. But then something remarkable happened. The Democrats’ resolution against anti-Semitism was tabled after an outcry from members who felt Omar, a Muslim woman of color, was being singled out and that the party should condemn the full spectrum of religious bigotry, including the Islamophobia practiced by President Trump. A powerful lobby tried to suppress criticism of its work, and rank-and-file Democrats spoke their minds.

Omar’s latest comments were not the freshman congresswoman’s first this year to draw accusations of anti-Semitism. Earlier this month, she tweeted that support in Congress for Israel was “all about the Benjamins baby,” referring to $100 bills. She later apologized for the tweet, even though it referred to a time-honored practice in Washington. Pro-Israel supporters have gained influence through hefty political spending, just as Big Oil and Big Finance and Big Tech have. There’s nothing particularly novel about that fact.

Let’s be clear about the sums we’re talking about. When considering single-issue lobbying, “pro-Israel” is the sixth-largest topic in Congress, larger than interest groups who lobby on abortion policy or gun control or women’s issues. AIPAC, by far the largest of the pro-Israel groups, spent nearly $7 million on lobbying in 2017 and 2018 combined. Outside of lobbying, AIPAC rallies its members to assist in political campaigns of like-minded candidates. Fundraising pitches are routinely made in side rooms at AIPAC’s 20,000-person strong policy conference.

AIPAC aside, one of the GOP’s largest donors is Sheldon Adelson, who is almost singularly focused on Israel policy. An Adelson summit in 2015 promised up to $50 million to counteract campus activists seeking to boycott, divest from, or sanction Israel, otherwise known as the BDS movement. (The bill that AIPAC most frequently lobbied on during the last Congress was the “Combating BDS Act.”) Adelson’s campaign contributions exceeded $100 million in 2018, breaking his own record of $82.6 million in 2016. Haim Saban, a major donor to Democrats who’s worth $4 billion, has called himself a “one-issue guy,” with that issue being Israel.

While Omar critics claim she’s accusing Jews of dual loyalty—a trope that slipped from popular discourse long ago—keep in mind that evangelicals are the far greater majority of Israel-supporting activists. Millions of Christian theocrats who believe that Jews must control Israel to usher in the end of days have massive influence over the GOP in Washington. Christians United for Israel, the manifestation of this line of thinking, is a larger organization than AIPAC by twenty-fold. CUFI has the ear of the conservative movement and in particular Vice President Mike Pence, the keynote speaker at its conference in 2017.

It is no more a trope that wealthy interests want to protect the pre-eminence of Israel in Middle East policy than it is to say that large corporations have an interest in protecting the source of their fortune. How these interests are advanced in Washington is pretty elemental. Through carrots and sticks, members of Congress are persuaded to support the preferred policies of various groups: They’re handed a check at a fundraiser, or implicitly threatened with support for a political opponent, or just overwhelmed with scores of lobbyists making persistent arguments.

The new contingent in Congress from the Democratic left, an astounding number of whom pledged not to accept corporate PAC money, presents a problem for powerful lobbyists. That’s why the Omar resolution has run into difficulty. These members are not as susceptible to the usual pressures, and they don’t see what’s wrong with criticizing influence-peddling when the party’s signature legislation this session—H.R. 1—is a full-throated denunciation of money in politics.

The Democratic leadership seems to believe that one major lobby in particular is beyond reproach, but making such an exception undermines the entire message. Either big-money lobbying puts powerful interests ahead of the public interest, or it doesn’t. Omar has made clear where she stands on the matter. It’s Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer who have some explaining to do.

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