Raskin at a February confirmation hearing.Ken Cedeno/Cnp/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

In a political era dominated by Donald Trump’s assault on democracy, it’s easy to feel nostalgia for the normal politics of just a few years ago. Of course those politics remain alive and well and, as they did before, continue to do their own sort of damage to the country and the planet. This week’s example is the defeat of Sarah Bloom Raskin to be the Federal Reserve’s top bank regulator because she believes the United States’ central bank shouldn’t ignore climate change when making decisions. It’s a reminder that while politics as usual wasn’t as violent or immediately threatening, neither was it proving to be a workable system sustaining our democracy or planet. If the country is the proverbial frog, then outside money and special interests are the water being slowly warmed to a boil. 

Raskin pulled her name from contention once Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) joined every Republican in opposing her nomination. “Sarah was subject to baseless attacks from industry and conservative interest groups,” President Joe Biden said Tuesday afternoon upon withdrawing her nomination. (Just like the good old days!)

A former Federal Reserve governor and deputy Treasury secretary, Raskin was well qualified for the job. But she also believes in climate change, and in the Fed’s responsibility not to exacerbate, within the confines of its decision-making authority, this existential threat to the planet. In 2020, she urged the Fed not to prop up fossil fuel companies as part of the governments’ coronavirus economic rescue spending. “The Fed is ignoring clear warning signs about the economic repercussions of the impending climate crisis by taking action that will lead to increases in greenhouse gas emissions at a time when even in the short term, fossil fuels are a terrible investment,” she wrote in the New York Times. “U.S. regulators can—and should—be looking at their existing powers and considering how they might be brought to bear on efforts to mitigate climate risk,” she wrote last year. So, naturally, the fossil fuel industry opposed her nomination. Manchin, who comes from a coal state and is close to the industry, cited her energy beliefs in opposing her nomination.

Republicans also argued that Raskin would exceed her authority to go after the fossil fuel industry. “President Biden was literally asking for senators to support a central banker who wanted to usurp the Senate’s policymaking power for herself,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell argued. It’s one thing to argue that the Fed shouldn’t be setting climate policy, but the argument that it should do nothing is also a kind of climate policy—just a much worse one. 

Republicans saw a few other blemishes on Raskin’s resume, some more admirable than others. She’s a believer in regulating banks, which made her unsuitable to Republicans, even to fill a position that regulates banks. (Republicans have in fact only once agreed to confirm a nominee to this position—a Trump pick—which was created through the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform aimed at preventing a repeat of the 2008 financial crash.) Raskin had also done private sector work that raised red flags, including surrounding an incident when she put in a call to the Fed, her former employer, on behalf of a technology company where she sat on the board. The company, Trust Reserve, subsequently got an account at the Fed, a boon for its business and for the $1.5 million in stocks that Raskin held as a result of working with it.

The revolving door is also an unsavory yet common part of politics as usual. Meanwhile, the Trumpist threat to democracy, as demonstrated by a violent assault on the US Capitol, is attention grabbing and immediate. But Raskin and her rejection remind us that the way things generally used to—and still do—work isn’t a workable solution for the country or the planet either.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate