The 2020 Election

[soleil]

Hi Rad,

Thanks for all the great articles you've been posting, especially:

1. "Donald Trump is the most successful bio-terrorist in human history":

I wish the mainstream media would have the guts to say this stuff out loud, because as long as they continue to normalize him, he may be able to get re-elected:

"Because of his extreme malignant narcissism, Donald Trump can and should be compared to leaders such as Adolf Hitler....Donald Trump is not just incompetent. He's not just delusional. He is not just narcissistic and doesn't care about others. Donald Trump's behavior with the coronavirus pandemic is intentional. He is malevolent. He is a first-degree mass murderer. This is a plan."..."To the extent that they (leaders) are not feeling great enough about themselves, they need someone to punish. One of the ways that a Trump or Hitler-type leader does that is to try to make people show loyalty by doing things where they knowingly harm themselves."

"Of course, the American news media is also unable to accept such a reality, that there are leaders who would actively hurt their own followers and others."

"Trump is going to find a way to steal the 2020 election. And even if defeated at the polls, he still has two months between Election Day and supposedly stepping down in January. These months up to Election Day and then to January will be some of the most dangerous in the country's history. Trump is capable of anything."

2. "The unmasking of Donald Trump":

"(David Cay) Johnston...still blames the media for failing to properly report on Trump in 2016, ultimately helping him win the White House."

Exactly right. Those in the mainstream media are still tip-toeing around Trump, refusing to be blunt about what we all see and have seen for years----that this guy is malevolent, existentially dangerous to the country, mentally disturbed, and MUST be stopped for the good of us all.

3.  "Attempted murder of your post office': Outrage as Trump crony now heading USPS moves to slow mail delivery":

There are also reports that many ballots have already been thrown out. See:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/tens-of-thousands-of-mail-ballots-have-been-tossed-out-in-this-years-primaries-what-will-happen-in-november/2020/07/16/fa5d7e96-c527-11ea-b037-f9711f89ee46_story.html

https://theintercept.com/2020/07/16/new-york-mail-in-ballots-thrown-out/

Thanks again for bringing to light important pieces of journalism that speak the truth and are an alternative to the whitewashed pieces in the mainstream media.

Regards,

Soleil

[Rad]

Trump's 2020 strategy: paint Joe Biden as a puppet for the 'radical left'

As Biden builds an impressive coalition of supporters, the Trump campaign hopes to link the candidate to high taxes and socialism

David Smith in Washington
Guardian
Sun 19 Jul 2020 08.00 BST

Donald Trump's new campaign manager began his tenure this week with a declaration of intent. "If we win more days than Joe Biden wins, President Trump will be re-elected," Bill Stepien said in his first public statement.

"We will expose Joe Biden as a hapless tool of the extreme left and contrast his failures with the undeniable successes of President Trump."

Expect to hear a lot more over the next 100 days or so about Biden, the former US vice-president, being "a hapless tool of the extreme left". It is a classic Republican argument that seeks to peel off moderates and independents by linking Democrats to high taxes and big government socialism. With other attack lines against Biden failing to stick, the Trump campaign appears to have concluded that this is their best shot.

It comes as Biden builds a coalition that spans military generals and Black Lives Matter activists, disenchanted Republicans and democratic socialists. His platform has been described as the most progressive of any presidential candidate in history, unfolding in a year that has seen the coronavirus pandemic and mass protests against racial injustice smash old certainties.

Should Democrats control the White House and both chambers of Congress, America could experience a paradigm shift in what is defined as the left, right and centre ground.

One of the last gasps of the pre-pandemic era was the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the National Harbor near Washington in February. Its official theme was "America v socialism" and the agenda included sessions such as "Socialism: Wrecker of Nations and Destroyer of Societies" and "Prescription for Failure: The Ills of Socialised Medicine". Trump, the star speaker, warned darkly of Democrats as "radical-left socialists".

Much has happened since then and Trump has struggled to respond with an election strategy. In late April, he went for xenophobia with an immigration ban; in May, he brushed aside the coronavirus pandemic to focus on rebuilding the economy and pushed a conspiracy theory about Biden's role in the Russia investigation; in June, he responded to Black Lives Matter protests by promising a law and order crackdown; and in July, he embraced a culture war over Confederate symbols from the civil war.

Each time, Trump has been reacting to events and playing catch-up, and opinion polls suggest that none of it has worked, culminating in Wednesday's demotion of the campaign manager Brad Parscale. His successor, Stepien, is a more traditional Republican operator who looks set to revert to a more traditional Republican game plan. In 2008, the party derided Barack Obama for suggesting it's good to "spread the wealth around"; now it will attempt to define Biden in similar terms.

Lanhee Chen, the former policy director for Republican Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign, said: "It is the best possible strategy they can employ given the fact that the far left has been such an ascendent part of the progressive coalition and given how vocal they have been about a number of policy proposals, which I think most Americans find completely distasteful."

Chen, a fellow at the Hoover Institution thinktank at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, added: "The idea of trying to portray Joe Biden as somebody who is either an empty vessel for the left or in cahoots with the far left makes a lot of sense to me. We'll have to see how effective the attack is, but I think it is the best available play in the playbook."

The play is under way. On Tuesday Trump held a 63-minute press conference that proved a thinly disguised campaign rally in the White House rose garden. Ostensibly about China and Hong Kong, the president's rambling speech mentioned Biden almost 30 times.

These included: "Joe Biden's entire career has been a gift to the Chinese Communist Party"; "Today, Joe Biden gave a speech in which he said that the core of his economic agenda is a hard-left crusade against American energy"; "Biden has gone radical left"; and "The Biden-Sanders agenda is the most extreme platform of any major party nominee, by far, in American history" - a reference to Senator Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist who finished second to Biden in the Democratic primary.

It was backed up by a fusillade from the Trump campaign across various platforms. The "Trump War Room" tweeted: "Bernie Sanders admits he forced Joe Biden to move "˜a whole lot' to the left on healthcare." A campaign email noted how Biden has praised leftwing congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, adding: "Biden is too weak to stand up to the radical left, so he's completely surrendered to them.."

A TV ad claimed: "The radical leftwing mob's agenda? Take over our cities. Defund the police. Pressure more towns to follow. And Joe Biden stands with them." And the vice-president, Mike Pence, speaking in the battleground state of Wisconsin on Friday, described Biden as a "Trojan horse for a radical agenda", adding: "I thought Joe Biden won the Democratic primaries but, looking at their unity agenda, it looks to me like Bernie won."

Such attacks contend that Biden will be soft on immigration, sacrifice hundreds of thousands of blue-collar energy jobs, raise taxes on middle-class families, shut down charter schools and cut funding for police. The Biden campaign dismisses such criticisms as false and desperate scaremongering.

Indeed, Biden is an improbable target for a red scare. Obama's former vice-president spent much of the Democratic primary fending off challenges from the left over everything from his links to the financial services industry to his incremental healthcare plan to his past shortcomings on racial equality. He ultimately won a comprehensive victory over Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the left's standard bearers.

Yet so far he has seemed able to bring the left with him. Biden's six policy task forces - on climate, healthcare, immigration, education, the economy and criminal-justice reform - have shown a humility that critics say Hillary Clinton lacked in 2016, giving Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives a seat at the table.
Joe Biden speaks during a campaign rally at Renaissance High School in Detroit on 9 March 2020.

Last week Biden launched a $700bn plan to revive American industry and tackle inequality, part of an ambitious economic restructuring that has earned comparisons with President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s. This week he added a proposal to invest $2tn in clean energy infrastructure and climate solutions.

María Urbina, the national political director of the progressive grassroots group Indivisible, said: "In terms of how is he doing in engaging and consolidating support from progressive communities, I got to say he's doing a really good job. When you look at his rollout this week of his climate plan, not only is he getting praised by grassroots communities who have spent a lot of time organising around changes to these bold new standards, but you're also seeing key leaders expressing support, from Jay Inslee to Bernie Sanders to Elizabeth Warren."

But could such a unity platform create an opening for Trump to exploit with his "vote Biden, get Sanders" attacks? Urbina thinks not. "It just doesn't add up. If you look at where Trump is starting to lose support and where Biden is gaining it, Biden is creating a continuum of support that is deep and wide as you can imagine in the kind of voting blocs you'd want to bring in. It's a distraction. Joe Biden has support from Angela Davis and he has support from Republicans, so that's not landing."

A party notorious for infighting, and for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, appears to have a struck a truce between centrists and progressives, uniting against the existential threat of Trump, at least for now. Al From, the founder of the Democratic Leadership Council and the man who in 1989 chose Bill Clinton to lead the party's revival with "third way" politics, agreed that Trump's effort to cast Biden as a handmaiden to socialism will fall flat.

"They're slinging mud wherever they can and the problem is it sticks to the president's hand and always winds up hitting him back in his own face," From said. "Joe Biden has a long record. It's pretty clear he's not Bernie Sanders. People know what he stands for. He's a good, decent, honest, empathetic man and people are looking for that.

"This election is a referendum on Trump. He's running against himself and he's doing a really good job of beating himself."

The seismic events of 2020 have shaken the political kaleidoscope. The jobless rate stood at 3.6% when Biden launched his campaign in April last year; now it is well above 10% in the thick of a pandemic that has claimed 140,000 lives. The police killing of George Floyd provoked the biggest mass protests for racial justice in half a century and sweeping transformation from corporate boardrooms to public squares.

What have been multiple crises for Trump could be multiple opportunities for his successor, especially if Democrats regain control of the Senate and thereby avoid Republican obstruction. Could Biden do something big and historic?

From, who has known him for about 50 years, said: "Biden is going to have a good centre-left New Democrat New Labour agenda that's modernised to meet today's challenges. I think the whole political spectrum is going to change. Both parties probably will see big changes. There will be a realignment. I can't tell you now what it's going to be like."

Neil Sroka, a spokesperson for Democracy for America, a political action committee that endorsed Sanders in the Democratic primary, said: "The realigning of the left and centre has actually already happened. Joe Biden, if he wins in November, will be elected on the most progressive agenda a Democrat has ever been elected on in the history of the country. Period. End of story.

"The movement behind Senator Sanders in 2016 and the response to Trump and the movement that grew behind Senator Sanders again in 2020 has fundamentally altered the trajectory of the Democratic party in a way that's hard to really grasp looking at it from where we were in January 2015."

America has a worldwide reputation as a conservative nation that values private enterprise above public services, with Democrats well to the right of Britain's Labour party and little prospect of European-style universal healthcare. But it may also have been awoken to new imperatives and possibilities by a historic convergence of health, economic and racial crises.

Sroka added: "While Joe Biden and perhaps his primary supporters might have thought we needed to go slower, outside events are showing that can change. Progressives are there to ensure that we get change that is big enough and delivered fas

[Rad]

"˜Give a direct answer': Chris Wallace grills Trump for suggesting he won't accept election results

on July 19, 2020
Raw Story
By David Edwards

President Donald Trump suggested that he may not accept the results of the 2020 election because he's not a "good loser."

In an interview that aired on Sunday, Chris Wallace asked the president if he is a "good loser."

"I'm not a good loser," Trump replied. "I don't like to lose. I don't lose too often."

"So, are you gracious?" Wallace pressed.

"You don't know until you see, it depends," Trump insisted. "I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election."

"Are you suggesting that you might not accept the results of the election?" Wallace wondered.

"I have to see," Trump remarked.

"Can you give a direct answer?" Wallace asked again.

"I have to see! Look, no, I'm not going to just say yes," Trump complained.

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=copt7hxZg70&feature=emb_title

[Rad]

"˜This is how it starts': Lincoln Project releases new attack calling out Trump for sending "˜unmarked agents into our streets'

July 20, 2020
Raw Story
By Sarah K. Burris

A brutal new takedown of President Donald Trump's attacks on American citizens protesting peacefully was released by the Lincoln Project Sunday.

"The videos of masked, anonymous government officers attacking American citizens who pose no threat is shocking to watch. Federal agents with no badge are kidnapping civilians into unmarked vans. How is this America?" said LP co-founder Reed Galen in a release. "All Americans must be vigilant."

While Trump's polling numbers are tanking, LP said that the president is losing control. The state of Oregon asked the Department of Homeland Security not to intervene with their protests, saying that things were dying down and had grown much more peaceful. Trump and the DHS ignored the governor's pleas to stop and made things worse, according to the Portland mayor.

Like a scene out of "V for Vendetta," The video describes how Trump's federal agents, "deputized by a rogue attorney general," snatched protesters off the streets, threw them into unmarked cars, and took them away somewhere.

"This is how it starts, and freedom dies," the ad closes.

See the shocking video from the Lincoln Project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzHE_SY334o&feature=emb_title

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Military and Secret Service need to start making serious plans in case Trump refuses to leave office: Joe Scarborough

on July 20, 2020
Raw Story
By Tom Boggioni

Responding to Donald Trump's comments on Fox News that he might not accept the results of the November election should he lose, MSNBC "Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarborough issued a dark warning that the "brightest minds" in Washington D.C. better start making serious plans on how to seize control of the government should the president balk at stepping down.

During his interview with Fox News host Chris Wallace, the president refused to say whether he would accept the will of the voters, which led the frustrated Wallace to demand a "direct answer" which he did not get from the hedging president.

After sharing the clip, Scarborough said Trump's hint that he may fight leaving should be taken with utmost seriousness.

"˜He has proven over the past three and a half years that he's capable of doing anything and, most importantly. he will do whatever he can get away with," the MSNBC host began. "That's why I think people in government, people out of government, the brightest minds in this country have a new task."

"This is a time when the candidates, both major candidates start talking about transition teams and talking about who's going to be running operations inside the White House," he continued. "I think the best and brightest minds in government and out of government now have to start using their imagination, now have to start thinking outside the box, now have to start preparing for something that we haven't had to prepare for. and that is: how does our government, how does our military, how does the Secret Service, how quickly do the courts respond to a sitting president who is defeated at the ballot box and refuses to leave?"

"If you take the president at his own words from yesterday, "˜doesn't know not so sure,' you look at what happened on June 1st in Lafayette Park and look at what's happening in Portland right now, and this is a president who is pushing the boundaries of his power in ways that few presidents have ever before," he concluded.

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GPq18xChTc&feature=emb_title

[Rad]

Trump's vow to send federal officers to US cities is election ploy, critics say

Opponents warn of grave threat to civil liberties as observers say president seeks to build "˜law and order' credentials

David Smith in Washington
Guardian
Tue 21 Jul 2020 06.00 BST

Donald Trump has vowed to send federal officers to several American cities led by Democrats in what critics say is an attempt to play the "law and order" card to boost his bid for re-election.

The president's threat came after a federal crackdown on anti-racism protests in Portland, Oregon, that involved unmarked cars and unidentified forces in camouflage.

Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, Trump identified New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore and Oakland as places in need of federal agents, describing those cities' mayors as "liberal Democrats".

"We're sending law enforcement," he said. "We can't let this happen to the cities."

Singling out Chicago, where more than 63 people were shot, 12 fatally, over the weekend, Trump pivoted to an attack on his election rival, Joe Biden. "And you add it up over the summer - this is worse than Afghanistan, by far. This is worse than anything anyone has ever seen. All run by the same liberal Democrats. And you know what? If Biden got in, that would be true for the country. The whole country would go to hell. And we're not going to let it go to hell."

Struggling against Biden in the opinion polls, Trump has leaned into a dark and divisive theme reminiscent of his fellow Republican Richard Nixon in 1968. "I am your president of law and order," he declared in the White House Rose Garden on 1 June, shortly before park police and national guard troops fired teargas and chased peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square so he could stage a photo op outside a historic church.

Since then he has repeatedly - and falsely - accused Biden of planning to "defund the police" and effectively surrender cities and suburbs to violent criminals. The conservative Fox News network, meanwhile, has been giving emphasis to coverage of inner-city violence rather the coronavirus pandemic.

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: "He took longer than I thought he would to start emphasising law and order. But I bet he starts at the convention. It's going to be one of the key themes of the convention. "˜These crazy liberals are causing problems again.'"

Such a strategy is "certainly a candidate" for explaining the fresh crackdown in major cities, Sabato added. "I'll tell you what it really is, though. It is an unmistakeable hint of what a second Trump term will be like. There'll be no hesitation to do any of this."

The Trump administration sent federal officers into Portland after weeks of protests there over police brutality and racial injustice that followed the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May. Last week, videos showed unidentified federal personnel taking people off the street and driving them away in black minivans.

Mark Morgan, acting commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection, defended the actions in a tweet on Sunday: "Law and Order - a cornerstone of American society - is under siege in Portland."

On Monday the Chicago Tribune newspaper reported that the Department of Homeland Security was making plans to deploy about 150 agents in the city where police defending a statue clashed with demonstrators on Friday.

Lori Lightfoot, the mayor of Chicago and a Democrat, told the Associated Press: "I have great concerns about that in particular, given the track record in the city of Portland. I have talked to the mayor of Portland [and] we don't need federal agents without any insignia taking people off the street and holding them, I think, unlawfully."

The issue has laid bare the binary choice for voters in November. Democrats, warning of a threat to civil liberties, called for Chad Wolf, acting secretary of Homeland Security, to quit. Congressman Don Beyer of Virginia said Wolf was "overseeing authoritarian abuses that betray our bedrock principles and would horrify our nation's Founders".

He added: "Ordering the occupation of US cities, seeking the escalation of violence, and intentionally risking American lives over peaceful protests and graffiti is unfathomable and unacceptable. Secretary Wolf must resign immediately or be fired."

The House committee chairmen Jerry Nadler, Adam Smith and Bennie Thompson said in a joint statement: "The Trump administration continues to weaponize federal law enforcement for its own agenda. Like we saw in Lafayette Square, rather than supporting and protecting the American people, we are witnessing the oppression of peaceful protesters by our own government.

"Not only do their actions undermine civil rights and sow fear and discord across the country, but in this case, they sully the reputation of members of our armed forces who were not involved."

And the congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Michigan wrote on Twitter: "They'll have to arrest me first if they think they're going to illegally lay their hands on my residents."

The sinister events in Portland have renewed fears about creeping authoritarianism from Trump's White House.

Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, has called for peaceful civil disobedience. "Stormtrooper tactics have no place in a free society," he said. "The apparent deployment of the military for domestic law enforcement violates the Posse Comitatus Act in the absence of a genuine insurrection, and the claim that such deployment is genuinely necessary to preserve order does not meet the laugh test.

"The administration is violating the first amendment on a regular basis now, thereby endangering all our liberties."

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Democrats warn the FBI that a GOP senator is "˜laundering' a foreign operation to attack Biden: report

on July 21, 2020
Raw Story
By Matthew Chapman

On Monday, Politico reported that Democratic congressional leaders have sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray demanding a briefing on foreign efforts to target members of Congress as part of an influence campaign.

"Among the Democrats' concerns is that a Senate investigation being led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has become a vehicle for "˜laundering' a foreign influence campaign to damage Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, according to two people familiar with the demand," reported Natasha Bertrand. "Though the letter did not mention the Johnson investigation, it included a classified addendum that the two sources say identified the probe as one of the sources of their concern."

The letter was signed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), and Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Mark Warner (D-VA).

Johnson, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, opened the investigation ostensibly to audit the origins of the Russia investigation in the previous administration. But even some Republicans have raised concerns that the overly political nature of the probe will backfire on them.

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Trump consults Bush torture lawyer on how to skirt law and rule by decree

   John Yoo wrote memo used to justify waterboarding
   Trump keen to use executive orders and circumvent Congress

Julian Borger in Washington
Guardian
21 Jul 2020 21.53 BST

The Trump administration has been consulting the former government lawyer who wrote the legal justification for waterboarding on how the president might try to rule by decree.

John Yoo told the Guardian he has been talking to White House officials about his view that a recent supreme court ruling on immigration would allow Trump to issue executive orders on whether to apply existing federal laws.

"If the court really believes what it just did, then it just handed President Trump a great deal of power, too," Yoo, a professor at Berkeley Law, said.

"The supreme court has said President Obama could [choose not to] enforce immigration laws for about 2 million cases. And why can't the Trump administration do something similar with immigration - create its own "¦ program, but it could do it in areas beyond that, like healthcare, tax policy, criminal justice, inner city policy. I talked to them a fair amount about cities, because of the disorder."

In a Fox News Sunday interview, Trump declared he would try to use that interpretation to try to force through decrees on healthcare, immigration and "various other plans" over the coming month. The White House consultations with Yoo were first reported by the Axios news website.

Constitutional scholars and human rights activists have also pointed to the deployment of paramilitary federal forces against protesters in Portland as a sign that Trump is ready to use this broad interpretation of presidential powers as a means to suppress basic constitutional rights.

"This is how it begins," Laurence Tribe, a Harvard constitutional law professor, wrote on Twitter. "The dictatorial hunger for power is insatiable. If ever there was a time for peaceful civil disobedience, that time is upon us."

Yoo became notorious for a legal memo he drafted in August 2002, when he was deputy assistant attorney general in the justice department's office of legal counsel.

It stated: "Necessity or self-defense may justify interrogation methods that might violate" the criminal prohibition on torture.

Memos drafted by Yoo were used for justifying waterboarding and other forms of torture on terrorism suspects at CIA "black sites" around the world.

Asked if he now regretted his memos, Yoo replied: "I'm still not exactly sure about how far the CIA took its interrogation methods but I think if they stayed within the outlines of the legal memos, I think they weren't violating American law."

In a book titled Defender in Chief, due to be published next week, Yoo argues that Trump was fighting to restore the powers of the presidency, in a way that would have been approved by the framers of the US constitution.

"They wanted each branch to have certain constitutional weapons and then they wanted them to fight. And so they wanted the president to try to expand his powers but they expected also Congress to keep fighting with the President," he said.

In a June article in the National Review, he wrote that a supreme court decision that blocked Trump's attempt to repeal Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme, known as Daca and established by executive order, meant Trump could do the same thing to achieve his policy goals.

Daca suspended deportations of undocumented migrants who arrived in the US as children. As an example of what Trump might achieve in the same way, Yoo suggested the president could declare a national right to carry firearms openly, in conflict with many state laws.

"He could declare that he would not enforce federal firearms laws," Yoo wrote, "and that a new "˜Trump permit' would free any holder of state and local gun-control restrictions.

"Even if Trump knew that his scheme lacked legal authority, he could get away with it for the length of his presidency," he said. In a telephone interview, he added: "According to the supreme court, the president can now choose to under-enforce the law in certain areas and it can't be undone by his successor unless that successor goes through this onerous thing called the Administrative Procedure Act, which usually takes one to two years."

Constitutional scholars have rejected Yoo's arguments as ignoring limits on the executive powers of the president imposed by the founders, who were determined to prevent the rise of a tyrant.

Tribe called Yoo's interpretation of the Daca ruling "indefensible".

He added: "I fear that this lawless administration will take full advantage of the fact that judicial wheels grind slowly and that it will be difficult to keep up with the many ways Trump, aided and abetted by Bill Barr as attorney general and Chad Wolf as acting head of homeland security, can usurp congressional powers and abridge fundamental rights in the immigration space in particular but also in matters of public health and safety."

On the deployment of federal paramilitary units against Portland, Yoo said he did not know enough of the facts to deem whether it was an abuse of executive power.

"It has to be really reasonably related to protecting federal buildings," he said. "If it's just graffiti, that's not enough. It really depends on what the facts are."

Alka Pradhan, a defence counsel in the 9/11 terrorism cases against inmates in the Guantánamo Bay prison camp, said: "John Yoo's so-called reasoning has always been based on "˜What can the president get away with?' rather than "˜What is the purpose and letter of the law?'

"That is not legal reasoning, it's inherently tyrannical and anti-democratic."

Pradhan and other defence lawyers in the pre-trial hearings at the Guantánamo Bay military tribunal have argued that the use of torture against their clients, made possible by Yoo's 2002 memo, invalidated much of the case against them.

"The fact that John Yoo is employed and free to opine on legal matters is an example of the culture of impunity in the United States," she said.

[Rad]

Biden Announces $775 Billion Plan to Help Working Parents and Caregivers

In a speech in Delaware, Joseph R. Biden Jr. outlined proposals covering care for small children, older adults and family members with disabilities.

By Claire Cain Miller, Shane Goldmacher and Thomas Kaplan
NY Times
July 22, 2020

Joseph R. Biden Jr. announced a sweeping new $775 billion investment in caregiving programs on Tuesday, with a series of proposals covering care for small children, older adults and family members with disabilities. His campaign hopes the plan will land with particular resonance during a pandemic that has severely affected the caregiving needs of millions of American families.

The proposals, outlined in a speech near his home in Delaware, were the third of four economic rollouts that Mr. Biden, the former vice president and presumptive Democratic nominee, is doing before the Democratic National Convention next month. He is seeking to blunt one of the few areas of advantage - the economy - that President Trump maintains even as Mr. Trump's overall standing has dipped.

"Families are squeezed emotionally and financially," Mr. Biden said in the speech. "They need help, but too often they can't afford it."

Professional caregivers, he added, "are too often underpaid, unseen and undervalued."

Mr. Biden's proposals are intended to appeal to voters who are now more acutely aware of how essential caregivers are, as the health crisis has shuttered schools - a source of child care for many Americans - and limited the options to care for older relatives who are more vulnerable to the coronavirus.

But they are also aimed at the caregivers themselves, promising more jobs and higher pay. His campaign estimated that the new spending would create three million new jobs in the next decade, and even more after accounting for people able to enter the work force instead of serving as unpaid, at-home caregivers.

Mr. Biden's ideas are in line with what other Democrats have proposed and what researchers have demonstrated could help working families, but it is notable to make caregiving a central issue in a presidential campaign. 

"Care has largely been ignored, certainly in presidential elections, so it's really exciting to see specific plans that would really move the needle," said Taryn Morrissey, who studies child and family policies at American University. "This would change families' finances."

In a conference call outlining the plan on Monday night, the Biden campaign framed caregiving help as an economic imperative to keep the country competitive globally, and to enable it to recover from the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic. The United States is the only rich country without paid family leave and has no universal child care; research has shown that labor force participation has stalled because of that.

But advisers to Mr. Biden, whose campaign has made empathy a central component of his 2020 candidacy, also repeatedly invoked the former vice president's own history as a single father. Mr. Biden's first wife and his 1-year-old daughter died in a car accident in 1972, shortly before he was first sworn into the United States Senate. His two sons survived the accident.

In his speech, Mr. Biden recalled the years after the accident and other difficult periods in his life, like when his son Beau Biden had brain cancer.

"We know what it's like," Mr. Biden said. "We know so many of you are going through the same thing without the kind of help I had."

To address care for older people and people with disabilities, the Biden campaign announced proposals to eliminate the waiting list for home and community care under Medicaid, which has roughly 800,000 people on it; provide fresh funding to states and groups that explore alternatives to institutional care; and add 150,000 new community health workers. The campaign said that coronavirus outbreaks in nursing homes had highlighted the necessity of providing care for aging adults at home.

For young children, Mr. Biden is proposing to start with a bailout for child care centers, many of which are at risk of closing amid the pandemic because they are financed almost entirely by private payments. Even before lockdowns began, they operated on very small profit margins.

Mr. Biden also proposed national pre-K for all children ages 3 and 4, and his campaign pointed to research that has shown that such programs help women work and shrink racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps.

For parents of younger children, he proposed an $8,000 child care tax credit per child, up to $16,000, for families earning less than $125,000. It would be refundable so parents who did not pay much in taxes could still collect it. Or families earning less than 1.5 times the median income in their state could choose subsidized child care, so they would pay no more than 7 percent of their income. The lowest earners would pay nothing.

The plan would address the dearth of child care by providing financing for the construction of new child care facilities, including at workplaces and in rural areas, and expanding after-school and summer options and care for people who work nontraditional hours.

Mr. Biden's plan also calls for increased pay for child care workers - who are disproportionately women and minorities - along with health benefits, career training and the ability to unionize. On average, preschool teachers in the United States earn less than $30,000 a year, while kindergarten teachers earn over $50,000, according to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

The plan follows earlier proposals from Mr. Biden to provide benefits for people who care for family members instead of working for pay, an idea that has recently gained support from both parties. He would give unpaid caregivers a $5,000 tax credit as well as Social Security credits.

Though Mr. Biden had previously called for public pre-K, paid family leave and elder care, his announcement on Tuesday was the most detail he has given about what those plans would look like and about additional ideas he has for helping caregivers. During the Democratic primary, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders were at the forefront of family policies, and each proposed universal child care, beginning at birth. Even now, Mr. Biden has not gone that far. Other of the senators' ideas, like raising preschool teachers' pay, are included in his new proposals.

The Trump administration has also proposed policies for items like paid family leave and affordable child care, an effort led by the president's daughter Ivanka Trump, who has framed the initiatives as economic ones. Politically, family policies appeal to a group that both parties are trying to court, suburban women.

Yet very few family policies have been put into place while Mr. Trump has been in office, and the ones that have, like an expanded child tax credit and more money for child care for low-income families, have been minimal and have not reached all the families that need help.

In response to the pandemic caregiving crisis, Democrats have introduced bills to provide more parents with paid leave while schools are closed and to invest billions to save the child care industry, but most Republicans have not supported them.

In general, Republicans have resisted any caregiving policy that would be paid for through a tax increase, which most of the Democratic plans would. For example, Mr. Trump has endorsed a bipartisan bill that would provide leave for new parents by letting them collect their own future child tax credits early and receive smaller credits later.

Mr. Biden's campaign said the newly proposed programs, some of which would be operated with state and local officials, would be paid for by rolling back some taxes on real estate investors with incomes over $400,000, as well as by increasing tax enforcement on the wealthy.

In response, the Trump campaign tried to draw attention to the cost of Mr. Biden's plan. "Instead of pro-job and pro-growth policies, Biden is turning to an old friend - tax hikes and big government," an email from the campaign said.

Mr. Biden delivered his speech in New Castle, Del., not far from his home in Wilmington, where he has mostly stayed put since the coronavirus began shutting down the country in March. His first economic rollout was focused on reinvigorating manufacturing and strengthening "Buy American" rules; the second was on building the infrastructure of a new, greener economy; and the final one will be about advancing "racial equity," the campaign has said.

[Rad]

Trump has inadvertently punched himself in the face with his politically-driven war on cities

on July 23, 2020
By Amanda Marcotte, Salon
- Commentary

On June 1, Donald Trump, the failed businessman who became president by pretending to be a successful businessman on reality TV, decided to tear-gas peaceful protesters in search of a photo op. With no apparent provocation, federal police assaulted a crowd of people staging a nonviolent protest in Lafayette Park, adjacent to the White House, unleashing tear gas on the crowd and laying into them with batons and rubber bullets. Soon it became clear why this was happening: Trump wanted his picture taken in front of St. John's Episcopal Church, and wanted a clear path to walk across the park.

But it was more than that: Trump also wanted images of people fleeing from paramilitary cops to air directly opposite the speech he gave just before his stroll, one in which the president claimed that "our nation has been gripped by professional anarchists, violent mobs or arsonists, looters, criminals, rioters, antifa and others" and that he was "mobilizing all federal resources, civilian and military, to stop the rioting and looting."

In other words, Trump and his aides apparently believed that chaotic images of cops crushing a peaceful protest would look, at least on TV, like proof of Trump's characterization of the largely peaceful protests as "riots" being run by dangerous "anarchists."

This gambit grossly backfired. Reporters on the scene saw with their own eyes that the protest had been peaceful, and the only people who could legitimately said to be "rioting" were the cops. Trump wanted to look tough but wound up looking weak and cowardly, a man so afraid of being heckled he hides behind a phalanx of RoboCops. Even the photo-op went sideways: Trump looked especially awkward with a Bible perched precipitously on his stubby fingers, in a manner suggesting he'd never seen or held a book before.

But Trump, never one to admit a mistake, has not given up on his belief that unleashing military-style assaults on peaceful protesters is just the thing needed to reinvigorate his campaign. He's sent federal police - armed to the hilt and clad in camo, to maximize the appearance of being in invading army - into Portland, Oregon, to terrorize and assault people gathered peacefully in the streets. (Even the mayor of Portland, Ted Wheeler, got tear-gassed while doing nothing more sinister than standing in a peaceful crowd, chatting with protesters.) Now Trump has said he'll send more federal goons to Chicago and Albuquerque, New Mexico, all against the express wishes of local and state leaders, who point out that  federal police, not protesters, are staging confrontations that become violent. He has suggested he may expand this domestic invasion to other cities across the country.

In a press conference on Wednesday, Trump tried to justify all this by claiming we're witnessing "a shocking explosion of shootings, killings, murders and heinous crimes of violence."

Like most things Trump says, this is an outright lie. FBI crime statistics show that overall crime is down by 5.3% since last year. It's true that murder rates have ticked upward in many places from the historic lows of the last few years. Experts interviewed by the New York Times suggest that the protests have nothing to do with it, and that it's a result of the enormous disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic, which has heightened stress, leading both to increased domestic violence and more heated disputes within the illegal drug trade.

As usual, Trump is lying about more than just the statistics. He's also lying about his intentions. He isn't doing any of this to keep people safe. If he cared one whit about the safety of Americans, he would focus his energy on fighting the coronavirus, not on staging violent confrontations with largely peaceful protesters. If he cared about reducing violence, he wouldn't be causing more of it by sending cops to attack demonstrators. If he really cared about "law and order," he wouldn't be deliberately inducing chaos in the streets.

No, all this is about one thing and one thing only: The reality-TV president wants to create a spectacle for the cameras, one he thinks will get him re-elected.

That's why Trump went to Tulsa to hold a rally near the site of one of worst racial pogroms in American history, on a weekend usually known for celebrating Black people's emancipation from slavery: He hoped the provocation would lead to a violent clash between protesters and police. (It didn't.)

Trump is playing the role of the world's worst TV director, one who is using taxpayer money to inflict real pain and suffering on people who didn't consent to play a part in his BDSM-themed cable drama aimed at viewers with a tear-gas kink. All for the purpose of generating B-roll footage of flash-bangs and clouds of gas and armored police and black-clad protesters to be featured in heavy rotation on Fox News and in campaign ads.

As Oregon Gov. Kate Brown explained on MSNBC, when Chad Wolf, the acting Homeland Security secretary, visited Portland recently, "he brought a Fox News team with him for a photo opportunity." Unsurprisingly, that network is playing the role of Trump's eager editor, presenting the Portland footage in misleading ways, and amplifying his lies about the protesters.

The one sticky problem for Trump's artistic vision is that everyone outside the Fox News bubble can see that the protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful, and that the president who's sending in poorly trained, amped-up federal cops is the one stoking violence and chaos. Trump is doing all this to get images of "violent" protests, but what he's mostly getting is images of cops attacking a row of middle-aged women who are singing lullabies (that's no exaggeration). As with the Lafayette Park incident back in early June, it's obvious who the real instigator of violence is.

Trump's campaign is so desperate for images of street violence that it literally borrowed a photo of protesters attacking a uniformed soldier - a photo taken in Ukraine in 2014 - and tried to pass it off as an image from recent American protests.

Trump's gut-level certainty that (white) Americans yearn for more images of cops beating or attacking protesters is, like most things Trump feels sure about, entirely wrong. The most recent polling data from earlier this month shows that 62% of Americans believe that Trump's handling of the protests has made the situation worse. When it comes to non-Republicans, that figure rises to 8 in 10 Americans. Trump is wasting taxpayer money and unleashing harm on U.S. citizens solely for the purpose of activating the worst impulses of the most racist and paranoid members of his base - people who were already going to vote for him, no matter.

Of course, Fox News - whose hysterical coverage no doubt inspired Trump to ramp up his autocratic crackdown in the first place - is backing him to the hilt, as are many of the Republicans running for election down-ballot from this historically unpopular president. That seems like a dumb move, likely to alienate any voters who weren't already on board, but then again, what else do they have? With the coronavirus pandemic raging out of control and the economy in the toilet, Republicans certainly can't claim they've done a competent job and deserve to keep on doing it. Violence and racism may not be a winning message in this year of historic turmoil and change, but at this point, it's all Trump and his party have left.

*********


Devastating ad depicts Trump's America in #GestapoTrump

on July 23, 2020
By David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement

A devastating new ad from Really American PAC depicts what life in Trump's America has become: the President's secret police SWAT teams physically attacking U.S. citizens protesting against police violence, beating them with bats and batons, tear gassing them, and shoving them to the ground.

The sharply-edited video includes audio of Trump calling protestors "animals," and his infamous remarks, bragging to police, telling them, "please don't be too nice" to suspects when they are arresting them.

And also:

"It was like a knife cutting through butter."
Defend democracy. Click to invest in courageous progressive journalism today.

"You have to dominate the streets."

The video is so disturbing because it's real.

Take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5p0xBNOvPo&feature=emb_title

[Rad]

Mitch McConnell accused of "˜doing everything he can to suppress the vote' by proposing $0 in election assistance

on July 24, 2020
By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

Progressives are accusing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Donald Trump of pulling out all the stops to suppress the vote in November after new details of the Republican coronavirus stimulus plan revealed it does not propose a single dollar in election assistance funding.

"It seems Mitch McConnell is doing everything he can to suppress the vote by putting voters in danger."
-Sean Eldridge, Stand Up America

A summary (pdf) of the Republican plan obtained by the New York Times Thursday doesn't mention election funding directly, but it does note that the GOP relief package will propose "no additional money for state/local governments."

The draft adds in a parenthetical, "Certainly expect to get some [funding] added in negotiations with the Dems."

"It is outrageous that this proposal contains not one penny to help states conduct safe elections during a global pandemic," Sean Eldridge, founder and president of Stand Up America, said in a statement. "Policymakers should be doing everything they can to ensure voters are not forced to risk their health to cast their ballot."

"Instead," Eldridge said, "it seems Mitch McConnell is doing everything he can to suppress the vote by putting voters in danger."

Stand Up America and other voting rights groups are demanding that Congress approve $3.6 billion in election assistance funding-a fraction of the $21.3 billion the GOP plan proposes handing to the Pentagon on top of the agency's likely $740.5 billion budget for fiscal year 2021.

The Republican plan, which is being crafted in McConnell's office in partnership with the Trump White House, has not yet been finalized and the details could still change.

    BREAKING: The new GOP coronavirus bill includes ANOTHER $21,300,000,000 for the Pentagon.

    The Pentagon already got $10,500,000,000 in the CARES Act.

    This is all on top of an existing $740,000,000,000 military budget.

    Meanwhile, struggling Americans get next to nothing. pic.twitter.com/2oD55w2jTc

    - Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) July 23, 2020

Voting rights advocates say the election assistance money is necessary to help states expand vote-by-mail and ensure that in-person polling places are adequately equipped and prepared to safely hold a general election amid a pandemic.

Failing to approve election funding, progressives warn, could drive down turnout in November by limiting voters' ballot options in an environment where it is potentially dangerous to vote in person.

    Want to feel your health is being prioritized when you vote this November?

    Call your senator.

    The Senate is coming up with a coronavirus response bill & reports are saying McConnell wants to allocate $0 in election funding for the states.

    Text MAIL to 21333 to be connected.

    - Stand Up America (@StandUpAmerica) July 23, 2020

Trump's repeated and baseless attacks on mail-in voting as well as his refusal to commit to accepting the results of the 2020 election have added urgency to progressive efforts to ensure a safe and fair contest. On Thursday, Stand Up America and Indivisible announced that 30 new advocacy groups have joined the grassroots campaign preparing to mobilize should Trump refuse to leave office.

"Together, we will ensure that every vote is counted and that we protect our democracy," said Cristina Jimenez, executive director and co-founder of United We Dream Action, an immigrant rights group.

In May, House Democrats passed legislation that would provide more than $1 trillion in funding for state and local governments-including billions in election assistance money-as they face pandemic-induced budgetary crises.

Eldridge said Democratic lawmakers must do everything in their power to ensure that adequate election assistance funding is included in the stimulus package that eventually makes its way through Congress.

"Democrats in both chambers cannot allow Republicans to threaten the foundation of our democracy-and they must use every piece of available leverage to ensure election funding is included in a final brokered deal," said Eldridge. "Nothing less than our democracy is at stake."

[Rad]

All Your Most Paranoid Transfer of Power Questions, Answered

What happens if Donald Trump refuses to accept the results of the election?

Ben Jacobs
Jul 24 2020
GEN

Can Donald Trump continue as president even if he loses the election in November?

Trump's refusal to say that he would accept the results of the election during an interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News comes as the president continues to fearmonger about the use of vote by mail in the 2020 election and raise questions about its legitimacy.

This rhetoric is not new from Trump. He falsely claimed in 2016 that Ted Cruz "stole" the Iowa caucuses and refused to commit in advance to accepting the result of the general election against Hillary Clinton. Now that he's in the White House, can Trump thwart the will of the American electorate if he loses in November? Let's look at what's actually possible - and what isn't.

Can Trump do anything if it's a Biden landslide?

No. In this case, only the most outlandish scenarios would be available to a president seeking to stay in office. Peter Feaver, a professor at Duke University who served on George W. Bush's National Security Council, said Trump "would have to persuade many, many people who are currently in government, most of whom are civil servants, they have to go along" with any effort. Further, the constitutional process of transfer of power does not require any "pomp and circumstance"; if Trump loses, he is no longer president as of noon on January 20, 2021, regardless of where he remains physically. Even if he bunkers down in the White House and tweets orders at government officials, he will lack any legal power.

What if it's a close election?

The constitutional procedures don't change if it's a close election, but there are more opportunities to weaponize them for political advantage. Even though Election Day is November 3, the presidential election is not finalized until January 6, 2021. In between, there is a two-month process with a number of choke points in a normal election year, to say nothing of one where the coronavirus pandemic sparks the unprecedented use of vote by mail.

Wait, the president isn't elected in November?

Nope. Remember, voters don't directly vote for the president. They vote for electors in the Electoral College. The electors convene to cast their ballots on December 14, 2020, in their respective state capitals. The ballots are then counted during a joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021, which is presided over by the vice president. Only then do we officially have a president-elect. In between, a lot of things can go wrong, ranging from fundamental election administration issues to a parade of constitutional horribles.

What's the biggest potential problem?

The big one is absentee ballots and the issues with counting them. Throughout 2020, elections have required extended periods to count absentee ballots and produce final results. Because of this, there is already a broad expectation on both sides that there may not be a clear winner of the presidential election on election night or even in the days after that.

The issue here is not just the lag in counting votes, but also that there is a partisan bias in the modality people use to vote. In recent elections, late-arriving ballots have trended toward Democrats. In 2018, mailed-in votes not counted until after Election Day tipped the balance and delivered victories in a number of races in California and in the Arizona Senate race. This Democratic-leaning trend is likely to be further amplified by Trump's rhetoric against absentee ballots, which has discouraged Republican primary voters from requesting them.

This creates a potential scenario where, on election night, Trump is ahead in states that have the 270 or more electoral votes needed to claim victory, while Biden wins in the final tally days or weeks later, once all the votes are counted.

But isn't the final count the one that matters?

It all depends. The three closest states in the 2016 election-Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan-all have Democratic governors but Republican legislatures. It's conceivable in a close race that the Democratic governor certifies one result and one set of electors, but the Republican legislature certifies an entirely different result and set of electors. That's where all these scenarios can start to go haywire.

However, they require one other precondition: a divided Congress in 2021.

Any conflict over the 2020 election results, including competing returns, would be decided by the next Congress, the one elected in November and seated on January 3, 2021. (Yes, the new Congress is sworn in almost three weeks before the president and three days before the presidential election is certified by Congress.) If Capitol Hill continues to be divided, with Democrats controlling the House and Republicans controlling the Senate, these scenarios come into play. It is unlikely to be an issue, however, if Democrats control both chambers.

There is precedent for this. In 1876, three different Southern states sent two sets of returns and two sets of electors to Congress. The result sparked a national crisis, and Congress created a special electoral commission to resolve the election, which was eventually awarded to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. Democrats then controlled the House, but Republicans controlled the Senate.

Things have gotten better since 1876, right?

Not really. Although Congress passed the Electoral Count Act of 1887 to try to clarify the situation in the future, it is "gibberish," in the words of Lawrence Douglas, a professor at Amherst College who has written a book about potential nightmare scenarios for the 2020 election. There are broad questions about whether it should even be considered a law, or whether it is merely a rule of congressional procedure that can be overturned.

The Electoral Count Act does provide that in the case of conflicting returns, the set of election returns "certified by the executive of the State, under the seal thereof, shall be counted." That means the governors. Because of the ambiguous legal standing of the law, however, a divided Congress could still raise issues about whether this resolves the dispute, and Republicans in the Senate could still try to force a stalemate.

This creates a whole new set of issues. If there is a stalemate over a conflicting set of returns from a state, its electoral votes could get thrown out. But there's no clear method of determining what happens next. Currently, to win the Electoral College, a candidate has to win a majority of the electoral votes: 270 out of 538 available. But there is no literature or precedent for what happens if electoral votes get thrown out. Do candidates still need to win 270 - or merely a simple majority of the electoral votes cast? Electoral votes have been rejected only once, in the election of 1872, when Ulysses Grant cruised to victory against Horace Greeley, a newspaper publisher who died shortly after the election. Grant won by such an overwhelming margin that this issue was not addressed.

So, what happens then?

The short answer is "human sacrifice, dogs, and cats living together"¦ mass hysteria." The long answer is a political fight that will be entirely results-oriented. Under the 12th Amendment, if no candidate wins a majority of the electoral votes, the election goes to the House of Representatives (the Veep Season 5 scenario), where each state delegation then casts a single vote. California gets one vote, Wyoming gets one vote, and the presidential candidate who gets 26 states' votes wins. Currently, Republicans control 26 state delegations in the House, Democrats control 23, and one is split. Even though the House has an elected Democratic majority, Republicans continue to narrowly control the majority of state delegations, just as they hold the majority of Senate seats.

This could lead to a scenario where Republicans try to force the election to the House, arguing that Biden has not received 270 votes, and attempt a last-ditch effort to elect Trump through their majority at the state delegation level.

Is any of this likely?

Probably not. It requires a very specific set of circumstances where Trump loses, challenges the validity of the election, and then still has enough allies in state legislatures and Washington, D.C., to be able to formally overturn the Electoral College results-to say nothing of the popular vote-under color of law. That said, the convoluted and arcane nature of the American electoral system still presents a number of choke points that create openings for a sore and resourceful loser to attempt to force a different result.

[Rad]

Operation Diligent Valor: Trump showcased federal power in Portland, making a culture war campaign pitch

By Marissa J. Lang,  Josh Dawsey,  Devlin Barrett and Nick Miroff
WA Post
July 25, 2020

PORTLAND, Ore. - As statues of Confederate generals, enslavers and other icons tumbled from their pedestals amid protests last month, President Trump issued an executive order meant to break the cascade. It enlisted the Department of Homeland Security, created in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks to protect the country against external threats, to defend U.S. monuments and federal property against "anarchists and left-wing extremists" who he said are advancing "a fringe ideology."

The order signaled Trump's eagerness to mobilize federal power against the societal upheaval that has coursed through America since George Floyd's death. He sought to frame and create a culture war - right vs. left, right vs. wrong - and was taking a stand at the monuments that some view as historical homages and many others view as symbols of oppression.

But Trump's June 26 declaration came too late. The momentum of the protests was fading in many U.S. cities, and confrontations between federal authorities and civilians were becoming less frequent. Then Trump found Portland, according to administration and campaign officials.

Still restive, the West Coast city with a long tradition of protest as a subculture of anarchism was staging peaceful mobilizations as well as smaller nightly clashes with authorities. Militant black-clad demonstrators were directing their anger at a large federal courthouse downtown.

Sinking in the polls over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump seized a chance to appear as a field general in a wider American cultural conflict over racial justice, police misconduct and the reexamination of American history and monuments. In Portland, he found a theater for his fight.

The Federal Protective Service officers responsible for guarding the courthouse were worn down and outnumbered, DHS officials say, and they sent teams of federal border and immigration officers to shore up their ranks in anticipation of larger protests on the July 4 holiday weekend.

"What is occurring in Portland in the early hours of every morning is not peaceful protesting," acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf said this week. "These individuals are organized and they have one mission in mind: to burn down or cause extreme damage to the federal courthouse and to law enforcement officers."

Trump has taken a keen interest in tactical operations against the protesters in recent weeks, according to White House and administration officials at the center of the response, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. When the fog of tear gas is thickest here in the wee hours of the morning, the president is sometimes up early on the other side of the country, calling Wolf for real-time updates from the front.

The scenes of militarized federal forces on the city's streets have stunned many Americans and unnerved former Homeland Security officials, but they have not quieted the protests. In many ways, the agents and the barricades they have erected have re-energized the demonstrators and have converted the courthouse into a proxy for the Trump administration itself.

The fortified, battle-scarred building has resembled a beehive on recent nights, as protesters prod it with fireworks and other projectiles until a door swings open and federal agents burst forth with volleys of tear gas and stinging munitions. Then they retreat inside. The pattern repeats.

Trump's campaign officials say that the president wants to amplify his law-and-order message to show he is a last bastion of safety for a reeling American public, and that U.S. cities ravaged by crime and unrest - which also happen to be heavily Democratic - are the right venue.

"Not only are the big-city mayors turning a blind eye, they are actively working against their own law enforcement and police forces who want to keep people safe," Trump senior adviser Jason Miller said. "The first rule of government is to keep people safe. That's what the president is doing."

Trump announced a plan this week to deploy federal agents to Chicago, Albuquerque and other cities where violent crime has spiked, and he later told Fox News that he is ready to deploy 50,000 to 75,000 officers if welcomed by local authorities. While DHS and Justice Department officials have tried to emphasize their defensive operation in Portland is different, Trump calls it part of the same "chaos" he blames on "the radical left" amid their calls to defund police departments.


White House officials have been frustrated with news coverage depicting federal agents as aggressors, and on Friday, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany opened her briefing with a video montage of mayhem in Portland that segued into toppled statues and damaged monuments elsewhere. The footage was graphic, and Fox News cut away.

Trump's "˜Operation Legend' was supposed to combat crime. It's produced one arrest, and some see a political stunt.

Trump has pushed for a Portland-style deployment in Chicago, one official said, but city officials made clear they prefer working with the FBI and other Justice Department agencies over DHS, whose reputation has suffered from its central role in Trump's domestic policy agenda.

Three and a half years into his presidency, the standoff in Portland is also the culmination of Trump's long-running battle against jurisdictions whose "sanctuary" polices have undermined his immigration agenda. The president's use of highly trained Homeland Security agents in a domestic policing role was preceded by his willingness to employ a show of force along the Mexico border to stop migrant caravans.

In a meeting last week with advisers, Trump said that what has been happening in the nation's largest cities is "ridiculous" and that "something has to be done about it," according to a person who attended the meeting but was not authorized to publicly discuss the strategy session.

Stephen Miller, one of the president's top aides, has regularly argued for more muscular action in U.S. cities, drafting talking points that say they are failing and that Trump will fix them.

"We will not let that courthouse be burned to the ground," Miller said Thursday night on Tucker Carlson's show, depicting the building as a kind of Trump citadel. "This is about the survival of this country, and we will not back down."

DHS officials have reported dozens of vandalism attempts and attacks on Portland federal buildings since May, and a timeline of those acts shows an escalation. Early graffiti rose to more serious recent incidents targeting the federal courthouse and the agents guarding it.

By the first week of July, protesters were trying to tear off the building's plywood defenses, shooting fireworks at the structure and smashing glass. The officers defending the building have been attacked with rocks, bottles, ball bearings and balloons filled with paint and feces, according to DHS, and officials said three agents have sustained serious ocular injuries from lasers pointed at their eyes. Arson smoke merges with tear gas to produce scenes of bedlam.

The responsibility for guarding the building during protests usually falls to the FPS and the U.S. Marshals Service, but the agencies asked for reinforcements ahead of the July 4 holiday, fearing an uptick in vandalism and violence, according to Homeland Security and Justice Department officials.

Wolf called up the country's most highly trained border and immigration agents, including units that typically focus on drug traffickers and powerful cartels.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D), one of the administration's fiercest critics, said she had no idea federal agents were being sent to her state to police protesters until photos of unidentified officers in tactical gear at the Portland federal courthouse began circulating on social media around July 4.

In the days that followed, the governor's office began to look into what was going on in Portland, spokeswoman Liz Merah said, and discovered the Trump administration had increased the number of agents in Oregon's largest city without letting anyone know.

"This is a democracy, not a dictatorship," Brown said in a statement. "We cannot have secret police abducting people in unmarked vehicles. I can't believe I have to say that to the President of the United States."

Brown acknowledged that state authorities have declined to coordinate with federal officials and have only contacted DHS to ask them to stand down.

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler (D) first heard about increased federal presence from officials in the Portland Police Bureau as the agency began its preparations to secure protests and events around July 4, spokeswoman Eileen Park said. Though Wheeler also serves as the city's police commissioner, he said he was not consulted by Trump or Homeland Security officials before the federal government deployed agents to the city.

Despite Trump's assertions that city officials were overwhelmed by nonstop protests, Wheeler has compared the presence of federal officers to gasoline being thrown onto an open flame.

"We had heard about it first when they were already here," Wheeler said. "What we had been seeing on our streets was a de-escalation of the criminal activity, the violence, the vandalism that was being engaged in by a handful of people - we were seeing that tail off significantly."

By mid-July, there were more than 100 officers from the FPS and other DHS agencies, including tactical teams from U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a deployment DHS dubbed Operation Diligent Valor.

There weren't enough government vehicles for all the CBP agents in Portland, so officials decided to rent minivans, according to officials familiar with the effort. The rental vehicles soon appeared in cellphone videos that showed federal agents in military-style uniforms grabbing protesters off the streets using unmarked cars.

CBP also began using some of the detention cell space inside the courthouse - jail cells normally run by the Marshals Service - to detain and question suspects, according to officials familiar with the matter. At least 43 suspects have been arrested by federal agents in Portland so far, Wolf said this week.

Wolf speaks to the president several times a day, according to White House officials, one of whom said Trump is "deeply involved" in monitoring crime in U.S. cities and suggesting responses, particularly while watching news coverage of the protests.

Wolf also is at the White House several times a week, including a meeting this week with Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Though Trump wanted more ardent DHS officials like Ken Cuccinelli and CBP acting chief Mark Morgan for the top job, Wolf has become one of Trump's favorite Cabinet secretaries, according to senior officials. He has told aides he likes Wolf far more than his predecessors, who sometimes resisted the president's expansive views of federal power.

One of the officials said the White House had long wanted to amplify strife in cities, encouraging DHS officials to talk about arrests of violent criminals in sanctuary cities and repeatedly urging ICE to disclose more details of raids than some in the agency were comfortable doing. "It was about getting viral online content," one of the officials said.

U.S. Rep. Peter T. King, a New York Republican and Trump ally, said he understands why federal reinforcements are in many of the cities and argued that the "mayors are embarrassing themselves."

"I understand why the feds are in there. Something has to be done," King said, noting that he believes any action should only be in certain places. "You have to be careful how far you go and what you do."

Federal agents have struggled to identify, isolate and arrest the protesters engaged in violence or graffiti, stymied at times by confusion about who in the crowd is who. Agents have had difficulty distinguishing individuals among dozens of people who are clad in all black and who are frequently wearing masks, law enforcement officials said. So at times they have grabbed an individual and taken them inside the courthouse for questioning before determining that they had no probable cause to charge them with any crime, the officials said.

"˜What choice do we have?': Portland's "˜Wall of Moms' faces off with federal officers at tense protests

The protests have swelled in size this week, mostly with peaceful demonstrators, including columns of parents known as the "Wall of Moms," who lock arms to shield protesters, and "Leafblower Dads," who use the landscaping tools to dissipate tear gas and blow it back at federal agents.

Two incidents captured on video have highlighted the ugly nature of the clashes, and what some protesters have said is the more forceful approach taken by deputy U.S. marshals. In the early hours of July 12, a protester holding what appeared to be a speaker across the street from the courthouse was struck in the head by a projectile fired from one of the people guarding the courthouse.

The man, Donavan La Bella, 26, has needed surgery for skull fractures, according to his family. Since the incident, the marshals have declined to say which agency fired on La Bella. On Friday, officials said they believe it was a deputy U.S. marshal, adding that they would not release the names of any of personnel involved in use-of-force incidents.

In a statement, the agency said its personnel guarding the courthouse "have shown incredible restraint under nightly threat by violent protesters while protecting lawful demonstrations."

A week after La Bella was struck, 53-year-old Navy veteran Christopher David was beaten with a baton and pepper-sprayed by marshals outside the courthouse. David suffered broken bones in his hand, and marshals said the force was justified because he presented a threat to officers "by continuing to approach them and failing to comply with lawful commands to withdraw as they proceeded to reenter the courthouse."

David has said he was trying to ask the federal agents why they were there. "Why are you not honoring your oath to the Constitution?" he yelled.

The agency also said it is not participating in Operation Diligent Valor, which is a DHS effort. "The US Marshals do not have the option of leaving Portland, as some have called for," the agency said, noting that marshals' duties include protecting the federal judiciary and courthouses.

On Thursday, the inspectors general at DHS and the Justice Department announced they would investigate how federal agents have used force, made arrests and conducted themselves in confrontations with protesters in Portland, Ore., and Washington, D.C.

Inspectors general to examine law enforcement actions at Portland, D.C. protests

Mac Smiff, 39, a Portland artist and editor in chief of a hip-hop magazine, said demonstrators have learned how to better prepare for the tear gas and munitions federal agents are using. Some have crafted homespun armor out of plastic. Others hold shields made from trash can lids, cut up plastic bins or plywood nailed behind a picture frame. They carry swim goggles, lab goggles, snowboarding goggles. Helmets, gas masks and half-face respirator masks abound.

"We're out here trying to have a peaceful protest and I almost got hit in the face - just last night - with something that flew just inches from my face and hit a barrier. I'm not sure if it was a rubber bullet, a gas canister or what," Smiff said, adding that he has gone online trying to buy a gas mask so he can take photographs of the protests. "We're buying motorcycle armor so we can go out there. This is not Fallujah, this is Portland, Oregon, and it's like war games out here."

Wolf this week laid blame on the city and state officials who have asked him to pull federal agents out of Portland, and the breakdown in cooperation has left DHS even more dug in.

Wolf described the deployment as part of DHS's legal mandate to protect federal property, rather than a response to the president's June 26 executive order. Trump administration officials say the president has the authority to order such deployments without such an order.

"We still have a job to do. We will continue to protect that facility," Wolf said. "What we know is if we left tomorrow, they would burn that building down. ."‰."‰. We know they have tried."

Relations between Oregon authorities and Trump officials turned more acrimonious after Wolf visited Portland last week. Spurned by city and state officials, he met with the police union and rejected calls to pull back DHS agents.

On Wednesday night, Wheeler, the mayor, joined protesters at a fence line outside the courthouse, but he was pelted with objects and heckled for the past use of tear gas against protesters by Portland police.

After some in the crowd shot fireworks at the building and attempted to light fires along the fence, federal agents unleashed tear gas. Wheeler was enveloped, and left the streets choking and gasping for air.

*************

America 'staring down the barrel of martial law', Oregon senator warns

    Ron Wyden says Portland tactics threaten democracy
    Senator Jeff Merkley deplores "˜military-style assault'
    Former Ice head: Trump is using agents as his "˜goon squad': https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/24/trump-goon-squad-john-sandweg-homeland-security-ice

David Smith and Daniel Strauss in Washington
Guardian
Sat 25 Jul 2020 07.00 BST

America is "staring down the barrel of martial law" as it approaches the presidential election, a US senator from Oregon has warned as Donald Trump cracks down on protests in Portland, the state's biggest city.

In interviews with the Guardian, Democrat Ron Wyden said the federal government's authoritarian tactics in Portland and other cities posed an "enormous" threat to democracy, while his fellow senator Jeff Merkley described it as "an all-out assault in military-style fashion".

The independent watchdogs for the US justice and homeland security departments said on Thursday they were launching investigations into the use of force by federal agents in Portland, where unidentified officers in camouflage gear have snatched demonstrators off the streets and spirited them away in unmarked vehicles.

But Trump this week announced a "surge" of federal law enforcement to Chicago and Albuquerque, in addition to a contingent already in Kansas City. The move fuelled critics' suspicions that the president was stressing a "law and order" campaign theme at the expense of civil liberties.

Wyden said in a written statement on Thursday: "The violent tactics deployed by Donald Trump and his paramilitary forces against peaceful protesters are those of a fascist regime, not a democratic nation."

    I wish the president would fight the coronavirus half as hard as he attacks my home town
    Senator Ron Wyden

Speaking by phone, he said: "Unless America draws a line in the sand right now, I think we could be staring down the barrel of martial law in the middle of a presidential election."

Military control of government was last imposed in the US in 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that triggered entry into the second world war. In current circumstances it would entail "trashing the constitution and trashing people's individual rights", Wyden warned.

The Oregon senator recalled a recent conversation with a legal adviser for the head of national intelligence.

"I asked him again and again what was the constitutional justification for what the Trump administration is doing in my home town and he completely ducked the questions and several times said, "˜Well, I just want to extend my best wishes to your constituents.'

"After I heard him say it several times, I said my constituents don't want your best wishes. They want to know when you're going to stop trashing their constitutional rights."

The White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, began a briefing on Friday with a selectively edited video montage depicting protests, flames, graffiti and chaos in Portland.

"The Trump administration will not stand by and allow anarchy in our streets," she said. "Law and order will prevail."

Trump has falsely accused his election rival, Joe Biden, of pledging to "defund the police" so violent crime will flourish. Democrats condemn Trump for a made-for-TV attempt to distract both from Black Lives Matter protests and his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, now killing more than 1,000 Americans a day.

"I wish the president would fight the coronavirus half as hard as he attacks my home town," Wyden said. "I think he's setting up an us-against-them kind of strategy. He's trying to create his narrative that my constituents, who are peaceful protesters, are basically anarchists, sympathisers of anarchists and, as he does so often, just fabricate it.

"Trump knows that his [coronavirus] strategy has been an unmitigated disaster. The coronavirus is spiking in various places and he's trying to play to rightwing media and play to his base and see if he can kind of create a narrative that gives him some traction."

The Portland deployment, known as Operation Diligent Valor, involves 114 officers from homeland security and the US Marshals Service, according to court documents. Local officials say their heavy-handed approach, including teargas and flash grenades, has merely enflamed demonstrations against police brutality and racial injustice. The justice department-led Operation Legend involves more than 200 agents each in Kansas City and Chicago as well as 35 in Albuquerque. It is targeted at violent crime.

Lori Lightfoot, the mayor of Chicago, has vowed to resist the federal intervention.

    It's very clear what the president is trying to do is incite violence and then display that violence in campaign ads
    Senator Jeff Merkley

"We're not going to allow the unconstitutional, state-sanctioned lawlessness we saw brought to Portland here in Chicago," she said on Thursday.

Merkley offered warning words of advice based on Oregon's current experience.

"I would say that you probably don't believe that these federal forces will attack protesters if the protesters are peaceful and you will be wrong because that's exactly what they're doing in Portland," he told the Guardian.

"This is an all-out assault in military-style fashion on a peaceful-style protest. The way to handle graffiti is put up a fence or come out and ask people to stop doing it, not to attack a peaceful protest but that's exactly what happened. It's very clear what the president is trying to do is incite violence and then display that violence in campaign ads. And I say this because that's exactly what he's doing right now. This is not some theory."

The senator added: "This is just an absolute assault on people's civil rights to speak and to assemble."

Merkley argued that with past targets such as Islamic State and undocumented migrants losing their potency, Trump has settled on African American communities in inner cities to be his latest scapegoats.

"I think it's also important to note the president we've always known has this intense authoritarian streak," he said. "He loved and had so much affection for the leader of North Korea, Putin in Russia. Just admiration for some of the tactics in the Philippines with Duterte and ErdoÄŸan in Turkey, by the crown prince in Saudi Arabia."

On Friday the United Nations warned against the use of excessive force against demonstrators and media in the US.

"Peaceful demonstrations that have been taking place in cities in the US, such as Portland, really must be able to continue," the UN human rights office spokeswoman, Elizabeth Throssell, told reporters in Geneva.

[Rad]

Trump is gearing up to create an "˜extraordinarily dangerous crisis' that only happens in broken countries: professor

Raw Story
7/28/2020
By Sky Palma

According to Washington Post columnist Brian Klass, President Trump is "laying the groundwork to do something that no previous president has ever done: falsely claim that an election was fixed against him in order to discredit the vote."

Klaas writes that Trump's ongoing attempts to cast doubts in the integrity of the 2020 election challenges the "flagship event of our republic" - namely the peaceful transfer of power that should be accepted by all candidates. "With about 100 days to go, we are careening toward an extraordinarily dangerous crisis of American democracy," he writes.

"Such crises never happen in other functioning democracies," Klaas writes. "But they happen all the time in broken countries around the world. In contentious elections from Africa to southeast Asia, incumbents who lose often refuse to accept defeat. Welcome to the club, America!"

While Trump potential win in 2o2o poses a list of threats to America, a potential Trump loss could cause "the period between Nov. 4 and Jan. 20, 2021 to be particularly dangerous as well.

Read the full op-ed:

Here's how to prepare for Trump rejecting the election results in November

Opinion by Brian Klaas
Global Opinions contributor
WA Post
July 27, 2020 at 6:45 p.m. GMT+3

President Trump is laying the groundwork to do something that no previous president has ever done: falsely claim that an election was fixed against him in order to discredit the vote. Trump has repeatedly - and incorrectly - claimed the election will be "rigged" against him. By promoting a series of wacky, debunked conspiracy theories, he has primed his supporters to wrongly believe he is the victim of some unknown, shadowy "deep state" plot. In an interview that aired last week, he refused to commit to accepting the results in November.

His actions challenge the flagship event of our republic: the peaceful transfer of power after an election, accepted by all candidates. (It's worth noting that in 2016, Hillary Clinton quickly accepted the results and congratulated her opponent, while also criticizing the election's integrity based on verified instances of Russian information warfare - a far cry from Trump peddling the debunked myth of widespread voter fraud.) With about 100 days to go, we are careening toward an extraordinarily dangerous crisis of American democracy.

Democratic Party lawyer Marc Elias says states and Congress need to act now to ensure all votes count during the general election. These changes are overdue.

Such crises never happen in other functioning democracies. But they happen all the time in broken countries around the world. In contentious elections from Africa to southeast Asia, incumbents who lose often refuse to accept defeat. Welcome to the club, America!

All the warning lights are blinking red. University of Birmingham professor Nic Cheeseman , an expert on contentious elections and political violence with whom I co-authored the book "How to Rig an Election," normally worries when contested votes happen in Kenya or Zimbabwe. Now, he's worried about the United States. "There are five warning I always look for," he told me. "Organized militias, a leader who is not prepared to lose, distrust of the political system, disinformation, and a potentially close contest. Right now, the U.S. has all five."

Consider ourselves warned. The question, then, is: What do we do about it? If Trump ends up trying to torch crucial norms of democracy in order to save face, how can we prepare? Other countries offer a series of lessons we should urgently learn from, so that if (or when) the worst happens, Trump's matches don't light.

First, we need a bipartisan pact endorsing the results. Incumbents who reject results solely because they lost tend to get more traction when their party backs them uniformly. When cracks show, the self-serving farce falls apart. Democrats and Republicans who believe in democracy should agree to immediately and publicly accept the election results (barring any major irregularities).

All living former presidents should be involved. It would also be particularly helpful to ensure that former members of the Trump administration - such as John Kelly, H.R. McMaster and Jim Mattis - are on board. The broader the coalition, the more Trump's desperate ploy would be exposed for what it is.

Second, shore up public confidence with oversight. State election officials can conduct quick randomized audits and release results that demonstrate the integrity of the process. Many states do not automatically mandate such audits, but there is still time to expand them before November. And while some states have put up roadblocks to independent international election observers in the past, now would be a good time to welcome them with open arms. They might shine an embarrassing light on any state's electoral failings, but can quickly debunk false claims of manipulation made by losers.

Third, the media should do more to educate voters about election administration. Trump's lies about election procedures work when people don't understand the process. For example, Trump tried to attack mail-in ballots while saying that he has no issue with absentee ballots, even though no-fault absentee ballots and mail-in voting are exactly the same thing. Just as it's easier to scare people with the risks of dihydrogen monoxide until people realize that it is water, educating voters will make it harder for Trump to get away with lying about how elections are held.

Fourth, state and local election officials should do more contingency planning for a pandemic election. Things will go wrong. The more preparations are done now, the fewer examples Trump and his allies can cherry-pick to make false claims of being the victim of an unfair vote. Again, the media can help expose states that aren't ready, to help kick them into gear.

Finally, it would help if the margin was clear and court rulings were swift and decisive to uphold democracy. As professor Sarah Birch, author of "Electoral Violence, Corruption, and Political Order," told me: "Malawi provides a good example of a country that recently weathered a contentious election more successfully than many observers had expected." Even though the president tried to manipulate the vote - and even tried to cancel it - "the clear margin of victory of the winner together with the resoluteness of the courts in insisting on adhering to democratic electoral norms" blunted the damage done by the losing incumbent.

If Trump's authoritarian populism wins in November, the United States faces an existential threat to its democracy. But if he loses, the period between Nov. 4 and Jan. 20, 2021, will be particularly dangerous, too. It's not too late. But we must get ready.

[Rad]

Joe Biden's climate bet - putting jobs first will bring historic change

The presumptive Democrat presidential nominee is picking a path through the perilous politics of the economy and the climate crisis

Emily Holden in Washington
Published on Wed 29 Jul 2020 10.22 BST
Guardian

Faced with a disgruntled climate voter during the primary season who wanted him to be tougher on the oil and gas industry, Joe Biden shot him one of his infamous "why don't you go vote for someone else" responses.

But that was six months ago.

Now, as the presumptive Democratic nominee, Biden's environmental credentials are on the upswing, and not just because his presidential opponent is a risk to the global climate fight.

The US is headed for climate disaster - but Joe Biden's green plan might just work..Art Cullen...Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/16/joe-biden-green-plan-democrats-climate-crisis

Major environmental groups were delighted by Biden's recent announcement of pledges, unimaginable in US politics just a few years ago, including to clean up electricity by 2035 and spend $2tn on clean energy as quickly as possible within four years.

Some campaigners remain unconvinced that he could be as aggressive as necessary with the fossil fuel industry, but his campaign believes they are on the winning path by connecting the environment with jobs.

"We really do see these as interlinked," Biden's campaign policy director, Stef Feldman, told the Guardian. "The climate plan is a jobs plan. Our jobs plan is, in part, a climate plan."

As the coronavirus pandemic has devastated the US economy and forced millions into unemployment, it has also cleared the way for the next president to rebuild greener.

The Biden message: vote to put Americans back to work installing millions of solar panels and tens of thousands of wind turbines, making the steel for those projects, manufacturing electric vehicles for the world and shipping them from US ports.

But Biden's plan, while significant and historic, would be just the beginning of a brutal slog to transform the way the nation operates. That's even without calling for an end to fossil fuels, which science demands but Biden has been careful to avoid overtly doing.

Climate plans need Democrats to win big

Democrats would need to gain control of the Senate and put more progressives into Congress if they expect to pass Biden's climate measures. In a nod to the party's left flank, and as a salve to the pandemic's crushing economic blows, Biden has revised his proposal in order to spend more money, faster. He wants to essentially eliminate US climate emissions by 2050.

"What's going to be possible for President Biden is going to be partially determined by what happens in the other races," said Tom Steyer, the Democrat philanthropist who ran against Biden in the primary and is now on his climate advisory council. "We're working as hard as possible to push climate champions up and down the ballot."

Andrew Light, an Obama climate negotiator and fellow at the World Resources Institute, said the world will be closely observing Biden's congressional support, including how Republicans react if he wins. "Is it like Obama in 2009, where the Republicans were just absolutely uniformly saying no to the new president? Or is it something where people kind of look at what Trump has done to the Republican party and then go, "˜right, well, we've now got to really take this seriously,'" Light said.

Trump's exit from the Paris climate agreement will happen automatically on 4 November, the day after the election. It will be the second time the US has led the way on negotiations and then pulled out or declined to join. The US also pushed for the Kyoto protocol, an international treaty in 1997, but it never ratified its commitments. To believe the US for a third time, the world will need evidence that Congress is engaged, Light said.

The Biden campaign says that's where he will excel.

"The vice-president has tremendous experience getting big legislative packages done," said Feldman, pointing to Biden's support from both major environmental groups and big labor unions.

He has had to walk a fine line to maintain that backing, political observers note.

"I think it is probably near unprecedented to have a climate and infrastructure plan that receives rave reviews from the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club and the electrical workers union and the auto workers union at the same time," she said. "That's really the coalition that is needed in order to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and create good jobs at the same time."

Biden's campaign has said his first priority with Congress will be economic recovery, which will include large-scale spending on clean energy jobs.

Green stimulus

Climate investments will probably be easier to pass as lawmakers hear from constituents about high unemployment because of the coronavirus. Polling from the group Data for Progress finds 49% of voters support a green stimulus. The idea is less popular with Republicans, with 52% in opposition.

Jamal Raad, the co-founder of Evergreen Action who worked for Governor Jay Inslee of Washington in his presidential run, said "a successful package will have jobs in every community and will have something for every senator to tell a story back home about".

Biden may be hoping that moderate Democrats whose support he will need will be encouraged by his support from major unions.

Lonnie Stephenson, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said he expects to lose some members over endorsing Biden, but the world is changing and workers are already losing jobs as coal plants close around the country.

"We're not climate deniers. We know that climate change is real and there needs to be some progressive action taken to try to address it," Stephenson said. "At the same time while we're making this transition to new renewables, we've got thousands of members that work in [fossil fuel] generation."

Stephenson said his group can support Biden because he doesn't want to ban fracking for natural gas or to quickly shut down coal and nuclear plants. Instead he wants to create jobs in clean energy, including in manufacturing - where Stephenson's members could be employed. Not all organized labor is as positive about Biden, however.

The measures that draw electrical workers to Biden's plan are the same ones that push more vocal climate activists away. Biden doesn't set a date to phase out drilling for oil and gas - although he would prohibit new drilling on public lands. He doesn't lay out a timeline for shifting away from gasoline-reliant cars. And he is mum on limiting fossil fuel exports, which would still cause climate damage, even if they are being burned outside the US.

"This is good, it just needs some improvements," said RL Miller, the founder of Climate Hawks Vote who has a seat on the Democratic National Committee. "But the places where it needs improvements are, to me, really important."

Collin Rees, a senior campaigner at Oil Change International, said the environmental community hasn't pressured Biden hard enough on the future of fossil fuels.

"Biden has made large strides on environmental justice, made large strides on clean energy and said absolutely nothing more on fossil fuels recently," Rees said. "There's a political decision here in which people are afraid of a very small portion of the white working class in Pennsylvania, for instance. They're using outdated information."

The world would need to cut emissions 7% every year this decade to have a hope of keeping temperatures from rising more than 1.5C. Scientists increasingly warn that the goal is slipping out of reach.

Miller said that to achieve it, Biden needs to call for even faster growth in solar and wind power, set specific goals for when new vehicles can no longer emit climate pollution, and move to ban exports of oil and gas.

Those absent elements will be key if Biden wins and the US seeks to reshape how the world perceives the country on climate.

Just re-entering the Paris agreement won't be enough to spur the strong global action that is needed, not now that so many nations have been snubbed by the US repeatedly.

Al Gore, the former Democratic vice-president who founded the Climate Reality Project, said the US must "re-establish its historic role as a leader in the international community".

"It's still true we're in a period of history when the US is the only nation that can play that kind of leadership role," Gore said.

**************

"˜This Is About Justice': Biden Ties Economic Revival to Racial Equity

In the last of four proposals laying out his vision for economic recovery, Joseph R. Biden Jr. pledged to lift up minority-owned businesses and to award them more federal contracts.

By Thomas Kaplan and Katie Glueck
NY Times
July 29, 2020

WILMINGTON, Del. - Joseph R. Biden Jr. unveiled wide-ranging plans on Tuesday to address systemic racism in the nation's economy, saying this year's election was about "understanding people's struggles" and pledging to tear down barriers for minority-owned businesses.

In an address near his home in Wilmington, Mr. Biden made the argument that racial justice is central to his overall policy vision in areas like housing, infrastructure and support for small businesses, while aiming to draw a stark contrast with a president who has regularly inflamed racial tensions.

"This election is not just about voting against Donald Trump," Mr. Biden said, standing before four American flags in a community center gym. "It's about rising to this moment of crisis, understanding people's struggles and building a future worthy of their courage and their ambition to overcome."

Mr. Biden's plan is the fourth piece of his "Build Back Better" proposal, an economic agenda that also encompasses manufacturing, climate and infrastructure, and caregiving plans. It takes aim at Mr. Trump's stewardship of the economy and his impact on working families, a potential vulnerability that has emerged during the coronavirus crisis.

The speech on Tuesday came with just under 100 days until Election Day, amid a searing national debate over racism in American society. Mr. Biden continues to hold a substantial lead over President Trump in national polls, and with each successive economic rollout, he has been trying to counter one of Mr. Trump's enduring sources of voter support.

The plan fell short of some of the most ambitious proposals promoted by the left wing of the Democratic Party. Mr. Biden, for instance, did not embrace reparations for slavery or endorse "baby bonds," a government-run savings program for children championed during the primary by Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey. Campaign officials said Mr. Biden had not ruled out eventually accepting such a plan, and that he was not opposed to a study of reparations.

But the proposal he released on Tuesday did emphasize the importance of closing the racial wealth gap, and outlined multiple prescriptions for doing so. Mr. Biden laid out plans for a small-business opportunity fund to help make capital available to minority business owners, and he proposed to triple the goal for awarding federal contracts to small disadvantaged businesses, to at least 15 percent of the money doled out from 5 percent. The plan also seeks to improve the opportunity zone program that was created as part of the 2017 tax overhaul.

"In good times, communities of color still lag," Mr. Biden said. "In bad times, they get hit first, and the hardest. And in recovery, they take the longest to bounce back. This is about justice."

In recent months, as the country has grappled with devastating public health and economic problems and a growing outcry over racial injustice, Mr. Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has increasingly called for ambitious measures to address the nation's challenges. He has sometimes gone far beyond the instincts toward relatively incremental change that guided him in the primary campaign, at least compared with many of his Democratic opponents.

As he seeks to unite and energize his party around his candidacy, he has sought input from a broad range of experts and officials, including from a series of task forces assembled with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, his liberal primary rival.

But Mr. Biden, the former vice president, continues to confront a lack of enthusiasm from some progressive voters, and while he won the primary with strong support from African-American voters - in particular, older ones - he faces challenges generating excitement among some younger voters of color. In the primary campaign, he was not the choice of many liberal activists of color, and he still faces skepticism from some of them about whether he can sufficiently address their concerns.

Mr. Trump, for his part, has sought to portray Mr. Biden as hostage to an extreme left wing of the Democratic Party, whose extravagant spending would wreck the nation's economy.

The plan Mr. Biden unveiled touched on a wide range of economic issues. It emphasizes support for small-business owners of color, promising that he will "leverage more than $150 billion in new capital and opportunities for small businesses that have been structurally excluded for generations," including by increasing access to venture capital and low-interest business loans.

Mr. Biden, who has long faced anger from some voters over his leading role in the 1994 crime bill, which many experts link to mass incarceration, also addressed some criminal justice matters in the plan. He would aim to help states improve their criminal justice data infrastructure so they can automatically seal criminal records for certain nonviolent offenders.

The plan also said that he would try to amend the Federal Reserve Act "to require the Fed to regularly report on current data and trends in racial economic gaps - and what actions the Fed is taking through its monetary and regulatory policies to close these gaps."

The Fed, which influences the speed of economic growth and the unemployment rate with its interest rate policies, already regularly discusses racial and ethnic economic outcomes in its reports and testimonies. It has shied away from targeting any specific group's unemployment rate when setting monetary policy, despite a growing chorus suggesting that it ought to consider targeting the Black jobless rate, which has historically remained higher for longer.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader, called Mr. Biden's overarching proposal promising, but said he wanted to see Mr. Biden call for more far-reaching proposals to ensure that Black Americans frequently do business with the government.

"It's the right direction," he said. "I just want to see more, and I intend to push for more."

Aimee Allison, the founder of She the People, a political advocacy group focused on women of color, said that the Biden campaign was taking encouraging steps on issues of economic, racial and gender "justice," as she put it.

"Progressives, we had other candidates in the primary that we would look at as carrying some of these messages," said Ms. Allison, who was often a Biden critic in the primary and said there are still issues he must address. "Now, the Biden campaign has showed an openness and willingness."

A number of the policies highlighted in Mr. Biden's proposal were already announced as part of other plans, like a housing proposal that would provide a tax credit of up to $15,000 for first-time home buyers, and a goal that disadvantaged communities receive 40 percent of the benefits of spending on clean energy infrastructure.

In contrast to the previous economic plans Mr. Biden outlined, which focused on major, transformational changes to certain sectors of the American economy, the proposal he unveiled on Tuesday was a broader effort seeking to emphasize the idea that racial justice is integral to his policy vision.

He began his address by invoking two icons of the civil rights era who recently died, Representative John Lewis and the Rev. C.T. Vivian, recounting the time he walked over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., with Mr. Lewis, and a conversation the two men had before Mr. Lewis died.

"He asked that we stay focused on the work left undone to heal this nation," Mr. Biden said. "To remain undaunted by the public health crisis and the economic crisis that's taken the blinders off in this crisis and showed the systemic racism for what it is that plagues this nation."

In his speech and in a subsequent question-and-answer session with reporters, Mr. Biden repeatedly lashed out at his opponent's stewardship of the crises facing the country.

He also forcefully rebuffed Mr. Trump's attempts to cast him as soft on law enforcement, as protesters clash with federal agents in Portland, Ore. "Peaceful protesters should be protected, and arsonists and anarchists should be prosecuted, and local law enforcement can do that," Mr. Biden said.

And Mr. Biden accused Mr. Trump of "trying to scare the hell out of the suburbs" by suggesting that Obama-era policies were "causing you to end up, by implication, having those Black neighbors next to you."

"That's supposed to scare people," Mr. Biden said.

Asked about his vice-presidential selection process, Mr. Biden revealed little, saying he would have a choice next week.

But handwritten notes that Mr. Biden held at the event - which were captured by an Associated Press photographer - touched on the subject in more detail. They included talking points about Senator Kamala Harris of California, who is considered a top-tier vice-presidential contender.

"Do not hold grudges," the notes said. A few lines down, they read, "Great respect for her."

[Sunya]

Hi rad!

I'm not sure but I kind of remember you saying months ago that trump could change the date or do whatever is possible to canceling the election.

How do you saw it? Which combination of arquetype was it?
Thank you

[Rad]

Hi Sunya,

No, I did not say that Trump would cancel the elections. I have been posting articles about the election in which others have been saying that he would try to cancel the elections as one of the ways of creating crisis that threaten the elections in the U.S. Very recently in the past days he has begun to make remarks to that affect. But others have pointed out that this is not possible because he does not have the power by U.S law to do that.

God Bless, Rad

[Rad]

"˜A catastrophe': Postal workers warn Trump sabotage of USPS could delay mail-in ballots and distort election

on July 31, 2020
By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

"I'm actually terrified to see election season under the new procedure," said one New York mail carrier.

Letter carriers and voting rights advocates are warning that sabotage of the U.S. Postal Service by the Trump administration and new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy-a major Republican donor to the president-could imperil the agency's ability to deliver mail-in ballots on time, potentially impacting the results of the November elections.

"Slowing down our Postal Service could interfere with this year's election. Voting by mail has become more popular than ever-and 34 states require ballots to be received-not just postmarked-by Election Day."
-Wendy Fields, Democracy Initiative

"I'm actually terrified to see election season under the new procedure," Lori Cash, president of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) Local 183 in Western New York, told the Washington Post.

The Post reported Thursday that key battleground states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania are already experiencing significant mail delays due to DeJoy's changes, which include overtime cuts and a new pilot program that bars postal workers from sorting mail in the morning.

"The cardinal rule is, "˜don't delay the mail,' and we're in a 180-degree switch where we're delaying mail every day," said Cash. If DeJoy's system isn't fixed before election season, Cash warned, "it's going to be a catastrophe at the Post Office."

The Post noted that any delay in "delivering ballots to voters and then returning them to election officials could cause people to be disenfranchised-especially in states that require ballots to be returned by Election Day."

"Already, tens of thousands of ballots across the country have been disqualified in this year's primaries, many because they did not arrive in time," the Post reported. "In Wisconsin, 2,659 ballots that were returned after the April 13 deadline for the spring primary were not counted due to their late arrival."

Wendy Fields, executive director of the Democracy Initiative, a coalition of voting rights organizations, said in a statement earlier this month that "slower mail service is unfair-and dangerous-for the millions of Americans who rely on the mail for food, medicine, medical supplies, unemployment checks and other critical mail and packages."

"Slowing down our Postal Service also could interfere with this year's election," Fields said. "Voting by mail has become more popular than ever-and 34 states require ballots to be received-not just postmarked-by Election Day."

    Trump is attacking the very machinery of government that makes legitimate elections possible in a pandemic. https://t.co/e32GkVGRIc

    - Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) July 31, 2020

An anonymous postal worker from California told the Post that if major mail backlogs persist, "there's no telling how many days-worth of delays there could be" come election time.

"I mean, we'll be delivering political mail days after the election," the worker said.

Anticipating that mail delays are likely to continue, the USPS recommended in a statement this week that localities "immediately communicate and advise voters to request ballots at the earliest point allowable but no later than 15 days prior to election date."

"Trump's unprecedented politicization and gutting of USPS is a much greater threat to American democracy than his bogus call to delay the election."
-Ari Berman, Mother Jones

Warnings from postal workers come as President Donald Trump continues to peddle unfounded claims about the prevalence of vote-by-mail fraud. On Thursday, as Common Dreams reported, Trump floated the possibility of the delaying the November election, claiming without evidence that the surge in mail-in ballots will cause "the most inaccurate and fraudulent election in history."

While the president does not have the authority to delay elections, critics said Trump's comments represent yet another insidious attempt to undermine trust in the electoral process.

The New Yorker"˜s Steve Coll wrote Wednesday that Trump's attacks on the legitimacy of the November election combined with his administration's undermining of the U.S. Postal Service "raise obvious questions about whether the management of voting by mail will be manipulated in service of Trump's reelection."

In a tweet Friday, Mother Jones reporter Ari Berman wrote that "Trump's unprecedented politicization and gutting of USPS is a much greater threat to American democracy than his bogus call to delay the election."

    Trump's gutting of USPS could lead to 1000s of ballots thrown out. "If they keep this up until the election, there's no telling how many days-worth of delays there could be. I mean, we'll be delivering political mail days after the election" a postal worker from California said pic.twitter.com/8F8oN0APU1

    - Ari Berman (@AriBerman) July 31, 2020

In April, Trump called the USPS "a joke" and demanded that the agency dramatically raise package prices during the Covid-19 pandemic.

With the USPS at risk of running out of cash by the end of September, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin announced Thursday that he reached a deal with DeJoy to give the Postal Service access to $10 billion in funding approved by Congress in March.

Democratic lawmakers warned in a joint statement late Thursday that the terms of the agreement would "would inappropriately insert the Treasury into the internal operations of the Postal Service."

"Secretary Mnuchin and the leadership of the U.S. Postal Service appear to be exploiting this public health pandemic to hold the Postal Service to unreasonable loan terms without even consulting Congress," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), and Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.). "We will not stop fighting to protect this critical service that communities depend on and to ensure that every American can safely participate in the November elections."