How Hugh Grant’s charming villain who plays the victim embodies 2020

The devil almost always wears a handsome face. Ever notice that? Evil itself is ugly, and villainy tends to be unattractive, but the boss of it all makes it a point to look good. That’s how he snags you. It also struck me while watching the finale of “The Undoing” that if the devil had a favorite mask, it probably looks like Hugh Grant and acts like his character Dr. Jonathan Fraser, a well-respected and very wealthy pediatric oncologist living in Manhattan.

In “The Undoing” creator David E. Kelley makes Jonathan’s guilt or innocence the central mystery. Jonathan is introduced as the charismatic, doting husband to Nicole Kidman’s Grace Fraser and demonstrates tremendous care and affection for his son Henry (Noah Jupe). His community loves him. Grace adores him.

Nevertheless, the fact that he’s played by Grant – TV and film’s go-to rake in recent years – you may suspect he’s at least guilty of something. And you’d be right.

Not long after a gorgeous young mother at Henry’s school turns up dead, Jonathan disappears. The police find a connection between the woman and Dr. Fraser not long after that. Jonathan swears his innocence, of course, because that’s what handsome devils do. The first line of defense he offers to Grace is, “Here’s what happened: I had an affair.”

Since he’s rich, people are inclined to believe that’s all it was. He gets on TV to plead his case. Grace stands by him even as his story starts to fall apart, piece by piece, proving to be as breakable as their marriage.

“The Undoing” is designed to be a showcase for Kidman, which aligns with the central focus of Jean Hanff Korelitz’s 2014 book “You Should Have Known,” which Kelley loosely adapted to make the series. But Grant seized our attention in an outsized fashion with his performance – not necessarily because it was brilliant but due to what it represents. Grant’s Jonathan may be the zenith of his filmography’s rogues’ gallery section because through him, the actor gives us an all-too-familiar avatar of white male privilege in the modern age.

The “I had an affair” line, by the way, is memorable because Grant stammers it out in a way that’s both ridiculously casual and blunt. He delivers it in a deadly serious scene but says it in way that borders on comedic. This is not a badly acted moment but rather the first example of bad faith on Jonathan’s part.

Taken as one part of a whole – which is to say, a man who confesses to the least of his crimes against his wife and son to convince them to shelter him from paying for the much great crime of murder – it’s such a quintessentially Grant moment that you can’t help but love it.

In recent years the actor has admitted that the antagonists roles he’s been getting lately more closely approximate his actual personality than those dreamboat Romeos ever did. This doesn’t mean he’s an actual sociopath (although years ago, Jon Stewart banned him from appearing on “The Daily Show,” calling him his least favorite guest. “And we’ve had dictators on the show,” Stewart quipped). But he does cop to his curmudgeonly demeanor and like many famous performers he enjoys letting his dark side out for the occasional sprint.

But Grant is one of a handful of actors who could convincingly play Jonathan Fraser because Jonathan appears to be a mature version of one of Grant’s early cinematic “types”: he’s clever, charming and hard-working, and it’s obvious Grace is the one who came into the marriage with money. He looks stunning in a tux and has a boyish sparkle about him, wearing his upper-crust accent without fuss.

His narcissistic malevolence soon gets the better of him. Still, the audience buys him as the face in his bout with the legal system because he fits a type that Grant himself helped create, and that creation fools the audience constantly.

Who knows whether the actor’s Richard Curtis films exist in the world of “The Undoing”? Supposing they didn’t, surely there would be some figure fulfilling the part of the swoon-worthy romantic lead – a mild-mannered, chivalrous stud who says “whoopsie daisies” unironically and doesn’t believe love will ever be in the cards for him until it shows up on his doorstep in the form of Andie MacDowell (“Four Weddings and a Funeral”) or Julia Roberts (“Notting Hill”).

This time of year, Grant will turn up in the inevitable holiday airings of “Love Actually” and “Bridget Jones’ Diary,” the former of which continues his love interest casting streak, the latter featuring his transition into jerkdom. It’s a safe bet we’ll also get a chance to marvel at his tap-dancing baddie Phoenix Buchanan in “Paddington 2.”

All of these parts and others conspire to make Jonathan particularly loathsome and magnetic at the same time, because in him Grant creates a man who so excels at playing the victim and the aggrieved party that you almost want to believe someone else did it, until it’s positively clear he’s guilty.

Grant’s oeuvre has trained us to expect Jonathan to be a man who steals your heart as mercilessly as he’d stab you through it. This also makes his deflection and misdirection through most of the series’ episodes all the more sinister, since he allows suspicion to be cast upon the people to whom he caused the most pain – the husband of his victim, his own wife, even his child.

“The Undoing” was a must-watch for many over these past few weeks, but that doesn’t mean it was great television. If anything it was a premium distraction enjoyed more for its lunacy and seductive fashion than the quality of its storytelling, a very pretty and ultimately weightless tale about one-percenter problems.

The finale’s twist was . . . there was no twist. Jonathan was the prime suspect from the jump, and Jonathan actually committed the crime – shown in the last minutes in all its skull-crunching ghastliness as a cutaway between scenes of father coaxing his son to sing along with him during their doomed road trip.

The finale closes with father and son pursued by the law and halted on a bridge where Jonathan gets out of the car and rushes to the side, threatening to jump. The boy pleads with his father not to run from the inevitable, to acknowledge his case is lost despite his insistence of innocence, that he should be winning. “The Undoing” ends there, so we don’t see the defense rest, the jury returning with its verdict or any rendering of judgment.

This leaves the door open for a second season, but I hope the story ends right here, leaving us at this point of ambiguity.

Justice may have Jonathan dead to rights, but if the modern world tells us anything about devils like him it’s that they can charm their way out of anything.

All episodes of “The Undoing” are available on HBO Max.

Trump bilks $170 million from supporters to fund suits—but his PAC pockets most of the cash: report

President Donald Trump has raised about $170 million from his aggressive fundraising campaign ostensibly aimed at fueling his baseless election challenges, but the majority of the money is actually going to the new political action committee he set up after the election, according to The New York Times.

Trump has bombarded supporters with appeals for cash as he wages a fruitless legal campaign to challenge the results of an election he lost by more than 6 million votes. But the president’s attorneys have failed to back up his allegations of fraud and irregularities with any actual evidence.

“Our democracy and freedom is at risk like never before, which is why I’m reaching out to you now with an URGENT request,” a recent email to donors from Vice President Mike Pence read. “President Trump and I need our STRONGEST supporters, like YOU, to join the Election Defense Task Force. This group will be responsible for DEFENDING the Election from voter fraud, and we really need you to step up to the front lines of this battle.”

Though the emails claim that the money is for the “Official Election Defense Fund,” no such account exists, according to The Washington Post. The fine print on the frenzied messages says the first $5,000 or first 75% of every donation greater than $5,000 goes to Save America, a new political action committee formed by the president in mid-November. The other 25% goes to the Republican National Committee.

Trump and his allies have failed in virtually every lawsuit and presented zero evidence of widespread fraud or irregularities that would overturn the result in any state. But their torrent of lies about the election present a huge boon for Trump’s political future as he reportedly plans to launch a 2024 presidential bid. In fact, earlier fundraising appeals directly noted that much of the money would be used to pay down debt.

The $170 million raised across four weeks is more money than Trump raised during the peak of his campaign — and it is enough to “have paid off any remaining Trump campaign debt,” according to The Times. The campaign struggled to raise enough money to keep up with President-elect Joe Biden after blowing $1 billion early in the game.

Trump’s leadership PAC saw its best month in September, when it raised $81 million. The campaign has also begun to automatically enroll donors into weekly donations, which critics have slammed as “misleading.” Rob Flaherty, who served as the digital director for Biden’s campaign called the tactic “plain and simple grift.”

The fundraising boon means Trump’s assault on the presidential election is not likely to end anytime soon. Trump advisers told reporters that most of the money had come from small-dollar donors.

“Small donors who give to Trump thinking they are financing an ‘official election defense fund’ are in fact helping pay down the Trump campaign’s debt or funding his post-presidential political operation,” Brendan Fischer, the director of federal campaign finance reform at the Campaign Legal Center, told The Post. “The average donor who gives in response to Trump’s appeal for funds to ‘stop the fraud’ likely doesn’t realize that their money is actually retiring Trump’s debt or funding his leadership PAC.”

Because of the way the money is split, “only bigger donors who’ve maxed-out to Trump’s campaign or the RNC will see any portion of their contribution go to dedicated recount or legal funds,” he added.

“The RNC has spent tens of millions of dollars over the last two years funding legal efforts in multiple states, and we continue the fight for election integrity across the country,” RNC spokesperson Mike Reed told the outlet.

The report noted that leadership PACs have little restrictions on how they can spend money, meaning the funds could be used to pay for events at Trump’s own properties to pay for his travel and personal expenses.

Some Republican donors have publicly criticized Trump’s tactics.

“He’s taking advantage of all the free media coverage to pay off his campaign debt and fill his coffers for whatever comes next,” GOP donor Dan Eberhart told The Post. “I would rather give to Romney 2012 than Trump 2020 at this point.”

Barr: Justice Department hasn’t uncovered any evidence of fraud that would overturn election results

As President Donald Trump promoted a hearing on voter fraud in Michigan on Tuesday, Attorney General William Barr told the Associated Press that a Department of Justice investigation had not found evidence of irregularities that would overturn the results of the 2020 election.

“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr told the AP in an interview.

The comments directly contradict the repeated false allegations from Trump and his allies that Democrats stole the election through pervasive criminal fraud. Trump still has not conceded to President-Elect Joe Biden, a moot point barring a dramatic and unlikely turn of events in the Electoral College. Election officials in every contested swing state have already certified their results.

The new disclosure also appears to undercut Barr’s own claims about voter fraud. Earlier this year, the staunch Trump ally repeatedly cast doubt on the security of mail-in ballots, even while admitting he had no evidence to support those allegations.

In spite of his admissions, a criminal complaint last month prompted Barr to grant U.S. attorneys wide berth to pursue “substantial allegations” of election irregularities before final results were even certified.

In a narrowly worded memo, the country’s top prosecutor cautioned that “specious, speculative, fanciful or far-fetched claims should not be a basis for initiating federal inquiries.”

“Given that voting in our current elections has now concluded, I authorize you to pursue substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities prior to the certification of elections in your jurisdictions,” Barr wrote.

The new guidance allowed U.S. attorneys to shortcut the typical chain of command to go directly to Barr. Hours later, Richard Pilger, a career prosecutor who oversaw voter fraud investigations, resigned in protest.

Barr authorized the dragnet in parallel with Trump’s last-ditch legal crusade to overturn results in key swing states and more broadly undermine public faith in the electoral system. Courts have so far ruled against Trump and his allies in every lawsuit alleging voter fraud that the attorneys have not withdrawn themselves — though the campaign still holds out hope for appeals in some cases.

Still, the Trump team presses on under the scepter of Rudy Giuliani, the former spokesperson for the LifeLock identity theft protection service. The president’s personal attorney has launched a flurry of failed filings and hapless press conferences, staging media events and hotel hearings in critical states across the country.

Giuliani is slated to speak at a previously unscheduled Michigan state House hearing on Wednesday evening. The hearing was still not on the legislative calendar as of Tuesday morning, the Detroit Free Press reported.

The hearing comes after a series of Republican lawsuits failed in the state, as well as one week after Michigan election officials certified Biden as the winner of its presidential election.

On Monday, outgoing Rep. Paul Mitchell, a Michigan Republican who represented a heavily Trump district but did not seek re-election in 2020, responded to a Trump tweet about the election by telling the commander-in-chief to “stop the stupid” and give up the court fights.

“Oh my God. .@realDonaldTrump Please for the sake of our Nation please drop these arguments without evidence or factual basis. #stopthestupid,” Mitchell wrote.

Scott Atlas is leaving the Coronavirus Task Force. Here’s why his departure is being celebrated

Dr. Scott Atlas, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution who became infamous for advocating bad science in ways that dovetailed with President Donald Trump’s political agenda, announced his resignation from the White House Coronavirus Task Force in a letter on Monday.

Because Atlas was a special government employee, he was only eligible to serve for 130 days and his position was set to expire this week, according to CNN. Nevertheless, his departure is being celebrated because of his habit of spewing misinformation that served Trump’s propaganda needs to the detriment of public health. This included claims that masks do not help stop the spread of novel coronavirus infections, that the seriousness of the pandemic was being exaggerated, that public health experts should not worry as much about children catching the disease, that the need for social distancing was embellished and that summer civil rights protests were to blame for novel coronavirus outbreaks.

One of Atlas’ most harmful claims was that people could develop herd immunity as a way to effectively manage the pandemic, a belief that experts resoundingly and overwhelmingly reject. Perhaps his most notorious instance of making this assertion occurred in July, when he told Fox News radio that “when you isolate everyone, including all the healthy people, you’re prolonging the problem because you’re preventing population immunity. Low-risk groups getting the infection is not a problem. In fact, it’s a positive.”

Indeed, Atlas’ habit of appearing on Fox News and echoing Trump’s own pandemic talking points reportedly helped land him the ostensibly prestigious White House gig. As Matt Gertz wrote for Media Matters for America, Atlas’ resignation put an end to “an experiment in governance by Fox News that has caused skyrocketing COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, with even darker weeks ahead.” He also characterized Atlas’ appointment as “the purest example of the disastrous impact of the feedback loop between President Donald Trump and Fox’s propaganda.”

Atlas’ expertise was suspect from the start. As a neuroradiologist, Atlas’ specialty is in using neuroimaging to treat ailments of the head, neck, spine and peripheral nervous system, not giving advice on dealing with highly contagious diseases. Nearly 100 of Atlas’ Stanford colleagues made this point in a September letter that drew attention to their ethical concerns about a scientist providing a veneer of misleading expertise on a major public health issue in which he is not a specialist. In that letter, they argued that

any of [Atlas’] opinions and statements run counter to established science and, by doing so, undermine public-health authorities and the credible science that guides effective public health policy. To prevent harm to the public’s health, we also have both a moral and an ethical responsibility to call attention to the falsehoods and misrepresentations of science recently fostered by [Atlas].

“I strongly endorse and agree with the letter from Atlas’s colleagues that he does not understand, or is purposefully misunderstanding, the nature of the virus, this pandemic, and appropriate control activities,” Dr. Alfred Sommer, dean emeritus and professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Salon by email at the time.

Atlas has also made explicitly inflammatory political remarks. Last month, Atlas tweeted that Michiganders should “rise up” against Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer after she ordered a three week freeze on in-person learning as well as the use of dining, stadium events, non-professional organized sports and indoor theaters. He made his comment only a month after it was revealed that six men had been arrested for allegedly plotting to kidnap Whitmer and overthrow Michigan’s state government.

Whitmer responded to Atlas’ tweet by telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that “we know that the White House likes to single us out here in Michigan, me out in particular. I’m not going to be bullied into not following reputable scientists and medical professionals.” She later told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough that Atlas’ comments “actually took my breath away, to tell you the truth.”

In the letter announcing his resignation, Atlas defended his record, claiming that he relied on science and avoided politics in his decision-making. He also praised his opposition to prolonged lockdowns and congratulated Trump for his “vision.”

The most authentic part of “Happiest Season” is Jane, who conquers the “quirky woman” trope

Much has already been written about “Happiest Season,” Clea Duvall‘s Hulu romantic comedy that stars Kristen Stewart as Abby, a graduate student who plans on proposing to her girlfriend, Harper (Mackenzie Davis), on their Christmas trip to meet her conservative parents, the Caldwells.

The catch? Harper never came out to her parents, Ted (Victor Garber) and Tipper (Mary Steenburgen), and asks Abby to spend the next five days pretending to be her straight, orphaned roommate who simply tagged along because she had nowhere else to go.

Harper’s family is . . . absolutely awful. Ted is a deeply conservative politician running for mayor, Tipper is obsessed with family legacy and image, and Sloane, Harper’s older sister (Alison Brie), is icy and competitive. Two minutes into meeting them, it’s clear that things aren’t going to go well for Abby — especially once it becomes clear that Harper becomes a worse person when around them.

“Worse how?” you might ask.

Well, for starters, after pushing Abby back in the closet, Harper ditches her to go drink with her ex-boyfriend until two in the morning, then proceeds to call Abby “suffocating” when called on it. It’s a pattern of really bad behavior for which she never really atones.

It’s an often-infuriating 102 minutes of holiday shenanigans and gaslighting, that left many viewers wondering why Abby didn’t just run off with Riley (Aubrey Plaza), Harper’s stylish and empathetic secret ex-girlfriend (whom, it should be noted, was outed by Harper when the two were in high school), or just go home to her best friend, John, a lovably acerbic book publisher played by Dan Levy.

Despite its imperfections, the movie has enough good going on that it’s worth a watch: it’s the first studio-produced holiday rom-com centered on LGBT characters; Levy’s and Plaza’s performances are pristine; Kirsten Stewart’s blazer and undone tie situation is enviable; and then there’s Jane.

Jane (played by “Happiest Season” writer Mary Holland), is Harper’s other sister. Unlike the rest of her family, she’s bright, bubbly and, as press materials put it, “wacky.” She also busts the screenwriting paradigms that typically surround quirky women characters.

“Jane really just came to life, in me, in a way that was so fun,” Holland told Collider. “In writing Jane, we knew that we wanted her to be this joyful character and this person who just really has such a deep level of self-acceptance.”

Jane’s level of self-acceptance is born from a position as the family black sheep. As Tipper puts it, “We gave up on her when she wouldn’t stop biting in preschool.” Her sisters have — or, in Sloane’s case, had — standard, “Dad-approved” jobs as a newspaper reporter and attorney; Jane has been working on world-building for her first fantasy novel for a decade. They quietly walk into rooms, she has an enthusiastic, Kramer-esque slide through open doors. They wear neutral, off-the-rack Banana Republic dresses, while Jane spends most of the movie sporting bright knits, chunky barrettes and florals that pop. (Tipper has also apparently banned her from wearing future outfits that “strobe.”)

While people in the Caldwell’s uptight Pennsylvania hometown might refer to Harper and Sloane as “driven” or “ambitious,” Jane is the kind of woman about whom those same neighbors would lower their voices, hesitate for a moment, before finally deciding on, “Well, she’s just quirky.”

Here’s the thing about quirky women: in film and television, they are often written in one of two ways, as either punchlines or, perhaps more often, sex objects.

Quirky women make for a tidy foil for more straightlaced or average characters, especially in the sitcom or cable television format. There’s Phoebe Buffay from “Friends,” Amy Farrah Fowler and Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz from “Big Bang Theory,” and Penelope Grace Garcia from “Criminal Minds.” Sometimes this results in characters who are endearing, if a little flat, because their peculiarities exist solely to serve as narrative fodder — but not always.

Think about Melissa McCarthy’s character, Megan, from the 2011 film “Bridesmaids.” She, like Jane, had an undeniable level of self-acceptance, an almost macho swagger, in this case. “I love those no-bulls**t women with close-cropped hair that you’ll see together and think, ‘Is that her partner?'” McCarthy told GQ after the film’s debut. “Then they talk about their husbands and six kids. I just love anybody who’s that comfortable in her own skin.”

While the entire “Bridesmaids” ensemble is stacked with comedic talent — Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Ellie Kemper, Rebel Wilson — McCarthy’s role is distinct. It hinges on her eccentricity, which is evident in the dichotomy between her voracious sexual appetite and her gym teacher wardrobe ( SAS Comfort sandals, included!) and in her willingness to deliver lines like, “I’m life, Annie, and I’m biting you in the ass,” before going on to physically bite Wiig.

Her life is presented as a stream of peculiar circumstances: she fell off a cruise ship, pinballing into railings and decks, before being saved by a telepathic dolphin; she has mysterious financial resources; she steals nine puppies from a bridal party and later in the film waltzes into Annie’s mom’s living room with all of them pulling on their leashes.

There’s a kind of shamelessness to the character that is both endearing and strangely aspirational, likely due to the fact that this was a film largely guided by the female gaze; “Bridesmaids” was written by Wiig and Annie Mumolo.

What happens when quirky women are written from the male point of view, you may ask? Well, that’s when we sometimes lapse into the eccentric sexual interest who only exists to teach a man about himself, known now in pop culture parlance as the “manic pixie dream girl.” The list of characters that fall into this category is long: Sam Feehan (Natalie Portman) in “Garden State,” Allison (Zooey Deschanel) in “Yes Man,” Claire Colburn (Kirsten Dunst) in “Elizabethtown,” Polly Price (Jennifer Aniston) from “Along Came Polly,” Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) from “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.”

Some of these characters are more nuanced than others in that the quirky women’s performance is filtered through how the men in their lives see them — a good example is Summer Finn (Deschanel again) from “(500) Days of Summer” — but the trope is well-trodden and exists for a reason.

That’s what makes Jane so refreshing as a character. While her unusual habits, wardrobe and mannerisms are decidedly funny, she doesn’t exist to be flattened or paired off, or spend the film languishing as someone’s sexual interest. To that point, her sexuality seems to be purposely scripted to be ambiguous. At the beginning of “Happiest Season,” she seems flirtatiously flustered by Abby; then just a few minutes later, she runs her hand down an old poster of a teenage heartthrob in her childhood bedroom and murmurs, “Is it hot in here, or is it just him?”

A lot of viewers posit that Jane is bisexual, as one Twitter user said, “I, and many other bis, [have] been the weird forgotten kid off to the side painting or writing fantasy stories is all I’m saying.” It’s all just speculation (and potential fodder for a sequel?) but that tweet gets at something that is actually more integral to the scripting of Jane’s character.

In pop culture, we see a lot of quirky adolescent girls — recent media is rich with examples, including the cast of “PEN15,” Missy (Jenny Slate) from “Big Mouth,” and Tina from “Bob’s Burgers” — who have deep, specific interests, ranging from Greek mythology, to Sylvanian Families dolls, to WWE wrestling, to horses to witchcraft.

Inevitably, there’s a narrative where those interests become almost like a homing signal for bullies, who tell them that they are too much or too weird. And while screenwriters sometimes flatten their female characters, often in real life, girls are taught to flatten themselves.

Jane, however, never did.

That’s why it’s so satisfying as viewers to watch things work out for her in the end. That moment when she’s finally holding up her complete novel, “Shadow Dreamers and the Second Sister,” all because John actually invested in her weirdness? It’s brilliant.

It’s unexpectedly poignant to watch her otherness be rewarded, and it is definitely her otherness that underpins Jane’s compassion for the people around her. This results in perhaps the best line in the movie, delivered by Jane after her Harper and Sloane reveal to their parents that, respectively, they are gay and getting divorced. She steps into line with her sisters and says, “I don’t have a secret, but I am an ally.”

And it’s exactly her otherness that makes Jane stand out in a film that otherwises lapses into both repression and schlocky holiday formula.

“Happiest Season” is currently streaming on Hulu.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, foe of net neutrality, resigns his post early

Ajit Pai, the former Verizon in-house lawyer whom President Donald Trump appointed to lead the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), announced on Monday that he is stepping down, ending a controversial tenure most conspicuously marred by his opposition to net neutrality.

Pai’s announcement has potentially huge ramifications for the FCC. The agency, which regulates communications including broadband internet access, has five commissioners and can have no more than three commissioners from one party at any point in time. By stepping down now instead of waiting for his term as chairman to expire in June, Pai is making it possible for President-elect Joe Biden to appoint his own chairman upon taking office as well as fill another vacant seat.

Pai was notorious during his tenure as FCC chairman for working with the other Republicans on the five-person commission to revoke net neutrality. Net neutrality is the concept that internet service providers (ISPs) should not be allowed to slow or block traffic from particular websites or offer higher internet speeds to customers who pay more. By revoking those rules in 2017, Pai was effectively “handing the keys to the internet to a handful of multi-billion dollar corporations,” as former FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said at the time.

In a public letter released at the time of Pai’s announcement, leaders of online businesses like Twitter, Reddit and Tumblr argued that “without these rules, internet service providers will be able to favor certain websites and e-businesses, or the platforms they use to garner new customers, over others by putting the ones that can pay in fast lanes and slowing down or even blocking others. Businesses may have to pay a toll just to reach customers. This would put small and medium-sized businesses at a disadvantage and prevent innovative new ones from even getting off the ground.”

The letter added, “An internet without net neutrality protections would be the opposite of the open market, with a few powerful cable and phone companies picking winners and losers instead of consumers.”

As Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols wrote for ZDNet after Pai’s announcement, 42 million Americans do not have broadband internet access in the aftermath of Pai’s revocation of net neutrality and 36% of Americans in a SatelliteInternet survey said they cannot move to rural areas due to poor internet access. Earlier this year a New York court ordered the FCC to turn over service logs and other records regarding fake comments that were received by the agency in 2017 when it announced its repeal of net neutrality. In 2017, tens of millions of public comments opposed to net neutrality sent to the FCC were revealed to have likely been created as part of an organized propaganda campaign to push net neutrality rules to be shot down.

Net neutrality was not the only issue in which Pai aroused public ire. He also took Trump’s side when the president retaliated against social media companies like Twitter for fact-checking him. Trump’s approach was to put into question whether Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act should protect online platforms from being liable for the content posted by their users. Pai agreed last month to “clarify” Section 230 rules, a move that prompted the FCC’s Democratic commissioners to declare that Pai’s decision “was politically motivated and legally unsound. The FCC shouldn’t do the President’s bidding here” and that “the FCC has no business being the President’s speech police.”

When Pai leaves on Jan. 20 (the same day that Trump’s presidency ends), the agency will be left with Republican Commissioner Brendan Carr and Democratic Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Geoffrey Starks. Republican Commissioner Michael O’Rielly was initially nominated to serve another term, but Trump revoked his nomination after O’Reilly questioned the president’s attempt to target social media companies through revising Section 230. Trump’s replacement nominee, Nathan Simington, is unlikely to receive a Senate vote before Biden takes office. At that time, Biden can revoke Simington’s nomination and fill up the two remaining seats, including the chairmanship.

In a public statement Pai thanked Trump for appointing him as FCC chairman, Obama for appointing him as a commissioner and both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Senate for confirming him. He added that it was a “particular privilege” to be the first Asian-American to chair the FCC.

“Juno” and “Umbrella Academy” actor Elliot Page comes out as transgender in heartfelt letter

“Juno” Oscar nominee and “The Umbrella Academy” star Elliot Page, formerly known as Ellen Page, has come out as transgender and non-binary in a heartfelt post published to his social media pages. “Hi friends, I want to share with you that I am trans, my pronouns are he/they and my name is Elliot,” the actor writes in an open letter. “I feel lucky to be writing this. To be here. To have arrived at this place in my life.”

“I feel overwhelming gratitude for the incredible people who have supported me along this journey,” Page continues. “I can’t begin to express how remarkable it feels to finally love who I am enough to pursue my authentic self. I’ve been endlessly inspired by so many in the trans community. Thank you for your courage, your generosity and ceaselessly working to make this world a more inclusive and compassionate place. I will offer whatever support I can and continue to strive for a more loving and equal society.”

Page got his start with breakout film roles in “Hard Candy” and “Juno,” the latter of which earned him an Oscar nomination in the Best Actress category. A year before “Juno” catapulted Page to the mainstream, he appeared as the mutant Kitty Pryde in “X-Men: The Last Stand,” a role he would reprise in the sequel film “X-Men: Days of Future Past.” Page’s other acting credits include Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” and the Julianne Moore-starring lesbian drama “Freeheld.”

“I love that I am trans,” Page writes in his letter. “And I love that I am queer. And the more I hold myself close and fully embrace who I am, the more I dream, the more my heart grows and the more I thrive. To all trans people who deal with harassment, self-loathing, abuse and the threat of violence every day. I see you, I love you and I will do everything I can to change this world for the better. “

Page currently stars on the blockbuster Netflix comic book series “The Umbrella Academy,” which debuted its second season earlier this year and will return at a later date for a third season. Read Page’s full coming out letter in the Instagram post below.

pic.twitter.com/kwti60bZLw

— Elliot Page (@TheElliotPage) December 1, 2020

Don’t be fooled: Trump’s conspiracy theories won’t discourage Georgia Republicans

Republican Party muckety-mucks in Georgia are worried about the upcoming Senate runoff elections in January. No, not about the threat of massive Democratic turnout, which is certainly possible. They’re worried that their own voters will sink the chances of both Republican incumbents, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.

The problem some Republicans perceive is that Donald Trump and the various conspiracy theorists he has empowered keep declaring that the Nov. 3 election was “rigged” and that Democrats — especially in cities with large Black populations — are somehow manipulating vote totals.

That’s completely false, of course. But the claim is being pumped throughout right-wing media, from Trump’s Twitter account to Fox News to email lists to all the sleazy sub-Fox knockoffs like Newsmax and OAN to viral Facebook posts. Polling shows that it’s working, with 63% of Republican voters claiming they don’t believe the election was “free and fair.”

So worry has started to spread among the party elite in Georgia: How can they get GOP voters to turn out, if those voters keep hearing that Democrats are going to steal the election?

Earlier this month, Sophia Tesfaye explained the concerns in Salon, arguing that “Trump’s attacks on America’s electoral system [could] depress GOP turnout,” because “the president GOP voters adore has said that America’s elections are rigged.”

I’m much more skeptical. I suspect Republican voters understand full well that Trump and his allies are lying about voter fraud, and they’re playing along because they believe doing so is politically advantageous. On Jan. 5, their actions will tell the truth: They’ll turn out to vote in Georgia in huge numbers, because they don’t really believe the elections are rigged.

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In Democratic circles, it’s long been a concern that conspiracy theories about elections can discourage voter turnout. Voting is a chore under the best of circumstances, and long lines and other voter suppression tactics — largely aimed at the Democratic base — can make it a miserable experience. People aren’t going to do it if they’re convinced that voting doesn’t matter. As such, Democratic politicians and organizers tend to push back hard against conspiracy theories, and even try to avoid talking about long lines at polls or similar impediments, fearing it might scare voters away from even trying.

The difference, however, is that Democratic voters aren’t steeped in bad faith the way Republicans are. But like their elected leaders, they are fluent in speciousness. They understand that Trump’s conspiracy theories aren’t sincere expressions of belief, but shibboleths uttered to score political points and to justify future election cheating. Republican voters understand perfectly that Trump’s lies are part of a con game — and they imagine they’re in on the con.

Certainly, since Tesfaye’s article was published, GOP fears have been rising that Trumpian conspiracy theories could cause Perdue and Loeffler to lose to Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock (respectively) in next month’s special election.

On Thursday, the Washington Post ran a piece of delicious schadenfreude bait, reporting that Perdue and Loeffler are facing a “conundrum” by “asking Trump supporters to put their faith in the same voting system their president claims was manipulated to engineer his defeat.”

“Would you bother voting in an election you thought was hopelessly corrupt?” Matt Shuham and Kate Riga at Talking Points Memo write in their coverage of this conundrum, pointing out that the situation is even more dire for Republicans when “even the elected Republican leadership of your state” is being accused of being in on the conspiracy to steal the election for Democrats. That’s a reference to Trump’s attacks on Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both Republicans and (at least until now) allies of the president.

Some prominent Trump supporters, in fact, are actively discouraging voting in the election. “I choose not to vote in another fraudulent election with rigged voting machines & fake mail ballots,” Lin Wood, a right-wing attorney who represents Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse and has filed lawsuits alleging fraud in the presidential election, tweeted on Sunday.

Another PAC, this one linked to Trump’s nefarious ally Roger Stone, has been encouraging voters to write in Trump’s name instead of voting for either GOP senatorial candidate. (It’s hard to say what the point of that would be, other than a theatrical protest: Trump is not a Georgia resident, and write-in votes don’t even count in a two-person runoff election.)

“Georgia Republicans are now actively pleading with Trump,” Greg Sargent of the Washington Post writes, hoping that he can “explain to voters that the voting was actually legitimate in their own state.”

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Fears are running so high that Donald Trump Jr., seemingly undercutting his father’s “rigged” narrative, tweeted last week that it was “NONSENSE” to say Georgia votes don’t count and that Peach State voters must “IGNORE those people” who are spouting conspiracy theories — such as, um, his dad? — and come out to vote on Jan. 5.

But the fact that Don Jr. doesn’t even seem to register that he’s contradicting his father’s outrageous lies is exactly why I don’t believe that all these bewildering claims will actually depress Republican turnout. Don Jr. clearly understands and expects his audience to understand that Trump is lying about the 2020 election, and that they should go ahead and vote without any worry that Trump actually means what he says or that the elections are actually rigged.

This conclusion is borne out by polling evidence. For instance, while the majority of Republican voters will insist to pollsters that they believe the election wasn’t fair, when asked about whether their own vote was counted, a strong majority — 72% — say yes.

This discrepancy suggests that Republican voters know they’re “supposed” to say the election was rigged in Joe Biden’s favor, because saying so pleases their overlord and benefits their medium-term political agenda. But ultimately, they don’t really believe it.

Then there’s the biggest poll of them all: Election Day. Despite the fact that Trump has been claiming for years that the election would be “rigged”, his voters were not dissuaded from turning out. On the contrary, Trump got 74 million votes, 11 million more than in 2016 and second only to Biden’s 80 million as the largest vote total in American history. That isn’t the behavior of people who actually think their votes will be magically disappeared by the “deep state.” That’s the behavior of people who know perfectly that their votes count — indeed, in the American political system writ large, their votes count disproportionately — and who only say otherwise as a nod and a wink to Trump’s con.

Trust me, I enjoy reading about Republican panic, and the possibility that their anti-democratic conspiracy theories could blow up in the party’s face and cost it control of the Senate. I cackled through coverage of Perdue and Loeffler’s teams sweating bullets at the thought that infighting will sink their election chances. But I don’t buy a word of it. Democrats are going to have to fight tooth and nail to win those Georgia’s runoff races, because Republican voters will turn out in droves. At the end of the day, the typical GOP voter knows all this talk of rigged elections is smoke and mirrors, and will behave accordingly.

Fox News host Sean Hannity thinks Trump should “pardon his whole family and himself” on the way out

Amid calls to investigate Donald Trump after he leaves office, Fox News host Sean Hannity suggested on Monday that the president “pardon his whole family and himself.”

Hannity interviewed Sidney Powell, the attorney representing recently-pardoned former national security adviser Michael Flynn, on his radio show. Powell was ousted from the president’s legal team for pushing a conspiracy theory which even Giuliani and Trump thought was bonkers amid repeated losses in court.

Hannity took issue with comments made by former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, one of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s top lieutenants, who called for the Department of Justice to investigate Trump after President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.

“I watched Andrew Weissmann come out and literally say, ‘Oh, Biden’s A.G. needs to go after Donald Trump.’ And I’m like, ‘The president out the door needs to pardon his whole family and himself, because they want this witch hunt to go on in perpetuity,'” Hannity said. “They’re so full of rage and insanity against the president. I mean, it’s — can the president — I assume that the power of the pardon is absolute, and that he should be able to pardon anybody that he wants to.”

Though Powell agreed that Trump could pardon anyone else, even she had questions about whether he could pardon himself.

“It is absolute. It’s in the Constitution,” Powell replied. “I don’t know about his authority to pardon himself, but it should not be necessary. And, aside from that, the president is going to get another four years in office.”

Sean Hannity: "The president out the door needs to pardon his whole family and himself, because they want this witch hunt to go on in perpetuity … he should be able to pardon anybody that he wants to" pic.twitter.com/DkbApzxb6d

— Brendan Karet (@bad_takes) November 30, 2020

Powell has waged a roundly-criticized legal and PR campaign pushing baseless allegations that Dominion voting machines, which are used throughout much of the country, switched votes from Trump to Biden in a plot financed by communists from countries like Venezuela, Cuba, and China — but the conspirators got caught because the overwhelming number of votes received by the incumbent president “broke” the algorithm.

Powell was unable to provide a shred of evidence to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, and what little evidence she has presented in court has largely been recycled from previous cases which have already failed. After she alleged that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, was involved in the plot, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani issued a statement claiming that she was not part of the president’s legal team, even though Trump presented her as his lawyer and she appeared alongside Giuliani at a recent press conference.

Hannity later repeated his idea to former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich on his TV program after again citing Weissmann’s comments.

“If that’s what they want to do — if Biden becomes president — I’d tell President Trump to pardon yourself and pardon your family,” he said.

Sean Hannity: "I'd tell President Trump to pardon yourself and pardon your family" pic.twitter.com/xsJAK0HsCh

— Kat Abu (@abughazalehkat) December 1, 2020

Though the president has the power to pardon anyone, it is unclear if he can pardon himself. Many legal scholars say “the only person Trump can’t pardon is Trump,” even though the president claims that he has the “absolute right to PARDON myself.”

“The president can no more autoimmunize himself from future prosecution than he can sell himself Trump Tower or nominate himself for the Nobel Peace Prize,” according to a legal analysis in The Washington Post. “Without two parties, it is both illogical and illegal. As a 1974 Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel memo put it: ‘Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the President cannot pardon himself.'”

Any self-pardon “not only would make Trump look guilty but would be a tacit admission that he was guilty,” the analysis added.

Weissmann called for Trump to be investigated amid reports that Biden does not want his attorney general to probe his predecessor but would stay out of the decision-making process.

“[A]s painful and hard as it may be for the country, I believe the next attorney general should investigate Mr. Trump, and if warranted, prosecute him for potential federal crimes,” Weissmann, who successfully prosecuted former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort, said in a New York Times op-ed.

Weissmann noted that Mueller’s team said Justice Department guidelines precluded them from prosecuting a sitting president, but “we amassed ample evidence to support a charge that Mr. Trump obstructed justice.”

Even if Trump does try to pardon himself, such a move would have no effect on state and local investigations. Trump is currently under investigation for potential fraud by the Manhattan district attorney and a sweeping civil probe into his business practices by New York Attorney General Letitia James, “which could quickly turn into a criminal inquiry,” Weissman wrote.

“Pardons would not preclude the new attorney general challenging a self-pardon or the state calling the pardoned friends and family before the grand jury to advance its investigation of Mr. Trump after he leaves office (where, if they lied, they would still risk charges of perjury and obstruction),” he added. “In short, being president should mean you are more accountable, not less, to the rule of law.”

“Anyone could be the Beatles,” Stephanie Phillips explains — “genius” not necessarily required

British rock journalist and musician Stephanie Phillips recently joined host Kenneth Womack to discuss her individual journey to discovering the Beatles on “Everything Fab Four,” a podcast co-produced by me and Womack, a music scholar who also writes about pop music for Salon, and distributed by Salon.

Phillips, who plays in the Black feminist punk band Big Joanie and whose writing has been featured in major outlets all over the world, grew up a music fan but for years had “a general disinterest” in the Beatles, due largely to the “sad dad army” of fans that she couldn’t relate to as a young woman of color.

Of the band, Phillips says that initially “there really wasn’t much for me to latch onto – their story had been commandeered by a very specific [group of people]. The way that England promotes the Beatles has been, for a long time in my understanding, that ‘this is the high standard of music because they are white Englishmen – we should all be proud of the Beatles. They’re just amazing.’ Well, why? It really defeats the point of what the Beatles are, because they started [out] imitating American rock and soul artists and specifically Black American musicians.”

Listen: John Oates of Hall & Oates fame talks Beatles backlash on “Everything Fab Four”

It was later in her teen years and beyond that Phillips, through the music of bands such as the Pixies and Throwing Muses, came upon songs she didn’t realize at first were Beatles covers. “I thought, they don’t sound anything like Beatles songs. [The Breeders’ cover of] ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’ was a lot darker than what I thought would be from the Beatles.” Upon listening to more of their albums, she realized “they were as amazing as people said they were — but for different reasons for me.”

In her essay in Audiofemme’s “Only Noise” series, entitled “On Loving the Beatles as a Black Woman,” Phillips writes, “Who would believe black people could find respite in the words of four white guys from Liverpool? Though it’s likely that was not their intention, their enduring music gives me space to fully realize myself. I can sit back and take in the best of ‘Revolver’ or ‘Rubber Soul’ while imagining who and what I could be as a musician, a music fan and a black woman.” As she tells Womack, “Our legacy and our inspirations created that music.”

Listen: Michael Des Barres on the John Lennon song that blew his mind — it’s not “Imagine”

Phillips, author of the forthcoming book “Why Solange Matters,” about the creative journey of Solange Knowles, also states that “it’s impossible to say modern music is rubbish, because modern music is the legacy of the Beatles.”

Listen to the entire conversation with Stephanie Phillips, including her thoughts on cancel culture, separating art from artists, and the very different types of Beatles songs she’d want with her on a desert island, on “Everything Fab Four” and subscribe via Spotify, Apple, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.

“Everything Fab Four” is distributed by Salon. Host Kenneth Womack is the author of a two-volume biography on Beatles producer George Martin, the bestselling book “Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles,” and most recently “John Lennon, 1980: The Last Days in the Life.”

What would a “successful” Trump presidency have looked like? An alternate universe

Donald Trump could easily have won re-election while riding an approval rating in the mid-50s. I’ll tell you how in just a second. But if you were to ask him, Trump would tell you all about how the “fake news”, the “China virus” and the “corrupt” Biden campaign stopped him from achieving a successful presidency.

He’d be lying, of course. The only thing that stopped Trump from reaching a second term was Trump himself.

During his remarks at this year’s Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama nailed the central crisis plaguing Trump’s presidency, and it began long before the White House was on Trump’s radar.

Obama explained, “Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t.” The former president added, “He’s shown no interest in putting in the work; no interest in finding common ground; no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends; no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves.”

Due to a laundry list of character flaws, mental illnesses and the blindingly obvious trappings of his “brand,” Trump was only ever going to be a failed poseur president at best, beloved by no one but similarly damaged, similarly uneducated, similarly aggrieved, similarly pitiable Americans. His myriad personal glitches have been collectively amplified by his fanboys and therefore worsened through their misguided and unsubstantiated adulation — positive reinforcement for his worst traits — rendering him completely trapped by his own reputation, blinded to what was a relatively easy path to success and a second term.

For years, certain members of the cable news media eagerly anticipated a Trump pivot to being more “presidential.” Talkers like Van Jones seemed desperately spring-loaded to crown Trump as finally having grown into the gig, but had they actually paid attention to who Trump was and is, they never would have assumed he was capable of such a transition.

Trump was always too possessed by the janky ideological-slash-conspiratorial roadmap provided by Fox News, talk radio and the perpetual online freak show to be capable of redirecting toward a more traditional agenda. Not only is he psychologically incapable of it, I’m sure he believed his disciples would never let him do it. He was wrong. The best way to have “owned the libs” would’ve been for Trump to attain actual popularity beyond his base. His hothead supporters would’ve gone along with whatever it took to get there.

How could Trump have made it to a second term?

The plan would’ve involved three things: 1) Keeping his big mouth shut, 2) Launching a first-term agenda exclusively about building things, and 3) Following a paint-by-numbers plan to control the spread of the pandemic while mitigating the economic fallout.

The first thing on the list — exercising some self-control — would have been the most challenging, while also the most rewarding for Republicans, had he been capable of managing it. Trump always makes things worse for Trump, and his total lack of restraint is the primary way he sabotages himself. But imagine a Trump presidency, if you can, without the tweets or the rallies or the egregious lying.

Of course Trump is known for his constant screeching, but I believe the supporters of Screechy Candidate Trump would’ve been fine with Less Screechy President Trump. To get there, he might have been convinced to put on a show for the public — as a semi-traditional president. A performance. His pal from “The Apprentice”, Mark Burnett, could have helped here. Meanwhile, Trump could have engaged in his usual hissy fits via surrogates, while keeping his (painted) nose clean. His aides could have told him the truth: His personal cellphone was a security risk — so hand it over.

But, once again, he couldn’t do it. He’s practically addicted to his image as a raging id — a whiny, fragile, small man, awkwardly framed as an alpha dog. He would probably have resigned before relinquishing his misguided and never-quite-satisfied craving to verbally sucker-punch his enemies.

Beyond his weirdly garish Dick-Tracy-villain appearance, Trump’s always been known as a builder. Those of us familiar with his track record understand the reality behind this claim. He has seldom built anything, but instead brands existing structures that someone else built. Nevertheless, the conventional wisdom, accurate or not, includes the perception that he builds things. Fine.

So right from the start, perhaps even during the transition, Trump could have branded himself as the infrastructure president, outlining an entire agenda of stuff he intended to build: railroads, highways, bridges, public buildings, museums, monuments, utility grids and so on. He could have spent his presidency attending groundbreakings and ribbon-cuttings, just as he did before he was president. Rather than pursuing the anti-Trump villain of the week, rather than wasting political capital cultivating his image as the world’s most infamous a-hole, he could’ve spent his early presidency launching a four-year construction agenda, working with congressional Republicans from key states to pass financing for such a massive undertaking. Trump’s loyal fans would have kept any stray “fiscally responsible” Republicans from balking at the cost.

Instead, “infrastructure week” became a Trump era punchline. Every time a plan was about to be rolled out, Trump would hobble the effort by launching another shovel-fight or relentlessly whining about how unfair the world is to him. Again, Trump always makes things worse for Trump.

So rather than breaking ground as the Construction President on a series of herculean infrastructure projects, Trump built exactly one thing: 15 miles of rickety new fencing at the southern border — fencing that no one cares about except racists and the Minute Men.

Despite all that, you’d at least think that one of the world’s best-known germophobes would have done whatever was necessary to stop a plague from infecting tens of millions of Americans, including himself. Sadly, most Americans, with our notoriously short attention spans don’t remember much that happened prior to March, when COVID first gripped the nation. Due to our selective amnesia, Trump had the opportunity to nail the response to the pandemic and save his presidency, but inexplicably refused.

The solution was simple enough: Pay people to stay home.

If there’s one thing the past 40 years have taught us about fiscal policy, it’s that Republicans don’t care about federal spending as much as they say they do. Otherwise the last several Republican presidents wouldn’t have left office with higher budget deficits than when they started. It would have cost an unprecedented fortune to do this, but the crisis itself was equally unprecedented.

Faced with a false choice between stopping the spread and keeping the economy afloat, Trump went with the latter rather than proposing to do both. By paying people to stay home, and by paying non-essential small businesses to remain closed, the needle could have been threaded.

But of course, Trump was far too motivated by the fate of his personal finances and his counterfactual brags about “the greatest economy ever.” So he chose instead to stand down at the initial height of the infection curve, allowing an uncontrolled pandemic to kill more than a quarter-million Americans and counting, while infecting millions more with pre-existing conditions.

Although the stock market rebounded, the broader economy continues to hover in a recession on par with 2008, and the next wave is about to begin. In other words, by ignoring the pandemic and favoring the Dow, Trump managed to fail at both flattening the curve and at keeping the economy in the black.

In his final year, Trump faced his “Cuban Missile Crisis test” and failed it catastrophically, infecting himself in the process. Again, he could have succeeded if he were capable of adjusting to reality, but he’s not.

Trump, along with everyone who enabled his worst instincts, is why he’ll be a private citizen again in 49 days. Full stop. Trump is why Trump will be remembered by history as apocalyptically bad at his job, sparking myriad long-term fiascos that we’re only beginning to understand. It didn’t have to be this way. Americans typically want their presidents to succeed, and history shows we have a penchant for two-termers. But it’s far too late for Trump, who made it impossible for Americans even to tolerate him, much less like him. Now history will have its way with him — and his legacy won’t look anything like he wants it to look.

Blame for Democrats’ down-ballot losses lies with the party, not social movements

In the aftermath of many down-ballot Democratic losses, from U.S. Senate races to the House to several state legislatures Democrats were hoping to flip, we are in the finger-pointing phase of the 2020 election. While some are blaming grassroots social and political movements, the fact is that this is the second cycle in a row in which Democrats had no clear positive and substantive message to offer voters.

While Republicans seized on racial fear and division to tell a compelling, if bleak, story to moderate white America — and even some swaths of communities of color, including Black, AAPI and Latino voters — Democrats completely failed to tell an equally compelling narrative based on movement priorities such as economic justice, climate justice or criminal justice reform.

What we know about movements — whether it’s the movement for Black lives or the youth-driven Sunrise Movement for climate justice — is that it’s their job to create new space for what’s possible in society. Martin Luther King Jr. and the leaders of the civil rights movement did not craft their message in terms of what they thought was politically feasible in the mid-1960s, but rather as bold vision and rallying cry that attracted millions of people.

Movements come out of real-life experience, and are often born in pain and injustice. Organized Black communities, despite years of calling for reform, watched an innocent Black man choked to death under the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis in 2020. Organized young people, seeing their futures crumble before their eyes under the weight of climate change, have had enough of government, largely led by people over 60, doing nothing to stop it.

We cannot blame movements for shouting from the rooftops what they need. But we can blame the Democratic Party and the political establishment for not choosing to occupy the space that is being created by movements to make a persuasive argument to voters on these and other critical issues.

A study of the message landscape and advertising campaigns of both sides reveals that Democrats running for Senate and House seats in 2020 did not even try to align their message with the majority of Americans who believe, for example, that policing in America needs major changes. Or the two-thirds who believe that government should do more to address the climate crisis. There was no clear story about the largest structure affecting Americans’ lives — our grossly unequal economy — and Democratic ads did not mention the racial reckoning and inflection point that gripped the country for the better part of 2020.

Instead, most Senate and House Democrats ran primarily on a promise to protect people with pre-existing conditions so they could still have health care — a worthy cause, but not exactly swinging for the fences — and on the promise of “bipartisanship” and working with the other side of the aisle to “clean up Washington.” Too often, rather than focusing on their own story, Democrats spent precious air time refuting attacks from the right, and thereby inadvertently lending more credence to the other side’s frames.

The other side of the aisle, meanwhile, told a very clear story that was specifically designed to stoke racial fear and resentment, while appealing to Americans who are struggling economically. Of course their story was false, but it was easy to understand: Democrats will raise your taxes, taking money out of your pockets, and they are doing it to appease all these angry Black and brown people, who by the way will break into your home and attack you. When you call the police, no one will answer. Literally.

You can’t win in a fight that you don’t even bother to engage in. What Democrats need to learn from the 2020 cycle is that in this moment, with American society facing multiple existential crises at once, movements will continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible. It’s the party’s job to tell an engaging, positive and politically persuasive story that works with that tide, rather than against it.

New questions: What did David Perdue know about COVID technology before big stock buyback?

Earlier this year, embattled Sen. David Perdue of Georgia, one of two multimillionaire Republicans facing tight runoff elections that could decide control of the Senate, sold $1 million worth of stock in Cardlytics, a financial firm where he once sat on the board. What makes this stock sale especially interesting is that six weeks later, an executive shake-up at Cardlytics that sent the stock tumbling. After the share price hit its low point in March, Perdue bought back up to $500,000 worth of stock, which has since quadrupled in value.

The trades drew federal scrutiny, but Perdue argued that he did not personally direct any of his transactions. The New York Times reported last week, however, that Department of Justice investigators have found that Perdue had instructed his Goldman Sachs wealth manager to make the sale two days after receiving a personal email from the Cardlytics CEO that advised of “upcoming changes.”

Now, new information raises questions about what else Perdue may have known was in store for the company in March, when he scooped up as much as half a million dollars worth of shares on the cheap.

Around the time of Perdue’s buyback, the company quietly rolled out a “COVID-19 Dashboard” to help its clients track and target consumer spending during the pandemic. Executives appear to have first mentioned this dashboard in public, however, during a first-quarter earnings call in May.

In the call, Cardlytics COO Lynne Laube told shareholders that the company had developed the dashboard to help track real-time consumer spending during the pandemic “six, seven weeks ago” — around the time Perdue made his March 18 purchase.

Executives on the call repeatedly pointed to the dashboard as a key asset and market differentiator during the challenging economic conditions of the pandemic.

Outgoing CEO Scott Grimes, who had sent Perdue the “upcoming changes” email, said at the time that he believed the company was “probably in its best position ever and really well positioned to grow,” and that he was “excited about new client opportunities that have risen in the rapid disruption of our economy.”

Lynne Laube, Cardlytics COO and Grimes’ successor as chief executive, reassured shareholders that the pandemic was “playing in our favor.”

“I hate to say it’s positive, because, obviously, this is a terrible situation, but it has — the trends are very much in the favor of our platform,” Laube said on the call. (In 2016, Perdue, who once sat on the Cardlytics board, posted a picture of himself with Grimes and Laube to his official Senate Facebook page.)

“We’ve always talked about the power of purchase intelligence, and if there was ever a time that power is really shining, it’s now,” Laube continued, adding that the dashboard is “why we firmly believe we’re going to be first back in for many of them, because we can spot at a very granular level where they should be spending.”

“So it’s a really cool dashboard,” Laube concluded.

She elaborated further two days later at the JPMorgan Technology, Media and Communications Conference, saying the dashboard was the “first thing we did,” and that it fed into a company-wide strategy and “gave us a real advantage” with marketers. Here’s an extended quotation from Laube’s remarks:

So when this happened, again, we’re super advantaged in that we see all the data. So the first thing we did was build a dashboard so that marketers could really understand at a DMA level, at the week-by-week level, what was happening to their spend, their category spend and even related category spend. So they could really understand how they were faring relative to others in the category during this time. And that was a really powerful tool because even for advertisers who are doing well, so there’s a category of advertisers, obviously, who benefited from this, there were plenty more doing as well as their peers. And so it gave us a real advantage to go in and have meaningful sales conversations with a number of advertisers. We’ve coined the strategy with how we’re using this dashboard: Rise, retain and return.

The earnings call in May, along with its first-quarter investor presentation that day, appears to have been the first time Cardlytics executives mentioned the dashboard publicly. It does not appear among the press releases on the company’s website, and does not show up in news reports before May.

While Cardlytics stock closed at $29.90 on March 18, one of its lowest price points of the year, it since more than quadrupled, to nearly $120. And in November, Laube, who is now the CEO, told shareholders on an earnings call that “we feel good about Q4” despite the potential for “another wave” of shutdowns, arguing that the company’s data is “uniquely advantaged” and “more COVID-insulated.”

This news adds to existing questions swirling around Perdue’s profiteering amid the coronavirus pandemic, as well as new concerns about unrelated trades. A watchdog recently filed a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission accusing Perdue of abusing his position on a defense subcommittee to capitalize on insider trades, and a Salon report last week revealed that Perdue traded hundreds of thousands of dollars in financial stocks while passing pro-bank legislation on the Senate Banking Committee.

Perdue now holds Cardlytics stock worth up to twice as much as the profits he raked in from his $1 million January sale, and its value is poised to increase further along with the company’s envisioned success: He refused to entirely divest his holdings in Cardlytics stock in May, despite public pressure and pending federal investigations.

The Perdue campaign did not immediately respond to Salon’s request for comment.

James Baker’s legal strategies won Bush a contested election — unlike Giuliani’s string of losses

With Rudy Giuliani flailing through a series of failed election challenges for the Trump campaign, a superb new political biography provides fresh evidence of just how stark the contrast is between the head of Trump’s legal team and George W. Bush’s hyperprepared, efficient and savvy commander-in-chief for the 2000 election political and legal fight, James A. Baker III.

The biography “The Man Who Ran Washington,” by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, provides at least three new major revelations, even for those of us election law experts steeped in that 2000 saga, which culminated in the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore decision and Bush’s consequent victory.

James Baker had headed two Cabinet departments – Treasury and State – had been White House chief of staff to two presidents and had run four successful presidential campaigns.

But after being strong-armed to relinquish being secretary of state and take over George H.W. Bush’s floundering 1992 reelection campaign, Baker failed. That failure, some claim, created a rift in one of the most important political friendships of the late 20th century.

So when Baker got the call the morning after the 2000 election to take command of George W. Bush’s effort to gain the White House, Baker saw it as an opportunity to redeem himself with the Bush family.

Seeing around corners

The book’s first revelation comes immediately: 45 minutes after being briefed on the situation that morning of Nov. 8, when Bush’s lead in Florida stood at 1,784 votes out of nearly 3 million cast – and before even a machine recount had taken place that would cut that lead by two-thirds – Baker told others: “We’re heading to the Supreme Court.”

When they expressed surprise, Baker followed up by saying: “It’s the only way this can end.”

Baker’s acumen here was stunning. At this stage, and even later in the saga, a large majority even of election law and Supreme Court experts were highly skeptical that the court would get involved at all.

The widely shared view was that the process of recounts would be resolved completely under Florida law and through Florida’s administrative processes and courts. That’s how election challenges, even in federal elections, had always been handled. Baker’s first choice to lead the litigation effort, former Senator John Danforth of Missouri, reflected this common view.

Danforth told Baker, “I just can’t conceive that a federal court’s going to take jurisdiction over a matter relating to state election law … I just can’t believe that.”

Danforth nevertheless agreed to take on the role. But Baker decided Danforth didn’t believe enough in the cause, cut him loose and turned instead to a former Reagan administration high-level attorney, Ted Olson, who ultimately won in Bush v. Gore. Baker’s immediate judgment that the Supreme Court would become the ultimate decision-maker structured everything he did.

Breach of judicial confidentiality

The second revelation in the book is highly disturbing, if accurate.

Litigating the outcome of the 2000 election began with the Gore campaign filing requests under Florida law for manual recounts in four counties. Two weeks after Election Day, the litigation made its first appearance before the Florida Supreme Court. Just before the argument was about to begin, Baker was reportedly handed a note from an intermediary who somehow knew that the Florida justices had already decided among themselves that they were going to rule against Bush and had written a draft opinion to that effect.

Given the time urgency to resolve the election, it is neither surprising nor troubling that the court would have moved this quickly and already drafted a decision. But for a party to a case to be told that, and how the court was going to rule, is a remarkable breach in the confidentiality of a court’s internal deliberations.

Once they got this note, Bush’s lawyer for the argument, Michael Carvin, asserts they decided “to lose and lose big,” in order to bait the Florida Supreme Court into a broad decision that would make U.S. Supreme Court intervention more likely.

Whether Carvin’s self-serving strategic claim is accurate or not, that’s exactly what happened. The Florida Supreme Court approved a manual recount and ordered the deadline for certifying the outcome extended by 12 days. The U.S. Supreme Court – to the surprise of many – agreed to hear the case. When it did so, the Supreme Court then unanimously vacated the Florida court’s decision, in the first of the United States Supreme Court’s two decisions concerning the 2000 election.

Threat of legislative action

The third revelation involves an issue that has swirled around the current election: the possible role of state legislatures in directly appointing presidential electors, rather than permitting the will of the voters to determine who has won the presidential election – and hence the electors – in that state.

Federal law permits a state legislature to appoint electors if the election has “failed” in that state – a term whose meaning the law does not clarify.

No legislature has invoked this “failed” election provision since at least the Civil War, but there was a great deal of concern in 2020 that the Trump campaign’s strategy was to get Republican legislatures in battleground states to do so.

The closest the U.S. has ever come to that happening is Florida in 2000. After the Florida Supreme Court decision that the Bush campaign lost, Baker asserted to the press that the Florida court had changed the rules after the election, by approving a manual recount and extending the deadline for certifying the election by 12 days.

Then Baker threatened: “So one should not now be surprised if the Florida legislature seeks to affirm the original rules.”

And indeed, in early December, the Florida legislature announced it would convene a special session to discuss appointing Florida’s electors itself.

That much is a matter of public record. But what the new biography reveals is that, while Baker wanted this to be seen as a threat, he did not want Florida’s legislature to go through with it.

Baker presumably wanted the shadow of imminent legislative action to spur the courts to bring closure to the recount process, given that Bush was ahead in the count.

Throughout the process, Baker was just as focused on public perceptions as on the courtroom battles. He believed that, if Florida’s legislature appointed the electors in favor of Bush, it would cripple Bush’s presidency from the start by undermining the legitimacy of his election.

Those most involved in the 2000 election contest believe that the looming specter of Florida legislative involvement effectively shaped the overall environment in the way Baker aimed to do. Six days after the Florida legislature’s action, the 5-4 Supreme Court final decision in Bush v. Gore ended the recount, without any further action from the Florida legislature – the path to Bush’s victory that Baker had envisioned from the start.

Giuliani versus Baker

In contrast to the Trump campaign’s litigation this year, with lawyers filing claims, then withdrawing from cases, and new teams of lawyers swooping in at the last minute, Baker’s firm hand at knowing how to structure effective organizations also played a prominent role in Florida in 2000.

Not only did he quickly assemble the most talented conservative lawyers in the country, but, as one example, he assigned different teams of attorneys to state and federal court, to enable greater specialization.

Some Democrats will never forgive Baker, nor the Supreme Court, for their roles in ending the recount before all the ballots were counted – though a consortium of major newspapers later determined that if the recount had been completed, Bush would have won under 21 of 24 possible standards for what constituted a valid vote.

But Democrats involved in the litigation battles knew the other side had the more effective leader. Indeed, the new Baker biography claims that when Baker was put in charge of the Florida contest, his “reputation was so formidable that Democrats knew they would lose the moment they heard of his selection.”

I can confidently say that thought did not cross the mind of any Democrat when Rudy Giuliani was put in charge this time around.

Richard Pildes, Professor of Constitutional Law, New York University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

How pharma money colors Operation Warp Speed’s quest to defeat COVID

April 16 was a big day for Moderna, a Massachusetts biotech company on the verge of becoming a front-runner in the U.S. government’s race for a coronavirus vaccine. It had received roughly half a billion dollars in federal funding to develop a COVID shot that might be used on millions of Americans.

Thirteen days after the massive infusion of federal cash — which triggered a jump in the company’s stock price — Moncef Slaoui, a Moderna board member and longtime drug industry executive, was awarded options to buy 18,270 shares in the company, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The award added to 137,168 options he’d accumulated since 2018, the filings show.

It wouldn’t be long before President Donald Trump announced Slaoui as the top scientific adviser for the government’s $12 billion Operation Warp Speed program to rush COVID vaccines to market. In his Rose Garden speech on May 15, Trump lauded Slaoui as “one of the most respected men in the world” on vaccines.

The Trump administration relied on an unusual maneuver that allowed executives to keep investments in drug companies that would benefit from the government’s pandemic efforts: They were brought on as contractors, doing an end run around federal conflict-of-interest regulations in place for employees. That has led to huge potential payouts — some already realized, according to a KHN analysis of SEC filings and other government documents.

Slaoui owned 137,168 Moderna stock options worth roughly $7 million on May 14, one day before Trump announced his senior role to help shepherd COVID vaccines. The day of his appointment, May 15, he resigned from Moderna’s board. Three days later, on May 18, following the company’s announcement of positive results from early-stage clinical trials, the options’ value shot up to $9.1 million, the analysis found. The Department of Health and Human Services said Slaoui sold his holdings May 20, when they would have been worth about $8 million, and will donate certain profits to cancer research. Separately, Slaoui held nearly 500,000 shares in GlaxoSmithKline, where he worked for three decades, upon retiring in 2017, according to corporate filings.
Carlo de Notaristefani, an Operation Warp Speed adviser and former senior executive at Teva Pharmaceuticals, owned 665,799 shares of the drug company’s stock as of March 10. While Teva is not a recipient of Warp Speed funding, Trump promoted its antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a COVID treatment, even with scant evidence that it worked. The company donated millions of tablets to U.S. hospitals and the drug received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration in March. In the following weeks, its share price nearly doubled.
Two other Operation Warp Speed advisers working on therapeutics, Drs. William Erhardt and Rachel Harrigan, own financial stakes of unknown value in Pfizer, which in July announced a $1.95 billion contract with HHS for 100 million doses of its vaccine. Erhardt and Harrigan were previously Pfizer employees.

“With those kinds of conflicts of interest, we don’t know if these vaccines are being developed based on merit,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for Public Citizen, a liberal consumer advocacy group.

An HHS spokesperson said the advisers are in compliance with the relevant federal ethical standards for contractors.

These investments in the pharmaceutical industry are emblematic of a broader trend in which a small group with the specialized expertise needed to inform an effective government response to the pandemic have financial stakes in companies that stand to benefit from the government response.

Slaoui maintained he was not in discussions with the federal government about a role when his latest batch of Moderna stock options was awarded, telling KHN he met with HHS Secretary Alex Azar and was offered the position for the first time May 6. The stock options awarded in late April were canceled as a result of his departure from the Moderna board in May, he said. According to the KHN analysis of his holdings, the options would have been worth more than $330,000 on May 14.

HHS declined to confirm that timeline.

The fate of Operation Warp Speed after President-elect Joe Biden takes office is an open question. While Democrats in Congress have pursued investigations into Warp Speed advisers and the contracting process under which they were hired, Biden hasn’t publicly spoken about the program or its senior leaders. Spokespeople for the transition didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The four HHS advisers were brought on through a National Institutes of Health contract with consulting firm Advanced Decision Vectors, so far worth $1.4 million, to provide expertise on the development and production of vaccines, therapies and other COVID products, according to the federal government’s contracts database.

Slaoui’s appointment in particular has rankled Democrats and organizations like Public Citizen. They say he has too much authority to be classified as a consultant. “It is inevitable that the position he is put in as co-chair of Operation Warp Speed makes him a government employee,” Holman said.

The incoming administration may have a window to change the terms under which Slaoui was hired before his contract ends in March. Yet making big changes to Operation Warp Speed could disrupt one of the largest vaccination efforts in history while the American public anxiously awaits deliverance from the pandemic, which is breaking daily records for new infections. Warp Speed has set out to buy and distribute 300 million doses of a COVID vaccine, the first ones by year’s end.

“By the end of December we expect to have about 40 million doses of these two vaccines available for distribution,” Azar said Nov. 18, referring to front-runner vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.

Azar maintained that Warp Speed would continue seamlessly even with a “change in leadership.” “In the event of a transition, there’s really just total continuity that would occur,” the secretary said.

Pfizer, which didn’t receive federal funds for research but secured the multibillion-dollar contract under Warp Speed, on Nov. 20 sought emergency authorization from the FDA; Moderna announced on Monday it would do so. In total, Moderna received nearly $1 billion in federal funds for development and a $1.5 billion contract with HHS for 100 million doses.

While it’s impossible to peg the precise value of Slaoui’s Moderna holdings without records of the sale transactions, KHN estimated their worth by evaluating the company’s share prices on the dates he received the options and the stock’s price on several key dates — including May 14, the day before his Warp Speed position was announced, and May 20.

However, the timing of Slaoui’s divestment of his Moderna shares — five days after he resigned from the company’s board — meant he did not have to file disclosures with the SEC confirming the sale, even though he was privy to insider information when he received the stock options, experts in securities law said. That weakness in securities law, according to good-governance experts, deprives the public of an independent source of information about the sale of Slaoui’s stake in the company.

“You would think there would be kind of a one-year continuing obligation [to disclose the sale] or something like that,” said Douglas Chia, president of Soundboard Governance and an expert on corporate governance issues. “But there’s not.”

HHS declined to provide documentation confirming that Slaoui sold his Moderna holdings. His investments in London-based GlaxoSmithKline — which is developing a vaccine with French drugmaker Sanofi and received $2.1 billion from the U.S. government — will be used for his retirement, Slaoui has said.

“I have always held myself to the highest ethical standards, and that has not changed upon my assumption of this role,” Slaoui said in a statement released by HHS. “HHS career ethics officers have determined my contractor status, divestures and resignations have put me in compliance with the department’s robust ethical standards.”

Moderna, in an earlier statement to CNBC, said Slaoui divested “all of his equity interest in Moderna so that there is no conflict of interest” in his new role. However, the conflict-of-interest standards for Slaoui and other Warp Speed advisers are less stringent than those for federal employees, who are required to give up investments that would pose a conflict of interest. For instance, if Slaoui had been brought on as an employee, his stake from a long career at GlaxoSmithKline would be targeted for divestment.

Instead, Slaoui has committed to donating certain GlaxoSmithKline financial gains to the National Institutes of Health.

Offering Warp Speed advisers contracts might have been the most expedient course in a crisis.

“As the universe of potential qualified candidates to advise the federal government’s efforts to produce a COVID-19 vaccine is very small, it is virtually impossible to find experienced and qualified individuals who have no financial interests in corporations that produce vaccines, therapeutics, and other lifesaving goods and services,” Sarah Arbes, HHS’ assistant secretary for legislation and a Trump appointee, wrote in September to Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who leads a House oversight panel on the coronavirus response.

That includes multiple drug industry veterans working as HHS advisers, an academic who’s overseeing the safety of multiple COVID vaccines in clinical trials and sits on the board of Gilead Sciences, and even former government officials who divested stocks while they were federal employees but have since joined drug company boards.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb and Dr. Mark McClellan, former FDA commissioners, have been visible figures informally advising the federal response. Each sits on the board of a COVID vaccine developer.

After leaving the FDA in 2019, Gottlieb joined Pfizer’s board and has bought 4,000 of its shares, at the time worth more than $141,000, according to SEC filings. As of April, he had additional stock units worth nearly $352,000 that will be cashed out should he leave the board, according to corporate filings. As a board member, Gottlieb is required to own a certain number of Pfizer shares.

McClellan has been on Johnson & Johnson’s board since 2013 and earned $1.2 million in shares under a deferred-compensation arrangement, corporate filings show.

The two also receive thousands of dollars in cash fees annually as board members. Gottlieb and McClellan frequently disclose their corporate affiliations, but not always. Their Sept. 13 Wall Street Journal op-ed on how the FDA could grant emergency authorization of a vaccine identified their FDA roles and said they were on the boards of companies developing COVID vaccines but failed to name Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson. Both companies would benefit financially from such a move by the FDA.

“It isn’t a lower standard for FDA approval,” they wrote in the piece. “It’s a more tailored, flexible standard that helps protect those who need it most while developing the evidence needed to make the public confident about getting a Covid-19 vaccine.”

About the inconsistency, Gottlieb wrote in an email to KHN: “My affiliation to Pfizer is widely, prominently, and specifically disclosed in dozens of articles and television appearances, on my Twitter profile, and in many other places. I mention it routinely when I discuss Covid vaccines and I am proud of my affiliation to the company.”

A spokesperson for the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy, which McClellan founded, noted that other Wall Street Journal op-eds cited his Johnson & Johnson role and that his affiliations are mentioned elsewhere. “Mark has consistently informed the WSJ about his board service with Johnson & Johnson, as well as other organizations,” Patricia Shea Green said.

Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine is in phase 3 clinical trials and could be available in early 2021.

Still, while they worked for the FDA, Gottlieb and McClellan were subject to federal restrictions on investments and protections against conflicts of interest that aren’t in place for Warp Speed advisers.

According to the financial disclosure statements they signed with HHS, the advisers are required to donate certain stock profits to the NIH — but can do so after the stockholder dies. They can keep investments in drug companies, and the restrictions don’t apply to stock options, which give executives the right to buy company shares in the future.

“This is a poorly drafted agreement,” said Jacob Frenkel, an attorney at Dickinson Wright and former SEC lawyer, referring to the conflict-of-interest statement included in the NIH contract with Advanced Decision Vectors, the Warp Speed advisers’ employing consulting firm. He said documents could have been “tighter and clearer in many respects,” including prohibiting the advisers from exercising their options to buy shares while they are contractors.

De Notaristefani stepped down as Teva’s executive vice president of global operations in October 2019, but according to corporate filings he would remain with the company until the end of June 2020 in order to “ensure an orderly transition.” He’s been working with Warp Speed since at least May overseeing manufacturing, according to an HHS spokesperson.

When Erhardt left Pfizer in May, U.S. COVID infections were climbing and the company was beginning vaccine clinical trials. Erhardt and Harrigan, whose LinkedIn profile says she left Pfizer in 2010, have worked as drug industry consultants.

“Ultimately, conflicts of interest in ethics turn on the mindset behavior of the responsible persons,” said Frenkel, the former SEC attorney. “The public wants to know that it can rely on the effectiveness of the therapeutic or diagnostic product without wondering if a recommendation or decision was motivated for even the slightest reason other than product effectiveness and public interest.”

Progressives welcome Ajit Pai’s departure from FCC as great news

Digital rights groups applauded the news Monday that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai—known for his efforts to destroy net neutrality and his fealty to corporate telecom interests—will resign his powerful post when President Donald Trump leaves office in January.

“Ajit Pai will go down in history as one of the most corrupt government officials of the century,” Fight for the Future deputy director Evan Greer said in a statement. “His callous attack on net neutrality and blatant coddling of Big Telecom monopolies sparked the largest cross-partisan online backlash in the modern era. As he fades into the background, his smug demeanor and giant Reese’s mug will become cautionary memes—reminding internet users what happens when we don’t hold our government accountable.”

While Pai said in his announcement (pdf) that “it has been the honor of a lifetime” to lead the commission, he was arguably the most controversial chairperson in the FCC’s 86-year history. He is best known for leading the successful push to overturn net neutrality rules in 2017, a move that former FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn at the time likened to “handing the keys to the internet to a handful of multi-billion dollar corporations.” In 2018, Pai was also investigated by his own agency for alleged corruption in connection with his deregulatory blitz.

We don’t need Ajit Pai throttling progress at the FCC and we don’t need Big Broadband throttling your internet speed for the sake of their profits. Let’s put #netneutrality protections back on the books and put consumers back in charge at the FCC. https://t.co/fJ1i2vtsy6

— Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) November 30, 2020

While the Pai-led effort to kill net neutrality may soon be overturned after Democrats regain a 3-2 majority on the commission, his shepherding of the T-Mobile-Sprint megamerger—for which he was accused of betraying the public interest in service of major corporations—will be much more difficult to reverse.

It will now be up to President-elect Joe Biden to decide whether to promote one of the two Democrats serving on the commission—Jessica Rosenworcel or Geoffrey Starks—to become chair or find someone new to fill the top spot.

We don’t need Ajit Pai throttling progress at the FCC and we don’t need Big Broadband throttling your internet speed for the sake of their profits. Let’s put #netneutrality protections back on the books and put consumers back in charge at the FCC. https://t.co/fJ1i2vtsy6

— Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) November 30, 2020

Digital rights advocates hailed news of Pai’s impending departure.

According to Greer:

Pai’s departure cannot come soon enough. We are in the middle of a crushing pandemic. Hundreds of millions of people are working from home and sending their kids to school online. Comcast just announced plans to re-impose arbitrary data caps. Kids are sitting outside Taco Bell to do their homework. We desperately need a functional FCC that will quickly repair the damage done by Ajit Pai and get to work protecting the public from ISP abuses.

Matt Wood, vice president for policy and senior counsel at Free Press, said in a statement that “the entire premise of Pai’s failed chairmanship is a lie.”

“He claims that his radical deregulatory agenda spurred broadband improvements and closed the digital divide,” Wood continued. “None of these claims are remotely true. While Pai hangs out the ‘mission accomplished’ banner, the stark reality is that nearly 80 million people in America still lack adequate broadband at home, with Black, Brown, and Indigenous people disproportionately disconnected.”

“That gaping digital divide remains, and Pai’s done nothing to close it—even during the ongoing pandemic that’s made essential internet connections that much more vital,” he added. “There’s little positive to say about four years of wasted opportunities and bluster from this failed chairman. But saying good riddance today is an opportunity to turn the page and get back to the serious work the FCC ignored while Pai ran it.”

Why some liberals and arms-control experts are backing war profiteers for Biden’s Cabinet

No matter who ends up winning Senate confirmation for top positions on incoming President Joe Biden’s “national security” team, an ominous dynamic is already underway. Some foreign policy specialists with progressive reputations are voicing support and evasive praise for prospective Cabinet members — as though spinning through revolving doors to broker lucrative Pentagon contracts is not a conflict of interest, and as though advocating for an aggressive U.S. military posture is fine.

Rationalizations are plentiful, but the results are dangerous. It’s an insidious process, helping to set low standards for the incoming administration. Enablers now extol potential Cabinet picks who’ve combined pushing for continuous war and hugely expensive new weapons systems with getting rich as dealmakers for the military-industrial complex.

As journalists have brought to light, Antony Blinken and Michèle Flournoy shamelessly teamed up to cash in while rotating through high positions at the State Department and Pentagon. At the same time, Blinken (Biden’s nominee as secretary of state) and Flournoy (a likely nominee as secretary of defense) have backed nonstop U.S. warfare.

Flournoy is grimly notable for urging potentially catastrophic military brinkmanship with China. Like her unabashed pursuit of wealth from the weapons industry, her dangerously aggressive approach toward China is anything but a secret. Yet in her current quest to run the Pentagon, she has received unequivocal support from numerous individuals who are respected in progressive circles, including those with avowed dedication to beating swords into plowshares.

From the top of the influential and well-heeled Ploughshares Fund, Joe Cirincione and Tom Collina have jumped onto the Flournoy bandwagon. Days ago, Cirincione proudly tweeted news coverage of the “Open Letter on Our Support for Michèle Flournoy to Be the Next Secretary of Defense,” which he had signed along with Collina and 27 other “nuclear experts.”

Other signatories of the open letter included Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, as well as Arms Control Association board chair Tom Countryman and executive director Daryl Kimball. Former Defense Secretary William Perry also signed.

Cirincione’s tweet, touting the pro-Flournoy open letter, ran into pushback from longtime peace activist Marcy Winograd, who tweeted back: “Joe, pls read her essay, ‘How to Prevent a War in Asia,’ which should be retitled ‘How to Start a War in Asia.’ Did you know she wants to continue to send ‘defensive’ weapons to Saudi Arabia while we ‘pivot’ to SCS [South China Sea] & more war games next to 2 nuclear powers?”

The reply from Cirincione offered little more than wishful thinking about Flournoy. “I disagree with many of the positions she has taken in the past,” he wrote. “She is, however, the best qualified candidate for the position; the one most likely to implement serious changes should President Biden order them. Dems have also moved away from the Clinton policies she favored.”

While Flournoy still awaits word on whether she’ll get the nod from Biden for the Pentagon job, Tony Blinken — the man with whom she co-founded the influence-peddling outfit WestExec Advisors — is already the designated nominee for secretary of state. Oddly, two of Blinken’s most high-profile progressive boosters for the job have worked in key roles for Bernie Sanders, a leader second to none in challenging corporate greed.

Faiz Shakir, the campaign manager for Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, tweeted that the selection of Blinken was a “solid choice.” And Sanders’ top foreign-policy adviser in his Senate office, Matt Duss, declared: “This is a good choice. Tony has the strong confidence of the president-elect and the knowledge and experience for the important work of rebuilding U.S. diplomacy. It will also be a new and great thing to have a top diplomat who has regularly engaged with progressive grassroots.”

That’s a common rationale for supporting potential Cabinet members, despite the fact that their records and policy prescriptions are contrary to progressive principles. In effect, we’re supposed to be grateful — and mollified — that at least they talk with us.

At the Council for a Livable World — which says that it “promotes policies to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons and to minimize the risk of war” — the executive director, former Massachusetts congressman John Tierney, told the group’s members that Blinken is a good guy: “I, and our organization, have worked with him over the years, and I trust that he can restore and rebuild a State Department badly damaged by the Trump administration.”

What does all this praise and access-drooling amount to?

Here’s a cogent assessment from Winograd, a tireless antiwar activist: “Progressives may be tempted to trade truth for access to the powerful and privileged, thinking they can influence the course of events if they bite their tongue when Flournoy talks of fighting and prevailing in a war with China. But this sort of thinking is misguided. The power progressives hold must be wielded now before it’s too late, before Flournoy is crowned and the U.S. slips further into decline, mired in a high-stakes high-tech arms race — or worse, another endless war, this one with a nuclear-armed nation of over 1.3 billion people.”

Disturbing information about Flournoy and Blinken has long been available. And just this weekend, the New York Times published a devastating in-depth news article that shed more light on their direct financial involvements, which amount to classic conflicts of interest.

Many progressive activists and organizations have mobilized since the election to offer well-documented opposition to highly dubious potential members of the Biden Cabinet, including contenders for “national security” posts. Outside the Beltway bubble, grassroots groups are organizing to put up a fight against nominees who have repeatedly pledged and shown their allegiance to the warfare state.

Joe Biden’s historic value was to defeat Donald Trump, and progressives played a vital role in that defeat — while often being candid about the many awful parts of the Biden record. Now progressives should emphatically challenge every odious aspect of the Biden administration, every step of the way.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to decide who owns your financial data

A federal agency is gearing up to make wide-ranging policy changes on consumers’ access to their financial data.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is looking to implement the area of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act pertaining to a consumer’s rights to his or her own financial data. It is detailed in section 1033.

The agency has been laying the groundwork on this move for years, from requesting information in 2016 from financial institutions to hosting a symposium earlier this year on the problems of screen scraping, a risky but common method of collecting consumer data.

Now the agency, which was established by the Dodd-Frank Act, is asking for comments on this critical and controversial topic ahead of the proposed rulemaking. Unlike other regulations that affect single industries, this could be all-encompassing because the consumer data rule touches almost every market the agency covers, according to the story in American Banker.

With the ruling, the agency seeks to clarify its compliance expectations and help establish market practices to ensure consumers have access to consumer financial data. The agency sees an opportunity here to help shape this evolving area of financial technology, or fintech, recognizing both the opportunities and the risks to consumers as more fintechs become enmeshed with their data and day-to-day lives.

Its goal is “to better effectuate consumer access to financial records,” as stated in the regulatory filing.

The agency, established after the economic crisis of 2008 to ensure consumers were never manipulated and scammed again for unscrupulous profit, went off the rails under Trump. The current administration all but “systematically neutered” the agency, according to an article by The Brookings Institution.

The agency went from collecting $12 billion in fines for consumer abuses under its first director Richard Cordray, to collecting less than the cost of a half-decent sandwich over the first six months of this year. That’s right, through the second quarter of 2020, the CFPB collected just $8 from two civil penalties.

Faced with eroding consumer protection and the economically crippling coronavirus pandemic Americans need the CFPB to do its job and protect them. So the agency is looking to implement section 1033. With the changing administrations, it’s not a foregone conclusion what will happen.

The issue is who really owns the financial data – the financial institution itself or the consumer. It’s become quite convoluted with the growing ubiquity of fintech as third-party owners of this information. Nearly 100 million American consumers use at least one finance app that takes data from their bank accounts, according to American Banker.

Consumers increasingly are turning to fintech to manage finances, using companies like Mint.com and data aggregators like Yodlee. To use these services, consumers must turn over access to financial data via login credentials and security question answers to the fintech companies.

In turn, these companies act and access the financial accounts just like the consumers themselves. And as part of the process, they become owners of the financial data, too. One of the risks is that there usually is not a set window of ownership; these third parties can own that information until a consumer changes the password, essentially. While consumers who use these services agree to these terms, the financial institutions may not.

This proposed rulemaking coincides with the transition in government, which is important for a few reasons. The current head of the CFPB, Kathy Kraninger, is criticized widely. A recent Supreme Court ruling allows presidents to fire CFPB directors at will; directors of the agency are no longer independent and immune from politics. Second, a Biden administration almost certainly means more changes to the Dodd-Frank Act, assuming Biden will look to restore all of the law Trump gutted.

Trump took a hatchet to the financial law, “dismantling the core pillars of financial reform,” according to an article by The American Prospect. Ever on the side of corporations and big banks, Trump, for examples, rolled back consumer and investor protections, reduced regulation of systemically significant banks 8.16 and stopped enforcing laws against financial predators.

So, the various players will jockey over what kind of guardrails get put in place going forward over what is expected to be a long battle.

With Biden overseeing the fight, at least it’s not an automatic forfeit for consumers. And for the new president, it could be the stuff of legacies.

The dangerous seduction of “going back to normal”

“Life is going to return to normal,” Joe Biden promisedThursday in a Thanksgiving address to the nation. He was talking about life after Covid-13, but you could be forgiven if you thought he was also making a promise about life after Trump.

It is almost impossible to separate the two. To the extent voters gave Biden a mandate, it was to end both scourges and make America normal again.

Despite Covid’s grim resurgence, Dr. Anthony Fauci – the public health official whom Trump ignored and then muzzled, with whom Biden’s staff is now conferring – sounded guardedly optimistic last week. Vaccines will allow “a gradual accrual of more normality as the weeks and the months go by as we get well into 2021.”

Normal. You could almost hear America’s giant sigh of relief, similar to that felt when Trump implicitly conceded the election by allowing the transition to begin.

It is comforting to think of both Covid and Trump as intrusions into normality, aberrations from routines that prevailed before.

When Biden entered the presidential race last year, he said history would look back on Trump as an “aberrant moment in time.”

The end of both aberrations conjures up a former America that, by contrast, might appear quiet and safe, even boring.

Trump called Biden “the most boring human being I’ve ever seen,” and Americans seem to be just fine with that.

Biden’s early choices for his cabinet and senior staff fit the same mold – “boring picks,” tweeted the Atlantic’s Graeme Wood (referring to Biden’s foreign policy team),”who, if you shook them awake and appointed them in the middle of the night at any time in the last decade, could have reported to their new jobs and started work competently by dawn.” Hallelujah.

All his designees, including Janet Yellen for Treasury and Anthony Blinken for Secretary of State, are experienced and competent – refreshing, especially after Trump’s goon squads. And they’re acceptable both to mainstream Democrats and to progressives.

They also stand out for their abilities not to stand out. There is no firebrand among them, no Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders (at least not so far).

For the same reasons, they’re unlikely to stir strong opposition from Republicans, a necessity for Senate confirmation, particularly if Democrats fail to win the two Senate runoffs in Georgia on January 5.

And they’re unlikely to demand much attention from an exhausted and divided public.

Boring, reassuring, normal – these are Biden’s great strengths. But he needs to be careful. They could also be his great weaknesses.

That’s because any return to “normal” would be disastrous for America.

Normal led to Trump. Normal led to the coronavirus.

Normal is four decades of stagnant wages and widening inequality when almost all economic gains went to the top. Normal is forty years of shredded safety nets, and the most expensive but least adequate healthcare system in the modern world.

Normal is also growing corruption of politics by big money – an economic system rigged by and for the wealthy.

Normal is worsening police brutality.

Normal is climate change now verging on catastrophe.

Normal is a GOP that for years has been actively suppressing minority votes and embracing white supremacists. Normal is a Democratic Party that for years has been abandoning the working class.

Given the road we were on, Trump and Covid were not aberrations. They were inevitabilities. The moment we are now in – with Trump virtually gone, Biden assembling his cabinet, and most of the nation starting to feel a bit of relief – is a temporary reprieve.

If the underlying trends don’t change, after Biden we could have Trumps as far as the eye can see. And health and environmental crises that make the coronavirus another step toward Armageddon.

Hence the paradox. America wants to return to a reassuring normal, but Biden can’t allow it. Complacency would be deadly. He has to both calm the waters and stir the pot.

It’s a mistake to see this challenge as placating the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. It’s about dealing with problems that have worsened for decades and if left unattended much longer will be enormously destructive.

So the central question: In an exhausted and divided America that desperately wants a return to normal, can Biden find the energy and political will for bold changes that are imperative?

The Trump administration is cutting back protection for migratory birds

The Trump administration is finalizing a rule change on protecting migratory birds that is a drastic pullback from policies in force for the past 100 years. The final rule is open for public comment through December 28, 2020.

In 1916, amid the chaos of World War I, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and King George V of Great Britain signed the Migratory Bird Treaty. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act wrote the treaty into U.S. law two years later. These measures protected more than 1,100 migratory bird species by making it illegal to pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill or sell live or dead birds, feathers, eggs and nests, except as allowed by permit or regulated hunting.

This bold move was prompted by the decimation of bird populations across North America. Some 5 million birds – especially waterbirds like egrets and herons – were dying yearly to provide feathers to adorn hats, and the passenger pigeon had just become extinct. Fearing that other species would meet the same fate, national leaders took action.

The Interior Department’s proposed rule reinterprets existing law to say that prohibitions on pursuing, hunting, capturing or killing migratory birds, or attempting to do so, apply only to actions directed at migratory birds, their nests, or their eggs. In other words, activities that are not intended to harm birds, but do so directly in ways that could have been foreseen – such as filling in wetlands where migrating birds rest and feed – will no longer be prosecuted.

But this new rule directly counters the way the Migratory Bird Treaty Act has been enforced for decades. It is applied to cases of gross negligence where potential harm should have been anticipated and avoided, such as discharging water contaminated with toxic pesticides into a pond used by migratory birds. This new approach means that companies will escape legal responsibility and liability for actions that kill millions of birds every year.

Pollution, development and habitat loss kill birds

Purposeful killing is only one threat to migratory birds. Habitat loss, invasive species, pollution and collisions with buildings take heavy tolls on many species. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, every year more than 40 million birds are killed by industrial activities or structures such as power lines, oil pits, communication towers and wind turbines. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico killed more than 1 million birds in a single event.

Seventeen former Interior Department officials representing every presidential administration from Nixon through Obama wrote a memo in 2018, which this policy was first announced, expressing deep concern. As they explain, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act has given industries a strong incentive to work with government agencies to anticipate, avoid and mitigate foreseeable death or injury to birds.

For example, it prompted energy companies to install nets above pits where they store waste fluids from oil drilling. Because these pits look like water sources, birds often land on them and can become trapped and die. Installing nets over the pits has cut annual bird deaths from roughly 2 million birds yearly to between 500,000 and 1 million. Not perfect, but a meaningful improvement.

Thousands of migrating snow geese died after landing in contaminated pit mine waters in Montana in 2016.

Global citizens, global consequences

Migratory birds don’t recognize international boundaries, so the consequences of reinterpreting the Migratory Bird Treaty Act may be felt across borders. In one year an individual warbler may spend 80 days in Canada’s boreal forests, 30 days in the United States at resting and refueling sites during migration and over 200 days in Central America.

At the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, we have constructed maps and animations using data collected by volunteers for eBird, the world’s fastest-growing biodiversity database. These references show how migratory birds connect countries.

Migration pathways for populations of 118 migratory birds species within the Western Hemisphere from 2002 to 2014, based on data from eBird. La Sorte et al., 2016, http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2015.2588., Author provided

The Eastern-breeding magnolia warbler, for example, spends winters in areas in the Yucatan Peninsula and Central America that are fractions of the size of its breeding range. Seeing how densely these birds are clustered in their winter habitat shows us that each acre of that territory is important to their survival.

Breeding, migration and winter abundance of the magnolia warbler based on computer models using eBird data. State of North American Bird report

Similarly, most populations of the Western-breeding Western tanager overwinter in Mexico. By identifying where bird populations winter in this way, we can better target conservation actions to protect species throughout their annual cycles.

Year-round abundance map for the Western tanager based on computer models using eBird data. State of North American Birds Report

Still at risk

Today we know much more than early conservationists did about the value of birds. Healthy bird populations pollinate crops and help plants grow by dispersing seeds and preying on insects. Migratory birds also contribute billions of dollars to economies through recreational activities like hunting and birdwatching. And they connect us with nature, especially through the dazzling spectacle of migration.

Conserving migratory birds requires effective protection both in the United States and through international agreements and partnerships. The most important threats are loss and degradation of habitat, which can be caused by land conversion – for example, clearing forests for farming – or by climate change.

In October 2019, a team of scientists from government agencies, universities and nonprofit groups published a study estimating that North American bird populations had declined by one-third since 1970 – a loss of some 3 billion birds. This followed the 2016 State of North American Birds report, in which an international team of scientists found that over one-third of all North American bird species were at risk of extinction without meaningful conservation action.

There are no easy solutions, but new science is supporting responses. Transformational citizen science projects like eBird are developing vast data sets to help pinpoint where conservation action should focus. Bird conservation groups and government agencies have formed international teams to eradicate invasive predators on islands that are critical to breeding seabirds, and drafted multinational agreements to clean up large floating mats of garbage in our seas that can choke, trap or poison seabirds and other animals.

Birds are a shared resource among nations. Where governments have acted, they have successfully protected migratory birds and the habitat they depend on. In my view, the Trump administration’s shift would abdicate U.S. leadership on migratory bird conservation and undermine public good for private profit.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on August 15, 2016.

Amanda D. Rodewald, Garvin Professor and Senior Director of Conservation Science, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

33 groups urge Biden to hold Big Tech accountable and keep industry allies out of his administration

Adding to the pressure that President-elect Joe Biden is under to avoid a “corporate Cabinet” and instead appoint progressives champions to his administration, Public Citizen spearheaded a letter on Monday urging the next U.S. president to steer clear of Big Tech executives, lobbyists, lawyers, and consultants.

The Biden administration “will need to tackle unprecedented challenges of combating Covid-19, providing economic recovery, promoting racial justice, and tackling the climate crisis,” says the letter, signed by 33 groups. “Solving these challenges will require a team of advocates for working people—not the Big Tech companies that work to exploit them.”

“With your historic election, and the groundbreaking mandate that Americans have thus entrusted you with, you are facing the challenge of not only rebuilding the country, but also rebuilding trust in government,” the letter adds. “We believe that eliminating the decades-old revolving door between Silicon Valley and your administration will only help your cause.”

The groups highlight a House Judiciary subcommittee’s recent investigation of Silicon Valley, the antitrust lawsuit that the U.S. Justice Department filed against Google last month, and Pew Research Center polling that shows nearly half of Americans want to see Big Tech regulated in addition to taking aim at some companies:

Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft once promised innovation and opportunity, and while they continue to provide many remarkable products, they now represent serious threats to privacy, democracy, innovation, and Americans’ economic well-being. Each of these companies have developed predatory business practices that harvest user data for profit. Over the last few years, we have seen how Facebook and Google irresponsibly wield immense influence over democratic elections, without oversight or accountability. Despite the myth that Silicon Valley is rife with entrepreneurs and small businesses capable of disrupting entire industries, these companies have killed, rather than fostered innovation. And during the worst health crisis in recent history, Amazon has taken advantage of Americans struggling with the pandemic, tripling their profit onprice gouged essential goods.

We believe that your administration must confront the threats posed by the monopolistic Big Tech companies that have exploited consumer privacy, threatened our democracy, stifled innovation, and profited from the pandemic. The time to hold these companies accountable and rein in their power is now. However, we can only bring these companies to account if you do not rely on affiliates of these very companies to make up your government.

The letter points out that the tech industry wields power in Washington, D.C. even without allies in government, noting how much companies such as Amazon and Facebook have spent on lobbying in recent years.

A Public Citizen report from last year cited in the letter found that the political action committees (PACs) of the “Big 4” technology firms—Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google—as well as their employees and lobbyists collectively spent $346 million on lobbying and campaign contributions to Congress from 2010 through 2018.

“While these companies pride themselves on being masters of innovation, they have relied on the old school approach when it comes to avoiding scrutiny and gaining influence in Washington—throw as much money at the place as they can,” Public Citizen senior researcher and report author Michael Tanglis said at the time.

New —

32 progressive groups led by @Public_Citizen write to Joe Biden and ask him "to reject the influence of these corporations by committing to exclude Big Tech executives, lobbyists, lawyers and consultants from your administration."

Full letter and signatories here —> pic.twitter.com/fEjQmw1WY5

— Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) November 30, 2020

Along with Public Citizen, signatories of the letter to Biden include Demand Progress Education Fund, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), Fight for the Future, Food & Water Watch, Jobs With Justice, Main Street Alliance, Make the Road New York, Open Markets Institute, Organic Consumers Association, and the Revolving Door Project.

Earlier this month, Demand Progress and the Revolving Door Project joined with a few other partners to launch the “No Corporate Cabinet” campaign, pushing Biden to exclude business insiders and industry lobbyists from his administration. The initiative’s website includes a “Persons of Interest” page of potential or selected Biden appointees opposed by the organizations.

As Common Dreams reported last week, recent polling from Data for Progress, sponsored by Demand Progress, found that 68% of Americans want the U.S. Senate to block any corporate-linked nominees proposed by Biden. However, given that not all positions require congressional approval and control of the upper chamber remains uncertain, advocacy groups are maintaining pressure on the incoming president to staff his administration with those who will serve the public good.

QAnon sympathizer elected to Congress failed to disclose fundraising ties to Sen. Ted Cruz, FEC says

The Federal Elections Commission (FEC) sent a letter last week to Representative-elect Lauren Boebert, R-Co., asking the QAnon sympathizer to disclose her campaign’s fundraising ties to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tx.

Cruz’s first donation came on the same day the senator asked the Department of Justice to investigate Netflix for alleged child pornography, a cause célèbre for QAnon adherents.

The FEC’s letter says Boebert failed to report the Cruz 20 for 20 Victory Fund PAC as a fundraising partner, even though two reported transfers appear to have come through joint fundraising efforts. Boebert and Cruz both reported the mid-September transfers, which dropped $136,250 in Boebert’s campaign account.

Federal rules require joint fundraising committees to disclose their partners. While Cruz’s PAC listed the Boebert campaign in its initial filing this July, the gun-rights restaurateur and political novice apparently did not reciprocate despite updating her own campaign’s registration in September.

“It is generally not a good excuse to say, ‘I forgot’ to accurately designate contributions,” Brett Kappel, campaign finance expert at Harmon Curran, told Salon. “But the FEC is lenient with first-time candidates, so she may not be sanctioned unless there are other violations.”

However, this marks the Boebert campaign’s third FEC letter. In June, Boebert received a notice after accepting contributions in excess of the maximum amount, a rule which she allegedly “just plain forgot.”

“There was no intent to try to report contributions illegally as I just plain forgot to watch for large donations as I was preparing the report,” the Boebert campaign’s FEC compliance liaison wrote in reply.

The campaign was sent a similar notice on Nov. 23, the same day as the letter about Cruz. This second notice detailed a number of contributors who gave more than the legal amount, as well as contributions from three “possible unregistered organizations” with names affiliated with the Republican Party.

Boebert told Salon in a statement that the campaign would update its reports accordingly.

“The donations in question were reported and the filing will be amended by my compliance team to complete the FEC request,” Boebert said. “The FEC has been very helpful and we will make sure everything is reported as they requested.”

The newcomer announced her bid late last year after a confrontation over assault weapons with then-presidential contender Democrat Beto O’Rourke catapulted her to headlines. An outspoken gun-rights advocate, Boebert and her husband co-own a barbecue restaurant in Rifle, Co. Shooters Grill requires wait staff to wear a holstered, loaded sidearm, but for years it did not require training.

Three years ago, Boebert’s food apparently posed a greater risk to customers than her untrained staff. Her pork sliders allegedly poisoned dozens of people when she catered a local rodeo, making them nauseous and sending some home with bloody diarrhea.

Like Cruz in 2016, Boebert initially ran against Trump. The president endorsed Scott Tipton, her opponent in the Republican primary. Boebert ended up beating the five-term incumbent by nine points, marking the first time a challenger had defeated a sitting congressional representative in Colorado in 48 years.

Boebert’s surprise victory also underscored a wider nationwide trend. Conservatives have gravitated towards far-right candidates, some of whom embrace the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory.

In a May interview with the pro-Q webcast “Steel Truth,” Boebert tried to distance herself directly from the conspiracy theory while expressing “hope” that it was “real.”

“Everything I heard of Q, I hope that this is real, because it only means America is getting stronger and better,” she said, adding that QAnon followers were “only motivating, and encouraging and bringing people together stronger. And, if this is real, then it could be really great for our country.”

Boebert told Salon that she disavows QAnon.

The congresswoman-elect was not the first Republican candidate to flirt with the movement, though she did not gone as far as Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Oregon Senate nominee Jo Rae Perkins, both of whom profess their allegiance outright.

Greene eventually won her race. However, neither of those candidates won fundraising support from the hyper-conservative Cruz.

While Cruz has never publicly aligned himself with QAnon, he drew criticism in September for “going QAnon” when he criticized the Netflix movie, “Cuties,” and asked the Justice Department “to investigate whether Netflix, its executives, or the filmmakers violated any federal laws against the production and distribution of child pornography.”

That day, he made his first of two transfers to Boebert’s campaign — $70,500.

Editor’s note: This post has been updated to include comment from Boebert.

Mitch McConnell has a playbook to destroy a Biden presidency — and it is already in the works

President-elect Joe Biden has often stressed that during his many years in the U.S. Senate, he frequently worked with Republicans — including Sen. John McCain of Arizona and President Ronald Reagan — and getting things done along bipartisan lines. But liberal Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent has a warning for the former vice president: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has no interest in meeting him half way and will do everything he can to undermine Biden’s presidency.

“We know that if he remains majority leader, Mitch McConnell will work to cripple the Biden presidency by saddling him with the terrible politics of a miserable recovery,” Sargent warns in his column this week. “We saw him do this for years, mostly as minority leader, during the last Democratic presidency.”

McConnell was consistently hostile to President Barack Obama during his eight years in the White House, but the Kentucky Republican was especially bad after Republicans obtained a majority in the Senate with the 2014 midterms and he became Senate majority leader.

Whether McConnell will be Senate majority leader or Senate minority leader in 2021 will depend on what happens in two U.S. Senate races that will be decided in runoff elections in January. The incumbent Republicans, Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Sen. David Perdue, are both far-right Trump supporters. If their Democratic challengers prevail — Jon Ossoff against Perdue, the Rev. Raphael Warnock against Loeffler — Democrats would obtain a narrow majority in the Senate.

Sargent explains:

If Republicans win one or both runoffs, Ossoff says, continued GOP control of the Senate will mean relentless obstruction of incoming President Joe Biden’s agenda. That means a much more grueling economic recovery, a less-coordinated response to the coronavirus’ latest rampage and a death knell for popular policies such as expanded health care and infrastructure investments. In short, unless Democrats win both runoffs — giving them control — it will mean far more economic misery, far more illness and death, and badly diminished prospects for long-term national revival.

Ossoff, during an interview, stressed to Sargent that McConnell has no interest in having a productive relationship with Biden after he is sworn in as president on January 20.

“If McConnell controls the Senate, he’s going to block the kind of relief package that we need,” Ossoff told Sargent. “And that means not just short-term, direct economic relief, but also, the kind of infrastructure jobs/clean energy program necessary to support long-term recovery. This paralysis of our government in the midst of a crisis is untenable. People are suffering, and they want government to work.”

Biden will inherit some daunting challenges as president — not only a pandemic, but also, all of the economic problems the pandemic has caused. According to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, COVID-19 has killed more than 1.4 million people worldwide — including over 267,000 in the United States. And many medical experts are saying that those numbers could become much worse by the time Biden moves into the White House.

Sargent notes, “By blocking a big stimulus, McConnell can do a lot of damage. The coronavirus’ spikes everywhere are requiring new health measures and a pullback from economic activity — only this time, previously passed federal aid programs are drying up. Last spring, Republicans backed a large aid package, when McConnell plainly calculated it would boost GOP electoral prospects. This fall, when he appeared to think another big stimulus couldn’t save President Trump and his members balked at more spending, he opposed a second round.”

Another way in which McConnell will try to hurt Biden’s presidency, if he remains Senate majority leader, is by blocking Biden’s judicial nominees. In 2016, McConnell wouldn’t even consider Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Merrick Garland — and on top of that, the Senate majority leader blocked Obama’s nominees for the lower federal courts.

McConnell would do the same thing with Biden, and according to Politico’s Marianne Levine, some GOP senators would be just as obstructive.

Sen. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, told Politico, “I imagine they’ll have a tough time just because I’m not going to vote for people who I think are, to use my words, ‘judicial imperialists.’ But maybe he’ll surprise me if (Biden) is indeed the president. Who knows, maybe he’ll send up nominees who are constitutionalists and textualists. I kind of doubt it.”

Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, meanwhile, told Politico, “The good news is that we’ve done a good job — and we’re not done, as you know — filling the vacancies that there are on the appellate courts to minimize the opportunity for more liberals on it.”

Democratic Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin is expecting the worst when it comes to how McConnell and other Senate Republicans will treat Biden’s judicial nominees, telling Politico, “If the last two years of the Obama administration were any indication, they’ll freeze them out. Hope springs eternal, but I believe in history.”

Sargent wraps up his Post column by emphasizing that if Loeffler and Perdue are victorious in the runoffs in Georgia and McConnell continues to oversee a Republican Senate majority, the last thing Biden’s administration should expect is a spirit of bipartisan compromise.

“A Republican victory in Georgia…. would also validate the GOP’s use of declaring the election’s outcome illegitimate as a successful political tactic,” Sargent writes. “That’s yet another way the stakes of these runoffs are so high — along with whether we get an ambitious governmental response to the profound crises we face.”

Fox News host pushes back on Lara Trump’s claim that her father-in-law will serve “four more years”

In a Fox News segment that aired Monday evening, President Donald J. Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump said she thinks her father-in-law will serve four more years. However, the host questioned her reasoning.

“I still think that the president will get four more years in office. I think it will be the next four years because this thing is far from over,” Lara said.

Fox News personality Martha MacCallum pushed back, noting all of the states that have certified the results and mentioning that Geraldo Rivera said it was time for the president to move on.

Lara called the certifications “procedural steps,” and said, “the reality is the Electoral College does not vote in their states until Dec. 14. Congress doesn’t actually certify anything until the beginning of January, so we’ve got plenty of time.”

You can watch the video below via Twitter:

Lara Trump still thinks her father-in-law will serve four more years. Totally bonkers. pic.twitter.com/BGK600SCBg

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 1, 2020