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Pennsylvania’s new vote-by-mail law expands access for everyone except the poor

Rem Em emigrated from Cambodia in 2002 to help take care of a grandchild with leukemia. Twelve years later, she became a U.S. citizen. It was one of the proudest moments of her life.

Ever since, she’s made sure to vote, even though the native Khmer speaker isn’t fluent in English. She talks to her family, other Cambodian immigrants in her South Philadelphia neighborhood and community groups about the candidates and the races. Before she votes, she studies what her preferred candidate’s name looks like in English, noting as well the shapes that form the word “VOTE.”

Then she goes to the polls, where she hands her ID to a poll worker she can’t understand, signs a poll book she can’t read and scrutinizes the shapes on the voting machine in front of her, carefully identifying the lines and curves she’s memorized.

“I want my voice to be heard,” Em, 70, said this month through an interpreter. “The reason why I became a U.S. citizen is because I want to vote.”

Em, who is retired from a factory job and lives on Social Security, could benefit from the state’s 2019 law that expanded voting by mail. It’s easier to do the high-stakes matching of patterns in the privacy of your own home than in a cramped space with people waiting on the other side of the curtain. This year, for the first time, any registered voter in Pennsylvania can apply for and receive a mail ballot without having to give a reason for being unavailable on Election Day.

But in the poorest big city in America, a law that passed with bipartisan support and was touted as providing historic access to the ballot box is doing little to boost turnout among low-income Philadelphians, according to a data analysis by The Philadelphia Inquirer and ProPublica. Instead, they are casting ballots in person when they do vote — even during a deadly pandemic that has disproportionately affected low-income people and people of color.

The law has enhanced access for middle-class and affluent voters who would likely have voted anyway, attracting much higher use in Philadelphia’s wealthier neighborhoods, the Inquirer/ProPublica review found. More than 392,000 Philadelphians had requested general election mail ballots by Oct. 20. In the 10 highest-income ZIP codes, 47% of voters have requested mail ballots. In the city’s 10 lowest-income areas, only 27% of voters have done so.

In the June 2 primary election, when Philadelphia was in a strict coronavirus lockdown, just more than half the votes were cast by mail, with the usage much higher in wealthier neighborhoods. In the 10 ZIP codes with the highest median household income, 73% of votes were cast by mail; in the 10 poorest, only 38% were. Low-income voters were more likely to vote in person, despite the potential risk of contracting COVID-19. (These figures exclude a small number of ballots where the method of voting isn’t included in the state voter roll.)

Overall, turnout in the 10 lowest-income ZIP codes fell to 26.8% in June from 35.2% in the 2016 primary. By contrast, the 10 wealthiest ZIP codes decreased to 38.8% from 43.6% in 2016.

The disparities center on economic status and not race, our analysis found. Nearly 1 in 4 residents lives below the poverty line in Philadelphia, making it the only one of the 20 largest cities by population with a poverty rate of 20% or higher, according to the 2019 American Community Survey. While race and income are deeply intertwined, more affluent areas with high usage of mail ballots include the predominantly Black neighborhoods in Northwest Philadelphia, where turnout is consistently among the highest in the city.

Among the obstacles for poor Philadelphians: A lack of stable housing makes it difficult to depend on the mail and know which address to provide when applying for a ballot to be mailed weeks or months later. Those with limited English proficiency have difficulty navigating the vote-by-mail process, and governmental voter outreach can miss them. Lack of internet service or home computers can complicate requesting ballots or finding key information about them.

The law skipped over key elements that could have helped poor voters in the city — including easier voter registration through automatic or Election Day sign-ups and the kind of in-person early voting that is drawing long lines and record turnout in other states. It also doesn’t require drop boxes where voters can hand-deliver ballots, though Philadelphia is installing some.

Em is familiar with these barriers. She doesn’t have a computer to make it easier for her to request a ballot. The application form isn’t available in Khmer. And voting by mail doesn’t work for a voter who can’t actually read her mail: Em collects hers in a plastic bag that she takes to an Asian American social services group every few weeks. A volunteer there helps her sort through it.

Plus she’s wary of voting by mail — and neither the government nor many community groups have prioritized educating low-income residents like her about the law.

“I’m just scared,” she said. “I’m not sure how that would work.”

“Just another law on the books”

Act 77 was one of the most significant changes to Pennsylvania election law since the state’s election code was written in 1937. Its passage late last year was accompanied by much fanfare about expanded voting access.

“For too long Pennsylvania has made it too hard for the citizens to actually fully participate in our democracy,” Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, said at the bill-signing ceremony. “These changes will make it easier for people to vote, participate in our democracy, actually to take care of the most fundamental responsibility of citizenship: voting.”

But implementing the law has been particularly challenging in a pandemic where voters are seeking mail ballots in far greater numbers than were expected last year. Act 77 has spurred ongoing lawsuits and legislative fighting about voting procedures and access, igniting fears of a dayslong delay in counting votes that could make Pennsylvania the 2020 equivalent of Florida in 2000, where a disputed outcome left the courts to decide the winner. President Donald Trump’s months of baselessly attacking mail voting as abetting fraud have sowed distrust of the method, especially among his supporters.

Overlooked in the partisan bickering has been the law’s ineffectiveness with low-income voters. Interviews with dozens of voters, elected officials, voting advocates and experts in the months leading up to Election Day painted a consistent picture: Poor and low-income Philadelphians generally aren’t benefiting from voting by mail.

“The intention was that it would be helpful,” said City Councilmember Kendra Brooks, who has advocated for poor and working-class Philadelphians. “I understand the intention. I celebrated it. … But without the work to make sure that everyone knows about this, it’s just another law on the books.”

It’s not that the law is suppressing minority and low-income Philadelphians’ votes; it’s that the barriers they face weren’t taken into account when the law was enacted. In addition, the pandemic has hampered voter education and awareness efforts that could have widened use of mail-in voting.

State Sen. Sharif Street of Philadelphia, the vice chair of the state Democratic Party, said that, “on balance, we’re better off” with the new law. But key provisions were left out, he said.

“The help to the poorest people in this legislation is primarily incidental,” he said. “And you could call it accidental.”

Systemic problems run deep

Pennsylvania began allowing online voter registration in 2015. Last year, it began allowing voters to request mail ballots online.

But tens of thousands of Philadelphia households lack broadband internet access or don’t have a computer.

A 2019 school district survey found that only half of students said they access the internet at home, with responses tracing the city’s socioeconomic lines. In some of the lowest-income neighborhoods, it was as few as 1 in 4 students.

The digital divide makes it difficult to vote by mail because the easiest way to request a ballot is by computer. It can also undermine voter turnout by reducing access to quality information about elections and candidates, as well as exposure to get-out-the-vote messages.

For example, voters have the option of providing an email address when they register to vote or request a mail ballot. Officials can use emails to provide election information and reminders, as the Pennsylvania Department of State did multiple times before the June primary election. But the percentage of voters whose email addresses are on file with the state is far higher in Philadelphia’s wealthier neighborhoods than in poorer areas.

Voting is also not top of mind for people facing eviction, temporarily staying with friends or family, or homeless.

“I’ve been out of the loop on the issues and all that,” said William Johnson, 59, as he stood in line recently for a box of vegetables and milk outside The Healing Center at Broad and Venango streets in North Philadelphia. He has a history of drug addiction, he said, and hasn’t voted in years.

“I move a lot, too, so that sort of knocks it out,” Johnson said. “I just forget all about it.”

But when volunteers set up a voter registration table by the food distribution site last month, he signed up. He said he plans to vote — in person, because he doesn’t trust the mail.

Even for those determined to vote, housing instability complicates the process. Although Philadelphia currently has a moratorium on evictions, more than 57% of renters ages 25 and up in the Philadelphia metropolitan area said in September that they were very or somewhat likely to lose their home to eviction in the next two months, according to a Census Bureau survey. Voting by mail is an unhelpful option for such voters: It doesn’t make much sense to request a ballot if you don’t know where you’ll be living when it’s sent to you, and if you do move, the U.S. Postal Service may not forward ballots to new addresses.

Since the 2016 presidential election, Lateefah Knight, 33, has lived at a Philadelphia shelter, in transitional housing, in an apartment, in a rooming house and with family and friends.

Knight, a caregiver for the elderly and people with disabilities, made sure to vote in 2016. But she was with a friend that day and went to her friend’s polling place, so she had to cast a provisional ballot.

In 2018, she was relieved to find what she thought could be a more permanent home for herself and her now 4-year-old daughter. Initially, it seemed affordable. Not long after she moved into the three-bedroom apartment, the owner boosted the monthly rent to more than double her income, she said. She was evicted soon after.

So now Knight doesn’t have a stable home. She stays at a West Philadelphia rooming house with her daughter’s father or with family members or friends. She’s spent at least a month’s rent in application fees for housing, she said, but no one will rent to her because of her prior eviction.

“I’m floating right now,” she said. “I’m just everywhere.”

Her daughter is autistic and needs extra care. “I’m trying to move, trying to work,” she said. “It’s exhausting.”

Knight hasn’t tried to vote by mail out of fear something would go wrong with her ballot. “Something is going to happen,” she said. “I want to make sure my vote gets in and it’s definite.”

Knight said she’s committed to carving out time to make it to the polls. She’s not sure where her polling place is, but she plans to go with a client who lives nearby so they can vote together.

“Election Day, I don’t care how I have to get there, I’m going to get there. By any means necessary,” Knight said.

“Not consciously forgotten”

It was a lack of money that drew both sides together to reform voting in Pennsylvania. But the issue wasn’t poverty in Philadelphia — it was new voting machines that strained county budgets.

In 2018, Wolf ordered that every voting machine in the state be replaced with more secure systems with paper trails that could be manually audited or recounted, a massive financial burden that counties struggled to bear.

After earlier negotiations for state funding collapsed, Wolf and GOP leaders who control the state legislature moved the talks behind closed doors in the summer of 2019.

Wolf needed money for counties to buy and implement voting machines. Republicans wanted to end straight-party voting, which allowed voters to choose every candidate on a party’s ticket at once. Wolf also wanted to ease what were then some of the country’s tightest restrictions on absentee ballots. At a time before Trump’s baseless allegations of fraud politicized mail-in voting, that was also acceptable to Republicans.

Lawmakers moved quickly once a deal was struck. Almost exactly a year ago, on Oct. 22, 2019, they added the mail-in voting expansion to an existing piece of legislation, which passed with bipartisan support. Wolf signed it into law nine days later.

The impact on low-income voters apparently played little role in the discussions.

“They’re not consciously forgotten,” said State Rep. Frank Dermody, who, as the state House Democratic leader, was aware of but not directly involved in legislative negotiations over the new law.

“We made it [voting] easier, we made it more accessible, but it wasn’t perfect, and it probably isn’t getting down to those folks,” he said. “Nobody consciously decided we wanted to continue to pile onto those unfortunate folks, but we may not have addressed all their needs. That’s for sure when it comes to the voting.”

“It’s not because of ill-will or anything,” Dermody said. “It’s just we’re all busy, and maybe we’re not focusing on that issue at the time.”

State Rep. Bryan Cutler, a Republican from Lancaster who was majority leader at the time and is now House speaker, disagreed with the notion that low-income voters were forgotten.

“The bill was crafted in a way that the opportunity was there for everyone in terms of the ability to vote by mail,” said Cutler, who participated in the negotiations. “I would offer they are being considered, because we tried to draft the bill in a way that would be open to everyone.”

Wolf’s office declined to make him available for an interview. State Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, a Republican from Centre County in central Pennsylvania, and Republican Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, from Jefferson County south of Pittsburgh, also declined interview requests.

What actually helps people vote

Unlike 26 other states and Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania doesn’t have traditional early voting. (It does have early mail voting: People can go to the county office, request a mail ballot and fill it out there.)

Besides an early voting system using voting machines, several other policies would be helpful in boosting turnout for low-income voters, said Chris Warshaw, a political science professor at George Washington University who studies political representation.

One is same-day voter registration, which allows people to register on Election Day, and another is automatic voter registration, in which people are registered by default when they interact with government services such as getting a driver’s license. Twenty states have same-day voter registration, and 19 have automatic voter registration — plus Washington, D.C., in both cases. Automatically mailing ballots to voters and giving people paid time off to vote on Election Day could also make turnout more economically equitable, Warshaw said.

Lower-income voters tend to become more engaged as elections draw near, meaning voting before Election Day — and the accompanying deadlines — doesn’t work well for them. It’s one reason why poorer people tend to vote on Election Day, and why mail voting tends to be used by people who would have voted anyway, rather than helping bring out new voters, Warshaw said.

Al Schmidt, a Philadelphia city commissioner and the lone Republican on the elections board, noted that vote-by-mail patterns have generally tracked historical differences in voter turnout between rich and poor neighborhoods.

“Areas with the lowest turnout, which were largely poor and frequently not always English proficient … also have extremely low rates of mail-in ballot applications,” Schmidt said.

Based on these early indications, state Rep. Donna Bullock, a Democrat from Philadelphia, expressed concern that Pennsylvania’s mail voting system could exacerbate inequalities in ballot access because any increased turnout would come primarily from wealthier voters.

“While it doesn’t suppress the vote of any particular group, and that’s not the intent of it, does the access to it widen the disparities in the vote?” she asked.

Over the last three decades, low-income eligible voters have consistently been more than 20% less likely to vote than those making at least twice the federal poverty line, according to a recent analysis of Census Bureau voter surveys by Robert Paul Hartley, an assistant professor of social work at Columbia University.

This disengagement is perpetuated because policymakers generally ignore or forget nonvoters, giving them little reason to vote in the future, he said.

“There’s this trick question,” Hartley said. “Are campaigns not talking to their issues because they don’t vote? Or are they not voting because people are just not speaking to their issues?”

“This is a population that could and might vote,” Hartley said, pointing to some past elections, including the 2018 midterms, when they did turn out in greater numbers. “When motivated, they can show up.”

Building on the current system

Some community groups are trying to boost the impact of the new law. Broad Street Ministry, a church in the heart of the city known for its social service work, serves as the mailing address for about 3,000 people who are homeless or housing insecure. So the ministry’s pilot civic engagement project is handling an unprecedented challenge this year with its bustling mail room: helping all of those potential voters register and giving them the option to vote by mail for the first time.

“Most of them really want a mail-in ballot,” said Zhane DeShields, who was registering voters there last month. “That’s the first thing they ask.”

At the same time, some elections officials are going beyond the law’s requirements to help voters who might not otherwise benefit from Act 77.

From Pennsylvania’s smallest counties of about 3,000 voters, to its largest in Philadelphia with more than 1.1 million, the law requires only one “early voting” location — the main elections office — and zero drop boxes. So local officials who want to provide more options are left largely on their own, with whatever funding they can scrounge up.

In Philadelphia, the city commissioners are opening more than a dozen satellite locations, thanks in large part to $2.3 million from a Chicago-based nonprofit. The commissioners deliberately included locations in low-turnout areas where few voters are requesting mail ballots, though they acknowledged those sites have much lighter traffic than others.

“They’re tough decisions to make,” said Lisa Deeley, chair of the commissioners. “I mean, honestly, you’re in a position where you want to make sure that everyone who can vote is voting, and everybody has equal access.”

The Pennsylvania Department of State, which oversees elections, has encouraged counties to go beyond the legal minimum and temporarily open satellite offices where they can provide and accept ballots on demand, creating a type of one-stop early voting site.

In deciding where to locate those offices, the department encourages counties to consider factors such as transportation accessibility and past turnout and to open them on weekends and outside of business hours. In a statement, the department listed several other steps it has taken beyond the minimum required by law to increase access, including providing prepaid postage for returning mail ballots.

Because they aren’t required by law, such efforts can be fragile, depending on the goodwill and priorities of whoever’s in charge at a given moment. Will Philadelphia keep opening satellite offices if it doesn’t receive nonprofit funding in the future? Will the state pay for postage in lower-profile elections?

Cutler, the House speaker, said he’s open to further reform but wants data to guide future changes.

“We have to keep continuing to watch it, but ultimately, whether or not people choose to vote or not vote, driven by any number of things — their own life situations, or their desire to be involved or not involved — is ultimately a choice that they make,” Cutler said. “And this is just about making sure there are some options that are safe and secure.”

Looking ahead

In the meantime, Rem Em is getting ready to vote in South Philadelphia. Not by mail, but in person. She’s scared of the coronavirus, but her mask is ready and her face shield sits on a table by the door.

Soon, she’ll once again memorize the shapes that spell her candidate’s name — though she politely demurs when asked whom she’s voting for. And on Nov. 3, she’ll take the five-minute walk to the recreation center around the corner.

She’ll show her ID to the poll worker. She’ll be directed to a machine.

And there, painstakingly matching the shapes in front of her, she’ll exercise her cherished right to vote.

Joshua Eaton, Lauren Rosenthal and Thy Anh Vo with ProPublica contributed reporting.

This article is co-published with The Philadelphia Inquirer. Sign up here to get the next investigation. The story is part of the Electionland project, of which the Inquirer is a partner. 

Top FEC official’s undisclosed ties to Trump raise concerns over agency neutrality

Debbie Chacona oversees the division of the Federal Election Commission that serves as the first line of defense against illegal flows of cash in political campaigns. Its dozens of analysts sift through billions of dollars of reported contributions and expenditures, searching for any that violate the law. The work of Chacona, a civil servant, is guided by a strict ethics code and long-standing norms that employees avoid any public actions that might suggest partisan leanings.

But Chacona’s open support of President Donald Trump and her close ties to a former Republican FEC commissioner, Donald McGahn, who went on to become the 2016 Trump campaign’s top lawyer, have raised questions among agency employees and prompted at least one formal complaint. Chacona, a veteran agency staffer who has run the FEC’s Reports Analysis Division, or RAD, since 2010, has made her partisan allegiance clear in a series of public Facebook posts that include a photo of her family gathered around a “Make America Great Again” sign while attending Trump’s January 2017 inauguration.

The public display of partisanship bewildered some FEC staffers, according to a former agency employee. For decades, the agency expressly banned employees from engaging in such partisanship, a cultural ethos that has stuck even after those rules were relaxed in 2011. Chacona’s duties included discerning whether the inaugural committee’s disclosures of donor information appeared to contain any “serious violations” of the law, an FEC procedures manual states.

Tyler Culberson, who worked under Chacona as a senior campaign finance analyst from 2010 to 2015, told ProPublica that staffers were trained to never betray political preferences that could call into question their division’s “neutrality.”

“Any public display of support or opposition to any candidate, campaign, anything on the federal level — we didn’t do it,” Culberson said. “When you are regulating partisan committees, the display of partisanship suggests the possibility of preferential treatment to that committee or candidate. So the mere appearance of it is problematic.”

The inaugural committee, a nonprofit distinct from Trump’s presidential campaign, filed its initial 510-page report in April 2017, detailing a record-breaking $107 million raised from more than 1,000 contributors. Within two weeks, a news story and then a watchdog complaint filed with the FEC highlighted a host of misidentified and shady donations. Several months later, when the committee amended its filing to address the issues, Chacona ultimately signed off on it, records show. But the updated report continues to list donors whose addresses don’t exist in public records. The committee has had other problems too: State prosecutors have accused it of spending lavishly on Trump properties, and federal investigators subpoenaed the nonprofit for donor records in an effort to track down any illegal contributions made by foreign nationals.

Separately, emails and other records obtained by ProPublica show Chacona had frequent, friendly interactions on matters professional and personal with McGahn. The two worked together at the agency from 2008 through September 2013, when McGahn briefly entered private practice then went to work in 2015 as counsel for Trump’s presidential campaign. After the election, he served as White House counsel.

Chacona did not respond to requests for comment. McGahn said, “I don’t comment on nonsense.”

Over the course of McGahn’s FEC tenure, concerns over his ties with Chacona were relayed through official agency channels: at least one colleague complained directly to Chacona’s supervisor that her closeness to the attorney could undermine the agency’s nonpartisan credibility, and the relationship was the backdrop for a 2011 inspector general report that was shared with commissioners.

The emails between Chacona and McGahn, obtained by ProPublica through the Freedom of Information Act, show that Chacona sought McGahn’s advice on fine points of campaign finance law and regulation, and engaged in derogatory exchanges about Ellen Weintraub, a Democratic FEC commissioner, and Fred Wertheimer, one of the country’s leading advocates for campaign finance reform. Democracy 21, Wertheimer’s nonprofit, helped file the FEC complaint against Trump’s inaugural committee.

Larry Noble, a former FEC general counsel who served in Republican and Democratic administrations, told ProPublica that an official in Chacona’s position must be “fair” to all commissioners, and that expressing negative views to a commissioner about someone with business before the agency “raises questions about whether the person will get a fair shake.”

Noble added that, overall, it’s “inappropriate for the head of a division to have such a relationship with just one commissioner. It makes you wonder in what ways she’s steered RAD toward that ideological view in both subtle and obvious ways — what kin​d of things the division went after, and what kinds of things it didn’t.”

Chacona’s division provides the public’s only window into how money is spent and raised on elections. She manages a staff of 70 employees, a portion of whom flag irregular contributions and potential spending violations that can prompt audits, civil penalties and, in rare cases, criminal prosecutions.

Culberson said that Chacona is “ultimately the one who will say, ‘We’re not going to question this; we are going to question this.’ There is a level of putting her finger on the scale if she wanted to.”

It is unclear whether the Trump campaign has received favorable treatment from Chacona. The FEC declined to address detailed questions from ProPublica, including whether Chacona and McGahn communicated about campaign finance issues during the 2016 election cycle, interactions that would introduce the prospect of favoritism.

Ann Ravel, a Democrat who served on the commission, said Chacona’s show of support for the president and the emails detailing her consultations with McGahn warrant an internal investigation to determine if there was any wrongdoing.

“You assume everything Debbie is saying is based solely on her expertise and knowledge,” she said. “At the very least, she should never, at any point, be involved in any decisions relating to Trump.”

Chacona’s contacts with McGahn may have run afoul of a government ethics regulation meant to address circumstances in which close relationships can call into question an employee’s decision-making, said Kathleen Clark, a government ethics expert at the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis. That rule requires that employees get approval from a designated agency official in cases where a “reasonable person with knowledge of the relevant facts” might question the federal employee’s “impartiality.”

McGahn is not involved in the president’s 2020 campaign, according to Tim Murtaugh, the campaign’s communications director. He is now a partner at Jones Day, a Washington, D.C., law firm that has been paid millions of dollars this cycle by the campaign.

Murtaugh declined to say whether the campaign was aware of McGahn and Chacona’s relationship in 2016, if the two were in touch over disclosure filings that year or if the campaign is in communication with Chacona now.

“As usual, you schooled me”

The tenure of McGahn, appointed to the FEC by President George W. Bush, was punctuated by discord between Republican and Democratic commissioners. Known as pugnacious and relentlessly partisan, McGahn led the agency’s GOP wing as it regularly pushed back on campaign finance regulation. Votes on possible violations often resulted in a 3-3 deadlock as commissioners split along party lines, a lasting legacy that has earned him the reputation as one of the panel’s most influential members of all time.

The acrimonious dynamic was exacerbated by the Supreme Court’s controversial 2010 Citizens United decision, which laid the foundation for removing essentially all limits on corporate and nonprofit election spending, as well as lifting restrictions on individual contributions to political action committees.

As elections were flooded with far more money than ever before, the importance of Chacona’s division grew.

In this uncharted regulatory terrain, she looked to McGahn for guidance.

“Wondering if a Super PAC that contributes to another Super PAC is still held to the contribution limit,” Chacona asked McGahn in the summer of 2012, her email including a smiley face. “Your thoughts please.”

“No limit,” he responded.

Part of the exchange is redacted, so it’s unclear where Chacona landed on the matter, but in her final response to him she said that “I even thought of some of what you said on my own (probably from reading all of your stuff over the years).”

The trove of emails shows that she shared McGahn’s negative view of those who saw Citizens United as a potential danger to democracy.

In early 2010, Chacona and McGahn privately mocked Wertheimer, whose watchdog group, Democracy 21, often files FEC complaints. In a press release, Wertheimer contended that the Citizens United decision was “out of touch with the American people.”

Chacona forwarded the quote to McGahn, wondering if Wertheimer “ever talked with anyone outside the beltway about this stuff,” because, she said, “they pretty much don’t have a clue.” Chacona concluded, “Sounds like he’s the one out of touch,” ending the sentence with another smiley face.

McGahn replied that Wertheimer has “zero intellectual honesty, and will say anything about anyone.”

The contempt extended to Weintraub. In one 2011 exchange, the two discussed a Politico article that quoted Weintraub as saying she considered the Republican panelists “colleagues” and “not pals,” prompting Chacona to ask, with her customary smiley face, “How broken up are you that Ellen doesn’t consider you a pal?”

Chacona told McGahn, who was quoted in the story deriding “superficial compromise,” that he came across as “sensible and sincere.”

McGahn responded that to Weintraub a deadlocked commission vote is “a failure to give guidance, but [to] everyone else, it’s a green light.”

A year later, early in what would become a more than $2 billion presidential contest between Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama — then the most expensive race in American history — Chacona and McGahn were critical of journalists scrutinizing FEC disclosure reports. She wrote to him decrying a “media frenzy” over the issue. McGahn characterized the intense interest as “disclosuremania.”

The emails show Chacona held McGahn in high regard. “As usual, you schooled me,” she wrote in one exchange about the Supreme Court and campaign finance. In an email about disclosure rules, she told him, “I should know by now you are always a step (or 2, 3, 4…) ahead.”

“A bit too cozy”

Chacona’s closeness to McGahn prompted at least one top FEC official to complain to Chacona’s supervisor, Patricia Orrock, about the appearance of a potential conflict of interest that could jeopardize the agency’s integrity.

Lynn Fraser, who retired in May 2017 as the head of the FEC’s Alternative Dispute Resolution program, told ProPublica that she was troubled by interactions between the RAD official and the commissioner, which she described as “a bit too cozy.”

Fraser said she spoke up because the appearance that the head of RAD had a personal or political bias for McGahn, a staunch Republican, could hurt the division’s promise of neutrality and might unintentionally influence RAD analysts worried about challenging a boss with a clear point of view.

“Conflicts of interest are tricky little things because sometimes people don’t even realize they have a conflict, they don’t perceive it as such,” Fraser added. “And that’s actually more dangerous. It can color your worldview without you even being really aware of it. And Don was persuasive. He’s really smart. And he knows campaign finance.”

In a closed door meeting, while McGahn was still a commissioner, Fraser said she asked Orrock to explain to Chacona that her relationship with the commissioner “looks really bad.”

“It’s the appearance of impropriety that starts raising peoples’ concerns,” Fraser said she remembers telling Orrock, who remains Chacona’s supervisor. “I got the assumption, and that’s all it was, that she would say something to Debbie.”

It’s not clear whether Orrock, who did not respond to a request for comment, ever talked with Chacona.

Fraser’s concerns did not come in a vacuum. In 2011, Chacona’s husband, Marcus, lodged a complaint with the FEC’s inspector general. The complaint included allegations that he had received anonymous calls relating to his wife and McGahn.

“The nature of this contact is to apparently alert me about the nature of their relationship and they expressed that it is more than professional,” he wrote.

The resulting report, which was shared by commissioners, was unable to determine who was behind the calls because Marcus Chacona, who declined to comment, stopped cooperating and refused to turn over his phone records.

A look at the Trump inaugural committee’s filing

Almost as soon as Trump was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2017, reporters noted the crowd size at the event was smaller than it was for Obama’s first inauguration in 2009. The accurate assessment touched off days of blustery pushback from the White House, which took on the media over its inaugural coverage. Chacona posted an image on Facebook of the event showing a packed crowd on the National Mall. “Here’s a real picture from yesterday,” she wrote.

But while the dispute played out publicly, more significant problems faced the 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee.

The nonprofit group had raised more than double what Obama’s inaugural committee collected in 2009, and the FEC required it to account for its donors. When Trump’s committee filed its initial FEC disclosure form in April 2017, the Huffington Post created a public spreadsheet to crowdsource its effort to vet the names, companies and addresses.

Within days, the news outlet detailed hundreds of reporting mistakes, such as obscuring the true buyer of inaugural tickets and disclosing inaccurate donor addresses.

A week after the story was published, Wertheimer’s Democracy 21 and other watchdog groups filed a formal FEC complaint, arguing that inaugural officials had recklessly filed reports “they knew or should have known did not include required information.”

Trump’s committee amended its filing to address some problems and asserted that the complaint raised mostly “technical reporting issues” and should be dismissed. To support its argument, the committee noted that RAD had sent both of Obama’s inaugural committees formal requests for more information — inquiries the Obama committees satisfied by amending their filings.

The FEC general counsel sided with Trump’s committee in an October 2017 report and recommended the commission dismiss the complaint. While acknowledging that “we do not know the full extent of the Inaugural Committee’s inaccurate reporting,” the report concluded that the Trump committee had made “analogous errors” to those of Obama. “We do not believe it is an efficient use of Commission resources to pursue this matter,” it said.

In a footnote, the report explicitly states that Chacona had “discretion” over the Trump committee’s amended report, and that RAD chose not to formally request more information.

Years later, the Trump inaugural has still not resolved all of its reporting problems, and the committee continues to list donors with questionable addresses, according to an examination by CNBC. One $25,000 donation, for example, came from a Singapore address that does not appear in public records. It is illegal for an inaugural to accept donations from a foreign national, but in its report, the Trump committee asserted that the donor was an American citizen. An additional $100,000 came from a contributor whose Anaheim, California, address also could not be verified. Both discrepancies were confirmed by ProPublica.

An inaugural committee spokesman said that if “additional corrections” to its report “are ever required, they will be addressed.” He also said that McGahn played no role in responding to Democracy 21’s complaint.

Wertheimer, who had been ridiculed by McGahn and Chacona years earlier, told ProPublica that he “can’t see any reasonable explanation” for why RAD hasn’t asked the inaugural committee to resolve these discrepancies. He said the FEC should “look at whether this was a political decision or a policy decision that can be justified.”

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Easy, not-too-spooky Halloween treats to cook up with your kids

This year, Halloween is going to look different for many families as communities across the country are cancelling trick-or-treating in an effort to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t cook up some spooky fun at home. 

Amy Palanjian is the founder of Yummy Toddler Food, a former magazine editor who worked in food and crafts, and the mother of three kids — aged 8, 4 and 1. Her first cookbook, “Food Play!” will be released on Nov. 10. 

Palanjian says that the recipes she creates are specifically made with parents — especially those without a lot of time or energy — in mind. 

“I love transforming simple foods, like smoothies and toast, with toppings to make them more fun for Halloween because that is often much more doable than more complicated projects for families with little kids,” she said. 

Her biggest tip for cooking with kids involves being realistic about their attention spans. 

“One simple step might be more appropriate than doing the whole recipe together, so broaden your definition of success and remember that perfection is not the goal!” Palanjian said. “Let them do as much as they can as they want to.” 

This means that they might make a mess, she said, but if you set them up for success — by using a bigger bowl than usual to contain the flour, pre-measuring ingredients or planning to vacuum once you are done — you might be surprised to see how capable they are. 

“Little kids love to do things themselves, so this can be a big confidence booster,” Palanjian said. 

Here are two of her favorite, simple Halloween recipes for kids. 

* * *

Recipe: Eyes Snack Bar
Makes 1 serving

Ingredients

  • 1 granola bar
  • 4 teaspoons of cold cream cheese 
  • 2 miniature chocolate chips

1. Divide the cream cheese in half and roll it into two small balls (these are your eyeballs!).

2. Place them on your granola bar. 

3. Stick the chocolate chips in the center of your cream cheese eyeballs, and enjoy! 

* * *

Recipe: Halloween Toast Three Ways 
Makes 3 pieces of toast 

Ghost Toast Ingredients 

  • 1 piece of toasted bread
  • 1 slice of white cheese, like Swiss or white American 
  • 2 raisins 

1. Cut the slice of cheese into the rough shape of a ghost — think a triangle with a rounded top and a “W”-shape on the bottom. 

2. Place the cheese on the toast, then add the two raisins to the top portion of the “ghost” to serve as eyes. 

Pumpkin Toast Ingredients

  • 1 piece of toasted bread
  • 2 tablespoons of cream cheese
  • 2 clementines 
  • 1 kiwi

1. Spread the cream cheese on the slice of toast. 

2. Peel the clementines, making sure to remove any remaining pith. Cut the clementines in half.

3. Place three of the clementine halves on the toast to create small “pumpkins.”

4. Peel the kiwi and slice three small portions to serve as the pumpkin stems. 

Franken-Toast Ingredients 

  • 1 piece of toasted bread 
  • 2 tablespoons of nut butter
  • ¼ cup of chocolate chips
  • 2 kiwis

1. Spread the nut butter on the toasted bread. 

2. Peel the kiwi and use a melon baller to create “eyes” from the fruit. Use the remaining flesh to make a mouth and nose. 

3. Melt the chocolate chips and spread it onto the toast with a small knife or spoon to create hair and a scar. 

If you liked Palanjian’s Halloween recipes, check out more over at Yummy Toddler Food. Her book, “Food Play!” is now available for pre-order. 

Elderly Trump fans stranded outside of Omaha rally hospitalized, one treated for hypothermia: report

Hundreds of attendees were stranded in the cold for hours outside of President Donald Trump’s Tuesday night rally in Nebraska. 

Trump held a rally at an airfield in Omaha, but event organizers were unprepared for what followed. Buses scheduled to take attendees to a distant airport parking lot were unable to “navigate the jammed airport roads” after the president departed aboard Air Force One. Hundreds of individuals, many of whom were “elderly Trump supporters,” were left in the cold for hours as a result, according to The Washington Post.

At least seven people were taken to a hospital, according to Omaha Scanner. Medics reported at least 30 patient contacts, while police observed eight to nine “elderly people who are struggling.” At least one 68-year-old man was treated for possible hypothermia as the temperature hovered around 30 degrees.

“We need at least 30 more buses,” one police officer told CNN.

A Trump campaign representative told the Omaha World-Herald that there were enough buses for all of the attendees. The buses had problems getting to the rally, because the two-way road was throttled into one direction following the event.

Aside from the cold, attendees were also forced to brave the threat of the coronavirus in a state seeing record infection spikes.

An estimated 6,000 to 10,000 people attended the rally, but Trump claimed the crowd was 29,000. Though the campaign distributed masks, many attendees declined to wear them, according to The World-Herald.

“We’re making that final turn,” Trump falsely claimed at the event as infections rose to record levels around the country.

After the rally, police officers and airport workers were forced to drive some attendees to their cars to get them out of the cold and away from the growing crowd.

“As we were walking, I saw at least two @OmahaPolice officers helping people who were getting cold, one elderly lady and a young boy,” World-Herald reporter Aaron Sanderford tweeted.

It took more than three and a half hours to clear the scene, according to Sanderford.

Some Democrats blamed the Trump campaign for the chaos.

“Supporters of the President were brought in, but buses weren’t able to get back to transport people out. It’s freezing and snowy in Omaha tonight,” state Sen. Megan Hunt tweeted. “What people will do for this con man, what people have sacrificed, is so sad to me. He truly does not care about you.”

“Leaving thousands of Nebraskans stranded in the cold captures the entire Trump administration,” Jane Kleeb, chair of the state’s Democratic Party, told The World-Herald. “I hope those responsible for the poor planning to feed Trump’s ego will be held accountable and that fellow Nebraskans turn out to vote to end this chaos.”

Trump, who is expected to easily win Nebraska, traveled to campaign for the long electoral vote in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District.

“I’m standing here freezing,” he complained, before adding: “In theory, I didn’t really have to be here, but it’s nice to be with friends.”

Editor’s Note: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story erroneously referred to Nebraska as Ohio. 

Trump White House takes credit for “ending” the pandemic — even as hospitals are overflowing

Donald Trump’s stalwart belief that he can make the coronavirus pandemic disappear through the magic of bullshit has permeated all levels of his administration. Even so, it was a bit of a shock to see the White House Office of Science and Technology put out a press release on Tuesday giving credit to Trump for “ending the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Meanwhile, in the real world, hospitalizations are up 46% from a month ago. A reported 983 people died of the disease on the same day the White House crowed about “ending” the pandemic. On Wednesday, according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Dashboard, the U.S. will pass 8.8 million cases and 227,000 deaths.

It remains unclear how this language about “ending” the pandemic even got into an official White House press release, since the report it’s announcing doesn’t say anything the end of this disaster, even though it features a lot of hilarious puffery of Trump for signing a couple of bills that were passed by Congress to provide money for research. That’s certainly proof that federal bureaucrats know the importance of flattering Trump’s massive ego, but nothing more. 

All signs point to this being yet another situation where the White House is pressuring formerly-apolitical federal offices to serve as propaganda outlets for Trump’s disinformation machine. 

For instance, the press release quotes Ivanka Trump gushing about how her father’s “investments in science and technology ensure America stands ready to solve today’s most pressing challenges.”

The language in the press release also reflects Trump’s own campaign rhetoric, in which he continues to act as if he can make the pandemic disappear by pretending that it’s not real and insisting that anyone who says it’s serious is just faking their concern in order to score political points against him. 

“It’s ending anyway. We are rounding the turn. It’s ending anyway,” Trump said at a Monday campaign appearance in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

At a packed and largely mask-free rally in Omaha, Nebraska, on Tuesday night, Trump called it “fake news” when the media covers “COVID COVID COVID COVID,” continuing his ongoing and bizarre reprisal of a “Brady Bunch” joke from the 1970s.

There is, of course, nothing fake about the pandemic news. On the contrary, the transmission rate is hitting record highs, often above the peaks from the first two waves of the spring and summer. The transmission rate is 39% above where it was two weeks ago. There were 500,000 new cases just in the past week, and the national case count is swiftly approaching 9 million people. 

As Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said in a discussion hosted by Yale on Tuesday, “We’re not even close to being finished with it yet.”

Trump no doubt thinks he’s a supergenius for not just denying the seriousness of the coronavirus, but forcing his underlings to echo his nakedly preposterous claims about how it’s all over and behind us. This has been commented on to death, but this tendency springs from Trump’s history as a reality TV host, which unfortunately reinforced his desire to believe that you can convince people of anything — including that a repeatedly failed businessman is a success — as long as you insist on it loudly enough on camera. But I suspect this tendency goes back further than that, to Trump’s career in real estate, where lying about the value of his investments to defraud banks was the backbone of his business model. 

But while the Eeyores of Twitter have, in a PTSD-style spiral, convinced themselves Trump is a Machiavellian political mastermind, the reality is that all this over-the-top lying about the coronavirus may be backfiring. It draws even more attention to Trump’s failures and reminds people of his sociopathic lack of concern for who gets hurts or even dies in his naked and desperate struggle to hang onto power. 

On Wednesday morning, CNN commentator John Berman called the Office of Science and Technology press release “Orwellian” and “laughable,” pointing out that “it is the literal opposite of true.”

Later in the morning, CNN’s Alisyn Camerota confronted Trump campaign flack Hogan Gidley, who was clearly rattled at having to defend such an obnoxious and obvious lie about the pandemic. 

First, Gidley tried to pivot by falsely blaming the World Health Organization for the pandemic, but Camerota wouldn’t let him wriggle off the hook, insisting he answer her on the question of whether the pandemic has “ended.” Then he tried to rationalize this odious lie by claiming the country is “moving in the right direction,” which is blatantly untrue, as Camerota pointed out before asking him again if he thinks Trump is telling the truth about the pandemic “ending”. 

Finally, Gidley cracked and said, “I didn’t write the document!”

Trump’s loyal supporters certainly don’t stick by him because they think he’s doing a good job on the pandemic. They’re voting for Trump because they harbor bigoted beliefs or because they want to stick it to the liberals, and usually some combination of both. Insofar as Trump voters have fallen into the habit of minimizing the virus, refusing to wear masks or rejecting social distancing, it’s out of a misguided loyalty to Trump and an unwillingness to admit that the despised liberals could ever be right about anything, not out of any sincere conviction that things are going well. 

But if anyone is wavering on who to vote for — and we had better hope those people exist, as the outcome of the election may depend on them choosing correctly — Trump blatantly lying about something as dangerous as this is not likely to lock down their votes,

None of that matters compared to Trump’s black hole of an ego. Ultimately, the real reason the Trump administration and campaign are being so bullheaded in lying about the coronavirus is that Trump, as a terminal narcissist, cannot admit he’s failed at anything. These lies and delusions about the pandemic ending aren’t as much campaign messaging as Trumpian ego-fluffing, feeding the childish president pretty falsehoods he can use to feel better about himself. That doesn’t mean he’ll lose — his voters really are that hateful, and ready to turn out to prove it — but it does show that he’s less a political supergenius than a moron who lucked into leading a movement of determined bigots. 

Trump says report that he failed to pay $287M debt tied to failing hotel shows he’s a “smart guy”

President Donald Trump had $287 million in debt forgiven by his lenders after failing to repay loans tied to his Chicago hotel and other projects, according to a new report.

Trump’s federal income tax returns obtained by The News Times showed that most of the debt was tied to Trump International Hotel & Tower — “another disappointment in a portfolio filled with them.”

Lenders gave Trump years of extra time to repay the debt, and Deutsche Bank even loaned him $99 million — more than previously known — to pay off his $99 million debt to another division of the bank, according to The Times. But Trump still did not repay the debt, and lenders ultimately forgave much of what he owed.

The New York Attorney General’s Office is now investigating the debt forgiveness as part of a larger probe into Trump’s company, according to the report. The IRS considers canceled debts as income, but Trump, who paid no federal income tax for years, appears to have paid no taxes on the funds.

Alan Garten, the Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, denied any impropriety.

“These were all arm’s length transactions that were voluntarily entered into between sophisticated parties many years ago in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis and the resulting collapse of the real estate markets,” he told the outlet.

But Trump publicly insisted that he had made a “great deal” with his lenders in order to avoid having to cover his hotel’s losses.

“I was able to make an appropriately great deal with the numerous lenders on a large and very beautiful tower” he tweeted. “Doesn’t that make me a smart guy rather than a bad guy?”

When Trump set out to build the tower in 2001, he arranged for two of his LLCs to borrow more than $700 million for the project, according to The Times. Most of the money came from Deutsche Bank, which was one of the few lenders willing to do business with Trump after a series of bankruptcies and defaults.

The bank agreed to lend the LLC $640 million after Trump said that his daughter Ivanka would be in charge of the project, according to the outlet. Trump personally guaranteed $40 million of the loan.

Another firm, a hedge fund called the Fortress Investment Group, agreed to loan Trump an additional $130 million, which he would pay back once the first loan was repaid. Lenders could seize the building if Trump defaulted under the terms of the agreement, according to the report.

Deutsche later sold off parts of the loans to overseas banks, while Fortress sold off parts of the loans to other equity and hedge funds, including Dune Capital Management, which was then run by now-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

Trump was projected to earn income from the property by 2008 when the loans came due, but delays left the residential part of the project under construction by the time it was time to repay. Trump reportedly cited the 2008 financial crisis to ask for an additional six months to pay.

When Trump attended a ceremony to mark the property’s upcoming opening in 2008, at least 150 units were still unsold, leaving the Trump Organization hundreds of millions short of what they owed.

Trump, who by then owed $334 million to Deutsche and $130 million to Fortress, asked for another extension but was rebuffed. Trump reportedly sent a letter to Deutsche insisting that the financial crisis contributed to a “force majeure” which “entitled him to extra time to repay the loans.”

Days later, Trump filed a lawsuit against the two lenders and the companies who bought parts of his debt. He accused Deutsche of “predatory lending practices” and demanded the bank pay his $3 billion in damages. The bank reportedly responded with its own lawsuit, accusing Trump of being a “habitual deadbeat” and demanding “immediate repayment of the now-defaulted loans.”

The lenders ultimately chose not to pursue the litigation and informed the court they had reached an undisclosed settlement in 2010. Trump’s tax returns show that he had about $270 million in debt forgiven, according to The Times. The generous move was one “few American companies or individuals could ever expect to receive, especially without filing for bankruptcy protection.”

Fortress ultimately settled for $48 million. Deutsche allowed Trump two more years to sell space in the building to repay the loan, according to the report. The Trump Organization ultimately raised enough money to pay off about $235 million.

But Trump reportedly still owed the bank $99 million when Rosemary Vrablic, who was Jared Kushner’s personal wealth manager at the bank, agreed to loan him $99 million. The funds, which were backed by a personal guarantee, were used to repay the outstanding debt. The Trump Organization repaid parts of that loan as it took on hundreds of millions in additional loans to fund Trump’s Doral golf resort and his Washington hotel.

Trump’s tax returns show he has personally guaranteed $421 million in loans from Deutsche Bank, according to The Times. Trump’s investments allowed him to declare losses which helped him avoid paying federal income tax.

Though Trump’s ascent to the White House has helped his business drum up millions in business from supporters, it has not been enough to help them overcome massive losses. His golf courses alone have reportedly lost hundreds of millions.

Most of the retail space at the Chicago tower has never been occupied, and profits fell from $16.3 million in 2014 to only $1.8 million in 2018, according to The Real Deal.

The hotel faced even more losses after the coronavirus pandemic hit, and the Trump Organization asked for additional financial relief from Deutsche and other lenders, according to The Times. The bank offered to let the company pause interest payments on the debt, but the Trump Organization “decided the bank’s proposal was insufficiently generous and turned it down.”

The debts come due in 2023 and 2024.

Voto Latino co-founder on 2020’s “surge of young voters” and what it means for Texas and Arizona

When Maria Teresa Kumar co-founded Voto Latino in 2004, along with actress and activist Rosario Dawson, national politicians all but ignored the Latino community when it came to national elections. Flash forward to 2020 and the Latino community has grown to become the largest non-white voting bloc in America and are poised to play a pivotal role in potentially flipping traditionally red states like Arizona and Texas in favor of Joe Biden.

I spoke to Kumar, who is also an MSNBC political contributor, on “Salon Talks” about the 2020 election and her work organizing the Latinx community and registering voters. While the community, of which a record 32 million are eligible to vote in 2020, is not monolithic, Kumar explained that Donald Trump has made it more active and united in the common goal of defeating him. This is not so much because of Trump’s demonization of Hispanic immigrants — after all, that was one of the cornerstones of his 2016 campaign, and he still received 28 percent of the Latinx vote per exit polls. Kumar explained that it’s more a result of Trump’s failed handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has disproportionality affected the Latinx community both in terms of health impact and economic pain. 

She also flagged that there are great concerns that Trump, if he wins in 2020, would not replace the Affordable Care Act if the United States Supreme Court strikes the law down in the case currently pending before it, leaving millions in the Latinx community without health insurance and ending coverage of pre-existing medical conditions for millions more.

Kumar is very optimistic at the prospects of her community increasing their political influence in the years to come, especially given the large increase in activism among younger Latinx Americans. But the future may actually be now, with both North Carolina and Wisconsin tipping blue, given the increased activism by Latinos in those states. For more of my “Salon Talks” conversation with Kumar about the blueprint to transform a once-ignored minority group into a political powerhouse, watch the video below or read the transcript that follows.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

People are talking about the Latinx vote so much this year. It’s been increasing over the last few years, but when you started Voto Latino in 2004, you have said that there weren’t people pursuing your community, at least not on a national level. Share with people a little bit about where your community was in terms of activism and how much politicians were actually seeking and courting your community’s support.

When we started Voto Latino, 30,000 Latino youth were turning 18 every single month. You and I have been talking for about a minute, and two Latinos have turned 18 already. Every 30 seconds, a Latino comes of voting age since when we started. What was happening that was so different back then —when they would talk about the Latino community, and sadly, this still happens, people’s immediate knee-jerk reaction is to talk to us in Spanish. The knee-jerk reaction is to talk to us in nontraditional formats. I would say, “I’m the beginning of a wave of Latinos that were raised in this country who are English-dominant, who speak it proudly. Some of us may speak Spanish, but most of us speak English, consume our information in English.”

When we started, people were saying that we were wasting our time, saying that Latinos didn’t speak English, that young Latinos did not care, and that the internet was not going to be a big deal. I am a testament that none of that is true, partially because here’s the thing: The majority of Latino youth, and the reason that we started targeting them is, they were navigating or are navigating the country for their families long before they turn 18 years old, simply because they speak English. We recognized that and we harnessed it, and said, “You guys are really natural-born leaders because you are put in difficult situations when you’re nine, ten years old.” When people were telling us that what we were doing was basically a fool’s errand, it was clear that even folks among the community leaders were out of touch with the tsunami of people behind me. Quite frankly, I grew up in California, and California is the bellwether of where the rest of the country is going.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what this moment is. People are talking about Texas a lot and I want to write more about this. I’ve realized that the states that have flipped in the last four election cycles: Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, and possibly Texas and North Carolina, they have had basically a perfect storm. They’ve had an aging in of the Latino youth population. You have had really bad leaders being jerks, for lack of a better word. I’m thinking of Sharron Angle, Jan Brewer, Sheriff Arpaio, Governor Abbott.

Then in between these young people coming of age and you have these really bad leaders, you also have late 20-somethings, early 30-somethings, running for office and winning in the Latino community. Voto Latino, to that perfect trifecta of people hungering for leadership because people are treating their families so badly, young Latinos becoming courageous enough to actually want to participate by running for office, Voto Latino comes in and basically helps all these masses to register to vote.

Speaking of bad leaders: Jan Brewer. I remember her with this famous — infamous — bill in Arizona, and others. There was a time when people like Donald Trump or Abbott or any of them on the right could say things, and it was only red meat for their base. For minorities and others, we would either roll our eyes or not have the power to change it. What I think the older white generation of politicians, like Trump especially, doesn’t get, it’s no longer red meat just for your base. It’s red meat for us. It animates us more, and now we know how to win elections. We understand the path. I think that has changed fundamentally. We listen to what they say and it actually matters to us. They never thought of that before.

I also think that you see Latinos and people of color in different positions of power that did not exist. Had a Donald Trump ascended into office in 2010, our community simply would not have been ready. What I mean by that is that we wouldn’t have had the voting-age population that we need, but then we also wouldn’t have leadership helping make decisions for investment, for turnout, and I mean that across the board for a lot of these populations. As a country we would not have been ready. In the last 10 years, you have this really beautiful fabric of America that has aged in and looks more like the rest of the population. There’ll be 12 million more young voters this year than Baby Boomers for the very first time. Two-thirds of them are kids of color. That’s huge.

That is. It’s remarkable. When you think about it, you started out by saying in 2004, your community was not being pursued. Now [in] 2020: 32 million Latinx projected to vote, 13.3 percent of all eligible voters, meaning they’re the largest non-white voting bloc. I know your community is not monolithic by any stretch.

Yeah, but Trump is making us more monolithic, quite frankly. I know it doesn’t sound like that’s true, but I can tell you that. My best example is Texas. You always have more conservative Latinos in Texas. As of last year, there was a September 2019 poll that was conducted by Univision. They asked Latinos what were the four things that were sending them out to the polls. It was healthcare, immigration, the environment and gun control in Texas. It’s because it’s a perfect storm of individuals treating whole swaths of the community badly.

This is going to get me into trouble. I would say that there’s more diversity in conversations right now happening in Florida than you see in the rest of the Latino community in America because the moment you walk out of your door in Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, it does not matter if you’re third-, fourth-, fifth-generation Latino, or first-generation or recently arrived. The way the president has created his antics is that you feel an incredible sense of anxiety being Brown in America, for the most part, because this guy has basically put a target on your family’s back. I mean, that is what he has done. That is not the case in Florida, and we can delve that deeper for another show.

In 2016, when I look back at the voter turnout: white voters 65 percent, Black 60 percent, Latino 48 percent. From what you’re seeing on the ground, do you expect to see a bigger turnout this year?

Well, this is the challenge with the numbers. That number talks about the whole pool of eligible voters, but it doesn’t talk about the people that are registered to vote. The biggest challenge in the Latino community is the voter registration gap. Literally, half of us are registered. There’s 32 million of us. Half of us are registered, half of us are unregistered. That turnout number, 49 percent, is based on the totality.

Why don’t they?

This is where Voto Latino comes in. Of the 15 million people that are unregistered, a good 10 million of them are under the age of 33. Of that 10 million under 33, four million of them have turned 18 since the last election. Part of it is that if you were to ask me what I would advocate for upon the change of government, I’m part of this universal voting task force, part of Harvard and the Brennan Center. We have so many young people, not just Latinos, but so many young people coming of age so quickly. Like I mentioned, we have 12 million more young people that have come of age since the last election total. Our system of how to register voters is antiquated and does not keep up with demand or supply, so to speak.

What California has done is a great example of automatic voter registration, that once you get your license at 16 years old, you’re automatically registered. That’s a good government function. That’s what we should be doing [everywhere]. My job should be basically to persuade you to vote in your interests, for the environment or for immigration reform. I should not be conducting, as an organization, a government function. That’s just absurd.

I agree. You know, states like New Jersey recently created a system where you are automatically registered to vote if you have any interaction with the state. We should make it easier for everyone to vote, not harder. That’s not what a democracy is, unless of course you’re a shrinking demographic and you don’t want everyone to vote, because you know when everyone votes, your party loses.

This is where it sounds really counterintuitive. The people who vote have a tendency of being the people who are very passionate about one candidate from either side of the parties. Studies have actually demonstrated that if you have automatic universal voting, if you make it mandatory, the temperature of politics actually goes down and you actually get more policy involved, because all of a sudden the people that are in the middle are participating.

Let’s talk about the issues of concern this year in the Latino community. We’ve talked before about the impact of COVID being disproportionate on people of color, Black and Latino. Can you share the disproportionate impact this virus has had?

I think finally within the Latino community, it was finally said out loud what we always knew, that we are the essential workforce of this country. We always knew it. People winked at it. The numbers and the fact that the country is running is because of the incredible work of the Latino community, immigrant communities and Black communities. That is not me saying it, that’s the data proving it. The sadness of it, though, is that we are also disproportionately impacted by the cases of COVID. The Latino community leads in the mortality rate and in the infectious rate. That means that we’re not talking about our elderly, we’re talking about moms and dads and we’re talking about children. We’re talking about orphans and we’re talking about mothers who are motherless and we’re talking about widows, and we don’t have those conversations, but coming out of COVID it’s going to be a conversation that we really need to figure out.

We are walking into a new era of America, where 7.7 million fellow Americans are going to be diagnosed already with preexisting conditions because of COVID. We are going to need healthcare in order for us to just, as a country, continue being an economic engine for all of us. I mean, that is just it.

I’ll give you an example. In San Francisco, the Latino community represents 30 percent of the San Francisco population makeup. There was a period when it was spiking that 80 percent of those admitted to San Francisco General Hospital were Latino. We know that we’re talking about a young population, because while the average age of Whites is 53, the average age of Latinos is 27 years old. This is the time when the majority of people in their twenties and thirties, that’s when they’re starting to start their careers, but it’s also their optimum productivity years. We’re hampering a whole generation of Americans who happen to be Latino from that, not just for themselves, for their community, but for the country.

Then you hear Donald Trump and the closing message of his campaign is ignore COVID, it’s gone, we’ve turned the corner, and don’t listen to “idiots” like Dr. Fauci. He is literally saying stuff like that. Is that because his base is primarily white, and Brown and Black people who are really suffering from COVID both health-wise and financially simply don’t matter to him?

If you track the moment that he stopped doing daily White House briefings, it almost perfectly correlates to when we started learning about who the deaths were in this country and who was contracting it. I think it was within hours. Almost perfectly, right? It also shows this weird level of inability to feel any empathy for people who may have lost and who have not had the choice to go through this. We, you and I, we’re so privileged that we can have this conversation and we can shelter in place, but millions of Americans don’t have that privilege.

When we talk about how lopsided our systems are, it is just looking at the populations who don’t have a choice, but who have to leave their homes to put food on their table for their children. They live in multigenerational households, so they have to be extra careful that they don’t infect their grandmother when they come back, for example. When we have a president that says that people who wear a mask contract COVID anyway, that’s an absolute lie, but it also shows how disconnected he is from the American reality of millions of Americans, regardless of race, but who are working hard every day for their families just simply to survive.

When you look at the latest unemployment numbers we have as a nation, we’ve gone to 7.9 percent, but the Hispanic unemployment rate is 10.3 percent, just down from 10.5 percent the month before. We’re clearly stuck at a number where there’s job loss disproportionately impacting the Latino community and the Black community. These jobs are not coming back because many of these businesses are gone. Over 100,000 small businesses are gone. What do you think? What are you hearing from people about what they want in the federal government in terms of job creation and a safety net for your community?

Real opportunity and re-imagination, frankly. If we just take a pause and imagine, the majority of individuals who live in Nevada, who rely on the tourism because of the gaming industry, those jobs, it’s going to take them a minute, right? United Airlines this week said that the airline industry is not going to recuperate until 2024. We’re talking about three and a half years from now. While many people say this is not the place of government, this is precisely the place of government.

Our world right now is so parallel to a hundred years ago when we were coming out of the Great Depression and all these other things, changing technologies, everything. We are so parallel. What we need to do is take clues of what did we do in our past. In our past, we had a clear vision of rebuilding America under the New Deal. We had a clear vision that we were going to level up and create a middle class. We decided that we were going to invest in the GI Bill on education, that we were going to provide public education, that we were going to provide people with home lines of equity. That had never happened before, but it was a decision by the government and by a population that said, yes, it’s a good thing to make sure that we have a social safety net.

Now what we have to do is reimagine it for population that looks wholly different than the last population, but that is just as hungry for being able to live in a thriving middle class. It’s our job to make sure that we are imagining and being audacious. You know, my favorite line I always like to share is there’s a guy that one day rolled out of bed and said, “Hey, let’s go to the moon,” and everybody’s like, “OK,” and we did it with less technology than our cell phone. When’s the last time we thought that audaciously as a country? We need to.

In 2016, 66 percent of Latinx voters voted for Hillary Clinton. You’re out there, you’re registering voters, you are on the ground talking to people around the country from your community. What do you expect to see in terms of Donald Trump’s support within your community, and Joe Biden’s?

It’s going to be very much state by state, believe it or not. What I mean by that, I think Florida is still a lot of work to be done. In Florida, what Trump did well was that he never stopped talking to Floridian voters since the 2016 election, and he spread a lot of misinformation. It has worked, but we see people coming in. We see Floridians, especially Latino women in Florida in general, coming in and voting for Biden.

In Texas, we see a surge of young voters that are led by young Latinas, but that are voting for Biden and Harris. That was because Beto O’Rourke and organizations on the ground for the very first time made Texas the lowest-propensity voting state to 41st, in a midterm election. That’s exciting. Texas is leading the nation in early voting. That is phenomenal for a state that typically never votes. I think that I would encourage us to look at what’s happening in Texas, what’s happening in Arizona, as bellwethers of the rest of the country for the Latino vote in this election.

Arizona looks very winnable. As you know, in 2018, a Democrat won a Senate seat there. Right now Biden is polling way ahead of where Hillary was. Polls don’t mean everything, but when I talk to people like Congressman Ruben Gallego he talks about how more active and organized the community is now than it was before. Is that something you’re seeing as well? Because that usually yields a real result, a tangible one.

I have to say if there is a model for the Democrats to learn on how to engage young voters, how to build a bench of young talent and how to not abandon them in between elections, it is Arizona. Arizona in 2010, Voto Latino — but tons of organizations too — got to work because of Sheriff Arpaio. The leadership coming out of Arizona is not only inspiring, but whip-smart. Their tactics are smart. It is awesome to see. I have to give kudos.

If Trump were to win, how do you think it impacts your community? What would be the priorities going forward under a second term of Trump?

My heart was broken in 2016 when he won, because I know that there was a whole slew of Americans who made a bet on him and said, “Well, my life is bad, but my life won’t change really radically if I vote or not.” For Latinos, for Muslim Americans, for Brown people, for Black people, for women, that was not the case. Our lives fundamentally changed the day after the election. It was not only through rhetoric, but policy. If there are folks out there that feel that they’re going to flip that coin again or sit it out, that tells me that you have incredible privilege, and you have incredible privilege where you do not have that empathetic stem of what it would be like to be a Brown child in America growing up under this president.

I think our charge right now is if, at minimum, you believe that there is climate change and you see California on fire — California is the bellwether of so many things, including climate change. We right now have a president that does not believe at all, at all, that climate change is real, despite what the scientists say, despite what the national security intelligence agencies say, despite what NASA says. I mean, he is one against the world on this, and we need to make sure that we can get our country back on track on a global scale.

What would you do in terms of activism if somehow Trump wins the election? How do we not lose energy and enthusiasm? So many people have been emotionally invested in defeating Donald Trump.

No, I think that our institutions are real. If you were to ask me how do we survive another four years, the biggest activism we can do, basically, Dean, is what you do. That is informing the public and giving them honest feedback and assessment of what is happening, so that they do not lose hope, but that they’re clear-eyed at what’s happening in their government. I don’t find everything short of that. Unless we get the Senate in there and the Senate and Congress can pass legislation that is demonstrable change, it is going to be literally our judicial system and our press that will be able to take those.

If Joe Biden wins, the sun is shining and we can all go out and play again and dream and sleep better, and I stop aging as quickly as I’m aging … I joke. Seriously, if Biden wins, what does the Latino community want from the Biden administration?

We have receipts. Before Voto Latino endorsed Joe Biden, we asked him what his policy positions were, on issues from immigration to the environment to police reform to education. It was a two-page document and he came back with 22 pages, and we have them. Those 22 pages, we now will say, “You voted, and this is what we expect.” What excites me about Joe Biden is that I’ve had the opportunity to meet him and work with him on a few issues when he was vice president for Obama, and he’s a curious learner. He is curious about people, but also about finding solutions, and he likes to learn. How refreshing is that?

Progressives and power: If Trump is defeated, the real fight begins

After seeing the spectacle this week of a Supreme Court justice installed just before an election for the express purpose of tilting the result in Donald Trump’s favor — and watching Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s evil threat of “what goes around comes around” take shape — it’s clear that the political battles we’ve been fighting for these past few years won’t be over once the election is decided even if Trump is defeated. The fight is just going to continue on new terrain.

The question then, is how the left and the Democrats will respond. After all, they’ve just spent the last four years focusing their energy on taking back the Congress in 2018 and then removing Donald Trump from office in 2020. The entire center-left, and a fair amount of the center-right, has unified behind this common purpose and it’s brought some impressive results. We’ll soon see whether that streak continues.

The grassroots organizing in this cycle is remarkable. For instance, according to The Connector Newsletter on democracy, organizing, movements and tech, Get Out the Vote activism since August dwarfs even that of the 2018 election — and that was unprecedented. “Resistance” groups, operating outside the Democratic party apparatus, have been active all over the country. 

The question, of course, is what happens to all that if they win. You’ll recall that there was a ton of grassroots energy in the center left organized around Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008, which was promptly squelched by a combination of top-down direction from the administration and a foolish belief among many of the faithful that their work was done and they could just trust Obama. That’s the natural consequence of a “movement” that’s based upon a charismatic leader.

That’s not going to be an issue this time. Joe Biden is not a charismatic leader, and while people are enthusiastic about ousting the worst president in American history, they are also primed for change in a substantive way. Trump and the Republicans have exposed the rot in our system in a way nothing else could have done.

Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir wrote a thoughtful piece this week about political engagement in which he makes the case that merely voting is a tepid form of activism anyway, particularly in America, where it often becomes “a bizarre form of symbolic theater or public therapy.” He suggests that direct action is necessary to move the country forward and cites the civil rights movement, the in-your-face ACT UP AIDS activism of the 1980s and the anti-globalization protests of the late ’90s as movements that were considered far outside the mainstream at the time but pushed their agendas much more quickly than they could have through traditional lobbying or partisan politics. He points out that the post-Parkland student movement, Greta Thunberg’s climate strikers and the Black Lives Matter protesters, among others, are the rumblings of a new generation getting ready to push the envelope beyond anything we’ve seen.

I completely agree with this, but I will add that I think electoral grassroots organizing (carried on more by the older generation, and mostly by women) is still vital. I’m reminded of this interview with leftist organizer Norman Solomon from a few years back discussing what makes a healthy, progressive political ecosystem:

We need to occupy — literally and figuratively — congressional seats for the 99 percent. Social movements need a healthy ecology, which means a wide array of activities and manifestations of grassroots power. That includes progressives in Congress. I say on the campaign trail that we need our feet on the ground and our eyes on the stars of our ideals.

It’s not good enough to have one or the other. State power matters — we’ve seen that from county and state offices to Washington, D.C. And as somebody who has written literally thousands of articles, 12 books, gone to hundreds of demonstrations and probably organized hundreds of demonstrations, I believe we always have to be protesting; we always have to be in the streets. It’s not either-or. I want our feet on the ground to include change for government policies. Laws matter. Whether or how they are enforced matters.

If nothing else, Donald Trump has revealed just how much state power matters in this country. With no more ambition than to be worshipped by his followers and treated like a king, Trump — with the help of his conniving Republican henchmen — has managed in four short years to turn the federal government into his personal fiefdom, enrich himself and his friends, twist the rule of law for his own purposes and upend American alliances and institutions, simply because he didn’t know what else to do.

Trump also finally laid bare the true nature of the Republican Party. It sees politics as war, and many or most Republicans are willing to win by any means necessary. If Trump ultimately loses the election and leaves office in January, that will only be a momentary pause in the conflict. The last four years of establishment GOP collaboration with his lawless administration, along with Mitch McConnell’s manipulation of Senate rules to stack the federal judiciary with youthful, far-right extremists, shows what an exercise of raw political power can accomplish. With or without control of Congress or the White House, Republicans will hold tremendous power to impact the lives of everyday Americans for a generation.

We don’t know if this upcoming election will provide a close enough result for the courts to decide the outcome, but we can already see considerable willingness to use the judicial system for crude partisan gain. Kavanaugh echoed his benefactor Donald Trump in his concurrence in the Wisconsin voting case this week, suggesting that election results should be decided on election night.

Trump is ignorant enough to think that when the networks call an election result, it’s official. TV is God to him. But in reality, elections are never certified on election night. Kavanaugh knows this. He was one of the Bush v. Gore lawyers who argued that absentee ballots should be accepted as late as Thanksgiving. He was acting as a partisan hack then, just as he is now. (And doing a sloppy job of it.) This is a preview of what we can expect Republicans to do whenever they get the chance.

When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., endorsed Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary campaign, she said it was because she wanted to be part of a movement. And so she is. She is one of the new generation of progressive leaders who is also, as Norman Solomon said in that interview I quoted above, “occupying” a seat in Congress. She has learned very quickly that if the movement is to accomplish anything, state power is essential.

AOC is both inside and outside, as are many of the new progressives in Congress, most of them women and several of the most prominent women of color. They will need the passion and numbers of outside movements to help them leverage their power on the inside. If they can do that effectively they may end up showing the Republicans, and the world, what a government that’s actually responsive to the people looks like. 

Clinical psychologist: President Trump is “so obviously impaired and so obviously disordered”

Clinical psychologist Dr. Alan Blotcky, Ph.D. spoke to Raw Story Tuesday to walk through what he thinks voters will see from President Donald Trump in the upcoming week ahead of the election. 

While Dr. Blotcky isn’t part of the “Duty To Warn” movement, he does support it and he explained how mental health experts have been able to diagnose the president without ever having him sit in their offices.

“The most important information that a mental health professional can get is observable behavior,” he explained. “It’s not just his observable behavior we have access to. We have thousands of examples of his tweets, of his statements, of his interviews, his audios, his videos. So, we have many years of his accumulated information directly from him both verbally and behaviorally. Yes, we don’t get to meet with him in our office in a one-on-one session. And that’s important because that would give us even more information into his thinking and feeling. But having access to vast amounts of verbal statements and behaviors is crucial.”

Dr. Blotcky explained that Trump is “so obviously impaired and so obviously disordered” that it would even be difficult to find a mental health professional who wouldn’t agree with that assessment after four years in office.

For anyone who thinks Trump is merely playing the role of an angry politician, he explained that throughout Trump’s life, he’s been consistent in his narcissism. 

“If you look at the whole of his life it’s very consistent,” he said. “It’s outlandish to think this is just an act. This is him.”

As Trump goes into the final week of his campaign, Dr. Blotcky anticipates seeing more desperation from Trump. He thinks that Trump will bring more “wild accusations, conspiracy theories and threats.” It has become clear that the president is reverting to what worked for him in 2016, “his old bag of tricks,” as Dr. Blotcky described it. The only difference is that this time around, it not only isn’t working to move the needle, but his multi-rally strategy is also serving as superspreader events.

“I think he’s going to throw out any outlandish things he can think of, hoping that something will stick,” said the psychologist. 

In a normal campaign, the candidate would be pivoting to something that actually works to expand their base of support. Trump is sticking with his existing supporters, even if that means he won’t have enough of them next Tuesday. 

“That’s why he always doubles down, triples-down, quadruples-down,” said. Dr. Blotcky. “He can’t [change] because to change would be a sign of weakness or failure. And he always thinks he’s right. He thinks he’s the smartest person on the planet. He thinks he knows more than the experts. He thinks he knows more than the scientists. And so, what he thinks automatically becomes the prevailing strategy on his part and he can’t pivot. He’s incapable of pivoting. I think it comes from his psychiatric disorder. I think he is so grandiose and so self-absorbed that he can’t see outside himself. And I don’t even think he understands that he needs to pivot because I think he thinks he’s right. And if he’s right, there’s nothing to talk about.”

For the every-day self-aware person who is capable of being insightful and psychologically minded, that level of delusion isn’t an option. 

“I think until recently he has thought of himself as unstoppable,” said Dr. Blotcky. “And I think he still thinks he’s unstoppable. I think he thinks he’s going to pull it out in the end just like he did in 2016 and if he can get it to the courts his new Supreme Court Justice will help tip the scales.”

If Trump loses, Dr. Blotcky thinks he will play the victim card, allege the election was rigged, there is a conspiracy against him and that mail-in votes shouldn’t even be counted. 

“I think he’s going to turn to his attorney general to try and get him to begin some actions,” he continued. “I think he’s going to try and take it to the courts and I think he’s going to try to give the message to his supporters all around the country that he is the victim, that he is aggrieved, and that they need to support him in his victimhood.”

For Trump’s supporters, even those who held their noses and voted for him four years ago, Trump has been able to tap in them a kind of grievance that they have been ignored by politicians.

“They believe in him because they feel aggrieved,” said Dr. Blotcky. “They feel like the political system has left them behind. They feel like victims. So, I think they identify with him and I think they like chaos. They like the rebelliousness of this president. They want to turn the political system upside down because they feel like the system has hurt them. So, he is kind of their supreme leader as far as wreaking havoc in the political system. When he says ridiculous things, they cheer him on because he’s expressing their own pent-up frustrations and feelings our system has left them behind and have hurt them.” 

One of Trump’s greatest accomplishments has been in fearmongering and painting former Vice President Joe Biden as a socialist to people who don’t know what that even means has been a successful tactic. It’s one that the GOP has employed for years, but such an accusation isn’t as effective as people understand American socialist programs like Medicare, the interstate system and public schools. 

“What he’s been successful at is selling the idea that Joe Biden and the Democrats are socialists and they’re going to change your neighborhood and that your way of life is going to be vastly different,” said Dr. Blocky. “I think there’s a group of Republicans that buy that. I know some people that buy that.” 

Trump’s claim that somehow neighborhoods are going to become chaos-driven riot-zones is a “fabrication,” he said, but “fearmongering works.”

It is possible to bring those people back from that, but Dr. Blotcky says it will come with Biden including them as part of his new administration. 

“If you cut off the head, which is Trump, I think there is going to be residual stuff, but I think if Joe Biden keeps talking about being the president for all Americans, and not just Democrats, that’s the strategy. That’s the attitude you have to have — that our new president has to be the president for all of us, and they have to listen to him,” Dr. Blotcky went on. “A lot of his supporters, I see them in the crowds, are people who really have been left behind by this economy and they feel like they are not listened to or valued. And I think one of the major functions of the president is to listen to everybody and have everybody feel like we’re a part of what we’re trying to do in this democracy.” 

In the immediate aftermath, Dr. Blotcky agrees that the Trump supporters will still take to the streets and that there will be violence, but that Biden will have the capacity to calm the nation much more so than Trump. 

“If [Trump] gets agitated and riled up, you’re going to see a lot of his supporters get agitated and riled up,” he explained.

In an interview Monday, Cindy, a self-described Republican evangelical explained that her children were kind and thoughtful in how they spoke to her about the election and helped her walk through options because she didn’t like Trump, but still had conservative issues she was dedicated to. Dr. Blotcky agreed that the soft and kind way of speaking to Trump supporters is the best way to help move them. For some, he acknowledged that it’s never going to work, but for those who are looking for other options in the final week of the election, it’s the best way to persuade. No one moves voters by screaming “you’re wrong!” at them. 

As the U.S. goes into the holiday season, he explained that’s the best way to get through with your families. Yelling and screaming over politics never persuades anyone. 

Dr. Blotcky closed by reinforcing that what Trump has done to diminish the dangers of the coronavirus has been reckless and criminal.

“Donald Trump has made the decision that losing American lives is fine. Our very lives have become unimportant, ignorable, even forgettable to him,” he wrote for AL.com in May.

When worlds collide: Can reality finally defeat the Trumpian delusion?

Republicans and Democrats; conservatives and liberals; Trumpists and progressives — technically, they live on the same plane of existence, but in very different realities.

They do not consume the same news media. They do not go to the same schools. They do not live in the same communities. They rarely encounter one another in meaningful ways in person. They do not pray or worship together. They live in the same country but not the same nation. They do not share the same values. They do not communicate with one another in meaningful ways. They do not speak the same political language.

What happens when these worlds collide? We have no certain answer.   

But we know one thing: Trumpism must be defeated on Election Day if the United States is to have any chance of remaining a democracy and then healing itself from the immediate and long-term harm done by Donald Trump and his movement over the last four-plus years.

For this to happen there can and should be no compromise between Trump and his movement, and Americans of conscience who are committed to the country’s multiracial democracy.

Ultimately, the differences between TrumpWorld and reality are irreconcilable. 

Donald Trump and his movement are antisocial and sociopathic. They literally are a death cult.

Trumpism is authoritarian, fascistic and committed to conspiracy theories, right-wing Christian fundamentalism and other forms of extremism. Democrats and their allies reject such things.

Trump has shown himself to be a sociopath, if not a psychopath. By comparison, Joe Biden — whether or not you approve of his ideology or his policy proposals — is emotionally healthy, well-balanced and humane. Leaders fulfill a permission function: In that role Donald Trump has encouraged his followers and other supporters to engage in the worst kinds of human behavior.

Joe Biden and the Democrats, whatever their numerous failings, represent healing and the possibility that the human species may survive global climate disaster and ecocide. Because of their rejection of science and their often-hypocritical embrace of right-wing Christian fascism and eschatological thinking, Donald Trump, the Republican Party and their allies represent an existential threat to human survival.

Cruelty and evil are the core values of Trumpism. Trump and his followers and allies have no shame, guilt, contrition or even embarrassment for the racist, white supremacist, anti-life and anti-family policies which have targeted nonwhite people for abuse and marginalization in a new Jim Crow America.

During last week’s debate, when Trump was asked about the brown and Black children in his concentration camps — almost 550 of whom cannot be returned to their families because the Trump regime did not keep proper records — he displayed no apparent care or concern. Indeed, Trump went beyond callous indifference, suggestion that the children in his concentration camps and detention centers had somehow been done a favor because they were “clean” and “safe.” Of course, that is not true: human rights organizations have documented physical and emotional abuse in those places. There have been many deaths from the COVID virus in those camps. Women and girls in those hellholes have been subjected to forced sterilization, along with other crimes such as rape and sexual assault.

Given Trump’s belief in white supremacy — made into policy by his senior adviser, overt white supremacist Stephen Miller — it should be no surprise that he resorted to Nazi-style propaganda in his talk of “clean” and “safe” concentration camps.

Last week’s debate also highlighted that Trump and his party have embraced a form of social Darwinist or Malthusian thinking, where the poor and weak and vulnerable are to suffer and be sacrificed for “the economy” and capitalism.

In a moment of unintentional honesty, Trump shared his commitment to such an anti-life ethic when he suggested that people who die from environmental pollution in some sense deserve their fate, because they made more money by living near toxic factories, waste dumps and other centers of poison.

Such claims are of course nonsensical — but internally consistent with a right-wing, libertarian, anti-democratic ideology where there are “makers” and “takers”, the “deserving” and “the undeserving,” and there should be no social compact or shared sense of care, concern and obligation to other human beings.

Joe Biden has repeatedly shown himself to be more empathetic, humane and decent than Donald Trump — again, irrespective of how one perceives Biden’s politics. Because he is a malignant narcissist and displays evidence of other mental pathologies, Trump cannot imagine himself as another person, or mobilize the type of empathy and concern for others that is dependent upon going beyond one’s own core sense of self.

When asked during last week’s presidential debate about the need for parents, caregivers and mentors of Black (and brown) young people to deliver “the talk” about the possibility of violent or fatal encounters with police, Trump avoided the question altogether, veering into delusional comments about being a 21st-century Abraham Lincoln who has done so much for Black people.

By contrast, Biden was reflective and caring and made substantive promises about how his administration would try to confront institutional racism.

The hearts and minds of those people who live within TrumpWorld and those who live outside it are very different.

Trump supporters and Republicans tend to be more authoritarian and committed to maintaining social hierarchy and social dominance. They possess higher levels of ethnic antagonism, racial resentment and outright racism, as compared to Democrats, liberals and progressives.

Trumpists, Republicans and right-leaning independents also possess more death anxieties (social psychologists describe this is “terror management theory”) and related fears of personal and societal change. They are also more likely to manifest what is known as the dark triad of personality traits (Machiavellianism, psychopathy and narcissism) as compared to others.

Donald Trump is effectively a cult leader. His movement and today’s Republican Party are a form of religious politics. Critical thinking is not allowed, as it is anathema to the movement’s victory. By comparison, the Democrats are a coalition in which dissent is allowed, if not encouraged.

Because Trumpism is a cult the relationship between Donald Trump and his followers it is fundamentally unhealthy. Writing at the Atlantic, Anne Applebaum explains that “in this election year we are grappling with something entirely new”:

The president, the Republican Party, and its campaign machine are collectively seeking to create a completely false picture of the world. This isn’t just a matter of wishful thinking or a few white lies. The president’s campaign staff needs voters to believe that the pandemic is over, or else that it never mattered; that 200,000 people did not really die; that schools aren’t closed; that shops aren’t boarded up; that nothing much happened to the economy; that America is ever more respected around the world; that climate change isn’t real; that the U.S. has no legitimate protesters, only violent thugs who have been paid by secretive groups. This fantasy has to be repeated every day, in multiple forms, on Fox News, in GOP Facebook ads, on websites like RedState. Inevitably, it will affect people’s brains.

Trump’s followers have surrendered their sense of self and their individual identities to the cult movement through collective narcissism. Once reality reasserts itself, as is inevitable in cults, Trump loyalists will likely experience great emotional and psychological pain before they are able to return to normal society.

There has been much excellent writing in these last few weeks and months about the collective feelings of permanent “brokenness,” civic disfigurement, cataclysm and doom in Trump’s pandemic America.

In his much-read essay “The Unraveling of America” at Rolling Stone, Wade Davis reflects on the implications of this moment, with a broken America beset with self-inflicted calamities and exposed before the world.

Evidence of such terminal decadence is the choice that so many Americans made in 2016 to prioritize their personal indignations, placing their own resentments above any concerns for the fate of the country and the world, as they rushed to elect a man whose only credential for the job was his willingness to give voice to their hatreds, validate their anger, and target their enemies, real or imagined. One shudders to think of what it will mean to the world if Americans in November, knowing all that they do, elect to keep such a man in political power. But even should Trump be resoundingly defeated, it’s not at all clear that such a profoundly polarized nation will be able to find a way forward. For better or for worse, America has had its time.

The Guardian’s Richard Seymour sees the United States as a pathocracy, likely to be undone by its violence, racism, right-wing omnicide and Christian “end times” fantasies:

There is a broader context for America’s turn toward what writer Huw Lemmey accurately characterizes as a sub-Verhoeven dystopia. Rapture-seeking movements such as QAnon, or those prepping for the “boogaloo”, are working the margins of a culturally mainstream phenomenon. Although the US has always been immersed in the fantasy of “regeneration through violence”, rarely has so much of the country been so thoroughly in the grip of adrenaline-pumping, apocalyptic excitement and conspiracist paranoia.

In both conspiracy theories and apocalyptic fantasies, life is reduced to a cosmic showdown between good and evil. The traumas and disappointments of life are folded into a millenarian revenge fantasy-cum-death wish, as in the enormously popular series of Left Behind novels about rapture and the struggle with the papal antichrist. Such apocalyptic thinking reverberates through a network of institutions, including white evangelical churches, Fox News and the Republican party itself.

Time magazine’s Charlotte Alter took an expedition into America’s “battleground” states where the 2020 election will likely be decided. There she witnessed the intoxicating power of “unreason” and its unbreakable hold over too many Americans:

For every two people who offered a rational and informed reason for why they were supporting Biden or Trump, there was another — almost always a Trump supporter — who offered an explanation divorced from reality. You could call this persistent style of untethered reasoning “unlogic.” Unlogic is not ignorance or stupidity; it is reason distorted by suspicion and misinformation, an Orwellian state of mind that arranges itself around convenient fictions rather than established facts….

With so many voters ignoring the headlines, it became increasingly hard to tell where most Americans fall on the continuum from reason to unlogic. In the absence of agreed-upon facts, the possibility of consensus itself seemed to be disappearing, and the effect was unsettling.

In a new essay at the Boston Review, Jonathan Metzl reflects on the power of white anxiety, and how it is further fracturing American society in the Age of Trump and the pandemic:

Clearing a new path forward … depends not only on a new relationship to the psychologies of white anxiety but also to the structures and finances that propagate, sustain, and shamelessly benefit from it. Leave those structures intact, and the United States will continue to burn in what historian Timothy Snyder calls a “slow-motion Reichstag Fire.”

Such change takes time. For now we must do our part to remind our fellow voters that this election is, as much as anything, a referendum on the ways that racial but also economic inequities have rendered many Americans uniquely vulnerable to a novel, fatal viral invader.

Salon’s Lucian K. Truscott IV channels the pathos born of a season of death and its effect on the American people’s sense of time and collective well-being, when so much else is also wrong and broken in their country: “We can’t be mournful enough in this plague. All we can do is go on and try to make [its victims’] lives count by remembering them. We will vote and make a better world, because that is our duty, but the world will never be the same after this.”

During the second and final presidential debate last week, there was one perfect moment that captured the collective frustration and disgust of the American people and likely the world. “Zeitgeist” is an overused and misapplied word — but in this moment, it applies. As Trump spewed out his lies, delusions and fantasies, Joe Biden looked down, flummoxed, and said quietly, “Oh, God.” With those words, he spoke for all sane and decent human beings watching the president of the United States humiliate himself, and us. 

Future historians may conclude that was the precise symbolic moment when Biden won the 2020 election.

Polls, late campaign activity from Biden and Bloomberg suggests GOP rule over Texas could be at risk

Joe Biden’s campaign will be running television ads in El Paso, San Antonio and Dallas-Fort Worth heading into Election Day. The Democratic nominee for vice president, Kamala Harris, is planning a visit to Texas during the homestretch of the campaign. And polls show the Biden-Harris ticket within striking distance — and, in some surveys, ahead — in the traditionally Republican state.

Texas may still not be among the top priorities of either party’s presidential nominee in 2020 — and President Donald Trump might still be the favorite here. But the activity in the final days of this year’s presidential election suggests that, for the first time in decades, Texas is not a foregone conclusion. Democrats are at least in the running here in races for the presidency, U.S. Senate and numerous seats down ballot.

“It’s really exciting. We see the amazing turnout numbers here in Harris County, but it’s not just here,” said Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo. “It’s Fort Bend, it’s Denton and Hays, too. I don’t think it’s just demographic changes, but people rejecting the leadership that’s currently in the White House. We saw this already in 2018, and we’re just building on that.”

Trump won Texas by 9 percentage points in 2016 — and that was the smallest margin of victory for a Republican since 1996. But few, if any, polls are showing that kind of margin right now.

The latest survey from the University of Texas/Texas Tribune, released Oct. 9, gave Trump a 5-point lead over Biden in the state. A Quinnipiac University poll last week showed a tie; a Dallas Morning News/University of Texas at Tyler poll released Sunday showed Biden up 2 points, and a New York Times/Siena College poll on Monday gave Trump a 4-point lead. Another nonpartisan Texas poll released Monday, from the Hobby School for Public Affairs at the University of Houston, gave Trump a 5-point lead.

Overall, RealClearPolitics’ polling average hovers at a 3.2-point advantage for Trump.

A Biden win in Texas would be a political earthquake in American politics. The last Democrat to win the state’s Electoral College votes was Jimmy Carter in 1976. It’s unlikely Texas would be the tipping point that handed Biden the White House — most agree a Texas win would be accompanied by a Biden landslide across the country. But it would end the decadeslong Republican dominance in the nation’s most populous red state.

In another sign of the competitiveness here, billionaire Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday indicated he would use his super PAC, Independence USA, to fund $15 million worth of statewide ads in both Texas and Ohio. A spokesman for Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, said the decision came after his team polled multiple states and came away convinced that Texas and Ohio were prime pickup opportunities.

Trump’s campaign and his allies insist that Republicans’ grip on the state hasn’t loosened. Over the weekend, campaign spokesperson Tim Murtaugh and former Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, also the former governor of Texas, told supporters on a press call that Trump would not visit Texas before Election Day.

“The president is going to win Texas,” Murtaugh told a reporter in response to a question about Trump’s plans for the state. “The president will be focusing his time and travel and energy on the states that will decide the election.”

In a separate statement to The Texas Tribune, Trump Victory spokesperson Samantha Cotten said the campaign’s “top notch ground game can’t be matched by Biden’s 11th hour effort.”

“While our volunteers are making millions of voter contacts and sharing President Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda, Biden is campaigning on decimating the energy industry. It’s safe to say President Trump is poised to win Texas,” Cotten said.

Biden himself hasn’t made a formal visit to the state. But the number of people going to the polls has been a major source of optimism for Democrats.

With four days of early voting still ahead, the percentage of Texas registered voters who had already cast ballots on Monday was poised to surpass the entire share of people who voted early in 2016. Given that Texans have six extra days of early voting this year and because some voters’ habits might have shifted due to the pandemic, it’s hard to conclude what that will mean for overall turnout. But Democrats were optimistic, especially since the raw number of votes cast was shattering records in the state’s fast-growing suburban areas, which have traditionally voted Republican but which trended more blue in the 2018 midterm elections.

“Turnout is completely unprecedented, and you better bet that the folks who are turning out are not turning out to keep the status quo,” Hidalgo said.

The shifting politics of the suburbs — and Trump’s declining popularity there — has also threatened Republicans’ hold on their state House majority and several congressional seats long held by GOP members.

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, finds himself at the center of a reelection race that has heated up considerably in recent weeks. His Democratic opponent, MJ Hegar, has handily outpaced him in fundraising since the summer, and national outside groups are making a late, eight-figure financial play to defeat him.

While polls continue to give Cornyn an advantage over Hegar, the senator is prepared for a much closer contest than his last reelection bid, which he won by 27 points.

“I think it’ll be single digits” this time, Cornyn said in a Dallas TV interview Sunday.

Even beyond the presidential and U.S. Senate races, some statewide races are drawing increasing attention. Chrysta Castañeda, the Democratic nominee for railroad commissioner, announced Monday that she had received $2.6 million in donations from Bloomberg, a remarkable amount for an office that rarely attracts political interest from outside Texas. The all-GOP Railroad Commission regulates Texas’ oil and gas industry.

And even if Trump wins Texas, a margin smaller than his 2016 one could cause a significant ripple down-ballot.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is targeting 10 GOP-held seats across the state, while its Republican counterpart is working to win back the two seats it lost in 2018, those currently held by Democratic Reps. Colin Allred of Dallas and Lizzie Pannill Fletcher of Houston. With a week left, though, the most hotly contested races are four where the GOP is on defense: the races for the 21st District, where Rep. Chip Roy, R-Austin, is running for reelection; the 22nd District, where Rep. Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land, is retiring; the 23rd District, where Rep. Will Hurd, R-Helotes, is also vacating the seat; and the 24th District, where another retirement is happening with Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Coppell.

But even beyond that core battlefield, some seats once considered stretches for Democrats appear increasingly competitive. Case in point: the 3rd Congressional District, currently held by Rep. Van Taylor, R-Plano. Trump won the suburban Dallas district by 14 points in 2016, but U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, carried it by only 3 in 2018 and the latest Democratic polling has Biden winning it by double digits, with Taylor in a tight race against Democratic challenger Lulu Seikaly.

In a sign of how much of a liability Democrats believe Trump is in the district these days, Seikaly is airing TV ads that explicitly tie the incumbent to the president, particularly on his coronavirus response. Seikaly’s latest TV ad shows a man inside his garage reacting with disbelief at Trump’s suggestion earlier this year that people may inject themselves with disinfectants to fight the virus.

“For us, at least, Van Taylor has been such a proponent of Donald Trump … so for these voters who are abandoning the president, that is what we’ve been doing with our ads, our mail, our digital,” Seikaly said in an interview. “We need them to know Van Taylor is just a Donald Trumper.”

Taylor, for his part, is airing commercials that avoid any mention of Trump, opening with an attack on “Liberal Lulu Seikaly” before touting a Dallas Morning News story that labeled him “Mr. Bipartisan.”

The biggest down-ballot prize for Democrats, though, is the Texas House. Democrats are nine seats away from the majority after picking up 12 seats two years ago — and Republicans acknowledge that even if Trump carries the state, even if Cornyn wins reelection, the House is still very much in play.

Austin Chambers, president of the Republican State Leadership Committee, said in an interview Monday that the Texas House battle will be a “dogfight that’s gonna be close all the way until the end.” He expressed confidence that Republicans will ultimately prevail but said the RSLC has spent about $9 million to defend the majority in Texas “and we don’t plan to slow down any time soon.”

Asked for the biggest challenge the RSLC faces in the homestretch, Chambers pointed to “all of the out-of-state Democratic money flooding in.”

“We’ve got better candidates, we’ve got better campaigns, we’ve certainly got a better message,” Chambers said. “We’ve got to make sure they don’t outshout us and outgun us.”

Democrats are certainly trying their best. On Monday, the Texas House Democratic Committee announced its latest fundraising haul: $4.5 million over roughly the past month, or more than eight times what it raised during the same period last election cycle.

Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin, The New York Times and the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. 

Putin has devious plans if Joe Biden wins

Ever since Russia’s anti-Western turn of 2005, governmental and non-governmental analysts across the globe have been busy discussing and predicting Moscow’s next offensive action.

Yet, in most cases, while the world’s politicians, experts, researchers, journalists et al. arrived with more or less adequate assessments and reactions, the Russian planners had already long achieved their aims.

The West talks, Russia acts

Such was the case with Russia’s invasion of Georgia’s South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008 or the (in)famous “little green men” in Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014.

Or the hackers inside Germany’s Bundestag in 2015, and the bombers over Syria’s Aleppo in 2015-2016. 

And the cyber-warriors in the U.S. elections of 2016 — or the despicable “chemical” assassins at England’s Salisbury in 2018.

Russia’s Biden calculus

One must reckon that the moment when the Kremlin becomes persuaded that Joe Biden will become the next U.S. president must be imminent.

At that moment, Russia may go for the jugular. Triggering civil conflicts in the United States — not merely election manipulation — could become the main aim of Moscow’s interference into U.S. domestic affairs.

Meanwhile, many U.S. observers — whether in national politics, public administration or social science — may be preparing to fight the last war.

While Russian election interference and other influence operations are pretty much on everybody’s mind across the United States, this realization by itself falls short.

Ukraine’s bitter lesson

As Ukraine has bitterly learned in 2014, the Kremlin only plays soft ball in other countries as long as it believes it has some chance to win.

The Ukrainian experience over the past six years suggests a truly grim scenario. At some point during the Euromaidan Revolution, in either January or February 2014, Putin understood that he may be losing his grip on Ukraine.

That became evident when it became obvious that Moscow’s man in Kyiv at the time, then still-President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych (though very much assisted by Paul Manafort), was on the verge of being kicked out by the Ukrainian people.

As a result, Russia’s President drastically changed track already before the event. 

When Ukraine’s pro-Russian President was ousted by the Ukrainian parliament on February 22nd 2014, the Kremlin had already switched from merely political warfare against Ukraine to preparing a real war — something then largely unimaginable for most observers.

What’s Russia’s plan in the U.S.?

Something similar may be in the offing in Moscow’s approach to the United States today too. To be sure, Russian troops will hardly land on U.S. shores.

That is neither realistic nor — and this is crucial — necessary. The possibility of fomenting violent civil conflict in the United States today is quite enough.

Such a scenario is already being discussed by serious analysts. The enormous political polarization and emotional spikes within American society make this plausible.

Judo tactics and dealing with the U.S.

As in Putin’s favorite sport of Judo (in which he holds a Black Belt), a brief moment of disbalance on the part of the enemy can be used productively. It may even be sufficient to cause his fall.

While the United States may, by itself, not descend into civil war after the elections, an opportunity to push the United States in this direction will not be missed by the ever-industrious hybrid warfare specialists in Moscow.

Why Moscow dislikes Biden even more than Clinton

Moscow detested Hillary Clinton as a U.S. presidential candidate in 2016. The prospect of her presidency was enough to cause Russia to hack the Democratic Party’s servers and launch a vicious ad campaign against Clinton.

Today, a U.S. President from the Democratic Party is an even more threatening prospect for the Kremlin. 

A key reason is that under President Obama, Joe Biden was responsible for the United States’ policy towards Ukraine, a country he knows and likes well. This makes a Biden presidency an extremely undesirable scenario for Moscow.

Conclusion

If Vladimir Putin concludes that he cannot prevent Joe Biden’s election, the Kremlin may decide to do the utmost to fundamentally undermine American society — as well as the United States’ standing as a relevant international actor.

In such a case, as Ukraine painfully learned in 2014, Moscow’s ruthlessness and resourcefulness should not be underestimated.

This article is republished from The Globalist: On a daily basis, we rethink globalization and how the world really hangs together.  Thought-provoking cross-country comparisons and insights from contributors from all continents. Exploring what unites and what divides us in politics and culture. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  And sign up for our highlights email here.

Are Pennsylvanians as obsessed with fracking as Trump and Biden think?

My home state of Pennsylvania is always on the receiving end of some heavy pandering by presidential candidates: some feeble stabs at the Sheetz vs. Wawa convenience store debate, pointlessly coy hints at an allegiance with the Flyers or Penguins, a professed devotion to one hideous sandwich or another.

Generally, I can tolerate it. Part of the business of politics in general, and elections specifically, is to appeal to swing states using these kinds of caricatures. But the 2020 Pennsylvanian stereotype of choice perpetuated by Trump and Biden has not been so easy to stomach: that we Keystone State denizens are all wholehearted devotees of fracking.

“If you want to kill the economy, kill the oil and gas industry,” Trump opined during Thursday’s final presidential debate, before launching into the usual accusations that his opponent will ban fracking. Biden denied it, but Trump warned ominously: “You know what, Pennsylvania, he’ll be against it very soon.”

You might be forgiven for assuming fracking is simply a synonym for “American industry,” as that’s how it’s used in a lot of political rhetoric. In actuality, it is a method of oil and natural gas extraction in which a concoction of chemicals and minerals are injected into tunnels drilled parallel to the ground. Pennsylvania, which rests atop the majority of the highly productive Marcellus Shale, does a great deal of it. We are the second-largest producer of natural gas in the country, after Texas. Moreover, we are the third-largest net supplier of energy, extracting more than four times what we consume.

The Trump-Pence campaign refers to fracking as if it were a sort of sacred ritual deeply meaningful to the identity of Pennsylvanians (and our 20 electoral college votes) — as if babies here are born with a drill clutched in one tiny fist and a seismograph in the other before being baptized in gasoline and Yuengling. On the national stage, fracking is celebrated via monologues by various working-class characters in ads, defended breathlessly by top-level Republicans who insist that Biden will ban it (again, he won’t), and praised at rallies in the heart of gas country.

But, like so many policies framed as concessions to swing states in the general election, neither candidate’s stance on fracking bears any strong resemblance to the complicated lives of people who actually have to confront it. Which was why, over several months last year, I headed out to talk to people who live near a proposed fracking well, on the site of the last functioning steel mill in the county.

The Edgar Thomson Steelworks is massive; it spans roughly a mile along the banks of the Monongahela River, and in doing so it touches four municipalities on the outskirts of Pittsburgh: Braddock, North Braddock, East Pittsburgh, and North Versailles (pronounced Ver-SALES, and you’ll get a puzzled look if you say it otherwise). Old mill towns run all up and down the Monongahela Valley, once considered extensions of the city, and this particular cluster sits just southeast of the city.

From an energy efficiency standpoint, the mill is an ideal site for a fracking well: Natural gas produced on-site could directly power the operation. But the bigger draw for residents of the region, of course, is a financial one. Whereas “fracking” has taken on all kinds of significance in the national conversation about everything from climate change to the economy, in a lot of Pennsylvania towns that never recovered from the loss of manufacturing or mining jobs, it just means “money.”

Unlike nearby Pittsburgh proper, there are no new, shiny condo developments and tech incubators in these chopped-up old mill towns. While the more affluent downtown neighborhoods of Lawrenceville, Bloomfield, and East Liberty are flush with employees of tech, medicine, and academia (and the money they bring with them), Monongahela Valley towns don’t have the kind of tax base or customer cash flow that Pittsburgh has increasingly enjoyed over the years. That’s why the lure of tax revenue from Merrion Oil and Gas, the company that’s proposed to put in a well on the site of the mill, is so appealing.

Allegheny County’s mostly urban makeup has spared it a lot of well development to date; you need specific zoning that’s rare in such a dense area to be able to drill. And these towns on the border of Pittsburgh don’t look much different from some of the neighborhoods within the city itself. The whole metro area is a hodgepodge of rusting warehouses and factories, lovely mansions, falling-down brick duplexes, new-ish taupe and neon strip malls, grand old libraries, museums, and schools — with so much lush greenery exploding out from the cracks in between.

One of the landowners that stands to benefit from the proposed well is the Grand View Golf Course, which is perched on the hillside overlooking the mill and the river, mostly because of the size of the property. Underground laterals from the well would extend under the expansive greens, yielding leasing revenue. The golf course itself has seen better days — by its own admission — but its high vantage point affords it a rather spectacular perspective of the little hillside houses across the river; the rollercoasters of Kennywood, the amusement park, on the opposite shore; and the mill itself, smoke billowing endlessly from its stacks.

Tom Beeler, manager of the golf course, expressed his support for the well in an email to Grist. “That money quite frankly is desperately needed to help keep the golf course — which is a centerpiece of the community and one of its biggest taxpayers — in business. Like many golf courses, we have been struggling for the past few years hoping that this project can help to turn us around.”

But for most residents, it’s not as straightforward a benefit: While income from oil and gas leasing has completely transformed the circumstances of some families in the region, it’s not likely to do the same for private property owners in North Braddock or East Pittsburgh. Lease agreements tend to be structured in terms of quantity of gas obtained per acre, and the small parcels of an essentially urban area don’t offer much of a payout. And to make matters worse, gas companies famously prey on cash-strapped families who will be too eager for an income stream to worry much about the terms of the lease.

“Some people are like, ‘Are you crazy? We need the money. This is our new and improved roads. New and improved infrastructure will bring income to the communities,'” explained Vicki Vargo, who’s on the borough council of North Braddock, in an interview last summer. “And other people go: ‘Yeah, are you crazy? Who in their right mind is going to want to live here?'”

In August of last year, Rep. Summer Lee, who represents North Braddock in Pennsylvania’s state congress, wrote in a letter opposing the development to the county health department: “This proposal would be the most urban setting that we have ever seen for a fracking well in Pennsylvania, exacerbating the aforementioned health effects.” The proposed well at Edgar Thomson would threaten the integrity of the (already flawed) drinking water, Lee alleged.

Disturbing clusters of rare cancers and birth defects have popped up in fracking-heavy regions of the state. The environmental historian Joel Tarr wrote that natural gas and oil wells polluting water sources in western Pennsylvania dates back to the 1800s, as sediment from the drilling process infiltrated water tables and abandoned wells were allowed to leak into the surrounding ecosystem.

While Pennsylvania has historically been a “fossil fuel state,” it’s not so clear that its actual residents want that cycle to continue. Approval and disapproval of the practice is split relatively evenly in the state, with a slightly higher percentage of the state in the latter camp. One might look at these divided numbers and simply attribute it to Pennsylvania’s cultural makeup, which tends to be split along geographical divides: “Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Kentucky in the middle,” as the adage typically goes. (Sometimes people say “Alabama in the middle,” but you can really substitute any region that pundits might consider a “backwards,” truck-driving, tobacco-spitting, Republican-voting part of America.)

But the realities of fracking — from its geological impact to the jobs it might create — defy many of the themes hyped up by our current political system: urban vs. rural, jobs vs. nature, liberal vs. conservative. All kinds of borders blur when it comes to the impacts fracking has on a community. After all, municipal borders do not extend to air and water.

Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh and many of its abutting mill towns, is already in the top 2 percent of cancer risk from air pollution in the country. It’s important to note that this is not tied directly to fracking, but to the industry that fracked gas powers here. There is pollution from the steelworks, to be sure, as well as sometimes criminal particulate emissions from the Clairton Cokeworks in a town just a few miles down the valley. Even in high-rent Lawrenceville, there’s a steel foundry that can bring air quality down to very retro levels.

There’s conflict among the towns themselves about the virtues and risks of the well: North Braddock, for example, is less affluent than East Pittsburgh, and the latter has filed complaints against Merrion Oil and Gas, the company proposing to put in the well, for its failure to observe regulations. The town also just voted to reject an extension of the company’s permit; Merrion has declared that it will appeal the decision. And residents from all over the county gathered at a community meeting a year and a half ago to loudly resist the proposal — because, in the end, it’s more than just the towns that host the well that stand to be affected.

Even the most fervent environmentalist can end up drinking water tainted by the “slurry” of chemicals used in the drilling process one town over; a boutique farm-to-table restaurant in Pittsburgh can benefit from the patronage of a well-paid field engineer; and the perceived treasure trove of gas reserves lying underfoot might tempt any cash-strapped municipality or property owner, blue or red, into issuing a fracking permit of their own.

Trump and Biden have each tapped into one partial truth: There is an allegiance to old industry in some Western Pennsylvania families, a belief that the wealth that steel and coal and gas brought to the region, albeit years and years ago, is owed a certain respect. That no one’s family would be here, would have been able to establish homes and raise generations, without the jobs provided by the mills and the mines.

You can find a logical descendent of that allegiance in support of fracking, even though the modern incarnation of that industry is less magnanimous than the old, which isn’t saying much. There are no pensions provided by a year-long gig drilling a well, there are no promises of any semblance of security once that well inevitably dries up. Even for those who own enough land to benefit from oil and gas royalties, they are not worth as much as they were five-ish years ago, before a lot of wells were tapped and energy prices dropped. But in the absence of other opportunities, there is always a temptation to lean on the old crutch of the region’s prodigious fossil fuel reserves, even though all the risks of dredging up those old dinosaur bones are better known now.

“I just can’t get over this feeling that we cannot keep digging out the inside of the Earth without some consequence,” says Vargo. “I’ve been here all my life. I understand where people are coming from when they say, ‘Oh, so now all of a sudden the mill is bad.’ You know, my family benefited from a job at the mill, it’s not like I don’t appreciate that. What I don’t appreciate is the fact that at least three people in my family have bladder cancer.”

It’s the classic Faustian bargain of selling off any natural resource; you can have the money for the community, but there’s a chance you might taint the water and air and land so much that you drive the whole community away. That is, those who can afford to leave.

“My family grew up in Dooker’s Hollow, which is right by the mill,” Vargo said. “I’ve seen pictures of the early days before they were able to control some of the emissions and there was no vegetation. The hillsides were bare. What does that tell you? I mean, if even weeds don’t grow. What does that tell you?”

When the Western Pennsylvania gas wells drilled at the end of the 19th century began to run dry (as they inevitably do), a lot of homes and industries quickly returned to coal, which was how we ended up with the “hell with the lid off” black skies for which Pittsburgh is infamous. Today, natural gas is held up by many self-proclaimed “climate realists” as a “bridge fuel” in the opposite direction: part of the transition away from coal toward fossil fuel-free sources of energy, and that’s its own heated debate. It’s impossible to silo even the supporters of natural gas ideologically.

It’s a necessity of political campaigns, particularly national ones, to deal in generalities. You are trying to appeal to the most people possible in the fewest words. But when you describe Pennsylvania, with its population of 12 million individuals, as a monolith, referring to something as complex as fracking as a simple issue of good and bad, you fail to understand how fossil fuel development may have formed a backdrop for life in Pennsylvania for centuries now, but never defined it.

Election Day is nearly upon us, and while it may bring change, it is unlikely to mark a truly meaningful moment in the fracking debate for states like Pennsylvania. So it is here, at the juncture of four towns with different and increasingly pressing needs, on the edge of a city that wants little to do with them, that the very lengthy saga of siphoning gas from the Earth will continue as a real, living thing.

Are 50 Cent, Ice Cube and young Black men enabling Trump’s re-election? Not exactly

To judge by the brief, but furious, flurry of recent news and social media reports about the 2020 presidential campaign, the fate of the election may very well be decided by a previously undetected groundswell of support for President Donald Trump by young Black men.

In the closing days of the campaign, a pair of hip-hop artists — 50 Cent and Ice Cube — drew widespread political attention by expressing support for Trump or, at least, a willingness to work with him in a second term.

Specifically, 50 Cent — born Curtis James Jackson III — endorsed Trump’s reelection in a Twitter post, saying he feared Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden would raise his taxes. “Yeah, I don’t want to be 20cent,” he wrote, noting that higher taxes on the rich “is a very, very, bad idea. I don’t like it.”

For his part, Ice Cube — born O’Shea Jackson — didn’t exactly endorse Trump. He acknowledged in interviews that he had talked with Trump campaign officials about their interest in his Contract with Black America. Ice Cube revealed his 13-point contract in July as a response to the public protests following the killing of George Floyd, describing it as “a blueprint to achieve racial economic justice” with proposals addressing financial, police, criminal justice and education reforms.

By entertaining a conversation with the campaign concerning his proposals, Ice Cube provided the opening for an adviser to the president’s re-election campaign to tweet that the rapper was on board with Team Trump, overstating the reality of the situation.

As a scholar who studies the intersection of race, public policy, elections, media and popular culture, I know more than enough about this subject to say authoritatively that 50 Cent and Ice Cube represent neither widespread Black political thought, nor a hidden pocket of pro-Trump activism among Black men.

Quite the contrary. They are outliers within the larger Black voting community — which includes young Black men — and they are unlikely to sway a considerable number of Black voters away from the Democratic candidate in the Nov. 3 election.

Little Trump support

In a study conducted earlier this summer with colleagues at American University’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies and School of Communications, we found that Trump is exceedingly unpopular among Black Americans.

For example, among all of the 1,215 Black American respondents surveyed during early July in six key swing states (Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida), only 7% said they intended to vote for Trump and 66% said they planned to vote for Biden.

Among just Black men, 10% said they preferred Trump, a figure that is only slightly higher than the overall support among Black Americans, but far smaller than the 60% of Black men who said they preferred Biden. Almost a third, 29%, of the Black men said they would vote for someone else or didn’t know whom they would support.

Our findings are consistent with historical Black voting patterns. Indeed, since the civil rights movement of the late 1960s, Republican presidential candidates have reaped no more than 13% of the African American vote.

According to figures collected and analyzed by the Pew Research Center, Trump collected 8% of the votes cast by Black Americans in 2016, which was slightly better than the 6% that went to GOP nominee Mitt Romney in 2012.

Of course, Black support for Democratic nominee Barack Obama was off the charts. He had a 91-point advantage in 2008 and an 87-point advantage in 2012.

More contemporary polling suggests that Trump’s support among Black Americans will fall in line with historical precedents. As a recent Gallup report noted, it’s “highly unlikely” that this pattern of voting by Black Americans will change during this election:

The recent Sept. 13-16 Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found Biden leading Trump among Black voters by 90% to 5%. Gallup’s aggregated data from polls conducted July 30-Aug. 12 and Aug. 31-Sept. 13 show Trump approval – a rough surrogate for likelihood to vote for Trump – at 11% among Black Americans, with disapproval at 87%.

And according to a new CBS-BET poll released on Oct. 25, only 8% of likely voters who are Black say they will vote for Trump. Yet, according to the CBS News report on the poll, “Half of Black seniors say they’re supporting Biden mainly because they like him, but that (support) drops to 28% among Black Biden voters under 30.”

Rather than a wholesale swing of voter support to Trump or the GOP following 50 Cent and Ice Cube, our research suggests many younger African Americans — with millenial-aged Black men leading the way — are so disillusioned by politics, they may opt out of participating in the election at all.

What’s the point?

Many Black Americans who are first-timers or relatively new to voting told us in focus group settings that they don’t see the point of choosing between the lesser of two evils.

Unlike their parents and grandparents who lived through racial segregation, the civil rights movement and a radical, racial transformation of American society, young Black people who have come of age in the past 30 years told us in focus groups that they have little to nothing that they can cite as examples of progress that can be attributed directly to politics — or voting.

To be sure, much of what they’ve experienced in their lifetimes has been the negative consequences of political stalemate in Washington, persistent economic inequality, widening health disparities afflicting their communities, and crushing student loan debt that makes building wealth with the purchase of a home and establishment of savings almost impossible. And perhaps most deadly and dramatic are the resurgent waves of racism and police violence directed at them and their loved ones.

Little wonder, therefore, that some Black men — especially those who desperately want to engage in politics to improve conditions for themselves and their communities — might seek alternatives to the status quo of politics. It is into that chasm of despair and disillusionment that the Trump campaign seems to be seeking a foothold by making it appear that young Black men are falling in formation with its campaign.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Or as the rappers like to say: Don’t believe the hype.

Kushner lambasted as “face of white privilege and nepotism” after mocking racial justice protester

Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner—who like his boss and father-in-law President Donald Trump is a product of his family’s fortune—was mercilessly lambasted on social media on Monday after he mocked Black Lives Matter activists and suggested that many Black people don’t want to be successful. 

Appearing on the Fox News morning show “Fox & Friends,” Kushner—some of whose $1.8 billion family fortune was amassed off the misfortune and suffering of Black people—and the hosts discussed economic issues facing the Black community. Racism was not mentioned. Kushner did touch upon the subject, albeit in a decidedly derisive fashion. After mentioning George Floyd, the unarmed Black man killed in May by Minneapolis police, Kushner accused people who expressed support for Black lives of “virtual signaling.”

“They’d go on Instagram and cry or they would put a slogan on their jersey or write something on a basketball court,” he said. “And quite frankly, that was doing more to polarize the country than it was to bring people forward.” 

While admitting that Black Americans overwhelmingly vote for Democrats, Kushner asserted that Trump’s “Platinum Plan”—which seeks to help Black people through capitalism-based solutions without acknowlegding the existence of racism as an obstacle to opportunity—and other policies “can help people break out of the problems that they’re complaining about, but he can’t help them be successful more than they want to be successful.”

The Democratic National Committee released a statement blasting Kushner for demeaning racial justice protests as mere “complaining.”

“This dismissive approach to the issues that Black voters care about is indicative of Trump’s callousness and disregard for the lives of Black people,” the statement said. 

Reaction to Kushner’s remarks came fast and fierce on social media:

Are Democrats open to expanding the Supreme Court? After Barrett, it looks that way

The last weekend of January 2017 was a radicalizing moment for many Americans. Less than 10 days after being sworn into office, Donald Trump issued an executive order carrying out his campaign promise to ban Muslims from entering the United States. As more than 100 people were detained in airports across the country, thousands came out in the frigid winter weather to protest such blatant bigotry. 

Days before that, millions around the world took to the streets during the Women’s March to symbolically push back against Trump’s inauguration. The fight continued six months later, as masses of Americans again came out to demonstrate against the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy of child separation at the U.S.-Mexico border. There have since been grassroots campaigns to lobby against the repeal of the Affordable Care Act at town halls in red districts, rallies against Trump’s nakedly partisan Supreme Court nominees in Washington, and a blue wave of Democratic midterm election victories across the country. To top off this moment of protest and resistance, this year has brought the type of nearly nonstop protests for Black liberation not seen since the civil rights movement of the 1960s. 

So Monday night’s shameful victory lap for newly-confirmed Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett at the White House — an open troll of liberals, progressives and especially feminists just a week ahead of a momentous presidential election — may finally be the moment that radicalizes the ostensible representatives of the people who have shown up in historic fashion over these last four years. 

Barrett, a conservative activist whose main experience is as a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, was confirmed by a Senate vote of 52-48 on Monday night, with no Democrats voting in favor. (One Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, voted no.) It’s the first time a Supreme Court nominee has been confirmed without a single vote from a major opposition party since 1869. Of course, that didn’t stop the Trump campaign from turning Barrett’s 11th-hour appearance at the White House into a literal ad for the president’s reelection campaign. 

Republicans have cunningly exploited our system to entrench their minority rule. One-third of the Supreme Court has now been nominated by a president who got three million fewer votes than his opponent and confirmed by a minority-controlled Senate that represents more cows than Americans. This is not sustainable — and there are signs that top Democrats finally understand that. 

Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, a Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on Monday that there needs to be a “wide-open conversation” on the ideological balance of the federal courts after Republicans confirmed 220 Trump-appointed judges in four years — the most since Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

 “Yes, the two Supreme Court cases that have been stolen, where these processes that are just wildly hypocritical have been used to jam through partisan nominees. But we’ve got to look at our federal courts as a whole,” Coons told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow following Barrett’s confirmation. 

Coons is a close ally of Joe Biden and one of the Senate’s staunchest institutionalists. If he’s willing to talk court expansion, it’s safe to assume he’s taking his marching orders from the Democrats’ presidential nominee. Coons suggested as much in a recent interview, telling Axios, “If we happen to be in the fact pattern where we have a President Biden, we’ll have to look at what the right steps are to rebalance our federal judiciary.”

Another Judiciary Committee Democrat, Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, called out Republicans for “shattering the norms and breaking the rules and breaking their word,” warning that “there will be consequences” in a floor speech on Monday. 

“Nothing less than everything is at stake. A shift in the balance of the court that will last for decades if we do not correct it — and believe me, there are appropriate measures that should be considered,” he said. 

Even Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the most conservative Democrat in the Senate — who conceded he might have supported Barrett for a lower court seat, appeared taken aback by Republicans’ aggressive push to ram her nomination through in record time. “Look, there’s not a judicial crisis,” Manchin said this week. “There’s still five conservatives to three progressives. What are they afraid of that they need insurance? The election and the Affordable Care Act.”

Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, pointed out on CNN that “the size of the Supreme Court is not set in the Constitution. It’s up to the Congress. It’s changed seven times over our history.” King, who still opposes filibuster reform, also noted that “the Republicans who are clutching their pearls now … in three states … over the last three or four years, the Republicans have packed their courts!”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts tweeted: “Every option needs to be on the table to restore the Supreme Court’s credibility and integrity. Every option to expand our democracy. Every option to ensure that all Americans have equal justice in our courts and representation in our institutions.”

For his part, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, facing his own re-election fight in Kentucky, was not content with simply gloating about his historic victory. He issued a threat to Democrats after Barrett’s confirmation. “Every high school student in America learns about Franklin Roosevelt’s unprincipled assault on judicial independence,” he told Politico, warning Democrats not to repeat it. 

The climate has shifted: Democrats can’t return to moderation and prudence now without risk of being seen as negligent. In the past, Democrats have defended their reluctance to hold Republicans accountable as an effort to protect our system, but the effect of their refusal to wield power has been the shattering of our system and the near-complete corruption of our government. This is no time for milquetoast half measures. There’s simply no future for the current vision of Democratic politics unless the party’s elected leaders are finally willing to take action to protect the nation from domestic enemies. 

The number of senators needed to impeach a Supreme Court justice is 67. That’s a pretty high bar. But should Democrats win control of the Senate next week, they could well decide to investigate the dark-money forces that promoted Barrett’s nomination, as well as that of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. 

“Should we expand the court? Well let’s take a look and see,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told MSNBC host Chris Hayes Monday night. “Not just the Supreme Courts, but the other courts,” she added. “In 1876 there were nine justices on the court. Our population has grown enormously since then.” Mapping Supreme Court justices to the federal circuit courts, in effect doubling the number of judges interpreting our laws at the highest level, is one of many ideas Democrats must explore. No option is too radical for this moment. 

Biden has pledged to review options put forth by “a bipartisan commission of scholars, constitutional scholars, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives” on “how to reform the court system because it’s getting out of whack” within his first six months in office. Should Biden win next Tuesday, there is no reason why those Americans who were radicalized by the first six months of Donald Trump’s presidency should let up during the first six months of Biden’s presidency.

Lindsey Graham, Thom Tillis pushed for controversial casino after donations from gambling mogul

Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who are both up for re-election this year, coordinated in an apparent pay-to-play scheme that rolled out for several years regarding the development of a controversial casino in a North Carolina tribal area.

The long-haul effort has involved pressure from a powerful ally to President Trump, as well as tens of thousands of dollars in contributions from industry lobbyists and the casino developer — a riverboat casino mogul who has paid out millions of dollars in fraud cases.

That casino broke ground this July, but still faces hurdles at the state and federal levels, as well as fierce local opposition. With both Republican senators facing unexpectedly tight races, the tangled decade-long dispute plays an obscure but contentious role in their campaigns, and might in the end prove reflective of Tillis’ and Graham’s changing relationships to the interests of their states.

The Catawba Native American Tribe reservation is located near Rock Hill, in the northern part of South Carolina, a state which does not allow casinos. The tribe, a low-income community, has pushed for years to develop a gaming sector. After meeting with defeat in South Carolina courts, in 2008 it announced plans to build a casino across the border in North Carolina, claiming historical rights to the land.

However, the Eastern Band of Cherokees, a North Carolina tribe, already operated two casinos in the region and pushed back hard against the proposal, which they viewed as an encroachment on their territory. This conflict has driven the story for more than a decade.

To helm the job, the Catawba chose Wallace Cheves, a Trump-backing riverboat casino developer and GOP megadonor who has been indicted for money laundering and forced to settle fraud suits for millions of dollars. Cheves has also been a Graham backer, maxing out to the senator’s short-lived 2016 presidential campaign while serving on national and South Carolina finance committees, campaign filings show.

Earlier in Graham’s Senate career, he had not been friendly to the Catawba’s efforts to gain a gambling foothold in the state, blocking them from opening a bingo hall in 2003 out of fears that it would expand the “Indian gaming problem.”

“I am not going to vote for any federal statute until there’s a consensus at home as to what is the best course to deal with the Indian gaming problem,” the freshman senator told South Carolina outlet The State in 2003. “And in fairness to the Catawbas, the state of South Carolina created this mess,” he added. “Things come back to bite you.”

Tillis had previously opposed the tribe’s proposals as well, joining a bipartisan group of more than 100 North Carolina lawmakers in a 2013 letter pushing back against the Catawba plan for a casino in the state. That year, the Catawba first applied for development rights to the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs; in the previous year, Tillis had accepted $4,000 from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, the Catawba’s rival in the dispute.

Around this time, Cheves set his sights on the two Republicans, coordinating a lobbying and donation campaign that appears to have turned both senators around within a few years.

After contributing to Graham’s 2016 failed presidential effort, Cheves backed his Senate re-election campaign, maxing out early to his campaign, in 2017, according to campaign filings. The actual election was three years away, but Cheves’ goals were more immediate.

In April of that year, Cheves’ company, Sky Boat, hired Ballard Partners, the lobbying firm founded by longtime Trump associate Brian Ballard, whose closeness to the president made him one of the most powerful lobbyists in D.C.

Records obtained by ProPublica show that between March and July of that year, Graham had four phone calls and two in-person meetings with Mick Mulvaney, a former South Carolina congressman and at the time the director of the Office of Management and Budget. One call occurred the day before Mulvaney met with Cheves and a Catawba lobbyist. Cheves maxed out to Graham’s campaign three months later.

The July meeting attracted press coverage, with the Daily Beast observing that it likely concerned federal approval for the North Carolina casino deal. However, the Catawba lobbyist did not report the meeting in his disclosure forms that year.

But even Ballard’s muscle could not push the deal through, and in spring 2018 the Department of the Interior challenged the Catawba’s application, forcing them to withdraw.

That summer, Graham called then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, government records show, and in September the Catawba filed a second application. The tribe’s lobbying firm contributed $1,500 to Graham’s campaign the next month, according to federal filings — two years ahead of the election.

By the following March, Graham had fully come around to Cheves’ point of view, introducing legislation to grant the Catawba rights to the casino. Graham’s press release announcing the bill made clear that the move was specifically intended to overrule the rejection that the Department of the Interior had handed down the year before.

“The Catawba Nation has been treated unfairly by the federal government, and our legislation rights that wrong,” Graham said in the statement. “I hope this legislation will be quickly passed through the Congress and signed into law so we can once and for all bring resolution to this issue.”

The release then added: “Four years ago, the Catawbas submitted an application to the Bureau of Indian Affairs seeking the ability to operate a casino. No action has been taken on the application.”

Tillis, in the meantime, had also benefited from the riverboat mogul’s largesse, taking in more than $82,000 from Sky Boat associates between 2015 and 2019. He cosponsored the bill despite bipartisan opposition from 38 out of 50 North Carolina state senators, led by the state Senate’s Republican president pro tem, who still supported the Eastern Band of Cherokees.

In a letter urging the U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee to kill the bill, the state lawmakers called the land grab an “unprecedented overreach” that would encroach on Cherokee territory and “deal an economic blow” to a region that depends on the gaming industry and the thousands of jobs it supports.

Despite Graham’s insistence that “nobody” objected to the Catawba opening a casino in North Carolina, in reality the proposal met with widespread popular opposition. The Cherokees objected, as did local commenters. Nearly a dozen counties and municipalities passed resolutions opposing the bill, and within one week nearly 1,200 people from the faith community had signed a full-page ad in the Shelby Star, a local North Carolina outlet, urging lawmakers to push back against “an industry that preys on the weakest sectors of society.”

Graham, however, pressed on. In May, he took advantage of a short break in a high-profile hearing with Attorney General Bill Barr about the Mueller report to hustle over to present his case to the Indian Affairs Committee. The bill, however, never made it to a vote.

Still, Graham saw a windfall: Ballard Partners employees gave $11,000 to his campaign that July, including $5,000 from Ballard himself, according to federal filings. In October, Cheves gave $5,000 to Graham’s leadership PAC.

Then, in December 2019, the Bureau of Indian Affairs released a new assessment about the land on which the proposed casino would be built, and in March of this year, the Department of the Interior finally approved the casino’s land trust, agreeing outright with Graham’s interpretation of the law and rendering any action in the Senate moot.

In thanking Graham, Tillis and Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., Catawba Nation Chief Bill Harris said that a right had been wronged. But the Eastern Band of Cherokees filed suit, claiming that Cheves had applied political pressure.

The casino, named Two Kings, broke ground in July, amid a resurgence of the coronavirus in the Carolinas. This spring an Obama-appointed federal judge denied the Eastern Band of Cherokees’ petition to block construction, but the Democrat-led U.S. House of Representatives is considering a bill to ratify the administration’s ruling and held a hearing on the issue last month.

Moe Davis, the North Carolina Democrat vying to fill Mark Meadows’ former seat in Congress, expressed his opposition to the House bill in a statement this Monday.

“If the deal was so shaky that the South Carolina [supreme] court denied it, why then, should North Carolina green light the same deal?” he wondered.

That question could also be asked of Burr, Tillis and Graham.

Salon reached out to Tillis, Graham, Sky Boat and Ballard Partners for comment and received no immediate response.

Omarosa explains dynamics between president and “repulsed” Melania Trump: “A very strange marriage”

Discussing yet another incident that saw first lady Melania Trump abruptly pull her hand away from her husband, Donald Trump, former White House adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman — who has known the couple for years — hinted that they have a difficult relationship before adding that the president’s wife often expresses disgust with him.

In an interview reported by the Daily Mail, Manigault Newman — who got her start with the president on “The Apprentice” — recalled interactions between the two and labeled their relationship, which has included the president’s dalliance with an adult film star, “very strange.”

“It’s a very strange marriage,” she explained. “I’m very cautious to comment on the dynamics of a marriage, because you never know what goes on behind closed doors. But I have known this couple since they were dating. They got married a year after ‘The Apprentice’ aired.”

Continuing in that vein, she added, “What I have observed in the last 17 years would make your head spin. Sometimes they like each other but sometimes she is repulsed by him,” which she tied to the latest denial of the president’s hand by the first lady which was followed by her wiping her hand on her skirt.

You can watch below via Twitter:

Kobach asks for Bannon wall funds to be “unfrozen” so he can get paid for work promoting it: report

On Tuesday, Law & Crime reported that former Kansas Secretary of State and longtime Trump ally Kris Kobach was rebuffed by federal prosecutors for trying to “inject” himself into the fraud case against former Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon.

“Kobach . . . is apparently looking to unfreeze We Build the Wall funds so he can get paid for the work he did,” reported Matt Naham. “Kobach has attempted to do this [by] challenging a restraining order that ‘intended to safeguard funds that will be subject to forfeiture following a conviction in this case[. . .].'”

“Prosecutors said Tuesday that the We Build the Wall-Kobach request to get involved in the criminal matter was legally baseless and would ‘seriously jeopardize’ an ongoing investigation that may also implicate other people and entities,” said the report. “‘We Build the Wall is not a defendant in this matter, and the fact that the [frozen] Accounts are in the name of We Build the Wall does not permit its intervening now,’ the memorandum said. ‘Additionally, Kobach is neither a defendant nor the owner of the accounts, and therefore in this context is nothing more than an unsecured creditor with no property interest in the accounts.'”

We Build the Wall was a supposed crowdfunding effort to privately construct a border wall for Trump. Bannon and his partner, veteran Brian Kolfage, have been charged with fraud, with prosecutors alleging that they diverted the proceeds from the crowdfunding effort for personal use.

Kobach was also involved in promoting the crowdfunding campaign, but has not been charged in the alleged criminal scheme.

Trump Organization charged taxpayers $3 to serve the president a glass of tap water: report

How much have President Donald Trump’s businesses been nickel-and-diming American taxpayers?

So much that his Mar-a-Lago resort sent a bill in which they asked to be reimbursed $3 for every glass of water they served during a bilateral summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The Washington Post reports that the $3-per-glass-of-water bill was part of a larger bill in which Mar-a-Lago asked the government to pay “$13,700 for guest rooms, $16,500 for food and wine and $6,000 for the roses and other floral arrangements” while hosting Abe.

And these revelations about payments to Mar-a-Lago are just the tip of the iceberg, as Post reporter David Fahrenthold has found that the government has paid at least $2.5 million to Trump properties since 2017.

“Trump’s company has charged taxpayers for hotel rooms, ballrooms, cottages, rental houses, golf carts, votive candles, floating candles, candelabras, furniture moving, resort fees, decorative palm trees, strip steak, chocolate cake, breakfast buffets, $88 bottles of wine and $1,000 worth of liquor for White House aides,” the Post writes. “In addition, Trump’s campaign and fundraising committee paid $5.6 million to his companies since his inauguration in January 2017.”

Read the whole report here.

NXIVM sex cult leader Keith Raniere sentenced to 120 years in prison

Keith Raniere, the convicted leader of the sex cult NXIVM, has been sentenced to 120 years in prison.

Raniere — who was convicted in June 2019 on the charges of sex trafficking, forced labor conspiracy and racketeering — was facing life in prison at his sentencing in Brooklyn, New York, on Tuesday.

Raniere has been accused of creating a secret female-only society within NXIVM called DOS where women were kept as slaves who were assigned to have sex with him. The women were branded with his initials, restricted to low-calorie diets and were forced to hand over nude photos of themselves as collateral for the purpose of instilling constant fear, should they disobey orders.

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At the sentencing, one victim said she was treated like a “piece of meat” and a “brainwashed sex slave.” Another woman said she was punished by Raniere when she broke her 400-calorie-a-day diet by eating pumpkin seeds. And another, who said she was raped by Raniere at just 15 years old, told the judge that she and her two sisters were impregnated by Raniere and then forced to get abortions.

Raniere’s attorneys were asking for 15 years, and ahead of the sentencing, had said Raniere unapologetically maintains his “complete innocence.” Prosecutors were seeking life in prison.

A total of 15 victims made statements at the Brooklyn courthouse, including India Oxenberg, the daughter of “Dynasty” actress Catherine Oxenberg, who says she was lured into the self-help organization when she was just 19 years old.

“You raped me,” Oxenberg said, facing Raniere in the courtroom. “You tried to destroy my family by turning me against my own mother, telling me she was a psychopath.”

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“I can still hear his voice in my head — it continues to be a daily struggle,” said a woman by the name of Camila, who says she was Raniere’s first sex slave. She first met Raniere at just 13 years old, when she and her two sisters were lured from their home in Mexico to join NXIVM. Sharing her horrifying account, she added, “He robbed me of my youth…He used my innocence to do whatever he wanted with me.”

The victim, now an adult, said Raniere raped her when she was a 15-year-old virgin. Raniere, now 60, would have been 45 years old at the time. The woman says the cult leader impregnated her and her two sisters, then forced them all to have abortions and gave her the sexually transmitted disease HPV. The woman said she was branded with Raniere’s initials, like cattle, and has traumatizing memories of Raniere taking naked photographs of her. She said Raniere was so critical of her weight, wanting her to weigh less than 100 pounds, that she developed an eating disorder.

Camila’s sister, named Daniela, alleges she was kept in a single room for two years as punishment by Raniere. “He showed me and my little sister no mercy. He deserves no mercy,” she told the judge.

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Leading up to Raniere’s sentencing, NXIVM has garnered mainstream attention, as Hollywood as catapulted the saga in both HBO’s nine-part docuseries, “The Vow,” and Starz’s true crime miniseries, “Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult,” which premiered earlier this month and revolves around Oxenberg.

Oxenberg appeared in-person at court, while other victims gave their statements via video. Sarah Edmondson and Mark Vicente, who appear in HBO’s “The Vow,” also made victim statements during the sentencing.

“Battlestar Galactica” actress Nicki Clyne, who is married to “Smallville” actress Allison Mack, one of the leaders of the NXIVM cult, was spotted at the courthouse to show support for Raniere, who despite disturbing allegations and charges, still has a number of supporters who were present at the sentencing.

On Friday, the judge rejected Raniere’s latest bid for a new trial, after Raniere accused the judge of corruption and demanded a new trial.

In the first interview since he was arrested, Raniere spoke to “Dateline” NBC News this past weekend, issuing a half-apology, saying, “Yes, I am innocent.” In the TV interview, he continued, “And although it is, this is a horrible tragedy with many, many people being hurt, I think the main thrust of this has been the oppression but really a different issue, which is hard for me to express. There is a horrible injustice here. And whether you think I’m the devil or not, the justice process has to be examined.”

Clare Bronfman, heir to the Seagrams liquor fortune and the primary financier of NXIVM, was sentenced to nearly seven years in prison earlier this month for conspiracy to conceal and harbor aliens for financial gain and fraudulent use of personal identification information. Bronfman, who was the first defendant sentenced in connection to the cult’s human-trafficking and sexual abuse case, was arrested in 2019, after pleading guilty to identity theft and immigration fraud.

Mack, who pleaded guilty to racketeering last year, has yet to be sentenced.

During Raniere’s sentencing, one of the victims said Mack recruited her into NXIVM, then sharing chilling details about her experience, telling the judge, “I was one of those f–k-toy sex slaves. That was me.”

With Barrett on the bench, Pennsylvania GOP pushes Supreme Court to rehear split mail-in ballot case

While Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the Supreme Court advanced to its all-but-certain conclusion last week, Pennsylvania Republicans pushed the high court to reconsider a case about voting by mail. Only days earlier, a split decision had dealt the attempt to restrict mail-in ballots with defeat. 

If the court agrees to rehear the case, Barrett, who refused to answer questions during her confirmation hearings about whether laws enshrining voter intimidation were against the Constitution and whether the president had the authority to unilaterally delay the election, would see her voting views tested out of the gate. 

Combined with the controversial timing and speed of her confirmation, such a move would undoubtedly raise questions about whether Republicans rushed to stack the court with favorable justices ahead of the election. In fact, some have already answered in the affirmative.

Earlier this month, Pennsylvania Republicans appealed a state court ruling declaring that mail-in ballots received within three days of Election Day should still be counted — even if they do not have a postmark. Barrett’s future colleagues on the high court blocked that Republican effort to curtail the vote in a split 4-4 decision, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the court’s three liberals.

The outcome set the table for the Trump appointee to cast the pivotal vote upon a potential second appeal, and experts quickly sounded the alarm that the ruling might be immediately challenged if Barrett assumed the bench.

The state’s “victory may only last a matter of days,” Vox reporter Ian Millhiser wrote at the time. “Indeed, the GOP may be able to raise this issue again after Barrett is confirmed, potentially securing a court order requiring states like Pennsylvania to toss out an unknown number of ballots that arrive after Election Day. If the election is close, that could be enough to change the result.”

Experts doubt the court will hear the case again for a few reasons, one of which is the proximity to Nov. 3. Moreover, Barrett’s recent confirmation in an election year — after Republicans refused to weigh Merrick Garland’s nomination by former President Barack Obama in 2016 — would be certain to invite questions about the politicization of the court.

“It’s possible that Republicans can renew their application if and when Judge Barrett is confirmed, in the hopes that she’d side with them,” Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, wrote after the initial ruling. “That said, that close to the election, it’s hard to imagine that all four of tonight’s dissenters would want to upset the status quo.”

Election law expert Rick Hasen pointed out the timing issues in a recent interview with CNN.

“People have been conducting themselves under the belief that as long as ballots are postmarked by Election Day, they’re going to be accepted,” Hasen said.

“Voters knew there was a dispute over what the timing was, and the Supreme Court declined to get involved,” he added. “So for the court to get involved now after voters relied on it would be really tough.”

The number of early votes has far surpassed past 2016 levels. Americans had cast more than 67 million ballots as of Tuesday, compared to just north of 47 million total early votes four years ago, according to national statistics compiled by the U.S. Elections Project at the University of Florida.

While a number of election law cases continue to percolate in the courts, the most paramount were decided earlier this year. Among them was Monday’s 5-3 Supreme Court decision striking down a Wisconsin court order to extend ballot receipt deadlines. Even if postmarks show they were mailed ahead of time, mail-in ballots in that state cannot count unless they are physically received on or before Election Day, the court ruled. 

Writing for the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, issued what was criticized as a “red alert” interpretation of the law. He argued that the “longer after Election Day any significant changes in vote totals take place, the greater the risk that the losing side will cry that the election has been stolen,” a calculation which seemingly prizes speed over accuracy ahead of the most contentious U.S. election in modern memory.

In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee, quoted the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as she argued the ruling meant Wisconsin voters must choose between “braving the polls with all the risk that entails and losing their right to vote.”

That decision came down Monday evening, minutes before the Senate confirmed Barrett. Kavanaugh’s argument appeared to align with Trump’s remarks about what he considered to be legitimate votes, including a tweet which was partially censored by Twitter on the same day for breaking the social media platform’s rules about election misinformation.

“Big problems and discrepancies with Mail In Ballots all over the USA,” Trump claimed. “Must have final total on November 3rd.”

In addition to the Pennsylvania ruling, other Republican legal efforts have been rejected, such as a previous suit to stop Nevada from mailing ballots to every registered voter in the state.

Some legal issues remain pending, however, including cases surrounding in-person voting. For instance, a Michigan lawsuit aims to block Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s order to ban the open-carry of firearms within 100 feet of polling places.

Observers also expect a number of ballot-counting lawsuits to be filed after the election, especially if the race is close in key swing states. Trump himself has said as much, telling a North Carolina crowd last month that he was “counting on the federal court system” to decide the contest on Election Day.

“We’re counting on the federal court system to make it so that we can actually have an evening where we know who wins, OK,” the president said at the time. “Not where the votes are going to be counted a week later, two weeks later.”

Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman hit with 15 new felony charges one day after testifying in related case

Weeks after Michigan prosectors hit the pair of right-wing provocateurs with charges in an alleged voter-intimidation robocall scheme, Jacob Wohl, 22, and Jack Burkman, 58, have been indicted by an Ohio grand jury on separate felony counts.

Local prosecutors charged Wohl and Burkman each with eight counts of felony telecommunications fraud and seven counts of felony bribery for allegedly sowing false fears about voting by mail in targeted minority communities in Ohio, plus multiple other states. Warrants were issued for the pair’s arrest, who face up to 18 years and six months in prison if convicted.

(Ohio defines “bribery” in this instance as “attempt by intimidation, coercion or other unlawful means to induce such delegate or elector to register or refrain from registering or to vote or refrain from voting at a primary, convention or election for a particular person, question or issue.”)

The duo, representing themselves, testified one day earlier before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) in a civil lawsuit brought on behalf of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation in relation to the same alleged scheme. The suit alleges that Wohl and Burkman violated the Ku Klux Klan Act with the calls. (Wohl and Burkman are both Jewish.)

Recordings featuring a woman’s voice falsely told recipients that mail-in ballots could be used to “collect outstanding debt,” “track down old warrants” and “track people for mandatory vaccines.” The recording cited in the lawsuit said the calls were made on behalf of Project 1599, Burkman’s group.

“Stay safe,” the calls concluded, “and beware of vote by mail.”

Burkman, who in August denied involvement, appeared to confess to placing the calls during the New York hearing. When the judge asked whether he had been “acting alone or with anyone else prepared that message and caused it to be sent,” Burkman replied in the affirmative.

“Oh, yes, your honor. Yes,” he said, adding: “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

And indeed, Wohl and Burkman were reported to have conspired with a notorious election trickster just this year: leaking grand jury information in the trial of longtime Trump associate GOP operative Roger Stone, whose prison sentence was commuted by President Trump in July.

Cuyahoga County prosecutors allege that 8,100 calls were placed to phone numbers located in Cleveland and East Cleveland, more than 3,400 of which were answered by a live person or voicemail.

“The right to vote is the most fundamental component of our nation’s democracy,” Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley said in a statement. “These individuals clearly infringed upon that right in a blatant attempt to suppress votes and undermine the integrity of this election. These actions will not be tolerated. Anyone who interferes with others’ right to vote must be held accountable.”

In a statement announcing the charges in Michigan — where the pair went free after pleading not guilty and posting $100,000 bail — state Attorney General Dana Nessel described similar robocalls targeting areas with “significant minority populations” in the state. Nessel had indicated that investigations were ongoing in Ohio and New York, as well as in Pennsylvania and Illinois. 

Wohl and Burkman achieved internet infamy through a series of hapless attempts to tag their political enemies with absurd allegations of sexual impropriety, in which they coerced, paid or otherwise convinced real people to make the false accusations. An ill-devised but elaborate plot against former special counsel Robert Mueller collapsed in spectacular fashion, possibly leading the FBI to open an investigation into a fake intelligence company Wohl created for the purpose.

Shortly after his Monday testimony before the SDNY, Wohl had to attend a hearing in California Superior court, where he was charged last year for felony securities fraud. The hearing was subsequently pushed to mid-November, according to court records.

Salon reported in May that the attorney general of Arizona was coordinating with California officials in pursuit of tens of thousands of dollars in fines and court fees assessed to Wohl in a separate securities fraud case.

Wohl and Burkman did not immediately respond to Salon’s requests for comment. 

Listen to a recording of the robocall here.

Trump satirist Sarah Cooper’s new Netflix special is a joyous acknowledgement that we’re not OK

No comedian with a soul would say that the last five years of Donald Trump has been good to them. (Yes, it’s been five! The Golden Escalator of Doom happened in 2015!) Nonetheless, and against all odds and reality itself, Trump’s reign of terror has yielded an excellent silver lining in Sarah Cooper’s emergence and ascent.

As the pandemic dropped on us like a hammer, Cooper’s expressive TikTok lip-syncs to Trump’s dumbest public ramblings made her a viral sensation. Now her Netflix special “Sarah Cooper: Everything’s Fine” seeks to release some of the pressure we’re collectively feeling with less than a week to go until Election Day.

Happily for everyone involved and the audience, it works. This is in no small part due to Cooper knowing her audience’s expectations and limitations.

At a scant 49 minutes Cooper and director Natasha Lyonne (“Russian Doll”) combine sketch comedy with all-star celebrity power and funnel all of it through the conceit of a sunny morning TV program in which the host, Cooper, is slowly being driven mad by having to smile her way through a slowly moving apocalypse.  

The show within a show is relentlessly optimistic, light, and full of commercials targeting an audience that despite all the misery unfolding around it only wants to be happy. The special, meanwhile, functions as a coming out party for Cooper and an all-star pre-election event to shame Trumpworld’s many devils with laughter. That makes “Everything’s Fine” less of a relief or an escape than it is an acknowledgment that no, you’re not dreaming this reality, it’s really happening and it’s crazy-making.

Jon Hamm gets a lot of mileage with his loose impersonation of My Pillow founder Mike Lindell, but probably not as much as executive producer Maya Rudolph’s turn as a weathercaster attempting to calmly report the violent day-to-day changes between hellscape heat and sub-zero conditions. Fred Armisen, another familiar face, functions as Cooper’s morning show producer. He hides under progressively heavier layers of COVID-resistant personal protective equipment as the hour passes. Jane Lynch drops by for a baking segment that evolves into a Ken Burns-tinged historical exploration of 2020’s most recognizable and reviled female archetype.

Cooper’s charisma and her outstanding ability to convey Trump’s obscene ineptitude through physical performance ensure that these gags land. However, and smartly, Lyonne and producers don’t rely too heavily on the impersonation aspect Cooper’s brand with which most of us are familiar. There’s a share of that, but mainly “Everything’s Fine” shows us Cooper’s natural talent.

But the special truly excels in using the morning show situation to depict what professional women like Sarah Cooper contend with in the real world and more to the point, in the type of workplace environment we’re watching her endure. In this respect “Everything’s Fine” isn’t solely a send-up of 2020’s woes but a sharp side-eye at all of the social events that brought us to this current point in time.

Some of this is achieved through celebrity stunt casting, such as when Cooper and her producers find a way to collide the expanding threat posed by artificial intelligence with the #MeToo movement in a character played by Ben Stiller in one segment. Aubrey Plaza pops up as a QVC host who may or may not be the mythological “Q” conspiracy theorists worship.

But wait – there’s more. We also get appearances by Megan Thee Stallion, Marisa Tomei and Winona Ryder! And the voice of Whoopi Goldberg! The caliber of this parade demonstrates how beloved Cooper is among the comedy and Hollywood powerhouses who can, you know, get this woman her own show. (Which is in development, by the way, at CBS.)

But the bits that exceed those in potency take Sarah Cooper, daytime host through the same irritating workplace paces that Sarah Cooper, former Google employee surely faced at her previous work place. In one segment she’s chastised for seeming angry and aggressive which she counters by shrinking herself behind her smile.

This results in her being penalized for confusing people who don’t realize she’s Black. “I think it might be a little confusing because, you know, I’m named Sarah,” she says, “and I feel like when my parents named me Sarah, a white lady just moved into my body and gentrified my entire personality!”

If real Sarah feels that way, that explains how and why she’s so effective at claiming the personalities of people who are nothing like her – Trump, Kellyanne Conway and Ivanka being a few – and beaming them back to us so convincingly and with an overt sense of ridicule.

The piece de resistance of “Everything’s Fine” places Cooper inside that fateful “Access Hollywood” bus ride we all listened to in October 2016, only in 2020 her Trump is joined by a version of Billy Bush as played by Helen Mirren. It’s a masterful, multilayered bend with a Black woman casting herself as the nation’s most famous sexist bigot playing opposite a refined British thespian goofing around as a C-lister entertainment magazine host.

Mirren and Cooper seems positively intoxicated with glee throughout a scene that ends with the chef’s kiss of “Queer Eye” star Jonathan Van Ness stepping into the role of Arianne Zucker, the woman Trump and Bush repellently objectify in that audio snippet. The “Access Hollywood” tape didn’t prevent Trump from winning the presidency, but in their recreation the actors invite us to reclaim the preposterous dark humor beneath the horror of that tape.

“Everything’s Fine” alludes to a meme that has come to define the Trump’s presidency: that of a smiling, saucer-eyed dog sipping from a mug as the house he’s sitting in burns down around him. “This is fine. I’m okay with the events that are unfolding currently,” he says, holding to his claim until his arm catches fire and his skin melts off.

Cooper’s special is a live-action rendering of this feeling, delivered to us precisely when many of us see an exit through all the smoke and are scared to lurch toward it nevertheless. And while it won’t put out the fire it at least acknowledges that we’re not OK – and it’s perfectly fine to spend an hour laughing at the madness of it all.

“Sarah Cooper: Everything’s Fine” is currently streaming on Netflix.