“Hypocrisy is rank”: Catholic newspaper urges Senate to “reject” Amy Coney Barrett in scathing op-ed

Republican supporters of Judge Amy Coney Barrett have been citing her Catholicism as one of the reasons why the U.S. Senate should confirm her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court as soon as possible. But Barrett is by no means universally loved among Catholics. And the National Catholic Reporter has slammed Barrett this week in a blistering staff editorial, asking the U.S. Senate to “reject” her nomination.

In the editorial, the Reporter’s editorial board argues, “We believed it was wrong for the Senate to consider this nomination in the first place given the precedent set four years ago when Justice Antonin Scalia died in February (2016), nine months before the election. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to even hold hearings on the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland, saying repeatedly that the American people should have a say in the matter. This year, when the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg created a vacancy less than nine weeks before Election Day, McConnell has seen fit to ram through the nomination.”

The editorial complains that “hypocrisy is rank” with the nomination and that it is impossible to see how “rushing this nomination will be good for our democracy.”

Although the National Catholic Reporter says that Barrett isn’t responsible for McConnell’s actions, she has let herself be used as a “vehicle for his agenda and that of President Donald Trump.”

The Reporter stresses, “She could have phoned the White House and asked not to be considered for the nomination. Barrett is only 48 years old, and there will be other vacancies.”

The publication also takes Barrett to task for being so evasive when answering questions from Sen. Amy Klobuchar and others during her confirmation hearings.

“It is her bad faith in discussing the law that warrants disqualifying her,” the editorial stresses. “About the evils of climate change, access to health care and voter intimidation, Americans deserve better than a relativist dressed in originalist drag.”

In Wayne Wang’s poignant “Coming Home Again,” a son cleaves to his dying mother by cooking galbi

Back in 1982, Wayne Wang‘s “Chan Is Missing” became a landmark independent film. Made for $20,000, it was the first Asian-American feature film that received a theatrical release for a broad American market. Wang continued to make indie films for the next decade, with the Chinese-American slice-of-life films, “Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart” and “Eat a Bowl of Tea.” But he also ventured into offbeat fare, with the noirs, “Slam Dance” and “Life Is Cheap . . . But Toilet Paper Is Expensive.” In 1993, he had his commercial success, directing the big-screen adaptation of Amy Tan’s “The Joy Luck Club.” He followed this success with two films scripted by Paul Auster, “Smoke” and “Blue in the Face,” and made a pair of Hollywood films, “Maid in Manhattan” and “Last Holiday,” but returning to smaller dramas, including, “The Princess of Nebraska,” and “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,” among others.

Wang tends to favor literary adaptations, and his latest film, the sensitive, heartfelt drama, “Coming Home Again,” is based on a New Yorker essay by Chang-rae Lee. The film has Chang-rae (Justin Chon) caring for his cancer-stricken mother (Jackie Chung), and preparing her favorite food for New Year’s Eve. The film depicts love and loss as Chang-rae reflects back on his interactions with his mother. These include his frustration when three women from church visit, to discussions of immigration and assimilation when Chang-rae asks his mother why she left Korea for America, or she asks him to help her with a bank statement. He even recalls her teaching him lessons about food and how to treat a girlfriend. What emerges is these episodes is Chang-rae’s search for a sense of purpose as he comes to understanding how his parents gave him the opportunity for a good life. However, he becomes more despondent given his mother’s worsening condition.

Wang creates emotion as the drama comes to a head during the dinner Chang-rae prepared. The filmmaker spoke to Salon about “Coming Home Again” as well as his career as a whole in a recent interview.

What made you need to make a film from Chang-rae Lee’s essay? How did you identify with his conflicted emotions?

I have a conflicted relationship with my parents. I’m closer to my mother, emotionally, but my mother is a very — how should I say it? — a very proper kind of mother. Even when she was quite old, and I would visit her, she would shake hands with me. Later on, there was not a whole lot to say, other than, “What do you like to eat?” We’d sit in the sun in a courtyard and not say anything for an hour and the silence was so communicative; there was love in that silence. She passed away six or seven years ago from Parkinson’s. And it was difficult to watch her get thinner and slowly fade away.

This producer from the Center for Asian American Media, they had money to make a VR film, and so we got a camera and tested it, but I couldn’t make heads or tails on how to make a VR film. I couldn’t make a narrative [in that format]. Maybe I could do a short. So the producer said, “Maybe we should do something with my grandmother’s apartment. We could make a movie there before we sell it.” The story [“Coming Home Again”] came out in 1995, but I didn’t read it until the 2000s. I remembered it was an emotional story of Chang-rae taking care of his mother and cooking the meal his mother cooked for the family for New Year’s Eve.

“Coming Home Again” is very much a food movie, as Chang-rae tries to recreate his mother’s recipe for galbi. What can you say about the importance of food and family, which seems to be so essential to every culture (and is also a feature in many of your films)?

I’m a glutton. I love to eat. Ever since I was a little kid. I used to be really fat when I was young. I ate anything, anywhere — on the street, in a restaurant. I got lucky when I went to school in Berkeley and got to know Alice Waters. In those days, I was lucky to understand organic food and slow cooking. I really appreciated food.

When we made this film, I had already known Corey Lee, who was a 3-star Michelin chef, who came from the French Laundry and opened Benu. As he got more confident in himself, he took on a more Asian quality. I wanted to spend time showing the process of cooking the food in the film. So, I asked him to come in as a chef consultant. He said it was a Chinese kitchen, so he spent two weeks redoing the kitchen. Then we designed the menu, which was a real home-cooking menu — something the mother always cooks, not something brought in from a restaurant. Galbi, the main dish, is so metaphorical —you cut the rib so the meat stays on the bone. There’s a Chinese saying, the bone and meat stay together forever, which is a metaphor for mother/child.

“Coming Home Again” reminded me of your earlier film, “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,” which depicted a father/daughter relationship. Can you talk about the appeal of making these very poignant, very affecting, modest family dramas?

I made all different kinds of films because I get bored easily. Generally, it’s in my blood. When I was growing up, I watched Chinese family films — they were like soap operas, but I enjoyed them. When I went to film school, I knew I was different. When I went to classes and saw [Yasujiro] Ozu films, they were all about the family sitting around the dinner table, eating food, and filial piety and how kids deal with it. The transience of life too — appreciating the short time you have. When it’s gone, it’s gone. Those are the elements in my blood. They are even the Hollywood films I did. Not “Slam Dance,” though. I was a crazy, drug-taking artistic filmmaker then! [Laughs] But “Slam Dance” was still about family! Tom Hulce was dealing with his family, but he met up with wrong people (laughs).

More often than not, you have adapted literary works for your films. What observations do you have about collaborating with writers and using novels, stories, or in this case, an essay, as the basis for a film?

I love books, and I love working them into scripts. Each one is different. Amy Tan, Paul Auster, Mona Simpson (“Anywhere But Here”). Auster is so specific about every word in the script. There was a scene in “Smoke” of two black drug dealers, and one guy he couldn’t take “sh*t” and “f*ck” out of his dialogue. Paul told him, “I didn’t write those words,” and the guy put them back in. Every author you work with is different but, I enjoy working with them. With “Coming Home Again,” Chang-rae is under stress. His middle-class parents have so many expectations of him. They send their kids to Exeter, and there are the frustrations of dealing with what they expect.

Right now, I’m reading Ocean Vuong’s “On Earth, We’re Briefly Gorgeous” I love what he writes, and I am so happy he is a Vietnamese writer who is so poetic and passionate about what he writes.

You have long been an independent filmmaker, but you have made a few Hollywood films, from “The Joy Luck Club” to “Last Holiday” and “Maid in Manhattan.” Can you discuss your experiences and why you shifted back to independent filmmaking?

I went into studio films because I grew up with big Hollywood films, and I have tremendous respect for them. I wanted to see if I could do it and learn something from them. I gave myself room to do something more independent. I loved and hated the whole process. Working on “Maid in Manhattan,” and I could tell the producer I need a pink elephant, and it would arrive in five minutes, but I hated having to walk past two miles of trailers to get to the set. I don’t regret the studio films. Even “Last Holiday.” I sat in a screening room at Paramount and people went crazy for it, but then the studio dumped it.

Producers tell me that at the end of a scene, the characters aren’t doing anything. They wanted to cut those scenes. I take my time to let characters and scenes breathe. In my own life, my doctor says, “You don’t breathe properly.”

I appreciate that you have made films in many genres, such as film noir (“Slam Dance” “Life Is Cheap . . .”) as well as comedy (“Last Holiday,”). But you seem to focus mainly on character studies. What accounts for this trend in your work?

I think that’s in my blood. [Laughs]. I’m a voyeur to begin with. Even as a child, I loved studying people — my brother my family. I think it comes from that. The thing I missed the most about big Hollywood films is there’s no depth in the characters. I really try to dig into that. It’s the most important thing to me. Good actors take a character on the page that doesn’t have depth and complexity and they will bring it out. Sometimes too much!

I appreciate that “Coming Home Again” is a Korean-American story. And I like that you’ve worked on non-Asian stories, but you are best known for your Chinese dramas, and have long given visibility to the Asian American community. What are your thoughts about telling Asian and Asian American stories?

I guess there’s an obligation. There are not that many Asian American directors to tell Asian American stories. After I left the studio industry, I wanted to go back and keep making Asian American films, whether they are Chinese, Korean, etc. and tell simple stories about family and food. That’s what I’ve done.

My early work — “Chan Is Missing,” “Dim Sum,” “Eat a Bowl of Tea,” were those kinds of films. Then I got “The Joy Luck Club,” the first crossover film. I knew I would be boxed in, so that’s why I did “Smoke” and “Blue in the Face.” After “Last Holiday,” I wanted to come back to this and contribute to this genre more. But watching the new things being done, maybe there are things I want to do. I’m hooked on “Ozark,” and I want to do something maybe non-Asian and interesting. “Slam Dance” was interesting. I like eccentric characters.

“Coming Home Again” is very much about memory, and you use flashbacks to reveal the characters. I like the film’s ideas about legacy. What do you want your legacy as a filmmaker to be?

[Laughs]. That’s for you to write about. I don’t know. I think the memory is that I made a lot of different kinds of film, but they were character-driven, and very authentic, always. I remember someone wrote that Wayne Wang doesn’t exist because I make different genres. I like that because I am more than one kind of film director.

Chang-rae is looking for a sense of purpose. What can you say has been your sense of purpose?

For me, I have recently spent some time in Japan. I’ve been there a few times over cherry blossom season, and one philosophy they live by is “Mono no aware,” or the transience of life. Cherry blossoms come once a year and stays less than a week and then they go away you have to accept it. In this film, Chang-rae is filled with frustrations about his mother, but he has to accept that life is transient. He gave it all to be a good son and do it the best way he can. Those memories will all be there.

“Coming Home Again” is in select theaters and virtual cinemas beginning Friday, Oct. 23.

“Disturbingly Kafkaesque”: Judge rips Betsy DeVos for denying 94% of student debt forgiveness claims

Arguing that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos had undermined the agreement, a federal judge on Tuesday denied approval for a class action settlement over the Trump administration’s handling of a student debt forgiveness program.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup said DeVos had subverted the agreement by rejecting tens of thousands of applications from defrauded students without adequate explanation, Politico first reported.

Alsup, a Bill Clinton appointee, threatened to block DeVos from denying any additional applications, calling the denial notices “potentially unlawful” and the process faced by borrowers “disturbingly Kafkaesque.”

The May settlement required DeVos to speed up the processing of about 160,000 backlogged applications, some of which had been pending for years. DeVos has thus far denied 94% of applications, approving just 4,400 claims while denying 74,000 others, according to Alsup. The department told borrowers they could appeal the decision but did not say why it had denied the applications, the judge said.

“All may not be entitled to relief, but all are entitled to a comprehensible answer,” Alsup wrote. “For 18 months, the secretary refused, largely on the grounds that such answers required backbreaking effort and, thus, substantial time. Now, the secretary has begun issuing decisions at breakneck speed. But most are a perfunctory ‘insufficient evidence’ — without explanation.”

Alsup also said he would consider requiring DeVos to be deposed in a probe of the administration’s handling of the claims and authorized depositions for up to five Education Department officials.

The judge granted preliminary approval for the settlement in May, requiring the department to process the backlogged claims within 18 months. As the department began processing the applications, hundreds of students objected to the settlement. About 650 people attended a virtual hearing to raise concerns about the settlement earlier this month.

“Students came together to speak up for themselves and show the court the massive scope of the trauma they have endured at the hands of the Department of Education, and the courts are listening,” Eileen Connor, the legal director at Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending, which represents the students, told Politico. “We look forward to the next stage of litigation in which we depose Department of Education officials to explain their actions under oath.”

Alsup noted in his ruling that the Obama administration had approved more than 99% of “borrower defense” claims, which allow students to seek debt relief if they were defrauded by for-profit colleges. Under DeVos, the department has rejected 89.9% of applications.

The Department of Education said it is “studying the ruling.”

“It’s important to understand that no claim is ‘denied.’ Many are simply ineligible, because the claimant wasn’t enrolled in an eligible program at an eligible date,” department spokeswoman Angela Morabito told The Hill. “Others claims don’t demonstrate financial harm. Just because a claim was filed does not make it valid and eligible for taxpayer-funded relief. The department is following the publicly available process for resolving claims as quickly as possible, so those students who are eligible and were harmed get the relief they deserve.”

DeVos revised rules related to the borrower defense program in 2019, prompting some Republicans to join Democrats to pass a bill blocking the policy.

“These for-profit colleges are the coronavirus of higher education,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said at the time, adding that DeVos’ rules made it “extremely difficult, if not impossible, for students to find relief.”

But President Donald Trump vetoed the bill and allowed DeVos to implement the new rules in July.

Rep. Susie Lee, D-Nev., the lead sponsor of the bill, said Trump’s veto “sent a message to the American people that he cares more about enriching predatory schools than protecting defrauded students and veterans.”

DeVos has repeatedly run afoul of the courts in the borrower defense litigation. Last year, a judge held the education secretary in contempt for violating a court order by trying to collect debt payments from thousands of students defrauded by for-profit colleges.

“At best, it is gross negligence,” U.S. Magistrate Jude Sallie Kim said at the time. “At worst, it’s an intentional flouting of my order.”

Arne Duncan, who served as the secretary of education under former President Barack Obama, said DeVos “consistently chooses the powerful over the vulnerable.”

“Luckily, she is not very good at it,” he added, “and very consistently loses in court.”

Mitch McConnell admits he’s blocking coronavirus bill — will media finally stop blaming Democrats?

For months, Congress has failed to pass a coronavirus relief bill, despite the widespread economic devastation and the fact that, under Donald Trump’s malicious mismanagement, the pandemic has spiraled out of control, infecting 8.25 million people and killing more than 220,000, as of Wednesday morning.

The mainstream media has firmly decided who they blame for the lack of a bill: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats who control the lower house of Congress. Blaming Democrats has been the dominant press narrative, even though it’s been obvious from the get-go that Republicans don’t want more relief legislation.

Now we have concrete proof that Republicans are to blame: Late Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “has warned the White House not to strike an agreement,” on the grounds that any new deal struck with Pelosi and the Democrats and “could disrupt the Senate’s plans to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court next week.”

To anyone unburdened by the delusion that “balance” is a more important journalistic principle than truth, it was always obvious that Republicans were the reason no coronavirus bill was getting passed. For one thing, House Democrats already passed a robust relief bill in May, which Senate Republicans have basically ignored while avoiding any substantive efforts at negotiating a bill that can pass both houses. For another thing, there are obvious ideological differences between Democrats, where even the party’s “moderate” wing supports increased social spending, and Republicans, whose only real goal is moving as much wealth as possible from the hands of working people to the rich.

Even setting common sense aside, there’s plenty of concrete evidence that McConnell had no intention of passing a bill to stimulate the economy and control the pandemic. When he was asked in July if such a bill was going to pass, he laughed contemptuously. Facing down an August deadline when unemployment benefits from previous coronavirus relief legislation were set to expire, McConnell chose to adjourn the Senate instead of working on a replacement bill. When Trump started getting sweaty and worried this month, believing he needed such a bill to have a chance at re-election, McConnell torpedoed the idea yet again.

McConnell’s behavior is not mysterious. For one thing, he’s an ideologue who actively opposes any government spending that might reduce the vast wealth inequalities that plague our nation. Indeed, McConnell’s main goal these days is installing Barrett on the Supreme Court — where she will arguably be the most reliably right-wing vote, or second only to Justice Clarence Thomas — in time for her to strike down the Affordable Care Act. Moreover, Trump’s erratic behavior — angrily rejecting a bill and then desperately tweeting his longing for one hours later — strongly suggests that the president is torn between his hopes that such a bill can save his fading hopes of re-election and pressure from Republican senators not to pass one.

Nor does McConnell seem worried about the electoral consequences to Republicans of a collapsing economy. For one thing, he likely thinks that Trump will lose in November, and that he can do nothing to save the president from his downward spiral. So he’s setting up a potential Joe Biden presidency to fail by refusing economic relief now. For another thing, McConnell’s multi-year strategy of capturing the courts, voter suppression and gerrymandering is paying off. He has good reason to believe that Republican control of government will not be seriously imperiled by democratic accountability, even if Democrats win both the Senate and the White House this time around.

Despite all this, mainstream media has been desperate to blame the Democrats for a lack of a bill. As Media Matters has documented, CNN’s coverage has been tilted for months toward suggestions that Democrats are the ones blocking new relief legislation. Shows like “Meet the Press” on NBC and “This Week” on ABC have uncritically advanced the narrative that Democrats are deliberately tanking the relief bill to damage Trump, even though Democrats are the ones who are actively negotiating with the White House while Senate Republicans twiddle their thumbs.

Things came to a head last week when Pelosi lashed out at CNN’s Wolf Blitzer after Blitzer said that Americans were “waiting in food lines” and proceeded to blame Pelosi, rather than Republicans, for the lack of a bill.

Pelosi responded by saying, “I don’t know if you’re always an apologist — and many of your colleagues — for the Republican position” and followed up by telling Blitzer, “You really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

That response set off a predictable round of sexist finger-wagging for Pelosi’s supposedly out-of-control behavior — the male-dominated media really hates it when women talk back — but whoops, it turns out she was right. Blitzer was carrying water for sleazy Republicans who want to do nothing, while pretending the entire situation is Democrats’ fault. McConnell is eagerly monkey-wrenching any effort to pass a new bill, and doing so while actively trying to seat a Supreme Court justice he hopes will destroy the Affordable Care Act, further plunging the American economy into chaos and causing the pandemic to get even worse.

Why on earth is the media so devoted to blaming Democrats, when Republicans are clearly the problem here? Part of it, as the response to the Blitzer/Pelosi exchange shows, is sexism. Pelosi is the lone female leader in Capitol Hill, and despite some #MeToo purges, there are still a lot of sexist men in control of the media and eager to find excuses to pin the blame for any and all problems on women.

But mostly, the issue is the plain old “both sides” fallacy, the one that leads reporters to believe that in the interest of “balance” they must pretend that Democrats are just as bad as Republicans, even if the facts show the opposite.

Over the past year, Republicans have been especially repulsive, covering for Trump’s crimes that led to his impeachment and making excuses for his refusal to deal with a pandemic that’s laying waste to the country. Far too many journalists are bending over backward to find some terrible thing they can say about Democrats in the name of “balance,” and they’ve landed on these empty accusations about a stimulus bill.

Moreover, deliberately destroying the economy in order to undermine a sitting president of the opposition party is the sort of thing Republicans would do — and indeed have done. Under the false but stalwart media belief that “both sides” are equally bad, therefore, the assumption has reigned that Democrats are doing the same that, even though there’s no real evidence for that. On the contrary, it’s much likelier story that McConnell knows Biden is likely to be president soon, so he’s pre-emptively undermining the economy to damage his administration in advance.

The reveal that it was Republicans who were the bad guys all along is unlikely to change the media’s insistence on covering national politics through a “both sides” lens. The fear of getting angry tweets from conservatives about “bias” will apparently never stop mattering more than the actual truth. But it’s just possible this report will make it a little harder for the Wolf Blitzers of the world to wax sentimental about the millions of Americans thrust into poverty while pretending that this is somehow Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats’ fault.

Trump attacks his Democratic rival as “Beijing Biden.” He owns a mysterious bank account in China

President Donald Trump, who has frequently attacked his Democratic challenger Joe Biden as “Beijing Biden,” owns a bank account in China, where he has chased development deals for years — a pursuit which appears to have followed him into the White House.

The account’s existence was first revealed Tuesday as part of the New York Times’ investigative series on Trump’s tax returns, which he has refused to share with the American public. Controlled by a company called Trump International Hotels Management, the account has reportedly paid nearly $200,000 in local taxes to the nation’s chief geopolitical foe between 2013 and 2015.

The Times previously reported that Trump had paid the U.S. only $750 in federal income tax in 2016 and 2017 when he became president — and none at all in 10 of the 15 previous years.

China is one of only three foreign countries — along with the U.K. and Ireland — where the president holds a bank account, per The Times. Because the accounts are listed under corporate names, they do not appear in Trump’s federal financial disclosures. The Times could not identify the banks associated with the accounts.

The British and Irish accounts are held by the Trump companies running the president’s golf courses in Scotland and Ireland, which report millions of dollars in revenue, according to The Times. By contrast, Trump International Hotels Management reported earning just a few thousand dollars from China.

Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, told The Times that the company “opened an account with a Chinese bank having offices in the United States in order to pay the local taxes” for business dealings in the country. The company opened the account after creating an office in China “to explore the potential for hotel deals in Asia,” he said, adding that the company was inactive.

“Though the bank account remains open, it has never been used for any other purpose,” he claimed.

However, Garten would not tell The Times the name of the bank.

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China — which is not only China’s largest bank but also the largest bank in the world — has leased a full floor in Trump Tower in New York for years, a fact Trump made clear when he announced his candidacy in June 2015.

“I love China. The biggest bank in the world is from China. You know where their United States headquarters is located? In this building — in Trump Tower. I love China,” Trump said at the time. “People say, ‘Oh, you don’t like China?’ No,” he repeated, “I love them.”

This year, however, Trump has sought to associate Biden with China in a negative light. The president has boasted about false gains from his trade war and repeated xenophobic slurs about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic while praising Chinese premiere Xi Jinping’s own response to the crisis. He has called Biden “China’s puppet” and promoted baseless claims about his son’s business dealings with the country, which have found foothold among a number of campaign surrogates.

“I’ll bet you Hunter is a middle-man. He’s like a vacuum cleaner. He follows his father around collecting money,” Trump recently said. “What a disgrace. It’s a crime family.”

Amid the Ukraine scandal last year, Trump publicly called on China to investigate the Bidens.

Biden’s own financial disclosures and tax returns, which have been publicly released by the former vice president, show no financial or business relationships with China. Trump’s known efforts to land business in the country date back decades. Opposition research compiled in 2016 by former British spy Christopher Steele indicated that the Trumps were far more concerned about disclosing their dealings with China than their efforts in Russia.

Per the Steele dossier, the campaign was “relatively relaxed” about ties to Russia, “because it deflected media and the Democrats’ attention away from Trump’s business dealings in China and other emerging markets. Unlike in Russia, these were substantial and involved the payment of large bribes and kickbacks which, were they to become public, would be potentially very damaging to their campaign.”

A source “close to Trump and [his former campaign manager Paul] Manafort” said the “Republican campaign team happy to have Russia as media bogeyman to mask more extensive corrupt business ties to China and other emerging countries,” according to the dossier.

The Times reported that Trump’s known efforts in China date back to 2006 trademark applications filed in Hong Kong and the mainland. Business dealings escalated from 2008 to 2012, and then beyond. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, scored a number of Chinese trademarks for her personal brand after she joined the administration in 2017.

Because a company that handles most of those efforts also manages several other overseas Trump-branded properties, it is impossible to tell from tax returns how much business the president conducts with China. The company’s revenue spiked in 2017, Trump’s first year in office, to around $17.5 million — more than the previous five years’ combined, according to The Times. The president withdrew $15.1 million from the company’s account that year, reporting it in his financial disclosure as “management fees and other contract payments.”

Just before the 2016 Republican National Convention, a Chinese couple from Vancouver, home of a recently built Trump-branded hotel and tower, paid $3.1 million for 11 condos in the Las Vegas tower that Trump co-owns with casino mogul Phil Ruffin — a project which loaned Trump $21 million later that September. The owner of a Vegas-based financial firm told The Times that FBI agents had later inquired about the shell company.

Garten said the Trump Organization had “never been contacted by the FBI and has no knowledge of any investigation.”

Ivanka and her husband, senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, had previously lived in a Trump penthouse in Manhattan which Trump sold to a Chinese-American businesswoman named Xiao Yan Chen for $15.8 million in an off-market transaction, per The Times. Chen reportedly has a number of ties to Chinese government and business officials.

The president’s taxes show a capital gain of at least $5.6 million from that sale, in 2017 — his first year as president.

In 2018, CNN reported that Trump’s Vancouver hotel had been the subject of a counterintelligence inquiry related to Ivanka Trump’s security clearance application.

“Get out and vote!”: Televangelist Pat Robertson predicts re-electing Trump will usher in apocalypse

Televangelist Pat Robertson predicted President Donald Trump would win re-election, and that would usher in the long-promised End Times.

The 90-year-old broadcaster, who has consistently supported the president who is backed by white evangelicals, told “700 Club” viewers that he was certain Trump would win the Nov. 3 election, and he then warned that trouble would soon follow.

“We’ve never seen the like of it before, but I want to relate to you again, there is going to be a war,” Robertson said. “Ezekiel 38 is going to the next thing down the line. Then a time of peace and then maybe the end, but nobody knows the day or the hour when the lord is going to come back. He said the angels don’t know it and only the father knows it, so I’m not sure this is the second coming.”

Robertson has been predicting the apocalypse since at least 1976, when he forecast the world would end in October or November 1982, and in 1990 the Southern Baptist minister warned the world would be destroyed April 29, 2007 — which, of course, has proved to be inaccurate.

“But I am saying that if things that people thought would be during the millennial time with the coming of Jesus, they are going to happen in our lifetime,” Robertson said, “and the next thing is the election that’s coming up in just a few weeks, at which time according to what I believe the lord told me, the president is going to be re-elected.”

“I’m saying by all means get out and vote, vote for whoever you want to vote for,” he added, “but let your voice be heard. But it’s going to lead to civil unrest, and then a war against Israel and so forth . . . I think it’s time to pray. But anyway, that is the word. You ask what’s going to happen next, and that’s what’s going to happen next.”

You can watch the video below via YouTube:

Man arrested in connection to alleged plot to kidnap and murder Joe Biden and Kamala Harris: report

A Maryland man was arrested this week after he allegedly threatened to kidnap and kill Democratic candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

WJZ reported that James Dale Reed, 42, of Maryland was arrested earlier this month after he admitted writing a letter and leaving it at a Frederick home on the morning of Oct. 4. A Ring door camera caught an image of the person.

According to The New York Times, Reed is accused of threatening to kidnap and murder the Democratic candidates.

“This is a warning to anyone reading this letter if you are a Biden/Harris supporter you will be targeted,” the letter states. “We have a list of homes and addresses by your election signs. We are the ones with those scary guns, We are the ones your children have nightmares about . . .”

WJZ described the rest of the message as “too graphic” to print.

The rest of the message is too graphic to detail, but claims that they will allegedly beat Biden and sodomize Harris before executing them on national television.

Reed initially denied that he wrote the letter when he was interviewed by the Secret Service on Oct. 13. But the suspect admitted writing the letter and was arrested two days later. He is facing charges of voter intimidation and threatening mass violence.

Reed was said to be known by the Secret Service for a threat against a protected person in 2014.

“Totally improper”: Pro-Trump Fox pundit criticizes president after he urges Barr to go after Biden

Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume was aghast at reports that President Donald Trump was pressuring Attorney General Bill Barr to prosecute Joe Biden.

The president appeared Tuesday on Fox News, where he complained that his attorney general had not bowed to House Republican requests to appoint a special counsel to investigate corruption allegations against Biden and his son Hunter.

“We’ve got to get the attorney general to act,” Trump told Fox News. “He’s got to act, and he’s got to act fast. He’s got to appoint somebody. This is major corruption and this has to be known about before the election.”

Trump’s claims are based on an hazily sourced New York Post articles that dozens of former intelligence officials believe are based on a Russian disinformation campaign, and are basically the same allegations the president got impeached over.

“Totally improper,” Hume tweeted about the president’s demands. “And what did he think could be done before the election anyway? Barr will almost certainly refuse, and rightly so.”

Totally improper. And what did he think could be done before the election anyway? Barr will almost certainly refuse, and rightly so. https://t.co/Ug7fy2caDb

— Brit Hume (@brithume) October 21, 2020

USPS still hasn’t reversed election mail slowdown despite multiple court orders: attorneys general

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is still not processing election mail at the rate it did prior to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s controversial changes, reigniting concerns that mail-in ballots in certain states may not arrive before voting deadlines, according to states who sued the agency over a reported mail slowdown.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who is leading a multi-state coalition in a lawsuit challenging the USPS’ “illegal” changes, claimed in a Monday federal court filing that the agency’s performance was down more than 5% since DeJoy implemented the changes in July and continued “to be lower than at any point in 2020,” according to Bloomberg News.

Multiple federal courts issued orders blocking DeJoy’s changes in response to lawsuits from Shapiro and other attorneys general, but the filing alleged that some USPS divisions had not complied with the orders. One division has a compliance rate as low as 85%, and others have not reported performance metrics, the filing said. The USPS has still barely increased late and extra trips as required by the orders, it added.

“Despite being subject to multiple injunctions, defendants have not improved their service performance,” Shapiro said, asking the court to appoint an independent monitor to ensure the agency complies with the courts.

Though DeJoy, a top donor to President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, has disputed Democrats who criticized him for instituting changes like limiting overtime and removing high-speed mail sorting machines, a new USPS inspector general report faulted the changes ordered by the new postmaster general for reduced performance.

“No analysis of the service impacts of these various changes was conducted, and documentation and guidance to the field for these strategies was very limited and almost exclusively oral,” the report says. “The resulting confusion and inconsistency in operations at postal facilities compounded the significant negative service impacts across the country.”

The report added that the changes “individually may not have been significant,” but “launching all of these efforts at once, in addition to the changes instituted by the postmaster general, had a significant impact on the Postal Service.”

The USPS Board of Governors disputed the report, arguing that the changes were not disruptive and “similar to efforts that the Postal Service pursued over the last several years.”

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., who chairs the House Oversight and Reform Committee, and Committee of Oversight and Reform, said in a statement that the IG report confirmed that “Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s sweeping changes — which were hastily implemented without analyzing their potential impact — caused serious delays across the country.”

Maloney added that the report undermined DeJoy’s testimony to the committee denying that he was aware of the changes, “calling into question whether the postmaster general is continuing to mislead Congress and the American people to this day.”

USPS data shows that mail disruptions have been particularly pronounced in key swing states, according to The Washington Post. In 17 postal districts across 10 swing states, on-time first-class mail arrival rates are just 83.9%, or about 7.8% lower than in January and 2% lower than the national average since the changes were implemented. More than 15% of first-class mail in those districts arrives later than the USPS’ one- to three-day delivery window.

This has sparked alarm in states like Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin, where ballots will be rejected if they arrive after Election Day. In Detroit, for example, only 71% of mail arrived on time in October versus 92.2% in January.

Some major cities in North Carolina have also experienced 10% drops in on-time arrival rates, while “timeliness also varied widely in postal districts in Pennsylvania and Florida,” according to the report.

USPS spokesman David Partenheimer told the outlet that the agency had maintained its performance levels despite mail levels surging amid an unprecedented rise in mail voting.

“The Postal Service is fully committed and actively working to handle the increase in election mail volume across the country over the next two weeks,” he said, adding that workers had been told to use “extraordinary measures” to speed up deliveries like special pickups, extra trips and Sunday deliveries.

But some postal workers told the outlet that the “ballot-handling directives from higher-ups have been chaotic.” Workers in Michigan claimed that they were instructed to focus on package delivery over mail ballot collection. Workers in Pennsylvania plan to handstamp ballot envelopes to avoid them getting caught up in overwhelmed processing plants.

“In the current state of the world, there is nothing a voter could do to work around problems in the post office,” J. Remy Green, an attorney representing a group of voters who sued the USPS, told The Post. “I think, at the end of the day, the damage that has been done here — it’s not just service performance and quantifiable damage. It is a kind of psychic damage to the confidence of voters and confidence in the vote.”

Lawmakers who tried to gain access to see how the USPS is handling mail at large facilities have been blocked by the agency, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., said he and two other lawmakers were blocked from entering a large mail processing facility in his state despite previously touring the facility “without incident or objection.” He added that he was told he could not enter nonpublic areas of the facility within 45 days of the election over concerns that doing so would violate the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees like postal workers from engaging in political activity. Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., said he was blocked due to Hatch Act concerns, as well.

“These are phony-baloney excuses,” Pascrell told the outlet. “It’s not like I’m trying to get into Area 51 or something.”

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., said she was also blocked from touring a facility in Florida prior to the 45-day window in early September. Schultz said she was told that the agency would require her to take a “bogus training course” to gain access.

The agency also faces a lawsuit from a union representing postal police officers after the agency issued an order ending daily patrols aimed at preventing robbery of mail collection boxes and vehicles, according to the Journal.

Officers say the move has “left letter carriers without escorts on unsafe routes” and raised concerns that thieves may target mail ballots, according to the report.

The union filed a lawsuit asking a federal court to block the order to “ensure the integrity of the mail” but the litigation is still pending.

“If I was going to undermine public trust in the mail, one of the first things I would do is pull postal police off the street,” Frank Albergo, the president of the Postal Police Officers Association, told The Journal.

If the USPS did not intend to undermine election mail security, “then why not wait until after the election to neuter the postal police?” Jim Bjork, a business agent for the union, asked.

GOP’s invented Hunter Biden scandal isn’t going away: Are they shooting for 2022 already?

One of the many nerve-wracking questions Americans facing with the 2020 presidential election is whether all the bizarre conspiracy theories that have sprung up in the last few years will outlast the Trump administration. Are we in for a prolonged period of this level of lunacy in our politics?

Maybe. There are a bunch of QAnon-curious Republican candidates who apparently believe that the Democratic Party is led by satanic, flesh-eating pedophiles and that John F. Kennedy Jr. (who isn’t actually dead) will be reappearing any day now to help Donald Trump save the children and put the country back on the right track. Let’s just say it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that there will be a Q Caucus in the next congress.

Philip Bump of the Washington Post reported on Tuesday that a recent Yahoo/YouGov poll showed that while a minority of GOP voters say they believe in QAnon, 50% of Republicans (fifty percent! That’s half of them!) claim to believe that high-level Democrats are involved in child sex-trafficking rings, and more than 50% believe that Donald Trump is working behind the scenes to dismantle them. This idea goes back to 2016 and Pizzagate, so it’s possible that many of these Republicans don’t even know they’re spouting QAnon conspiracy theories. But what’s the difference? Clearly tens of millions of Republicans have, as Joe Biden said on the stump the other day, “gone ’round the bend.”

This really shouldn’t surprise us. Facebook has been the vehicle for spreading this and many other ridiculous conspiracy theories about COVID and antifa and Black Lives Matter and much else during the Trump years. These viral lies are not confined to weird corners of the internet or Alex Jones and Infowars anymore.

I can’t hazard a guess as to what happens if the supposed savior of the children is defeated and has to leave the White House. Will the conspiracy theory just die out, as the rest of the country averts its eyes from the people who were big believers and try to forget that they lost their faculties during the Trump years? That’s probably the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario involves QAnon adherents deciding they need to take matters into their own hands.

The fever may break once the chaos agent is out of the White House. As Bump pointed out in that Washington Post article, part of the reason some people gravitate to these elaborate conspiracies is because they need to feel that someone, somewhere, is pulling the strings because otherwise everything feels out of control. Perversely, if Trump loses, these people may actually calm down. Even if they don’t, what’s left of the GOP establishment is likely to distance itself as much as possible from the kookier conspiracists. It’s bad for business.

But that doesn’t mean that they’re going to give up conspiracy theories and pseudo-scandal-mongering altogether. It is, after all, one of their favorite political weapons. Many of us recall (or have read about) the endless Whitewater investigations into the Southern-gothic arcana of Arkansas politics, when Republican congressmen shot watermelons in their backyards and the Beltway media trekked across the country, reporting back as if they were on the first manned mission to Mars. It went on for years, cost a lot of money and destroyed quite a few Arkansans, but never found any wrongdoing by Bill and Hillary Clinton.

And let’s not forget the more recent Benghazi crusade, which current House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced was conducted entirely for partisan political purposes and which led to the equally vacuous “Clinton email scandal.” There are many more where that came from, which often telegraphed openly as partisan attacks, but which the media gobbles up like baby birds being fed worms by their mother.

The Hunter Biden “scandal” has all the hallmarks of one of those patented GOP mudslinging operations. It’s not as wild as a pedophile ring in a pizza parlor, but it’s got lots of hurtful personal slander and ugly calumny to keep the folks entertained. That it has a Russia-Ukraine element makes it especially fun for those who want payback for Donald Trump being exposed as the most useful of idiots in the past four years.

The “scandal” itself is actually nothing more than an example of the very common (and admittedly skeevy) business practice of hiring the family members of important people for the purpose of obtaining favors, gaining access or simply being viewed in a favorable light. Hunter Biden clearly made a mistake in joining the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company, while his father was vice president. The apparent conflict of interest was obvious to literally everyone. But Republican charges that Joe Biden granted a favor to Burisma by having the Ukrainian government fire a prosecutor that was investigating the company are flat-out provably false. It’s true that Biden (along with virtually the entire Western alliance) pressured the Kyiv government to fire Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor in question. But one of the reasons was because Shokin wasn’t investigating Burisma. There was no favor done on Hunter Biden’s behalf. If anything, it was the opposite.

Republicans know this. Everyone knows this. This “scandal” has been dismissed by the new Ukrainian government, the U.S. intelligence services, and the Senate Intelligence Committee. It is 100% phony. And yet it’s likely to continue for years if Joe Biden becomes the next president, because the Republican Party and the entire right-wing media sphere will make sure of it.

Salon’s Roger Sollenberger reported on the latest twist in the phony scandal — the “discovery” of Hunter Biden’s laptop, with dubious provenance, by Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon. Reporting in the right-wing press is filled with the sort of salacious gossip they love to peddle to keep the story dribbling out and hopefully entice the mainstream press to run with the story. (Indeed, you can feel an anxious desire to go there, among supposedly respectable reporters.)

Does the laptop really belong to Hunter Biden? Are the emails real? Did he arrange for his boss at Burisma to meet his father? Who knows? But it doesn’t matter because nothing will change the fact that Joe Biden’s actions were the opposite of what Republicans are pretending to investigate him for, and they know it. They are once again knowingly misleading the public.

If the Democrats manage to gain a majority in the Senate and hold on to the House, the GOP will be deprived of its ability to run this new crusade through Congress with multiple investigations, as they did with Benghazi. But unless something unusual happens, such as Rudy Giuliani being indicted as a foreign agent (which is not outside the realm of possibility), Republicans will keep this one going by whatever means they can fine and hope that a big backlash, along the lines of the Tea Party wave of 2010, carries them back into the majority in the 2022 midterms. If that happens, get ready for the circus to come to town.

If Joe Biden is elected president two weeks from now, the QAnon insanity could end up as just another hallucinogenic flashback of the increasingly surreal Trump era. Hunter Biden and Burisma, unfortunately, will be with us for a while.

Tiffany says the quiet part out loud at Trump Pride event: Dad “supported” gays “prior to politics”

Tiffany Trump, the daughter of President Donald Trump, this week campaigned for her father’s re-election at a LGBTQ Pride event.

The event was said to have around a dozen people in attendance and was co-headlined by former White House official Richard Grenell.

“I know what my father believes in,” Trump said at one point. “Prior to politics, he supported gays, lesbians, the LGBQIA+!”

Many commenters noted that she omitted the “T” from LGBTQ, which stands for transgender people.

“This may be the worst speech I’ve ever seen,” Molly Jong-Fast wrote.

Watch the video clips and read some of the comments below.

Tiffany Trump: My father "supports the LGBQIA+" community.@Realdonaldtrump has spent four years unraveling protections for our Trans neighbors. So it's not surprising Tiffany says the quiet part out loud: Donald Trump does not stand up for the Trans community. pic.twitter.com/TT5y5DrmVX

— American Bridge 21st Century (@American_Bridge) October 19, 2020

What in gay hell is this bullshit? Also there’s like 12 people in the room. Also I’m no longer convinced Eric Trump is the dumbest of them. It’s a tight race. https://t.co/soqGBBwVNN

— Dana Goldberg (@DGComedy) October 20, 2020

My god. @TiffanyATrump is just as bad as the other kids. Also: the gays do not want you so stop trying. https://t.co/NUFh0069le

— Jamie Grayson (@TheJamieGrayson) October 20, 2020

Trying so hard to win over an absentee father. Damn. Painful to watch.

— 🔥 🏠 with a Y 🏠 🔥 (@wyntermitchell) October 20, 2020

I remember my first eight ball @TiffanyATrump You can really sub that in for any of the @realDonaldTrump offspring. Also…the omission of T in #LGBTQIA seems a little sloppy and disingenuous…wanna weigh in??? https://t.co/UBAvURxIit

— Joely Fisher (@MsJoelyFisher) October 20, 2020

Tiffany Trump led a tiny rally in which she claimed to have gay friends and eliminated the T from LGBTQ. Just when I thought I couldn’t hate the Trumps more, and it’s hard to believe Tiffany has any friends

— Paul Rudnick (@PaulRudnickNY) October 20, 2020

It's sad seeing her half-heartedly try to be evil. Just to feel a part of the family 😢

— Billy Procida (@TheBillyProcida) October 20, 2020

Why does she look like she’s auditioning for a dinner theater adaptation of Legally Blonde?

— Andrea Kuszewski 🧠 (@AndreaKuszewski) October 20, 2020

LG B Q and the t stands for Tiffany trump apparently 🤣 https://t.co/r40LNBcR2D

— dev.m4a (devon rose) (@devm4a) October 20, 2020

Was holding out some small piece of hope that Tiffany might be the cool Trump.

— Brian Heater (@bheater) October 20, 2020

1. He reversed Obama's trans protections in schools.

2. He banned transgender service members.

3. He banned homeless trans people in shelters.

4. He tried to reverse Obama's protections for trans people in health care.

5. He nominated anti-LGBTQIA+ judges.

Tiffany Trump… https://t.co/Y5RyqlX6hl

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) October 20, 2020

Texas to reject mail-in ballots over signature mismatch without giving voters chance to fix it

If they decide the signature on the ballot can’t be verified, Texas election officials may continue rejecting mail-in ballots without notifying voters until after the election that their ballot wasn’t counted, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Monday.

The appeals court halted a lower court’s injunction, which had not gone into effect, that would have required the Texas secretary of state to either advise local election officials that mail-in ballots may not be rejected using the existing signature-comparison process, or require them to set up a notification system giving voters a chance to challenge a rejection while their vote still counts.

Requiring such a process would compromise the integrity of the mail-in ballots “as Texas officials are preparing for a dramatic increase of mail-in voting, driven by a global pandemic,” reads the Monday opinion issued by U.S. 5th Circuit Judge Jerry E. Smith.

“Texas’s strong interest in safeguarding the integrity of its elections from voter fraud far outweighs any burden the state’s voting procedures place on the right to vote,” Smith wrote.

Before mail-in ballots are counted, a committee of local election officials reviews them to ensure that a voter’s endorsement on the flap of a ballot envelope matches the signature that voter used on their application to vote by mail. They can also compare it to signatures on file with the county clerk or voter registrar that were made within the last six years.

The state election code does not establish any standards for signature review, which is conducted by local election officials who seldom have training in signature verification.

Voters must be notified within 10 days after the election that their ballot was rejected, but state election law does not require affording them an opportunity to challenge the rejection, the appeals court ruling noted.

In August 2019, two voters, George Richardson of Brazos County and Rosalie Weisfeld of McAllen, filed suit after their mail-in ballots were rejected by local officials who decided the signatures on the envelopes in which their ballots were returned were not theirs.

The voters — joined by groups representing Texans with disabilities, veterans and young voters — argued the state law allowing local election officials to reject mail-in ballots based on perceived mismatching signatures violates the 14th Amendment.

The lawsuit claims at least 1,873 mail-in ballots were rejected on the basis of mismatched signatures during the 2018 general election; at least 1,567 were rejected in 2016.

On Sept. 8, U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia ruled that the state’s process for matching signatures “plainly violates certain voters’ constitutional rights,” and ordered the state to either abandon the practice or come up with some mechanism that lets voters get their ballots counted.

The injunction has been under an administrative stay by the 5th Circuit since Sept. 11, three days after it was issued, and will now remain on hold while the state challenges the underpinnings of Garcia’s decision.

Plaintiffs said they will now push counties to voluntarily give early notice to voters whose ballots are rejected for signature-match issues, allowing them a chance to rectify the situation and let their vote count.

“It will affect this 2020 election, so voters will not be notified in time, and so I think the main thing we’re trying to do now is notify counties that ballot boards are not required to give pre-election day notice, but they can,” said H. Drew Galloway, executive director of MOVE Texas, a plaintiff. “We encourage them to follow the original intent of the lower courts here so folks (whose ballots were rejected) can go vote in person, or contest that decision.”

Texas offers voting by mail to people with disabilities, Texans who are 65 and older, voters who will be outside of the county during an election, and those in jail during an election.

Disclosure: MOVE Texas and the Texas secretary of state 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.

Donald Trump is getting desperate — and his mental pathology is getting worse every day

Despite the outbreak and spread of the coronavirus at the White House, Donald Trump still insists that “it’s going to disappear.” To make matters worse, he proclaims, “We have a cure.” We have lost 220,000 Americans to a deadly pandemic. And what does he say? “I’m immune. So the president is in very good shape to fight the battles.” He continues to promulgate lies and misinformation about the pandemic.

At his rally in Florida in front of 7,000 supporters, Trump announced, “I feel so powerful. I’ll walk into that audience, I’ll walk in there, kiss everyone in that audience. I’ll kiss the guys and the beautiful women, just give you a big fat kiss.” This is hypomanic hypersexuality from our president.

Last Thursday evening at his town hall on NBC, Trump admitted that he had retweeted a QAnon conspiracy theory that the killing of Osama bin Laden was fake and had been staged by Barack Obama and Joe Biden. A bizarre conspiracy theory gone awry.

On Friday, Trump told a crowd in Georgia that he “might have to leave the country” if he loses the election to Biden. That sounds like a semi-confession of his corruption.

At a campaign rally in Wisconsin on Saturday, he asserted that the National Guard’s physical altercations with protesters were “beautiful.” Trump’s glorification of violence.

At his rally in Michigan on the same day, he criticized Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — recently the subject of a kidnapping plot busted by the FBI — and the crowd chanted, “Lock her up.” His response: “Lock them all up.” Trump’s vindictiveness toward political foes.

Donald Trump is a desperate man. His recklessness is growing by the hour as his poll numbers are failing and his presidency is coming to a crashing end. His mental pathology is front and center. His psyche is unraveling before our eyes.

Trump is in an existential crisis of his own making. George Conway — a lifelong Republican, Washington attorney and co-founder of the Lincoln Project — summed it up best when we reached out to him: “We’ve seen how he is continuing to reach new depths. He realizes he is headed toward destruction.”

Trump is now wildly out of control with his ranting tweets, lies, conspiracy theories, threats, gaslighting and erratic behavior. His pronouncements are getting more disturbed and destructive. He is telling senior citizens that they are not vulnerable to the coronavirus. He is telling the public that they should not let the coronavirus dominate their lives. He even stated that he must be a perfect physical specimen because he recovered from COVID-19 so quickly (completely disregarding the powerful cocktail of drugs he received). He was recently live on the air twice in one day on Fox News, airing his unmoored grievances, soothing his injured ego, projecting ridiculous grandiosity and collecting narcissistic fuel.

Alarmingly, Trump is losing his grip on reality. He is agitated. He seems to be hypomanic — quite likely exacerbated by his COVID-19 medications. He has become paranoid. He has been calling out for his political opponents to be indicted. He has been preoccupied with a totally fake conspiracy theory about Barack Obama and Joe Biden spying on his campaign. He is lashing out at some of his most loyal cabinet members. He is even blaming Gold Star families for giving him COVID-19.

Trump is on a collision course with self-destruction. He has lost all ability for rational and reasonable discourse with the American people. His performance during the presidential debate on Sept. 29 was shocking and disheartening. He was hostile and rude. He showed no self-control. He was flailing. Trump even canceled his second debate with Biden — he was looking for a way out.

Trump now feels cornered and exposed. His sense of entitlement is threatened. His grandiosity and superiority are crumbling. What he fears most is being embarrassed and humiliated. After all, he has spent his whole life branding himself as smarter and stronger and richer than anyone else. His “false self” persona is being chipped away hour by hour.

The emperor is about to have no clothes.

As Trump’s desperation grows, his mental pathology is becoming more amplified. He is looking unhinged because he is unhinged. It is all we can see — a man who is erratic and unrestrained and debilitated. He is always defensive. He grumbles and roars and blames others. He is incapable of taking responsibility for his own decisions and behavior. He is incapable of leading and governing.

Trump’s desperation includes a scorched-earth mentality. If he is going down, he wants to bring everyone and everything down with him. He has no hesitation to break laws or destroy people. Democratic institutions and principles mean nothing to him. All that matters is his survival, his preservation, his continued power.

The end is in sight. But Trump will go down fighting. He will hold onto power until the last possible moment. It will have to be stripped away from him. He will not facilitate a peaceful transfer of power to Biden. He will cry out that he is the victim of a conspiracy. Unbelievably, he will seek sympathy for himself. He will urge his supporters to strike out in anger and aggrievement. He will bask in the glow of his victimhood.

Trump will leave behind a deadly pandemic. He will leave behind a country that is divided and tribal. Racism and xenophobia and terrorist groups have become prominent. Far too many of us have stopped believing in science, the truth and the free press.

We are facing two more weeks of Trump’s desperation and mental pathology. Each day will seem unending. Each day will be exhausting.

Two more weeks until our votes are finally cast and counted.

Two more weeks until Trump’s chaos, incompetence and corruption can be ended.

“Trumpcare” doesn’t exist. But Facebook and Google cash in on misleading ads for “garbage” insurance

“Trumpcare” insurance will “finally fix healthcare,” said an advertisement on Facebook.

A Google ad urged people to “Enroll in Trumpcare plans. Healthcare changes are coming.”

The problem is, there’s no such thing as “Trumpcare.”

Facebook and Google have promised to crack down on lies and misinformation about politics in the run-up to next month’s presidential election, but they have run tens of thousands of ads in the past year containing false claims about health insurance reform and plans.

The “Trumpcare” ads don’t appear to have a political aim and don’t advocate for the reelection of President Donald Trump over former Vice President Joe Biden. Nonetheless, the Facebook ads touting these nonexistent products have been viewed some 22 million times in the past year, disproportionately in battleground states like Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to Facebook data.

The ads are placed by marketers targeting consumers — politically conservative ones in some cases — who become sales leads if they respond. Then the consumers get deluged with phone calls from brokers hawking health insurance plans that are not the comprehensive solution that’s often promised, but instead are less conventional products that have traditionally been used as supplemental coverage or for when people transition between jobs.

The Affordable Care Act requires traditional health insurance plans to provide “minimal essential coverage,” which includes preventive care, mental health care, substance abuse, maternity and more. The less-conventional plans are exempted from those requirements. Some of the plans are offered by name-brand companies like UnitedHealthcare, but critics say they’re typically big moneymakers for the companies that can leave patients with unexpected medical bills. The plans’ limitations often are not explained in the advertisements or in brokers’ high-pressure sales presentations. Hundreds of complaints about the plans show up on consumer sites like the Better Business Bureau or Yelp.

“The marketing is extremely deceptive,” said Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms. “Both the advertising and the brokers use terms that to the average consumer would make them think they are buying a comprehensive insurance plan that provides coverage if they get injured or sick. But quite often nothing could be further from the truth.”

The misleading marketing may be ensnaring more consumers now, as an estimated 14 million Americans have lost employer-sponsored health benefits due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Google and companies involved in the marketing generally defended the term “Trumpcare,” saying it’s legitimate to use to describe the president’s general philosophy about health care or his 2017 executive order that allowed short-term insurance plans to cover a time period of up to 12 months rather than three months. Facebook said the word “Trumpcare” on its own didn’t violate its rules. However, Facebook and Google both initially accepted “Trumpcare” ads that, after they were flagged by ProPublica, the companies later said did violate their rules.

A ProPublica reporter responded to one of the “Trumpcare” ads and took calls from five insurance brokers. The brokers seemed to have no idea what type of ad had led to the call. They were focused on closing the deal. One said, wrongly, that “Trumpcare” was just a new name for “Obamacare.” The other four acknowledged that there’s no such thing as “Trumpcare.”

“It’s fake news,” said one.

“Trumpcare” “is not even in existence yet,” said another.

“They’re starting to change over from ‘Obamacare’ to ‘Trumpcare,’ but it hasn’t switched over yet,” a third broker said.

Traditional health care plans sold under the Affordable Care Act must comply with a host of regulations, including not discriminating against people with preexisting conditions. But the plans are expensive, and some consumers may not qualify for the income-based subsidies that reduce the cost. For example, a 40-year-old single person who makes more than $50,000 would likely not qualify for a subsidy to help pay for an individual health care plan, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation Health Insurance Marketplace Calculator.

The less conventional plans — called short-term, fixed indemnity, accident-only or specified disease plans — offered by the brokers are less expensive. Some provide benefits for a short term or give a fixed payment to cover a portion of a doctor or hospital bill. Others pay out only if the beneficiary had some type of accident. A purchaser would need to read the fine print to know what they did or did not cover.

ProPublica contacted the Federal Trade Commission and insurance regulators in all 50 states and found hit-and-miss enforcement of misleading ads and sales tactics. Some states, like Delaware and Virginia, have meted out discipline for using misleading tactics to sell the limited plans. But many have not. Most who spoke to ProPublica said they have no jurisdiction over the online “lead generation” advertisers. The regulators say it’s like playing “whack-a-mole,” as those caught using abusive marketing tactics can simply incorporate under a new name and resume the same behavior.

Online “lead generators” lure in consumers

Identifying deceptive tactics related to health care plans is as easy as going online and looking.

Southern California marketer Stuart Millar said he’s placed “Trumpcare” advertisements to join in “the gold rush of online entrepreneurship.”

Millar has spent at least $350,000 on 12,500 “Trumpcare” ads from four Facebook pages with “Trumpcare”-themed names since last October. “Thanks to our President,” one of them said, “U.S. health insurance companies have had to drastically drop their rates.” (ProPublica can see how much Millar spent because he had proactively marked his ads as political, triggering Facebook to disclose this information.)

Millar isn’t an insurance broker — one of the people who sell insurance and are regulated by the states. He’s a “traffic broker,” a marketer in charge of running ads to drive visitors to his clients’ websites. There’s little regulation of his activities. His ads have focused so much on the term “Trumpcare,” he said, because it’s clickbait. He called it far more attention-getting than the “left-wing one,” his term for “Obamacare.”

“I’ve got to find a fun way to make health care interesting,” Millar said. “‘Trumpcare’ is interesting but health care in general isn’t.”

“Traffic brokers,” like any Facebook advertiser, can select the specific demographics of the Facebook users who will see their ads.

Millar declined to get into details about how he targeted his ads, but said he mostly relied on Facebook’s algorithm to find him the people who’d click. He said he tested thousands of iterations of the ad to make sure it found an audience. “What I went with was what converted,” Millar said, a reference to people responding to the ads.

Some “Trumpcare” ads — not apparently linked to Millar — have been targeted at people Facebook labels as “interested in Donald Trump,” according to targeting data provided by Facebook to users along with ads that are shared with the Ad Observer project.

Millar says he didn’t come up with the idea of using “Trumpcare.” That came from his clients, whom he wouldn’t name. Many of Millar’s ads led to a page featuring a red, white and blue “Trumpcare” logo on HealthPlansAmerica.org, which is owned by a company called Apollo Interactive. (The company is not a nonprofit, but anyone can buy a .org website address.)

Apollo Interactive isn’t an insurance broker either. It’s what’s called a lead broker, yet another cog in the lightly regulated machinery of insurance “lead generation” marketing. That means it gathers profiles of people who are looking for health insurance. Those who input their information on these sites become “leads.” And then they’re put up for auction.

Officials from Apollo Interactive wouldn’t say how the company sells leads. But Colin Sholes, an activist and former online health insurance marketer, said lead generators extract an anonymized sample of each person’s data: ZIP code, age, gender. This profile, without any contact information, gets shared with potential buyers, who bid for it in an instant, automated auction. The winning bidder or bidders get the person’s name and their contact information.

Leads are often sold as “shared leads” — meaning they’re sold to more than one buyer at the same time. Some of the buyers are insurance brokers. Some are other lead brokers who bid so they can resell data that originated elsewhere. “It’s a big web and everybody’s interconnected,” Sholes said. “A lot of data just floats around.”

So how much is each “lead” worth? Sholes estimated that a lead for a person under 55 would cost as much as $20.

The lead might be even more valuable if it was sold as what the industry calls a “warm lead,” he explained. Some companies exist just to buy leads, then have a call center agent call and, if a human picks up, the agent “warms you up,” Sholes said. That means they check to make sure the consumer is interested in buying insurance. At that point the company sells the call to an insurance broker as a “warm” transfer. “A connected call,” he said, might sell for up to $80.

Millar confirmed he got paid by the lead, but he refused to say how much. He did say that he made a profit on what he paid Facebook to run the ads. He was not aware of what happens to consumers who click on his ads, then purchase the health plans. “I didn’t ever call in myself. I am not exactly sure how any of that works.”

Facebook and Google profit from the misinformation

This fall, someone Googling for affordable health insurance might have come across an ad that said: “Healthcare changes are coming. Check out the new pricing tiers under the American Health Care Act.”

The American Health Care Act — the bill most commonly called “Trumpcare” — failed to pass the Senate in 2017 when the terminally ill Sen. John McCain dramatically walked across the chamber’s floor and gave a thumbs down, leading to the bill’s defeat. So there were no new “pricing tiers” on offer, as the ad claimed, in 2020.

Those ads led to Apollo’s HealthPlansAmerica.org site. Apollo Interactive attorney Chris Deatherage said in a written statement that the Google ads “appear to be old ads” from when AHCA “was actively being discussed in the legislature.”

Deatherage said “Trumpcare” is an “abstract” term used to “tie together” various pieces of intended or existing legislation and policies and that Apollo’s “Trumpcare” website said the term refers to Trump’s “collective policy updates.” He compared it to “Obamacare” — which specifically refers to the Affordable Care Act — and proposals for “Medicare for All,” which are not law. He added that Apollo Interactive’s website lets visitors connect with brokers who can explain the term.

Google’s rules say it does not allow ads that “deceive users by excluding relevant product information or providing misleading information.” Facebook says it bans ads with “deceptive, false, or misleading claims.” But both accepted the “Trumpcare” promotions. Google even gave the misinformation prime real estate, with the ads as the top-listed results when people search for affordable health insurance.

Christa Muldoon, a spokeswoman for Google said, “Health care ads cannot make misleading claims about the advertiser’s identity or the services they offer.” She said Google removed the ads referencing AHCA under that policy after ProPublica contacted Google about them. She wouldn’t explain why the company apparently let the ads run for years, despite violating Google’s rules.

Until last year, Google also sold ads that lured in consumers with the phrase Healthcare.gov — the federal government site where you can purchase plans that comply with the Affordable Care Act — even though they were for private, lead-generation websites.

It’s not clear how much Google earned from selling “Trumpcare” ads. Unlike Facebook, Google doesn’t consider ads about “Trumpcare” political, so it doesn’t publish any data about them. Muldoon would not say how much Google made from the ads.

But, she said, citing Trump’s executive orders on health care, “We do not consider the phrase ‘Trumpcare’ alone to be misleading,” so it’s allowed in Google ads.

A report a year ago from Sen. Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, criticized Google and other search engines for showing ads for for-profit lead-generation sites listed above the official Healthcare.gov site when a person searched for “Obamacare” or even “Healthcare.gov.” Casey called for search engines to put an “answer box” above all content, even ads, with a link to Healthcare.gov on searches for health insurance.

Muldoon hinted at a coming change to what kinds of health insurance-related ads the company will allow. She said that Google is “evaluating the health insurance space to strengthen our protections for users and prevent misleading ads.”

After Newsweek flagged the Facebook ads in a blog post in August, the Lead Stories news organization published a fact-check saying that “there is no such thing as Trumpcare.” That prompted Facebook to stop accepting the ads, under a policy that bans ads with content that fact-checkers have found to not be true.

Devon Kearns, a Facebook spokesperson, told ProPublica that some of the ads were removed for violating a Facebook policy that bans “scammy tactics.”

But then in mid-September, more “Trumpcare” ads appeared on Facebook, from something called “National Center for Medical Records,” which didn’t return a request for comment. These ads led to another company’s website, not Apollo’s. One of them featured a smiling Trump with his arm around the shoulder of a doctor and the slogan: “Trumpcare from $1/Day.”

Omissions and high-pressure sales

ProPublica wanted to learn more about the sales tactics involving “Trumpcare” ads, so we checked for ourselves. One of the reporters on this story, Jeremy, had been laid off in May. So he clicked on an ad in Facebook’s ad transparency portal, featuring photos of a health insurance card and a tuxedoed Donald Trump with Melania Trump in a ballgown. It took him to HealthPlansAmerica.org, which prompted him to input his contact details, as well as his age, gender, address, income range and whether he had any “major medical conditions.”

Jeremy is young and healthy, and he answered the questions honestly, so his information made him a hot prospect.

Jeremy entered a burner phone number that he acquired for this project — a good choice, because he got 67 phone calls the day he submitted the form; the day after, he got 46 more. The plans the brokers offered were legal, to the extent that they gave enough information to check. But to be informed, a consumer would want to know each plan’s limits and exceptions and be provided with detailed information about what’s covered, or not. The brokers often withheld crucial information.

Alex, from “the Enrollment Center,” said his plan offered free preventive care and would let Jeremy pick his own doctor. Using the lingo of the Affordable Care Act he described the insurance as a “minimum essential coverage plan.” But that’s exactly what it was not. Jeremy, who is married with no children, had to ask if the plan covered maternity costs, something that might be relevant to a childless couple. Alex said that would require something else, a “major medical plan.”

When Jeremy asked Alex to email the plan documents, so he could read what the plan covered or excluded, the line disconnected. Alex never called back.

When we called back several weeks later to ask for comment, the line was apparently disconnected.

Another company, “Modern Health,” would not even provide a brochure about its health plans. A supervisor named Louis said he was “in charge of the company” and that it would be a violation of patient privacy laws to send information in writing about the plan. (It isn’t.) Those details would supposedly have to come from the insurance company, and only after Jeremy signed up.

Anthony, who said he worked for the “National Health Enrollment Agency,” also wouldn’t send anything in writing. But his reason made it sound like he needed to lock in a fare on a flight that was rapidly running out of seats. “Once we disconnect the line, the companies aren’t going to let me hold onto the plan,” he said.

When Jeremy said he wanted to talk it over with his wife, Anthony countered: “Is she a licensed broker?” He offered to add her to the call rather than have the couple discuss it alone.

None of the salespeople volunteered the details a consumer would need to make an informed choice. Brandon, the salesman from Modern Health, for example, offered a plan from a company called “HealthShield.” It’s for “things like emergency surgeries, hospitalization, ambulances and prescriptions,” he said. He went into painstaking detail about the amount it paid for certain items. But when asked if he’d shared everything Jeremy needed to know, he said, “It does have your essential package that a lot of people sign up for, especially at this time.” Only later, when asked what category of insurance the plan fell under, did he say that “they do remove certain things, which include substance abuse, mental health and maternity benefits.”

Reached for comment for this article, a man who said that his name was Brandon Greer and that he was now in charge of Modern Health said “I’m not sure” when asked if these omissions might confuse consumers. He said that the company instructs its salespeople to note the exclusions “upfront.” He then ended the call.

When we tried to reach the National Health Enrollment Agency minutes later, to get a comment for this story, the phone rang at the offices of Modern Health. The person who picked up denied knowing what the National Health Enrollment Agency was and hung up when asked his name.

Omitting the details of health insurance plans can harm consumers. In August, the Government Accountability Office, the auditing and investigative unit of Congress, published a secret shopper investigation of the sales tactics for the plans. GAO investigators tested 31 brokers by using a fake persona, a person who had a preexisting condition. Eight of the 31 brokers made misstatements, the report says. One was selling the GAO investigator — who claimed to have diabetes — a health insurance plan that the broker said would cover the investigator’s diabetes, but it really didn’t. In a different case, the investigator told the broker that they had diabetes, but the application completed by the sales representative said there was no treatment or diagnosis for diabetes in the past five years. “This indicates that the broker may have intentionally falsified information,” the report said.

The GAO didn’t disclose the names of any of the brokers in its report, but it said it referred them to the Federal Trade Commission and state insurance regulators.

“Garbage” insurance generates profit for brokers and insurance companies

USHEALTH Advisors, one of the companies whose broker contacted Jeremy, posts videos online to show off how much money its brokers are making selling limited insurance plans.

“How much can you earn monthly at US Health Advisors?” asks one of the videos, posted by US Health Advisors Coral Springs.

“$16,000,” says a bearded man in a black shirt and tie.

“$18,000,” says a woman in a sleeveless top.

“$34,000,” says a man in a dress shirt and tie, a family photo in the background behind him.

Then, the closer: “$42,000 — in one month,” a man says.

Justin Brain, the USHEALTH benefits specialist whose number is on the US Health Advisors Coral Springs Facebook page, said commissions vary depending on a broker’s “production,” or sales totals. He declined to say how much the commissions were per sale, but he said the video is used for bringing in new sales recruits to “give them what’s possible.”

An April study by the Urban Institute found brokers making commissions of around 25% for the type of plans offered by the company. Other insurance brokers told ProPublica the commissions on some plans could be as much as 50%.

The video closes with a USHEALTH Advisors logo that adds, “A UnitedHealthcare Company.” UnitedHealthcare is a massive company that provides health insurance and benefits. It’s part of UnitedHealth Group, one of the largest companies in the country, with $242 billion in annual revenue in 2019. UnitedHealthcare declined to say how much the brokers made in commissions.

A USHEALTH broker pitched Jeremy a plan sponsored by Freedom Life Insurance Company of America, which is also a UnitedHealthcare company. The broker characterized the coverage as similar to Affordable Care Act plans and sent a 36-page brochure that laid out the details of the offer.

The document he sent made it clear that the Freedom Life plan would provide limited coverage that could leave a person with hefty bills. But it would take an exceptionally savvy consumer to sort through dozens of pages of insurance jargon to understand that. At ProPublica’s request, Jeffrey Hogan, the Northeast regional manager for Rogers Benefit Group, a national benefits marketing firm, examined the document.

Hogan pointed out that it disclosed on Page 3 that the plans would “supplement” any “essential health benefit plan,” meaning one of the more comprehensive plans sold under the Affordable Care Act. If this plan was meant as a supplement, then it would not be ideal for an uninsured couple. This was not mentioned in Jeremy’s sales presentation from the Freedom Life broker.

One portion of the plan listed its “maximum” benefit for various “defined” sicknesses. It did not say what its “minimum” payment might be. The daily maximum paid under the plan for an X-ray would be $50. For a CAT scan it would be $200. For an outpatient lab it would be $30. Each of those procedures could cost many hundreds of dollars more than the maximum benefit.

Hogan called the plan a “cascading mess” of coverage for specific conditions. “I wouldn’t sell this stuff if it was the last piece of garbage on earth,” Hogan said.

The limited benefit, accident or defined benefit plans like the ones offered by Freedom Life are highly profitable for the companies that operate them, Hogan said. “They pay very little out on the dollar,” he said.

In 2019, Freedom Life took in $171 million for Accident and Health policies covering about 291,000 people, according to a report by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Its “loss ratio” was 46%, the report said, which means Freedom Life spent less than half of what it brought in from premiums on medical claims and funding its reserves. That leaves plenty of revenue for profit and to pay commissions and fees to brokers and lead generators.

By comparison, the plans sold under the Affordable Care Act have a minimum loss ratio of 80% to 85%, meaning 80 to 85 cents of every dollar must be spent on medical care for the people paying premiums. If companies spend less, they are required to refund the difference to consumers or employers.

Hogan said that he’s been selling insurance for 35 years and that it wasn’t easy for him to sift through all the jargon and limits and caveats about coverage in the Freedom Life document. One of the most insidious details was “buried” on Page 22, Hogan said. That’s where the company disclosed that any cost incurred as a result of a preexisting health condition would not be covered under the short-term plan included in the package. “This just makes my blood boil,” Hogan said. “This hurts people.”

Maria Gordon-Shydlo, a spokeswoman for UnitedHealthcare, said in an email the plans provided by USHEALTH provide “valuable health coverage options to meet people’s individual financial and care needs.” Its brokers present various options, including Affordable Care Act plans, to help people find the plan that’s best for them, she said.

Jorie Jacobi, a 31-year-old from St. Louis, signed up for a plan through Freedom Life Insurance in 2018 when she was working as a freelance writer. She searched for affordable health insurance on Google and put in her phone number on a website that promised she’d receive quotes. She got inundated with phone calls that went on for more than a year.

Jacobi is relatively healthy, so she figured she didn’t need to pay for the more comprehensive, higher-priced plans offered under the Affordable Care Act. She spoke to a USHEALTH agent selling Freedom Life and said she was under the impression at the time that the package of limited health plans provided by Freedom Life would make sense for her. Her monthly premium came to $224 — not cheap, she said.

Jacobi admits that she didn’t do her due diligence when she signed up for the coverage. “I feel silly about this now, but I just trusted them,” Jacobi said. She doesn’t remember her exact conversations with the agent, and UnitedHealthcare said that there are no recordings of the sales calls, and that it would not provide a recording or transcript of a follow-up call. Jacobi insisted that she would have made sure she had coverage for routine visits to her internist and obstetrician-gynecologist, but after she went to the doctors she received bills for lab work that came to $311 and $710.

After about a dozen hours on the phone with Freedom Life’s customer service representatives, Jacobi said the bills still hadn’t been paid. So she wrote a negative review on Yelp. That led to a phone call from a company vice president who helped make sure the insurer paid the bills.

In another case, the Freedom Life plan did not cover a drug Jacobi needed. And when she needed a minor surgical procedure she learned it would not be covered by the plan, so she paid cash.

Gordon-Shydlo, the UnitedHealthcare spokeswoman, said Jacobi had selected coverage that had a lower premium but only covered specific diseases, accidents and other items. The insurer complied with its “stringent application process” and addressed Jacobi’s questions and correctly paid her claims, Gordon-Shydlo said.

Jacobi is now covered by a health plan sponsored by her employer. She regrets getting caught up with Freedom Life. “It makes you feel really stupid that you fell for it,” she said.

Regulators play “whack-a-mole”

Frank Pyle has been chasing junk insurance companies for years as the director of market conduct enforcement for the Delaware Department of Insurance. “As soon as you take one down another one pops up in its place.”

Pyle said regulators across the country are aware of misrepresentations by insurers selling limited, short term, accident and defined sickness plans.

Pyle and his team in Delaware have to get throwaway phones when they play secret shopper on the lead generating websites, because the lines get inundated with so many calls from brokers.

In one investigation, Pyle said his team listened to a random sample of 87 recorded sales calls from a particular company. At least half of them contained some form of deception, he said. The level of misrepresentation seemed to depend on the savviness of the consumer, he said. A consumer would ask if the limited plan was the same as an Obamacare plan and the broker would tell them it’s just as good. If the consumer asked if the plan covered diabetes, the broker would tell them it did when it didn’t, he said. The case resulted in a fine against the company, he said.

When some states identify violations, they impose weighty penalties, like fines or revoking the license of a broker. But in others the penalties are light or sometimes limited to warnings.

Numerous state insurance commissioners have warned consumers to “be wary of telemarketers from the ‘national enrollment center,’ ‘national healthcare center,’ or other official-sounding names.”

The Virginia State Corporation Commission settled a case for $6,300 with Freedom Life that alleged the company misrepresented benefits or terms of a policy with advertising that was “untrue, deceptive or misleading” and failed to give applicants a summary of their rights. The company agreed to a corrective action plan that addressed the alleged violations, documents show. Gordon-Shydlo, the spokeswoman for UnitedHealthcare, which owns Freedom Life, said in an email that the company’s brochures included notices about the limitations of the products and that the company did not admit to any violation of the law.

It was hard to find state regulatory agencies that had taken action against lead generating companies. One state insurance regulator, who spoke anonymously because he didn’t want his colleagues to be criticized, said his agency “probably” has the authority to regulate the lead generators, because they are engaged in selling or soliciting the sale of insurance. “But it’s something we haven’t done in the past,” the regulator said. “It’s something that hasn’t been the best use of our time.”

New Mexico’s superintendent of insurance issued an official warning, saying it intended to hold insurance brokers and companies responsible for “abusive marketing practices by lead generators.” It also said the kinds of sales tactics used by brokers — such as referring to limited plans with terms associated with “Obamacare” plans — were misleading and deceptive, and banned them.

Corlette, the Georgetown insurance expert, said the Federal Trade Commission could take a “more aggressive” look at deceptive advertising and lead generating. An FTC spokeswoman said in an email that the agency is “concerned with illegal lead generation across the board,” but could point to only five enforcement actions that related to the deceptive marketing of health care plans. Only one of the cases took place within the past five years. None involved Millar or Apollo Interactive.

The FTC’s jurisdiction includes almost any sales claim that is “unfair” or is misleading and would affect a consumer’s decision to buy, says Aaron Rieke, a former FTC staff attorney. Because the agency is “super understaffed for their jurisdiction,” he said, its attorneys aim to take enforcement actions that yield real systemic improvement for consumers. But the fact that the lead-generation ecosystem includes many small players who buy ads on Google, Facebook and elsewhere presents a “structural challenge” — because “swatting [them] down doesn’t feel like a very effective way to go.”

Pyle said the state regulators should hold the insurance companies responsible for their advertising tactics, including the actions of lead generators. In 2016, the Delaware Department of Insurance fined Companion Life Insurance Company $487,000 for violations that included “deceptive acts,” documents show. Many of the problems in the case came from the lead generators the insurer was paying to do the outreach to consumers, Pyle said.

A person in the Companion Life compliance department referred ProPublica to its parent organization, BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina. But no one returned requests for comment.

Pyle said he’s troubled that legitimate insurance giants own some of what he calls the “bad companies.” “I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “I am surprised UnitedHealthcare is involved as much as it is.”

Pyle said regulators from various states have regular meetings and are considering pursuing criminal action against insurance company executives. “If the insurance company is paying someone to work on their behalf, they are responsible for their actions,” Pyle said. “You can fine these companies and they consider it the cost of doing business. But if you lock up their CEO in federal prison, they’ll think twice about harming our consumers.”

Doris Burke contributed reporting.

Questions Democratic senators failed to ask Amy Coney Barrett

After three days of Kabuki theater, a television mini-series produced by the Senate Judiciary Committee, did you learn anything that Judge Amy Coney Barrett didn’t want you to know?

Really, it’s not hard to frame questions that produce informative answers, including when the response is a dodge. Let me show you, starting here:

Judge Barrett, you testified your judicial philosophy is to follow the law as written. Can you please cite examples of where the law required you to render a decision contrary to your personal beliefs?

Notice how that is framed. Barrett can’t swat it away, as she did so many questions as hypotheticals. It asked her to speak about the decisions she already rendered.

Judge Barrett, have you contemplated whether in a childbirth gone awry you would sacrifice your own life to save that of your youngest child, leaving your other children sitting behind you motherless, or whether to live so that your children would grow up under your care with one less sibling?

As a relatively new judge, appointed by Donald Trump to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals three years ago, Barrett has not written all that many opinions. Were the judge to respond that she has yet to encounter that issue here’s the follow up:

Judge Barrett, have you given thought to how you would deal with that conflict, especially an irresolvable conflict, between your most deeply held beliefs and the law?

Framing matters

Again, notice the framing. The question is not what you thought but have you thought about a conflict between personal beliefs and the law.

Were the nominee to say that she had not pondered this—which would be preposterous — then the line of inquiry shifts to how deeply she has thought about the law. If she says she has indeed thought about it the question to ask is, “What did you conclude, if anything?”

Next question:

Judge Barrett, have you talked in your Notre Dame law classes and other forums about resolving conflicts between personal beliefs and Supreme Court rulings your students must work under with when they become lawyers and jurists?

That’s a question Barrett might try to slough off with the “I don’t recall” diversion. To deal with that ask this:

Well then, Judge Barrett, let’s assume I’m not a senator, but the most serious student in your class and that I hope to become a trial court judge or, like you, an appellate court judge. So, what do I do, professor, when confronted with a wide chasm, or worse a complete contradiction, between the law as decided by our Supreme Court and my beliefs?

Following your own advice?

The goal here is to get her to talk about how she analyzes such conflicts as well as her advice. And if she gives her advice the obvious follow up is short and sweet:

Would you, Judge Barrett, always take your own advice?

How that question is answered — candidly, philosophically, or evasively — would give senators and the public insight into what is going on behind the mask that Barrett, like all judicial nominees, wears during such hearings.

I could go on with more questions like this but the point I want to make here is that nothing like this emerged from three days of hearings in what is supposed to be the most exclusive deliberative body in the world, the American Senate. Their questions indicate our senators don’t respect that.

That so many bad questions were asked was unsurprising, but also shocking given that most Judiciary committee members are lawyers. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a subsidy grabbing Republican, is the Senate’s only pig farmer. The rest of them ought to know how to ask useful questions.

Judiciary Committee members in both parties should ask questions that probe the souls of nominees — simple, direct questions stripped of rhetorical filagree. Their questions should force nominees to instantly choose between dissembling, looking idiotic to other lawyers or telling the truth.

We would be wise to castigate every member of that committee, in person if you attend a political or social event, for making novice lawyers on their first day in a courtroom look good.

There’s one other question I would have asked. It’s based on my own life experience as the father of eight now grown children:

Awful choices

Judge Barrett, obstetricians in troubled deliveries sometimes must make an awful choice between saving the life of the mother or the child. How would you weigh that choice?

Again, the framing is how to make a choice, not what choice.

Concise follow-ups would note that each year about 700 American women die in childbirth. So do about 21,000 of roughly 3.8 million infants.

Russian media may be joining China and Iran in turning against Trump

It can be easy to overlook how the rest of the world is making sense of America’s chaotic campaign season.

But in many cases, they’re paying attention just as closely as U.S. voters are. After all, who wins the U.S. presidency has implications for countries around the world.

Since Sept. 22, we’ve been using machine-learning algorithms to identify the predominant themes in foreign media coverage.

How different countries cover the race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden can shed some light on how foreign citizens discern the candidates and the American political process, especially in places that have strict state control of media like China, Russia and Iran.

Unlike in the U.S., where there is a cacophony of perspectives, by and large the media in these three countries follow very similar narratives.

In 2016, we did the same exercise. Back then, one of the main themes that emerged was the decline of U.S. democracy. With scandal and the disillusionment of voters dominating the headlines, America’s global competitors used the 2016 election to advance their own political narratives about U.S. decline.

Some of these themes have emerged in the coverage of the current race. But the biggest difference is their portrayal of Trump.

The last election cycle, candidate Trump was an unknown. Although foreign nations acknowledged his political inexperience, they were cautiously optimistic about Trump’s deal-making ability. Russian media outlets were particularly bullish on Trump’s potential.

Now, however, the feelings appear to have changed. China, Iran and even Russia seem to crave a return to normalcy — and, to some extent, American leadership in the world.

Dissecting the debate

To assess how America’s competitors make sense of the 2020 campaign, we tracked over 20 prominent news outlets from Chinese, Russian and Iranian native language media. We used automatic clustering algorithms to identify key narrative themes in the coverage and sentiment analysis to track how each country viewed the candidates. We then reviewed this AI-extracted information to validate our findings.

While our results are still preliminary, they shed light on how these countries’ media outlets are portraying the two candidates. Two key moments from the 2020 campaign — the first debate and Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis — are particularly illustrative.

After the first debate, the Chinese media questioned its usefulness to voters and generally portrayed Trump’s performance in a negative light. To them, the “chaotic” back-and-forth was a sobering reflection of America’s political turbulence.

They described Trump as purposely sabotaging the debate by interrupting his opponent and, in the days after the debate, noted that his performance failed to improve his lagging poll numbers. Biden was criticized for being unable to articulate concrete policies, but was nonetheless praised for being able to avoid any major gaffes and — as an article from the Xinhua News Agency put it — responding to Trump with “fierce words.”

Unlike in 2016, where Clinton was portrayed as anti-Russian, corrupt and elitist, Russian media appeared more willing to characterize the Democratic Party nominee in a positive light.

In fact, Russian coverage expressed surprise over Biden’s debate performance. He didn’t come across as feeble; instead, he was, as the daily newspaper Kommersant wrote, a lively opponent who appeared to be “criticizing, irritating and humiliating” Trump by calling him a “liar, racist and the worst president.” They did praise Trump’s especially aggressive rhetoric. However, our analysis found that Russian media also repeatedly claimed that, unlike 2016, voters today were tiring of his bombast.

While Trump’s post-debate posturing received some positive coverage, Russian media largely lamented his administration’s failure to deliver substantive progress toward normalizing relations between the two countries. They noted the debate neither clarified policies for voters nor for international observers.

Iranian media took the strongest anti-Trump stance. Reports routinely pointed out that Trump has had no foreign policy successes, and has only exacerbated relations with the country’s major rivals. According to Iranian media outlets, Trump’s lack of accomplishments has left him with no choice but to rely on insults and personal attacks.

Biden, however, was said to have kept his calm. As Al Alam News wrote, he used “more credible responses and attacks than Trump.”

The former vice president, in their view, promised some semblance of normalized diplomatic relations.

“Intransigence’ and ‘ignorance”

The final month of the U.S. presidential race is known for last-minute surprises that can upend the race. This year was no exception, with Trump’s Oct. 2 announcement of his COVID-19 diagnosis quickly shifting media coverage from the debate to Trump’s health.

He received little sympathy from foreign outlets. Across the board, they were quick to note how his personal disregard for public health safety measures symbolized his administration’s failed response to the pandemic.

For example, one Chinese media outlet, The Beijing News, characterized the diagnosis as “hitting” the president “in the face,” given his previous downplaying of the epidemic. Other reports claimed Trump lacked “care about the epidemic,” including disregard for “protective measures such as wearing a mask.”

Chinese outlets suggested Trump would use the diagnosis to win sympathy from voters, but also noted by being sidelined from holding campaign rallies, he could lose his “self-confessed” ability to attract voters.

Russian media, on the other hand, remained confident that Trump would recover and repeated the White House line of Trump’s good health.

At the same time, Russian outlets tended to chastise Trump’s unwillingness to avoid large gatherings, practice social distancing or wear a mask, all of which violated his administration’s basic health guidelines. Likewise, Russian reports criticized Trump’s post-diagnosis behavior — like tweeting video messages while at the hospital and violating quarantine with his public appearances — as “publicity stunts” that jeopardized the safety of his Secret Service detail and supporters.

Again, Iranian media most directly criticized Trump. Reports characterized Trump as “determined to continue the same approach,” despite his diagnosis, and remain “without a muzzle,” “irresponsibly” continuing to tweet misinformation falsely comparing COVID-19 to the flu.

Coverage centered on Trump’s inability to, as Al Alam put it, show “any sympathy” for the over 200,000 dead Americans. This death toll, the same article noted, was attributed to Trump’s “mismanagement, intransigence, ignorance and stupidity,” highlighted by his cavalier disregard for safety guidelines such as wearing a mask.

In the bag for Biden?

Many of the criticisms of the U.S. found in foreign media outlets in our 2016 study appear in this year’s coverage. But since the 2016 election, geopolitics have changed quite a bit — and, for many of these countries, not necessarily for the better. That might best explain their collective ire toward Trump.

During Trump’s first term, Iranians absorbed the U.S.’s unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, the reimposition of sanctions and the assassination of one of its top generals.

The Chinese entered into a trade war with the U.S., while the U.S. government leveled accusations of intellectual property theft, mass murder and blame for the spread of what Trump has called the “China Virus.”

Russians, meanwhile, have seen themselves — fairly or not — bound to Trump’s 2016 election victory and outed as an international provocateur. That Trump has not been able to deliver on normalizing U.S. Russian relations despite four years of posturing and political rhetoric has perhaps made Trump more of a political liability than worthwhile ally. Not only has the COVID-19 pandemic sparked unrest in Russia’s backyard, but mounting regional instability is also undermining Putin’s image as a master tactician.

As a result, these countries’ outlets appear to have shifted attention away from a broad critique of U.S. democracy toward exasperation with Trump’s leadership.

The two, of course, aren’t mutually exclusive. And these countries’ relatively positive characterizations of a potential Biden administration likely won’t last.

But even the country’s supposed adversaries seem to be craving a return to stability and predictability from the Oval Office.

Robert Hinck, Assistant Professor, Monmouth College; Robert Utterback, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Monmouth College, and Skye Cooley, Assistant Professor of Communication, Oklahoma State University

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

Bill Barr is using the DOJ “to crush a victim” on behalf of Trump

In Attorney General Bill Barr’s latest attempt to help President Donald Trump avoid accountability for an alleged rape he is accused of committing in the 1990s, Barr on Monday argued in court filings that when the president denied columnist E. Jean Carroll’s accusation last year, he was acting not on behalf of his own interests but in his capacity as a public servant representing the people of the United States.

“Given the president’s position in our constitutional structure, his role in communicating with the public is especially significant,” wrote Justice Department lawyers, who last month at Barr’s direction replaced Trump’s personal legal team to represent the president in the case, in a highly unusual move. “The president’s statements fall within the scope of his employment for multiple reasons.”

The statements the government lawyers were referring to include Trump’s claim that Carroll was “not [his] type,” that he had never met her despite photographic evidence to the contrary, and that she was a liar who was trying to sell books by accusing him of raping her in a department store more than two decades ago, long before Trump’s political career began.

“There is not a single person in the United States — not the president and not anyone else — whose job description includes slandering women they sexually assaulted,” Carroll’s attorneys wrote in response to the DOJ’s claim on Monday.

Carroll, who sued Trump for defamation in a New York state court following his remarks, tweeted that she and her legal team are planning to argue in court that Trump’s denial was “not an official act.”

We are REALLY looking forward to meeting you in court and arguing it was NOT an "official act."https://t.co/yicFk1DjNp

— E. Jean Carroll (@ejeancarroll) October 19, 2020

The DOJ lawyers’ claim comes a month after Barr intervened in Carroll’s case against Trump, both by replacing the president’s legal representation and by attempting to transfer the lawsuit from the state court to a federal district court. Both moves suggest the DOJ aims to have the case treated as one that was filed against a government employee who is immune from defamation lawsuits, in order to have Carroll’s case dismissed.

Former federal prosecutor and NBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner tweeted that Barr’s latest action goes against the department’s responsibility to work “on behalf of victims.”

“Bill Barr is trying to use the DOJ to crush a victim,” Kirschner said.

E. Jean Carroll reported that Trump raped her. He then defamed her. In the decades I spent as a prosecutor w/the DOJ we worked ON BEHALF OF victims, we tried to help them & vindicate the crimes committed against them. Bill Barr is trying to use the DOJ to crush a victim. https://t.co/xWl9oin2r0

— Glenn Kirschner (@glennkirschner2) October 19, 2020

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden last week criticized the president for using the DOJ as his “own law firm” to gain the upper hand in his legal troubles.

“‘I’m being sued because a woman’s accusing me of rape. Represent me. Represent me,'” Mr. Biden said in imitation of the president. “What’s that all about?”

Mark Meadows’ FEC filings raise questions of unlawful spending, campaign coordination

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows reported spending tens of thousands of dollars through his campaign and leadership PAC on what appear to be personal expenses, including gourmet cupcakes, a cell phone bill, grocery purchases, lavish meals, thousands of dollars at a Washington jeweler and lodging at the Trump International Hotel, according to FEC filings.

A number of the expenses align with Lynda Bennett’s failed campaign to fill the North Carolina seat left vacant in the U.S. House of Representatives by Meadows, both before and after Trump named Meadows for the White House job.

Meadows had endorsed Bennett, a friend and ally, and when the Republican primary in that district grew unexpectedly contentious in the wake of Meadows’ resignation, local Republicans began to suspect that the chief of staff was putting his thumb on the scale. Salon’s investigation now raises questions about whether Meadows’ support ventured into the financial realm as well.

Meadows announced late last December that he would not run for re-election in his North Carolina congressional seat, but his campaign went on to spend more than $60,000 before he officially converted the committee to a leadership PAC. In that same time his campaign raised just $300.

He created Freedom First PAC in early July, and it has since spent more than $14,000, federal filings show, including on cupcakes, Costco, a cell phone and lodging at President Trump’s Washington hotel. Despite its spending, Freedom First has reported raising no money at all, which is highly unusual for any PAC, especially in the run-up to a national election.

It is illegal to spend campaign and PAC funds on personal expenses, such as groceries and meals.

“After Meadows announced he would not seek re-election, then took a job in the White House, his campaign account continued to spend large sums of money on food and beverage and lodging, including at the Trump Hotel, even though it was no longer fundraising,” Jordan Libowitz, of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics and Washington (CREW), told Salon. This pattern, he continued, “raises serious questions” about the purpose of that spending.

Former Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican, “is going to prison for using his campaign account for personal expenses, including at restaurants and hotels,” Libowitz added. “Meadows needs to explain what these expenses were for.”

Brendan Fischer, director of regulatory oversight at the Campaign Legal Center, agreed. He told Salon, “Campaign funds may be used to support one’s candidacy or duties as an officeholder, but after a person is no longer a candidate or congressional officeholder, campaign expenditures can look much more questionable.”

Between January and March of this ear, the Meadows campaign reported spending a total of $5,570 in donor funds on food and beverage items. About $1,600 of that went to the Capitol Hill Club, a mainstay hangout for House Republicans, just around the corner from Republican National Committee headquarters, including an $1,100 purchase on Jan. 13 — the same day Hunter resigned from the House for manifold campaign finance violations.

Hunter’s campaign had spent more than $100,000 at the Capitol Hill Club dating back to 2008. The Meadows campaign reported spending about half that amount at the GOP haunt in 109 separate expenditures since 2012, though most of those reports came in the four years after Trump’s election: more than $37,000 since 2017.

“There are plenty of possible reasons for this, especially because he was still a candidate for most of it,” Libowitz explained of the meals, which ranged from several thousand dollars to very small sums, a handful below $20.

“He could be having fundraising meetings. Or meeting with campaign staff. Or he could, like Duncan Hunter, be using the campaign card to pick up his own tab,” Libowitz continued. (The campaign reported raising just $786 gross between January and April, $292 of that in net contributions — and nothing at all thereafter.) “In and of itself, it doesn’t prove anything,” he added, “but it does at least ask for explanation.”

A week after that serendipitous Capitol Hill Club expense, the campaign reported spending $312 on food and beverage at The Grove Park Inn & Resort, a four-star country club in Asheville, North Carolina, in Meadows’ home district. It expensed a $15 parking fee for the same affair.

Campaign filings also show a $84 campaign expense at Lavender Moon Cupcakery in Alexandria, Virginia, on Feb. 12, and last month his leadership PAC — the direct extension of his campaign committee — dropped another $70 at the same bakery in two visits a week apart, with a $400 lodging expense at Trump International in between.

The Meadows campaign also told the FEC that it spent a total of $1,100 on food and drinks at Trump’s Washington hotel, after Meadows had announced the end of his campaign. This included $500 on March 3 of this year — Super Tuesday in the Democratic primary race. (Hotel insiders know Tuesdays as “lobbyist night.”)

Trump named Meadows his new chief of staff three days after that.

On March 30, the day that Meadows officially resigned from the House — more than three months after announcing that he would not run for re-election — his campaign reported spending $2,650 on “printed materials” from Washington custom jeweler Ann Hand.

“I have no legitimate explanation for that one,” Brett Kappel, campaign finance expert at Harmon Curran, told Salon. “It’s illegal to make a false statement to the FEC. If he used campaign funds to buy jewelry for someone, that could be another personal use violation. The FEC allows campaigns to use campaign funds to buy gifts for donors or volunteers — but they have to be disclosed as such.”

The purchase, however, is not flagged as a gift, something Meadows did for previous purchases. While Hand’s website does not advertise printed products such as stationery, the store, which deals predominantly in politically-themed jewelry and accessories, sells printed American Eagle silk scarves at $350 apiece.

The site also showcases a number of custom and individualized pieces, including some made for members of Congress and the White House. A single Trump-Pence pin studded with Swarovski crystals costs $65 — two percent of what Meadows expensed. In October 2019, the campaign reported spending $925 on “Logo Lapel Pins with Magnets” from Coates Designers in Franklin, North Carolina.

Photos show that Meadows’ wife, Debbie, wore a necklace to the Republican National Convention event on the White House lawn which matches an Ann Hand design.

The purchase underscores the unusual phenomenon: Meadows was no longer campaigning, but his campaign still racked up expenses. While it’s normal for campaigns that have ended to have a grace period to wrap up loose ends, many of the disbursements that Meadows listed are difficult to understand in those terms, since he was no longer a political candidate.

For instance, Meadows paid campaign associate Henry Mitchell more than $5,000 for “field representative mileage” in five installments between January and March.

“There’s still campaign work that can be done as a campaign winds down. It’s not out of the ordinary to keep someone around to help out,” Libowitz said of those expenses. “But at 58 cents a mile, back-of-the-envelope math has it at 900 miles some weeks. That’s a ton of driving.”

It’s not clear why Mitchell was putting on so many miles, or where. However, the Republican primary to replace Meadows had already grown chaotic by February, with Bennett, his friend and hand-picked successor, facing a number of candidates, some to her right. At the time, local Republican operatives speculated that Meadows had been trying to tip the scales in her favor, according to Politico.

Two days after his Super Tuesday expense at Trump hotel, Meadows’ campaign reported giving $4,000 to Bennett’s campaign: $2,000 for the Republican primary; and $2,000 for the general election. Trump had announced Meadows would be hired as chief of staff the previous day, and as mentioned above, he officially resigned from Congress at the end of the month.

Furthermore, FEC filings show that the Meadows campaign continued to spend campaign money in the months after his resignation and before he filed to create Freedom First PAC on July 1. These expenses include phone bills, in-flight internet, food, groceries and consulting.

In mid-April, two weeks after Meadows signed on with the White House, his campaign reported a $360 meal expense at the Capitol Hill Club, in the middle of coronavirus lockdowns. That week the Capitol Hill Club, which had been shuttered, posted a mailer about delivering charity meals to frontline workers.

Asked if the Meadows campaign could have expensed meals as a charity gift, Kappel said it was possible, but pointed out that if so, the filing should have indicated that.

“The FEC would probably allow that, but it would have to be reported more specifically than this. A memo entry would be sufficient — something like ‘charitable contribution of food for hospital workers’ — but the receipt doesn’t show that,” he said.

In the end, Meadows’ efforts did not sustain Bennett, who lost her June 23 primary to pro-Trump political newcomer Madison Cawthorn. That same day, the Meadows campaign reported a $2,300 payment to Henry Mitchell, the aforementioned field representative, for “management consulting.” (Mitchell was formerly the chair of the Buncombe County Republican Party, in Meadows’ district.)

A week later, on the last day of the Meadows’ campaign’s official existence, his campaign reported a $600 expense at a Safeway grocery store.

Furthermore, the Meadows and Bennett campaigns, along with Right Women PAC, which was founded by Meadows’ wife, are the only three political committees in the U.S. to report payments to a company called Tower Digital, which was founded by Meadows’ brother — who apparently registered Bennett’s campaign domain in October 2019, according Politico.

Additionally, Meadows’ campaign lists political expenditures that on their face do not seem to fit the needs of a candidate who has already announced he will no longer be seeking elected office.

For instance, the campaign reported paying pollster McLaughlin & Associates $11,200 on Jan. 7, three weeks after Meadows announced he would no longer be campaigning. That same day the campaign reported a $3,000 payment to Hammond & Associates for “Fundraising Consulting,” with another $3,032 consulting payment to the company on Jan. 10, filings show.

“The only legitimate answer is that Meadows asked his campaign vendors to submit any outstanding invoices or receipts so that they could be paid, but if he had done that you would expect one lump sum payment,” Kappel told Salon. “If Meadows had polling done in the interest of a candidate he wanted to replace him, that would be an excessive in-kind contribution.”

Although Meadows made his retirement announcement in December, Politico reported that skeptical North Carolina Republicans noticed a number of coincidences surrounding Barrett’s entry into the race — among them the October domain registry, as well as other indications she had a heads-up on Meadows’ announcement, the timing of which caught other GOP hopefuls off guard.

It is unclear why Meadows paid a polling company weeks after announcing his retirement from Congress, and possibly months after having made the decision, as Politico’s reporting suggests. Similarly, it seems Meadows would owe an explanation for $6,000 in fundraising consulting expenses for a dead campaign that went on to raise less than $300 in net contributions for all of 2020 to date.

“While some of the campaign’s expenses in the first quarter might be justified,” Brendan Fischer of the CLC told Salon, “those meal and grocery expenses from the period after Meadows resigned from Congress raise the most red flags for me. Those post-April expenses for meals at the Capitol Hill Club and groceries cannot possibly be connected to Meadows’ candidacy or congressional duties, since he was neither a candidate nor a congressman at that time.”

The spending continued after Meadows established his new PAC, Freedom First, which has not raised any money since its July 1 inception. It remains unclear exactly what could legitimize the $14,500 in campaign expenses reported since then.

Those expenditures include several meal purchases, including $1,000 at the Capitol Hill Club on July 21. Remarking on that expense, Fischer pointed out that the FEC, in response to a CLC complaint, fined former Rep. Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican, in 2019 for using his old campaign account to pay for Capitol Hill Club dues and meals, among other things.

Then, in August, Freedom First reported its largest expenditure: A $10,000 PAC donation, the maximum amount allowable under election law, made to Ralph Sexton Ministries on Aug. 10. The Meadows campaign had previously reported only one other contribution to the organization, of $1,000 in April 2019.

Sexton ran a church in Asheville that Debbie Meadows and Lynda Bennett both attended. He introduced the two women, along with Jim Jordan’s wife, Polly, to a crowd of churchgoers this winter, according to local outlet the Mountaineer. Sexton announced his retirement from the church on Saturday, two months after the $10,000 contribution from Freedom First.

Bennett’s campaign finished $70,000 in debt, and she still needs to return the Meadows campaign’s $2,000 general election contribution, since she lost the Republican primary and is not on the ballot in November. Her campaign has $1,000 cash on hand, according to filings.

However, the lion’s share of Bennett’s outstanding debt is owed to herself: She loaned her campaign $80,000 on the last day of 2019, days after Meadows announced his retirement.

Freedom First has still not raised any money after all of this activity, but it continued to spend into September, including at the Trump International Hotel in Washington. In August it filed a series of payments to Tower Digital, Meadows’ brother’s company, as well a $240 payment to Costco and $1,000 to the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro.

“You can’t use campaign funds to buy your groceries at Costco,” said Kappel.

Freedom First’s most recent payment was reported on Sept. 24: an Uber ride, for $80.32.

Lynda Bennett’s campaign did not reply to Salon’s detailed request for comment. The White House did not reply to multiple detailed requests for comment.

Republican “hero” who helped stop terror attack faces questions over “affiliations” to extremists

An Oregon congressional candidate who drew worldwide acclaim for helping to stop a terror attack faces questions about his “affiliations” to extremists ahead of Election Day.

Former Oregon National Guardsman Alex Skarlatos, better known as the “Paris train hero” after he and four others subdued a gunman while traveling in Europe in 2015, is running in Oregon’s 4th Congressional District. Democratic groups claim that his association with Timber Unity, a group linked to extremist groups such as the Proud Boys, QAnon and the Three Percenter movement, raises “serious questions about his affiliations.”

“Their Salem log truck rallies were a smorgasbord of climate denial, anti-vaxxers, gun nuts, anti-immigrant, militia groups, QAnon,” Steve Pedery of the conservation group Oregon Wild told Salon.

A photo displayed on the Skarlatos campaign’s Facebook page shows the Republican candidate posing with Timber Unity protesters holding a banner with the QAnon slogan last year.

Posted by Alek Skarlatos on Thursday, June 27, 2019

“Alek Skarlatos has been hoping to skate through this election without answering any real questions — and with good reason. The more we learn about him, the more troubling his candidacy gets, and his association with an extreme right wing group is just the latest alarming news about him,” Abby Curran Horrell, executive director of House Majority PAC, said in a statement to Salon. “Alek Skarlatos needs to disavow this group immediately, or answer serious questions about his affiliations.”

Skarlatos’ campaign did not respond to questions from Salon. Julie Parrish, a Timber Unity board member, told Salon in an emailed statement that reports linking the group to extremists were hit pieces.

“Let me be really clear: Our board doesn’t support racism in any way, shape or form,” she said. “We’re not part of QAnon, or any other group. We have one focus — protect jobs for working Oregonians in the natural resource sector — regardless of their party, race, sexual orientation or gender.”

Skarlatos was honored in 2015 by former President Barack Obama and former French President Francois Hollande for rushing to confront a man linked to ISIS who was armed with an AK-47 and a pistol. His heroics earned him and his friends, Air Force veteran Spencer Stone and Anthony Sadler, a book deal. The men later portrayed themselves in Clint Eastwood’s film adaptation of “The 15:17 to Paris.” Skarlatos went on to appear on “Dancing With the Stars” and “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”

Skarlatos, a conservative who served in Afghanistan, soon became a frequent guest on Fox News. He attempted to use his newfound notoriety in 2018 to launch a bid to become Douglas County Commissioner in his home state but fell short. Not wanting to “waste” his popularity, the 28-year-old launched a bid earlier this year to unseat Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., who has represented the district for 33 years.

Skarlatos, who has been accused by Democrats of “blindly backing Trump or wanting to dismantle health care protections,” according to Politico, is the first serious opponent DeFazio has faced in years in an increasingly red district which President Donald Trump lost by about 0.1% in 2016. Skarlatos outraised DeFazio in the last quarter in a contest which is expected to become the most expensive House race in state history. His bid has been financially backed by House Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tx.

Skarlatos has repeatedly praised the president but pushed back on the “Trump Republican” label, vowing to represent “the loggers, the veterans, moms, dads and families trying to make ends meet” against the “extremes” in Washington. However, he previously stated in a deleted tweet that he supports Trump “100%.”

With a focus on the timber industry and forest management amid the state’s wildfires, Skarlatos has pushed a debunked conspiracy theory that the fires stop at the Canadian border and are not growing in other countries like Germany. Skarlatos has said he does not “believe” that climate change is to blame for the growing fires despite scientists repeatedly pointing to climate change as a key reason.

He has also argued that the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has been an “overreaction” — and the virus is not “that lethal” — while opposing federal unemployment benefits to Americans laid off amid the crisis.

Skarlatos, who describes himself as a libertarian, has taken other positions outside of the mainstream, such as opposing any new gun laws and arguing that there should be no minimum wage.

He has endorsed Republican Senate candidate Jo Rae Perkins, who has pledged her allegiance to the QAnon conspiracy theory and attended events hosted by a group linked to QAnon supporters and other fringe groups in Oregon.

Skarlatos has allied himself with Timber Unity, a new right-wing “anti-environment” group linked to a Republican walkout which thwarted legislation aimed at combating climate change, according to Mother Jones. The group’s members have reportedly “had no qualms associating with violent extremists and far-right groups,” including being photographed with members of “neofascist or militia groups.” Their rallies have “prominently featured messages backing QAnon,” and their private Facebook group is “awash with violent threats, conspiracy theories and sometimes racist messages that likely violate the platform’s terms of service,” according to the report.

Some members have allegedly made death threats against Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, and pushed conspiracy theories about vaccines and George Soros, a frequent target of anti-Semitic attacks, per Mother Jones.

The group’s leaders have also been linked to the far-right “Three Percenters” movement, QAnon supporters and the Proud Boys.

Though the group does not endorse federal candidates, board member Todd Stoffel told KOIN-TV that Skarlatos was “a member of our movement, and we are very proud of him stepping up in his district.”

Stoffel was last year pictured with former Congressional candidate Angela Roman, a reported member of the Three Percenters, making the “OK” hand symbol, which has been co-opted by white supremacist groups. Other members were also photographed with Roman.

Skarlatos “says he supports Timber Unity and spoke at a rally it organized at the state Capitol in Salem,” according to E&E News. He spoke at a Timber Unity rally before Republican lawmakers fled the state to prevent the climate bill’s passage and was photographed alongside Perkins at one of the group’s rallies, according to Jefferson Public Radio.

Conservation groups have alleged that Timber Unity has “mainstreamed extremism by allowing activists engaged in violent threats and conspiracy theories into the group,” according to Willamette Week.

“By refusing to distance themselves from these parts of the movement,” Oregon Wild said in a report earlier this year, “the Timber Unity leadership is simultaneously harnessing the energy of these extremist elements for their own benefit, while proclaiming that they are a legitimate representative of rural Oregon.”

“Protesters came dressed in the regalia of the Three Percenters, a right-wing anti-government militia, and carried signs decrying government efforts to increase childhood vaccination rates,” Willamette Week reported.

The group’s leaders have pushed back on the reports. Parrish told Williamette Week that the reported ties were “outlandish” and “bogus.”

“The assertion that Timber Unity members from poor rural communities are somehow privileged or ‘supremacists’ for fighting for their livelihoods,” she said, “is simply proof that the Democratic majority in this state has completely abandoned the needs of the working class.”

Parrish told the outlet that the group had reported at least one person who made problematic comments in its Facebook group to state police and insisted that she did not think “any” of its members “know what the whole QAnon thing is.”

But sociologist Spencer Sunshine, who authored the Oregon Wild report, told Mother Jones that the group was “profiting off of an extremist space and refusing to distance from it while posing as mainstream organization.”

“While Timber Unity has sought to downplay these links, an investigation of its social media channels has found extensive ties between its leaders and Far Right figures, as well as the use of racist, homophobic, Islamophobic and violent rhetoric by its supporters,” he said. “The organization already has a history of and association with groups who have either made violent political threats or have supported violent actions.”

Since the report was published, Timber unity has “heavily” moderated its online group “as best we can,” Parrish told Salon in an email. “But we do have 64,000 members in a group. Just like Salon isn’t responsible for the opinions of their readers or their comments on your page, nor are we responsible for the individual opinions of 64,000 other people.”

Pedery agreed that “they have been a lot more aggressive in shutting down most (but not all) of the overtly racist stuff on their closed Facebook group, and they take pains to say they do not support violence.”

But Pedery added that Stoffel remained on the board, and “their material continues to feature QAnon imagery.”

“To the extent they have made changes,” he said in an email, “I think they are cosmetic.”

Parrish reiterated that the group does not tolerate bigotry.

“Our board is of mixed race/heritage, as are some of our children,” she said. “As the daughter of an Arab immigrant, I’ve personally been subject to some pretty racist comments over the years, so we just don’t tolerate it.”

“As to Alek Skarlotos, we haven’t endorsed his campaign,” she added. “We’re not set up to do federal endorsements. We do allow all candidates of any party to post once every Tuesday in our group, as Timber Unity is a non-partisan entity. That would include Congressman De Fazio if he wanted to avail himself to his constituents; he has chosen not to. We do appreciate Alek’s positions on forest management and job creation compared to his opponent, but we’re not weighing in on his campaign. As a former eight-year Oregon lawmaker, I find his candor and energy refreshing. After 30-plus years of De Fazio, I think people in Southern Oregon are ready for someone new to represent them in Congress.”

Pedery argued that Timber Unity was “essentially an arm of the Oregon Republican Party and their far-right donors in the logging industry.”

“From the get-go, Parrish positioned Timber Unity as an umbrella under which a variety of far-right and rural grievances could be organized in support of Republican candidates and causes,” he said. “They have started sending out mailers listing their candidate endorsements, and Republican candidates are displaying their logo prominently in their materials. The only [Democrats] they have endorsed are pro-fossil fuel export terminals, and pro-clearcutting.”

Pedery said the group had “pretty clearly tried to glom on to any activism [or] political momentum it can find in right-wing politics in the state,” which is why their rallies have featured so many extremist groups.

“Their goal has always been to try and weld all of this together into a rural-focused campaign to generate political support for far-right causes and candidates (and hate of anything that smacks of urban, liberal, Democrat, environmentalist, etc.), and to create support for Republican walkouts that paralyze the legislature,” he added. “If anything, the Oregon GOP is worse. I think Timber Unity at least has Parrish trying to maintain a public image of non-racist, non-crazy people (even if she is perfectly happy to tolerate and even recruit those folks in private).”

After the publication of this article, Parrish emailed an additional statement refuting Pedery’s characterization.

“Mr. Pedery walks a thin legal line in making libelous statements about members of our board to further an agenda that hurts the working families in our state. His allegations are downright shameful,” she said. “Pedery would like to scare people into thinking his concerns are about race, but in reality, it’s about denigrating people with whom he disagrees politically, and he’ll use any tactic to do so. Our board Secretary, Angelita Sanchez, is running for a city council race on a platform of stamping out racism in her community and our members are fully supporting her efforts. I’m proud of the Timber Unity members who attend truck rallies to save their jobs while also attending peaceful protests to support Black lives in Oregon. That’s the real magic of our organization…we’re here for anyone who wants to fight for their jobs, no matter what.”

This article was updated with additional comments from Julie Parrish.

Feeling the pinch, GOP Senate committee restructures $20 million loan one month before the election

Amid tight financial straits and a narrowing electoral map, the official Senate election committee of the Republican Party restructured a $20 million loan so it could withdraw a $6 million line of credit, according to an FEC filing submitted on Tuesday.

The National Republican Senate Committee (NRSC), the national GOP organization dedicated to supporting Republican candidates for Senate, took out the new line of credit from Chain Bridge Bank. For collateral, the group put up its deposit accounts but apparently had to augment those with its donor list, which together were valued at $39.3 million, the filing shows.

While Tuesday’s filing shows the NSRC took out the original loan March 18, 2020, it also appears to be the only record of it. The committee did not include the loan in its monthly report from March, and its financial summary does not show any loans at all over the last two years. The group reported payments on a prior line of credit from the same bank in 2019.

The FEC fined Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tx., $35,000 for failing to report the source of just over $1 million in loans during his ill-fated 2016 presidential bid.

“I’m thinking the NRSC is going to get a letter from the FEC asking why this loan wasn’t disclosed earlier,” campaign finance expert Brett Kappel told Salon. “Of course, given where the election cycle is, that won’t happen until after the election.”

Republican purses have become strained as Senate races tighten across the country, with Democratic candidates exploiting national dissatisfaction with the Trump administration to expand the map of flippable states. Democrats once pinned their hopes on a few toss-up states in the early months of 2020, but now Republican incumbents in conservative strongholds like Georgia, Montana, and South Carolina — plus Alaska and Texas — have had to field competitive races. Democrats are now favored to take back the Senate, according to election experts.

That wave has put new pressure on Republicans to preserve whatever down-ballot seats possible. Where the NRSC was once able focus spending on a handful of vulnerable candidates — Susan Collins in Maine; Cory Gardner in Colorado; and Martha McSally in Arizona — funds have diluted as Democrats expanded the map.

For instance, longtime incumbent Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., whose 2014 campaign set fundraising records, has been outraised by Democratic rival Jaime Harrison, who has so far drawn more than $58 million in his bid to flip the Palmetto State seat.

Graham has used a number of recent Fox News appearances to beg for money as he plays defense. Last week, the Republican appeared to have violated both federal campaign finance laws and Senate ethics rules when he stumped for cash in the halls of the upper chamber after a confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

The NRSC gave the Graham campaign $44,600 at the end of September before it withdrew the new line of credit, according to filings. Four other candidates received committee funds that month, all of them in that amount: Bill Cassidy in Louisiana; John Cornyn in Texas; Mark Ronchetti in New Mexico; and Tommy Tuberville in Alabama.

As Election Day approaches, NRSC funds have bankrolled ad buys in a number of states. In September alone, the NRSC put $570,582 into ads boosting Gardner’s race in Colorado; $2.4 million into defending McSally’s seat; $3.1 million into Steve Daines’ Montana bid; $3.3 million into Collins’ fight in Maine; and nearly $4 million into Sen. Joni Ernst’s unexpected bout with Theresa Greenfield in Iowa, campaign filings show.

The GOP has also tapped other ways to channel money from megadonors who have maxed out their allowable contributions through what experts described to Salon as a legal form of money laundering.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) can disperse funds to races across the country as needed, but individual donors can only give the RNC so much. However, megadonors can give over the limit by “washing” bundled contributions through state parties first, a process the FEC does not technically view as a direct individual contribution.

For instance, billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, each maxed out their annual limit to the RNC in February. They also gave $10,000 to Trump Victory, a joint fundraising committee between the Trump campaign and RNC, the same month. However, if Trump Victory had sent that money from its account straight to the RNC, the RNC would have had to refund the Adelsons.

But Trump Victory has a way around that, by holding on to the money and later washing it through an affiliated state party — and on Sept. 4, it did just that.

First, Trump Victory made a $579,707 transfer to the Maine Republican Party, according to FEC filings. That same day, the Maine Republican Party transferred exactly $579,707 from its account to the RNC. Smuggled in those pools of money was the Adelsons’ combined $20,000 from February, which records show was among the funds sent by Trump Victory to Maine on Sept. 4.

Trump Victory smuggled $701,697 to the RNC through the Michigan Republican Party, also on Sept. 4.

The committee’s filings show it moved millions of dollars to the RNC this way, through 20 other state Republican parties — all on the same day.

Trump’s business appears to have cut Matt Gaetz a RNC hotel discount that went unreported to the FEC

The campaign to re-elect Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., a reliable ally of President Donald Trump, appears to have received a deep discount on lodging at Trump International Hotel in Washington during the Republican National Convention in August, federal records show. Such a discount would violate federal election law barring corporations from contributing directly to campaigns, according to campaign finance experts.

Recent Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings show the Gaetz campaign made four separate payments, ranging from $216.20 to $261.47, for lodging at Trump’s hotel on Aug. 27, the last of four nights of the convention when Trump gave his acceptance speech from the White House lawn.

On that evening, the price for rooms for one adult through Hotels.com began at $795 and ran as high as $2,070, The Daily Beast reported. On the three convention dates prior to Trump’s keynote address, the hotel priced its cheapest room at $695 a night. (Rates for rooms this week range from $695 to $895.)

It appears the hotel cut the Gaetz campaign a discount far below market rates. Even if the campaign had booked the cheapest room available, it appears to have paid about one-third of the market rate, saving anywhere between $470 and $530. Such a discount would represent an in-kind donation to the Gaets campaign, courtesy of Trump Old Post Office LLC. (The FEC treats any item of value as money.)

A photo of Gaetz at the hotel alongside White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and New Jersey convention delegate Joseph Belnome was posted to the latter’s Instagram page on the day of the hotel payments.

Corporate contributions to candidates are illegal under federal election law. It is also illegal for companies to cut campaigns a special deal not given to other customers. When campaigns pay below normal prices, they must report the discount as a contribution. Per the Federal Election Commission:

[A]nything of value made by any person for the purpose of influencing any election for Federal office is a contribution . . .

For purposes of this section, the term anything of value includes all in-kind contributions. . . [T]he provision of any goods or services without charge or at a charge that is less than the usual and normal charge for such goods or services is a contribution . . .

If goods or services are provided at less than the usual and normal charge, the amount of the in-kind contribution is the difference between the usual and normal charge for the goods or services at the time of the contribution and the amount charged the political committee.

The Gaetz campaign did not report a discount in its latest filing.

While it is possible that the Gaetz campaign booked the rooms in advance, it is unlikely to have made much of a difference. First, the reservations were unlikely to have been made with much advance notice. Trump, who canceled his previous plans to accept the nomination in Jacksonville, Fla. — itself a back-up to the original location of Charlotte — was still weighing in early August whether to give his speech from the White House or Gettysburg, Penn. Plans for the D.C. portion of the convention were not announced until Aug. 13.

Even if Gaetz — who recently accused Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., of trying to bribe Trump for his support — was given an early heads-up, he may not have been alone. Everson, an independent journalist who reports extensively on the Trump Hotel, first noticed the price hike on Aug. 6. If Gaetz somehow had the foresight to book the rooms months in advance, the rates would still be improbably low, according to Everson.

As the Trump hotel reportedly hiked its prices, other luxury D.C. hotels were cutting their rates. Accommodations for single adult rooms on Aug. 27 started at $367 at the Mandarin Oriental and $263 at the Fairmont Washington, the Daily Beast reported on Aug. 6.

Trump’s 2020 financial disclosures show the president made $40.5 million last year from the luxury hotel, which occupies the federally-owned Old Post Office building. The government controls the Trump Organization’s lease, which the company has sought to offload.

Gaetz, one of the president’s most ardent supporters, recently appeared at a Trump campaign rally in his home state of Florida, where the president repeatedly called him “Rick.”

Jordan Libowitz, of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which also noted the disbursements, told Salon that a steep discount for Gaetz would not surprise him.

“Gaetz is particularly close to Trump and has been to Trump properties more than any other Representative — tied with Kevin McCarthy,” Libowitz said. “But he’s still behind Senators Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul.”

“So how he got a discount is really a question he’d need to answer,” Libowitz added, pointing out that standard room rates at the hotel range from the high-300s to mid- to high-400s.

The deal echoes another scandal centering around Gaetz from earlier this year, when the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) probed nearly $200,000 in taxpayer funds that the panhandle conservative paid over the years to a campaign donor to rent the entire sixth floor in a historic building in downtown Pensacola. Watchdogs considered the price to be below market rate.

The OCE ended its investigation in early July without reporting any wrongdoing. Gaetz’ campaign reported a $3,786 payment on Sept. 4 to the law firm he tapped during the inquiry, according to his FEC filings, or one week after his hotel stay.

While it is unclear what that payment concerns, Politico reported in late July that Gaetz appeared to have violated House ethics rules after funneling taxpayer money to Darren Beattie, a consultant and former Trump aide. Beattie was ousted in 2018 after it was revealed that he had spoken at a conference featuring prominent white nationalists.

Gaetz and the Trump International Hotel did not reply to Salon’s request for comment.

Both the GOP and the Democrats want to break up Big Tech. Could it really happen?

We live in an era of unprecedented political polarization, to the point where it seems unimaginable that liberals and conservatives could unite around any issue. Yet as a House Judiciary Committee hearing last Thursday illustrated, there are many conservatives who join liberals in arguing that we should strengthen antitrust laws against Big Tech companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon — although they sometimes have very different reasons for wanting to do so.

The House Judiciary Committee hearing was chaired by Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., who is in charge of the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law. The hearing, dubbed “Proposals to Strengthen the Antitrust Laws and Restore Competition Online,” was a rare display of bipartisanship even though the two sides on some occasions still talked past each other. The hearing was also unusual because antitrust action is rare nowadays, a testament perhaps to how big business has essentially captured government.

In general, the Democrats and Republicans seemed united in their desire to rein in big technology companies. Cicilline declared at one point that “these once-scrappy, underdog startups have grown into the kinds of monopolies we last saw more than a century ago.”

Gus Hurwitz, an associate professor of law at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, told Salon that this narrative of “little guy” companies growing dangerous big is consistent with perceptions of technology corporations since the late 20th century. In the 1990s they were viewed as bringing about a potential utopia — the logic, as he described it to Salon, was “Hey, this is going to be a incredibly important platform that’s going to bring the world together and create a new global entity that is independent from any nation.” Now they are perceived with suspicion because of concerns that normally would not have fallen under the purview of antitrust legislation. These include the belief that Big Tech companies violate users’ privacy and, on the right, the accusation that companies discriminate against conservative voices.

This point was reflected in comments made by Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, who told the hearing that the movement for using antitrust laws against Big Tech has been a “historic and bipartisan process” in which “nearly a dozen bipartisan bills by the antitrust subcommittee have all been passed with unanimous support.” He urged his colleagues to “take a moment to reflect” on how “the subcommittee has taken a number of concrete steps forward in support of its critical mission to promote open and fair markets for the American people, with an appropriate focus on consumers and workers as well as small and medium-sized businesses who are struggling to stay afloat.”

Zephyr Teachout, associate professor of law at Fordham University School of Law, explained during her testimony at the hearing that “antitrust laws, and strong antitrust laws, are essential for freedom and for a thriving economy. The highly concentrated Big Tech marketplaces and the existing abuses of Big Tech enabled by their dominant positions poses a major democratic threat.” While her sentiment was met with broad agreement, Teachout had a more pessimistic outlook on whether change will be made. She argued that the Supreme Court has engaged in judicial overreach by holding antitrust cases to an unreasonably high standard and urged Congress to take the initiative from the Supreme Court by acting on the fact that “significant new legislation is required, as your investigation revealed.”

Another antitrust expert, one who spoke to Salon, shared Teachout’s analysis about the difficulty of getting the American court system to enforce antitrust laws.

“If you go into court and you say, ‘We ought to break up this company because it has a 100% market share,’ but you can’t show that they did anything reprehensible to gain that market share, then you’re going to lose,” Alexander “Sasha” Volokh, an associate professor of law at Emory University, explained to Salon. “If a company grows to a hundred percent through its own merits, there are certain things that are absolutely condemned, like competitors making agreements on what prices to charge or what quantities to produce, that has always been and continues to be absolutely condemned by the antitrust laws.” Other practices, too, like “exclusive dealing contracts,” were once strongly condemned but no longer are, Volokh said.

One of the Republicans at the subcommittee hearing, Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, seemed to agree with these sentiments when he argued that “we also need to seriously consider increasing scrutiny on big tech companies, including shifting the burden of proof required for a market dominant company to prove that a merger is not anti-competitive.”

There were also experts like William Baer, Visiting Fellow of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, who has worked on antitrust enforcement for four different presidents. As he told Congress in his testimony on Thursday, “That experience teaches me that in many cases our antitrust laws have been successful and forces for good, but too often antitrust jurisprudence has fallen short and failed to protect consumers and competition as much as it can and as it should.”

As Hurwitz pointed out, many of the biggest antitrust cases over the past few decades have involved large tech corporations, with some of them turning out successfully so long as the government had overwhelming evidence of violations.

“Technology has always been at the forefront of big antitrust cases, and big in antitrust history,” Hurwitz told Salon, ticking off examples including “the Microsoft case in the 1990s, IBM in mid-century and the AT&T breakup in the 1980s, but the 20th century was just the history of AT&T regulation.”

Hurwitz added that the early 21st century has exacerbated concerns about Big Tech because “the internet and technology affects all of us. It is day to day in our lives, our work, our social existence, our friendships, our communications, our news, our media. Everything gets to us intermediated over the internet by these big tech companies using the big tech platforms. So it’s a lot more tangible and palpable for everyone.”

This does not mean that it will be easy for Congress to break up Big Tech companies, at least not without changing current laws so that the courts will be unable to overturn their actions.

Herbert Hovenkamp, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School who has written extensively about antitrust laws, told Salon that the case against companies like Google and Amazon is quite challenging. While they “might be doing a lot of bad things, they’re generally not charging high prices. In fact, Google’s most common consumer price is zero. Email is zero, Gmail and it’s operating system for cell phones, Android, is free. The same thing is true of the browser and search engine, they’re all free to users.” He made the same point about Amazon, “which also has a reputation for having low prices, maybe not always the lowest price, but you don’t see in consumer complaints about Amazon that they charge high prices for things, and the way they’ve managed their business to grow so incredibly is by low prices.”

At this point, we must turn to the other aspect of the modern antitrust movement against Big Tech firms, one that most scholars agree would not usually be considered under the purview of antitrust law.

The sentiment was best summed up by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a Ranking Member who helped preside over the hearing held by the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law. Rep. Jordan proclaimed that “big tech is out to get conservatives. That’s not a suspicion. That’s not a hunch. It’s a fact. I said that two months ago at our last hearing. It’s every bit as true today.”

Jordan’s words were echoed by one of the expert witnesses, Rachel Bovard of the Conservative Partnership Institute, who argued that the problem is not with existing antitrust laws but with how Big Tech companies supposedly censor free speech.

“Single algorithmic decisions made by individuals in a private corporation accountable to no one changes what kind of viewpoints and information are available to billions of people around the world,” Bovard said at the hearing.

Hovenkamp told Salon that conservatives’ complaints of ideological bias are “not an antitrust issue” just as “the left’s concern has been with bigness, but bigness per se has never been an antitrust problem either. We permit firms to get very big as long as they don’t charge consumers high prices.”

As Salon has previously covered, President Donald Trump has used measures like Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which protects online platforms from being liable for the content posted by their users, to try to retaliate against social media platforms that he claims are hostile to him. In May he signed an executive order instructing the Federal Communications Commission to craft a new regulation that could exempt social media platforms from Section 230 protections, which he did after Twitter fact-checked inaccurate tweets that the president posted to his account.

“The threat by Donald Trump to shut down social media platforms that he finds objectionable is a dangerous overreaction by a thin-skinned president. Any such move would be blatantly unconstitutional under the First Amendment,” Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe told Salon by email at the time. “That doesn’t make the threat harmless, however, because the president has many ways in which he can hurt individual companies, and his threat to do so as a way of silencing dissent is likely to chill freedom of expression and will undermine constitutional democracy in the long run.”

Australians are being urged to consider a publicly-funded alternative to Facebook

Many of the worst ills of social media — from its addictive nature to its psychological effects to its corporate surveillance capabilities — emerge because of its status as a for-profit, capitalist enterprise.

But if social media has become a public good — the digital equivalent of a public forum — does it make sense to consign it to the private sphere? And in turn, couldn’t those ills be cured by making a publicly-owned alternative?

Some Australians think so.

An Australian think tank is proposing that the government-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation create a publicly-funded social network to compete with corporate giants like Facebook and Google. This proposal is being made in the event that those companies retaliate against the Australian people over recent laws that protect local news outlets.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian equivalent of the BBC, is primarily funded by direct grants from the Australian government. This is in contrast to the Americans “public” broadcasting station PBS, which is funded through multiple methods such as member station dues, pledge drives, private donations and nonprofits, or the UK’s BBC, which is mainly funded through an annual television license fee. The Australian think tank’s proposal responds to a new Australian law that requires digital platforms to pay for news content, according to The Guardian. Facebook is fighting the law by threatening to stop Australians from sharing news if it is implemented, while Google (which also owns YouTube) has been publicly campaigning against the statute.

In response, Australia’s Centre for Responsible Technology — which is affiliated with the progressive Australian think tank The Australia Institute — wrote a report called “Tech-Xit: Can Australia survive without Google and Facebook?” The authors propose a platform that would avoid harvesting data like Facebook and Google as well as inspire user trust because of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s strong public reputation.

“It sounds like this is part of a larger fight on the part of the Australian government to protect their local news sources from having their content scavenged by Facebook and Google, which seems to me like a net positive for any government to do,” Kati Sipp, editor of Hack the Union, a blog that focuses on the intersections of work, organizing and technology, told Salon. “We need to protect the ability of news organizations to survive, and if they don’t have business models that can help them survive because their old business models have been kind of devastated by new forms of advertising essentially, then I think it’s a good idea for governments in general to figure out how to have a press that is sustainable.

She added, “I assume that part of this sort of like side effect would be that people would leave Facebook in favor of a different social network where they can post news in a way that actually allows the news organizations themselves to make some kind of money off of it, which seems to me — like, again, you may lose the short-term connection of Facebook’s monstrous user base, but it seems to me like it’s a net positive for them as users overall to have a system that’s locally supporting news organizations in their country.”

Australia’s new law was motivated by the fact that many local news outlets have lost money because people frequently read news articles that they find on social media giants like Facebook. Because Facebook is not required to compensate content creators even though their work appears on Facebook’s forums, this has made it more difficult for many news companies to stay in business.

Facebook and other U.S. tech giants have responded with alarm to this development, with Facebook stating last month that it would not allow any Australian users to share international or local news on its platform if the statute is put into effect.

“It would be a shame for Australian democracy (and) it would be a shame for Facebook users if they took that course of action,” Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Chair Rod Sims said in a Zoom speech last month, according to Reuters.

He added, “It would also weaken Facebook, so it’s their call. If people can’t get their news from Facebook then they’ll go elsewhere to get their news.”

Australia is not the only country to have concerns about Facebook’s relative power and size. While the United States government has not acted on behalf of news outlets in the same way as Australia, American political leaders have also tried to rein in large technology companies who they perceive as acting in ways that are not in the best interest of the public.

Earlier this month in the U.S., a House Judiciary Committee hearing showed liberals and conservatives in rare agreement that companies like Facebook and Twitter need to be reined in. During their antitrust hearings, Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., who is in charge of the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law argued that “these once-scrappy, underdog startups have grown into the kinds of monopolies we last saw more than a century ago.” Conservatives accused platforms like Twitter of discriminating against right-wing voices, while liberals expressed concerns about economic fairness.

As Zephyr Teachout, associate professor of law at Fordham University School of Law, explained during her testimony, “Antitrust laws, and strong antitrust laws, are essential for freedom and for a thriving economy. The highly concentrated Big Tech marketplaces and the existing abuses of Big Tech enabled by their dominant positions poses a major democratic threat.”

Half of Trump supporters believe baseless QAnon pedophilia claim about Democrats: poll

As outlandish as QAnon’s beliefs are, the conspiracy cult has been gaining ground in the Republican Party. A Yahoo News/YouGov poll finds that roughly 50% of President Donald Trump’s supporters now embrace at least some of QAnon’s claims.

QAnon believes that the United States’ federal government has been infiltrated by an international cabal of pedophiles, Satanists and cannibals and that Trump was put in the White House to lead the fight against the cabal. According to the fictional belief set, an anonymous figure named Q is providing updates on Trump’s battle. And one of QAnon’s beliefs is that R&B superstar Beyoncé isn’t really African-American but rather, is really an Italian woman named Ann Marie Latrassi who is passing herself off as Black as part of the conspiracy.

The Yahoo/YouGov poll, conducted October 16-18, asked participants, “Do you believe that top Democrats are involved in elite child sex trafficking rings?” — and 50% of Trump supporters said “yes” compared to only 5% of former Vice President Joe Biden’s supporters.

The poll also asked, “Do you believe that President Trump is working to dismantle an elite child sex trafficking ring involving top Democrats?” — to which 52% of Trump supporters responded “yes,” while only 4% of Biden supporters said “yes.”

Yahoo News reporters Andrew Romano and Caitlin Dickson note that only 16% of Trump supporters who were familiar were QAnon were willing to dismiss the entire movement as conspiracy nonsense that has no basis in fact.

The inroads that QAnon has made in the GOP were evident when, in August, QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene won a Republican congressional primary in Georgia. Because her district is overwhelmingly Republican, Greene will likely win the general election on November 3 and be sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives in January 2021.

Well-known Republicans who have made donations to Green’s campaign include Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. And after her primary win, Trump congratulated Greene on Twitter and exalted her as a “future Republican star.”

Nina Jankowicz of the nonpartisan Wilson Center told Yahoo News that it’s “really crazy” that “such a high number” of Trump supporters embrace QAnon’s conspiracy theory.

Jankowicz explained, “It seems, increasingly, like we’re dealing with two different sets of facts in this country, sometimes more. The fact is that QAnon is a movement, a conspiracy that has been cited by the FBI as potentially inciting terrorist and other violent extremist acts in this country. It shouldn’t be something that we’re this split (on) along partisan lines.”

During a recent town hall event hosted by NBC News, moderator Savannah Guthrie grilled Trump about QAnon — and he maintained, “I know nothing about QAnon.” But Trump added that from what he has heard, “They are very strongly against pedophilia, and I agree with that.”

Jankowicz told Yahoo News, “The fact that we have so many political candidates who are public adherents of QAnon and a president who himself has refused to disavow the theory (amounts to) a tacit endorsement of a different set of facts. That’s what’s really worrisome about it.”