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Trump administration privately warned wealthy donors while publicly downplaying the coronavirus

The Trump administration publicly downplayed the coronavirus in the early days of the pandemic while giving major Republican donors private warnings. The information helped elite traders “gain financial advantage during a chaotic three days when global markets were teetering,” according to The New York Times.

President Donald Trump repeatedly downplayed the threat posed by the virus in February. He claimed on Feb. 24 that it was “very much under control” in the U.S., and the stock market was “starting to look very good to me.”

That same day, Trump’s economic team privately gave a less optimistic briefing to board members of the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank whose members often donate to Republican candidates. 

Top economic adviser Larry Kudlow also sought to publicly insist that the virus was “contained,” and the economy was “holding up nicely” on Feb. 25.

But privately, Kudlow was not as certain in his Hoover presentation later that day, where he was quoted as saying the virus was “contained in the U.S., to date, but now we just don’t know.”

The private comments were included in a lengthy email by hedge fund consultant William Callanan, who detailed the three-day Hoover event to hedge fund manager and top Republican donor David Tepper before it was distributed it to others.

“What struck me,” Callanan wrote, was that nearly all officials brought up the virus “as a point of concern, totally unprovoked.”

Kudlow “revised his statement about the virus being contained,” he added.

Tomas Philipson, the chairman of Trump’s Council of Economic advisers, acknowledged to The Times that he had expressed uncertainty during the private briefing. Kudlow also did not dispute that he had made the comments. The former CNBC anchor told the outlet that he believed his comments were not materially different from his public ones. 

“There was never any intent on my part to misinform,” he said.

The Hoover Institution, which is led by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, includes board members like Fox News mogul Rupert Murdoch, who did not attend the meeting.

There has also been a revolving door between the think tank and the Trump administration. Joshua Rauh, one of the economists who spoke at the meeting, has since rejoined the institution. Kevin Hassett, who moderated the panel and served as the top White House economist, is now a Hoover Institution fellow. Dr. Scott Atlas, a Hoover fellow who has pushed the discredited “herd immunity” strategy, joined Trump’s coronavirus task force in August.

The stock market was already struggling as public health officials publicly contradicted the administration’s rosy outlook, but investors “spotted the immediate significance” of the private messaging, according to The Times.

The president’s aides appeared to be giving wealthy party donors an early warning of a potentially impactful contagion at a time when Mr. Trump was publicly insisting that the threat was nonexistent.

Some investors stocked up on toilet paper and other essential items before a mad rush caused nationwide shortages, according to The Times. Others decided to “short everything,” or bet that certain stocks would fail, to profit from the collapse.

Callanan reportedly sent the email to Tepper, the owner of the Carolina Panthers and the prominent hedge fund Appaloosa Management, detailing the “level of concern” among officials and how “ill-prepared health agencies appeared to combat a pandemic.”

The email was circulated throughout the company, and its warnings were shared with other investors, according to the report. Those investors shared it with their own associates. The email was shared between at least four financial firms over 24 hours, on the same day the Dow Jones fell 300 points.

Callanan told The Times that the email was shared “without his knowledge or consent.” He claimed that the copy obtained by the outlet was “materially different” than the original one he created, though he would not say how.

Tepper disputed that the email was significant.

“We were in the information flow on COVID at that point,” he told The Times. “Because we were so public about this warning, people were calling us at this time.

The report highlights the disconnect between the rosy picture the Trump administration tried to paint to an unprepared public — before panic and supply shortages began — and growing concerns within the administration.

Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro distributed an internal memo on Feb. 23 predicting the coronavirus could kill as many as 2 million Americans.

Trump told Bob Woodward even earlier on Feb. 7 that the virus was airborne and “more deadly than even your strenuous flus,” according to the journalist’s new book.

Democrats said The Times report showed where the administration’s priorities were before the pandemic killed more than 217,000 Americans.

“If this doesn’t tell you who they prioritize then I don’t know what will,” Michigan Democratic Senate leader Jim Ananich said. “People died and he lied.”

Can America be saved from Donald Trump’s black hole of lies?

Donald Trump has publicly lied at least 20,000 times since taking office, according to the Washington Post. He does this in part because he has shown himself to be mentally unwell, if not a sociopath. But he also lies because he is a fascist authoritarian. For such leaders, lies are a way of assaulting reality and truth as a means of achieving unlimited power. These explanations are not discrete. They overlap with one another. 

In a season of massive death, Donald Trump and his regime’s lies about the coronavirus are a public health emergency – one which has killed at least 216,000 people in the United States.

Donald Trump and his regime’s lies have also severely damaged America’s prestige, alliances and global power. The country’s enemies have also been emboldened by the Trump regime’s lies and overall lack of consistency in foreign policy and principles.

Most important, Trump and his regime’s policy of lying (in conjunction with wanton cruelty and other evil) has undermined American democracy. A common understanding of reality is the foundation of a health democracy. The Trump regime’s lies and those of its agents are rotting that foundation. 

In “The Death of Truth,” Michiko Kakutani explains that the damage Trump has done to the country’s institutions and foreign policy will take “years to repair.” 

“And to the degree that his election was a reflection of larger dynamics in society—from the growing partisanship in politics, to the profusion of fake stories on social media, to our isolation in filter bubbles—his departure from the scene will not restore truth to health and well-being, at least not right away,” Kakutani writes. 

Why is Donald Trump such a powerful and effective liar? Why has the mainstream American news media largely surrendered to his lies, and by doing so normalized them? Would more aggressive fact-checking have blunted Donald Trump and his regime’s strategy of lying? What explains why the mainstream American news media as a whole refused — and for the most part, continues to refuse — to describe Donald Trump and his regime accurately as being fascist and authoritarian?

In an effort answer these questions, I recently spoke with Eric Alterman, a columnist at The Nation and the author of more than 10 books, including the bestseller “What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News.” His latest book is “Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie and Why Trump is Worse.” 

Why are there now so many more voices in the mainstream American news media who, several weeks from Election Day, are finally using language such as “fascism” and “authoritarianism” to describe Trump and his regime? This was obvious several years ago. Why the delay? What were they waiting for?

There are many disincentives to tell the truth about Donald Trump. The most obvious one is that he’s the President of the United States and people consider it disrespectful to use certain words about the president, like “liar” and “racist” and “conman” and “conspiracy nut,” even when they’re true. It is worse in Washington D.C. to call someone a liar than for them to actually be a liar.

In Washington, that rule is part of how a person makes a living. Therefore, people in the news media have to show respect for the office of the presidency. The second reason is that the ideology of “journalistic objectivity” does not have a framework for determining what the truth is. It has no bias for truth. “Journalistic objectivity” says on the one hand, so-and-so said this; on the other hand, his opposition said that, and you, the reader, you, the viewer, you, the listener, it is up to you to decide what’s true.

Donald Trump is an idiot in many ways, but he is a genius when it comes to media manipulation.  

The Washington Post has now documented at least 25,000 or so lies by Donald Trump — and nothing has changed in his behavior. If anything, he has become more brazen.

I do not find fact-checking as done in that way to be very helpful, because Donald Trump is not being fact-checked as he says the lies. If a person reads the fact-checking article, they will learn what Trump said is not true. Trump’s lie still has power because it is repeated by the president and circulated. Again, Donald Trump has been winning this battle against the mainstream news media every day and they still have not really caught up to his strategy. The New York Times still does not really know what to do about Donald Trump in this regard and others.

Is the reluctance, if not fear, of calling Donald Trump a liar a function of the corporate culture of American’s mainstream news media? Are reporters and journalists afraid of being punished in terms of their careers if they tell the unpolished truth about Donald Trump?

I have a different idea of lying than most of the country’s journalistic institutions do because they will almost never use the words “lie” or “liar” when it comes to the president or most politicians. Instead most in the mainstream news media will say, “We can’t know his intent. We can’t know what’s in his heart.” They assume that a lying politician may believe the nonsense that they are saying. My position is if a politician should know what is true and he does not, then he is lying.

I do not care what the excuse is. I don’t care if Trump or some other politician thinks God is talking to him. I don’t care if Trump is too disengaged from reality. I don’t care if Trump is so much of a narcissist that he makes up stuff and he believes it. If it’s the president’s job to know something and he misinforms the country, then he’s lying. Worry about his motivation some other time.

There has never been a historical moment in this country where a president, in this case Donald Trump, could be ignored because everyone knows he’s so full of lies and nonsense.

Donald Trump might get reelected and destroy our democracy because so many in the mainstream news media are treating Donald Trump’s lies and delusions as though it is all somehow normal.

Why has the White House press corps been so accommodating and enabling of Trump’s lies? He also uses them as props for his fascist performances. Why do the members of the White House press corps not just walk about of the briefings or stand up and turn their backs to him?

They do not know how to do their job any other way. Their job is defined as getting whatever information is available at the White House. So even if it’s lies, even if it’s daily humiliation, the press corps has to go back the next day. Those reporters need to be on good terms with the people who are giving out the information — even if they’re not giving out real or otherwise substantive information. It would be nice if the job of the White House press corps was to actually go out and find news, but that’s not what they’re there for. They’re there as conduits for the White House.

There are few public voices who have been consistently warning the American people and the world about the realities of Trumpism and the threat Trump represents to the country. Why have the American people, largely, been in so much denial about the horrible reality that is the Age of Trump and what it means for the present and future of the country?

There’s about a third of the country that lives inside this bubble where the truth never reaches them. They watch Fox News, they listen to conservative talk radio, they read Breitbart and Daily Caller and so forth, and they are lied to, and the lies that they are told make them feel good about themselves. They blame other people, mostly Black and brown people and Muslims and immigrants and so forth, sometimes Jews, for the problems in their lives, and it works for them. Such people are unreachable. You cannot get through to them. 

There is a battle over the rest of the American people. Trump and his spokespeople and others who are doing all the lying on the right have a gravitational effect on the entire public discourse.

It began initially with Ronald Reagan and then went into warp drive with Newt Gingrich. But before Ronald Reagan, and especially before Gingrich, both parties pretty much had an idea where the goalposts were on what you could get away with in terms of not telling the truth. There were a lot of problems. Nixon was a big problem, Lyndon Johnson was a big problem, but still people understood what was all right and what wasn’t all right, and then Reagan and Gingrich just started making stuff up all the time. They did this with no consideration for the truth — and they discovered that the media wouldn’t call them on it.

The American right-wing learned that the American people did not care enough. As long as the news media was attacked as having a “liberal bias” it did away with the problem of them being called on their lies. This dynamic expanded and grew until Donald Trump could run for president with his claims that Barack Obama was an illegitimate president because he was born in Kenya. There were 30 or 40% of Trump voters believing that Hillary Clinton ran a pedophile ring inside a pizza parlor in Washington. They actually believed that.

Now the country is facing QAnon nuttiness with millions of people believing such nonsense because as a country we have just completely lost track of the truth in our political discourse. As Hannah Arendt warned, “This is how you create a dictatorship. You destroy the idea of truth.”

Why this obsessive narrative and all these expeditions out to Trumplandia to talk with “white working class” and other Trump followers by the mainstream American news media? What is there left to learn? The research shows that Trump’s voters are driven by racism, white supremacy, misogyny and authoritarianism, if not outright fascism and in some cases Nazism.

They just have to be defeated. Enough is enough. We have to beat them into the ground as hard as we can and let them start over. For example, the Lincoln Project is seeking to destroy every single Republican senator because they believe that the Republican Party cannot be saved. It’s been taken over by crazy people, by corrupt people, by the equivalent of a mafia gang, and they just have to be beaten. There is no sense in trying to talk sense into them anymore.

Fox News really is sports talk radio for conservatives. What are the implications of how American politics is now treated like some type of sport by the right wing?

I recall an observation that Noam Chomsky made when I was writing my first book. He said, “What we need in this country is a politics where people care as much about sports as they do about politics, because if you listen to people on sports radio, they’re very knowledgeable in a way that people did not have the same passion about the Democratic and Republican candidates.” And then there was the rise of talk radio and the internet and it brought in all this passion — but it seems to only exist on one side. The conservative side is driven like mad to care about every little thing. By comparison liberals do not feel that way. Liberals would let the people who are in charge do the right thing.

Liberals trust scientists and want to let them be the experts. Almost every single-issue group is a conservative group. They win. 90% of the country wants stronger gun control, but we’re not getting it because the 5-10% that doesn’t want it has a stronger voice than the 90% because they’re so dedicated. They vote only on this issue, and you can’t say that about really any issue for liberals. We see this on Fox News and on right-wing talk radio.  

When Trumpists say that “all politicians lie” and “Trump is no worse than Obama,” and the news media is being “mean” and “unfair” to Donald Trump, how do you respond?

The New York Times tried to answer that question about Obama. Trump followers say that, “Why all the fuss about Donald Trump lying? Why don’t you explain that Obama lied too?” The New York Times looked at the entire eight-year record of Obama’s presidency and they found 12 false claims over eight years, none of which he repeated, all of which he then corrected when he found out that what he had said was not true. Trump can tell 12 falsehoods in 10 minutes. He does it all the time. There is no comparison between Trump and Obama. Some presidents lied a lot. Trump is in his own category. Trump lies about absolutely everything, and he gives his cabinet and his advisors permission in doing so to lie about everything as well.

Are our expectations of the American public too high or too low in terms of their understanding of politics, generally, and capacity to intervene against and reject Trump’s lies, specifically?

Too many Americans have had a full meal of bullshit and now they have no way to judge good and bad, right and wrong. I’m very angry at the people who support Donald Trump because they are destroying my country. They are responsible for putting people in cages and separating families. A lot of Trump’s supporters do not know any better. Some of them are just terrible people. I do not really care why people think what they think anymore, I just want to beat them. Trump’s supporters are on the wrong side.

Does Donald Trump believe his lies? Or is this all some type of performance?

All that Donald Trump cares about is winning the next five minutes — and he only really cares about the next minute or so. Trump is always doing the wrong thing. Trump is a toddler and he just wants to have his belly stroked every minute or so and then he forgets that it happened.

What is your greatest hope in this moment? What is your greatest fear?

My hope is that we turn this ocean liner around in the 2020 election. I hope that the Republicans are defeated, that Trump is defeated, that the Supreme Court is made rational, and we start moving the country back in the direction of sanity and decency. My fear is that the upcoming election is the last time we actually have a chance to save the United States from an American form of fascism. I’m only 60, but I’m an American historian, and I don’t think things have ever been this bad since the Civil War. I wish there was more of a sense of alarm among the institutions that really matter to this country’s democracy.

Flip-Flopping Trump needs Democrats more than he needs boot licking Senate Republicans

Donald Trump was against a new coronavirus aid package before he was for it. And now, with time running out before the elections, we’re actually unsure of what the White House wants – other than a second term.

It would seem that the easiest explanation for all the back-and-forthing is that it suddenly has occurred to Trump that giving out relief checks to Americans who have lost jobs to coronavirus might be a good idea after all.

The timing, days before the election, clearly is not coincidental.

It’s not as if Democrats suddenly told the airlines to start layoffs of thousands, or for landlords to start demanding the rent from people put out of work with extra unemployment benefits running out by Labor Day.

Maybe the Republicans should keep a calendar for aid expiration.

Nevertheless, Trump has been far better at negotiating medical all-clear notes from his doctor than he has in forming anything that will get through Congress.

Last week, Trump shifted from withdrawing from any negotiation with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over the shape and size of an aid package to a total turnaround promoting a package for which he claims ownership. He’s offering far more agreement with Pelosi than with Senate Republicans, who oppose any substantial aid, though Pelosi thinks she already has compromised.

So, somehow this week, we can hope that there is an actual tangible deal for Congress to accept or reject.

The quick background here: As coronavirus continues to trample jobs around the country and forces a too-slow rebound, Pelosi and Democrats have been pushing for the big package they passed three months ago for individual checks, small business aid, education funds and help to depleted state and local government coffers. The White House, represented by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, has insisted on no aid for local governments, which Trump says will benefit what he sees as irresponsible spending by blue states.

In other words, what has held all this up is just plain partisan politics. Over the weekend, the maneuvering on all sides confirmed the primacy of finding a clause here or there that was objectionable, further dooming agreement.

Now, in the last days, Trump told his negotiators to “go big” in securing a package that will allow him to take credit for sending aid checks out just before the election – something that puts him at odds with Senate Republicans.

Spotlight on Trump

As usual, we’re left watching solely for the imperial word from Trump as to whether people forced from their jobs can pay rent, eat and pay for health care in the midst of a pandemic.

“I would like to see a bigger stimulus package, frankly, than either the Democrats or the Republicans are offering,” he said in a two-hour interview with conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh. His $1.8 trillion proposal isn’t actually larger than the $3 trillion voted by the House but represents far higher figures than those promoted by his own Republican majority in the Senate.

Trump has managed once again to have the spotlight, but he also has left pretty much all sides confused.

Perhaps Trump is more interested in his political image as a deciding voice than in the outcome. Still, media coverage of the issues here shows stacks and stacks of people who are pretty desperate for aid and financial markets that need certainty.

With any number of Republican senators insisting that they oppose the idea of adding trillions of dollars to the national debt, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has taken the odd role of simply looking at anything that can pass the Senate.

Plus, McConnell has indicated he is far more interested in using Senate time to confirm the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court than on argument, brief or prolonged, over an aid package.

With Trump trailing in the elections, it is not immediately clear that Trump’s position even will result in a uniform Senate Republican response that helps him.

It’s a mess, and whatever we call leadership is missing.

The Current Offer

In its $1.8 trillion offer, the White House made concessions to Pelosi and the Democrats, though apparently more will be needed.

For those wanting detail, the proposal includes $300 billion in emergency aid for cities and states, up from $250 billion, and money for airlines, restaurants, small businesses, unemployment insurance, food stamps and additional food aid for low-income women and children. Republicans also are offering direct payments of $1,000 per child — up from $500 — in addition to the $1,200 stimulus checks for individuals, rather than rely on future tax credits. But who knew a clause about health care money would raise objections from anti-abortion forces, for example?

What’s noteworthy is that Trump needs the Democrats more than his Republican allies.

All parties are being pushed toward compromise.

The clearest reading here is who wants to avoid blame from voters for failing to deliver needed aid ahead of the election.

News outlets are reporting that there are plenty of private lobbying efforts under way on Trump, Pelosi and McConnell to provide some form of aid.

Stay tuned.

Amy Coney Barrett is even more “extreme” on gun rights than her Republican defenders in the Senate

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett argued in a dissent last year that felons should be allowed to own guns, a position Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee long opposed before defending President Donald Trump’s nominee to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the bench. 

Barrett, who was appointed to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals by Trump, broke with two fellow Republican-appointed judges with more than 70 years of experience and Attorney General Bill Barr’s Department of Justice to defend gun rights for felon, according to The Washington Post.

The case, Kanter v. Barr, was brought by Rickey Kanter, a Wisconsin businessman who pleaded guilty to mail fraud. Kanter sued the Justice Department and the state of Wisconsin after completing his sentence, because federal and state laws prohibit felons from purchasing firearms.

A district court rejected Kanter’s claims in January 2018, and a three-judge Seventh Circuit panel upheld the ruling 2-1. Barrett cast the lone dissenting opinion.

“She is extreme on this issue,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a member of the committee, told The Post. “She would go much farther than her mentor Scalia did in striking down common sense measures.”

Barrett argued in a 38-page opinion that the Founders did not intend to deny gun rights to all felons — only those who may be considered dangerous.

“Neither Wisconsin nor the United States has introduced data sufficient to show that disarming all nonviolent felons substantially advances its interest in keeping the public safe,” she wrote. “Nor have they otherwise demonstrated that Kanter himself shows a proclivity for violence. Absent evidence that he either belongs to a dangerous category or bears individual markers of risk, permanently disqualifying Kanter from possessing a gun violates the Second Amendment.”

History showed felons “could be disqualified from certain rights,” such as voting or jury duty, but gun ownership is an individual right which can only be suspended if a person is deemed dangerous, Barrett argued.

Barrett cited her mentor Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion in the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller case, which established a national right to gun ownership. It said, “Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill.”

“The constitutionality of felon dispossession was not before the court in Heller, and because it explicitly deferred analysis of this issue, the scope of its assertion is unclear,” Barrett wrote.

The majority disagreed, and The Post noted that Barrett’s opinion was “at odds with nearly all other federal appeals court decisions on the issue.”

Her position was also at odds with many Republicans on the Judiciary Committee eager to confirm her ahead of Election Day.

Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said in 2018 that the Second Amendment was “not an unlimited right,” noting that “if you’re a convicted felon, you can’t own a gun.”

“I think that most Second Amendment people like me understand there’s a balance here,” he told the Greenville News.

“One bullet in the hand of a mentally unstable person or a convicted felon is one too many,” Graham argued during a Judiciary hearing in 2013 where NRA chief Wayne LaPierre agreed that a “convicted felon” should not be able to own a gun.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, sponsored legislation that would create a task force to “prosecute felons and fugitives who try to get guns.” 

Cruz last year urged the committee to pass the bill, which he said “targets resources on bad guys, on felons and fugitives that would have audited every federal agency to make sure that those felonies are reported to the background check database.”

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, also sponsored the Fix NICS Act, which he said aimed to ensure that “convicted felons don’t exploit our background check system by ‘lying and buying.'”

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., called on Congress in 2016 to address “how to keep guns out of the hands of terrorists, out of felons.”

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who previously served as Missouri’s attorney general, filed a brief in a 2017 appeal that said “the Second Amendment does not protect the right of convicted felons to possess firearms.”

Barrett defended her opinion when pressed on the issue by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., during her confirmation hearing on Tuesday.

“I think we could all agree that we ought to be careful of saying that because someone’s a felon, they lose any of their individual rights,” she said.

Durbin argued that she had “ignored” evidence showing that non-violent offenders were more likely to engage in illegal gun use than non-felons.

“I didn’t ignore it,” Barrett replied. “As I recall, that evidence and the studies were unclear.”

Durbin went on to note that Barrett argued that gun rights were an individual right, while voting is a civic right.

“So you’re saying that a felony should not disqualify Rickey from buying an AK-47, but using a felony conviction someone’s past to deny them the right to vote is all right?” he asked.

“What I said was that the Constitution contemplates that states have the freedom to deprive felons of the right to vote,” Barrett replied. “It’s expressed in the constitutional text. But I expressed no view on whether that was a good idea — whether states should do that. And I didn’t explore in that opinion, because it was completely irrelevant to it what limits, if any, there might be on a state’s ability to curtail felon voting rights.”

“Well, I will just tell you that the conclusion of this is hard to swallow,” Durbin said. “The notion that Mr. Kanter, after all that he did, should not be even slowed down when he’s on his way to buy a firearm. My goodness, it’s just a felony. It’s not a violent felony that he’d committed. And then to turn around on the other hand and say, ‘Well, but when it comes to taking away a person’s right to vote, that’s the civic duty.'”

Durbin went on to rebuke the Republicans on the committee who had criticized Democrats for wanting “activist judges.”

“Yet when we look at this case, the notion of what disqualifies you from buying a firearm was being rewritten by the dissenting judge and saying, ‘When we say felony, we just mean violent felony,'” he said.

Gun control activists have expressed alarm as Barrett’s nomination appears poised to cement a new 6-3 conservative majority court.

“There’s a whole host of public safety bills and laws that we’ve had in effect for a quarter century — including the Brady background check system — that we are concerned about with her on the court,” Kris Brown, the president of Brady United Against Gun Violence, told NPR.

“Make no mistake,” John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety, told Mother Jones. “Amy Coney Barrett is a gun rights extremist who has no place on the Supreme Court.”

Defeat Trump first — then push Biden to the left

The extreme dangers of this political moment have forced leftists to face contradictory truths about Joe Biden. At once, he can be seen as dreadful and essential. A longtime servant of corporate America and a politician of last resort. The current top functionary for neoliberalism and the presidential candidate for a united front against neofascism.

Such contradictions should lead to clear analysis and strategic action. We need approaches that respond to imminent emergencies — first, bailing out the boat before it sinks, and then charting a course toward where we want to go.

The Trump regime must be brought down, or the left will be up against the wall. As Cornel West says, “A vote for Biden is . . . a way of preserving the condition for the possibility of any kind of democratic practice in the United States.”

Read more: Salon’s new interview with Cornel West.

No one has described the current crossroads more astutely than Naomi Klein, who tweeted last month: “Vote for a more favorable terrain. Our struggle goes way beyond elections. We’re in the streets. We’re talking to our neighbors and co-workers. But who controls the presidency changes what’s politically possible for our struggles.”

Under the Trump regime, the terrain has a stone wall around what’s politically possible for progressives. And Trump is becoming more and more authoritarian, week by week, as he manipulates and expands executive-branch power.

With three weeks of voting to go, the race between Trump and Biden is likely much closer than the forecasts usually presented by corporate media. Biden’s lead in virtually every swing state is appreciably smaller than in national polling. Over the weekend, even while reporting that Biden is 12 points ahead of Trump nationwide in the new ABC-Washington Post poll, ABC noted that four years ago Hillary Clinton had a polling lead with the identical 12-point national margin a mere 17 days before her loss to Trump.

A recent open letter signed by 55 progressive activists and writers (including me) asserted that “voting for Biden in swing states is essential.” We added: “Protestations that Biden is beholden to elites are true but beside the point. The lesser evil is evil, but in this case, the greater evil is simply off the charts.”

The left should play a leading role in defeating Trump, the off-the-charts evil. That’s the first step. And if Trump is defeated, the second step is to confront President Biden from day one.

With systemic injustices now screaming out to all who are open to hearing, the left would have a historic opportunity under Biden to expose and confront the Democratic Party — which talks a good game while often helping corporate elites to rip off the public and pollute the planet. The coronavirus pandemic has “laid bare the inequities, corruptions, and cruelties of our political life — features that the [Trump] administration did not originate but which it has magnified and exploited,” The New Yorker declared two weeks ago in an editorial endorsing Biden.

The editorial acknowledges that returning to a pre-Trump status quo would not be enough: If Biden wins, “he will have to govern with boldness, urgency, tenacity, and creativity. In the face of such challenges, realism and radicalism are not so far apart.” The left will need to insist that “radicalism” can be the utmost of realism.

That will require persistently challenging the reflexive stances of corporate media and corporate Democrats. Helping to defeat Trump is the current imperative. An election victory would make it possible to immediately confront the Biden presidency with grassroots movements—relentlessly organizing against the fossil-fuel industry, systemic racism, income inequality, corporate power, militarism and so much more. As the Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said days ago, “the chance of having some influence on his administration is just incomparably greater than the zero chance of influencing the Trump administration.” 

In a cogent new video, Ellsberg offers clarity: “As a leftist, and antiwar and antinuclear activist for half of a century, I share all of the left-wing criticisms of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. That means that I expect to have a lot of oppositional activity ahead of me in the next four years whoever is president. I want Joe Biden to oppose as a president in my activist activities rather than Donald Trump.”

Bill Barr accused of perjury by Michigan AG for claiming ignorance on right-wing threats to Whitmer

Appearing on CNN on Friday morning, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel lashed out at Attorney General Bill Barr for testifying in July that he was unaware of threats against the state’s governor — saying he was either ignorant of what is going on in his department or he committed perjury.

On Thursday, the Detroit News reported on a plan by right-wing militia members to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) and place her on trial, while noting that Barr had pleaded ignorance when asked about people with threatening signs at anti-Whitmer rallies.

Speaking with CNN host John Berman, Nessel said too little attention is being paid to Barr’s words before a House committee.

“Can I bring up a point that no one seems to be talking about?” Nessel asked the host. “Over the summer United States Attorney General Bill Barr testified under oath before the House Judiciary Committee that he had no idea that there were any threats being made at all to the governor of the state of Michigan.”

She then added, “And yet, his own authorities were actively working to foil these types of plans and these threats, which seems very curious to me that either, A: he didn’t know what was happening in his own Justice Department or, B: he committed perjury.”

Watch below:

Amid national crises, Lincoln and his Republicans remade the Supreme Court to fit their agenda

As a political battle over the Supreme Court’s direction rages in Washington with President Donald Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, history shows that political contests over the ideological slant of the Court are nothing new.

In the 1860s, President Abraham Lincoln worked with fellow Republicans to shape the Court to carry out his party’s anti-slavery and pro-Union agenda. It was an age in which the court was unabashedly a “partisan creature,” in historian Rachel Shelden’s words.

Justice John Catron had advised Democrat James K. Polk’s 1844 presidential campaign, and Justice John McLean was a serial presidential contender in a black robe. And in the 1860s, Republican leaders would change the number of justices and the political balance of the Court to ensure their party’s dominance of its direction.

Overhauling the Court

When Lincoln became president in 1861, seven Southern states had already seceded from the Union, yet half of the Supreme Court justices were Southerners, including Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of Maryland. One other Southern member had died in 1860, without replacement. All were Democratic appointees.

The Court was “the last stronghold of Southern power,” according to one Northern editor. Five sitting justices were among the court’s 7-2 majority in the racist 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford ruling, in which Taney wrote that Black people were “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.”

Some Republicans declared it “the duty of the Republican Party to reorganize the Federal Court and reverse that decision, which . . . disgraces the judicial department of the Federal Government.”

After Lincoln called in April, 1861 for 75,000 volunteers to put down the Southern rebellion, four more states seceded. So did Justice John Archibald Campbell of Georgia, who resigned on April 30.

Chief Justice Taney helped the Confederacy when he tried to restrain the president’s power. In May 1861, he issued a writ of habeas corpus in Ex Parte Merryman declaring that the president couldn’t arbitrarily detain citizens suspected of aiding the Confederacy. Lincoln ignored the ruling.

Remaking the Court

To counter the court’s southern bloc, Republican leaders used judicial appointments to protect the president’s power to fight the Civil War. The Lincoln administration was also looking ahead to Reconstruction and a governing Republican majority.

Nine months into his term, Lincoln declared that “the country generally has outgrown our present judicial system,” which since 1837 had comprised nine federal court jurisdictions, or “circuits.” Supreme Court justices rode the circuit, presiding over those federal courts.

Republicans passed the Judiciary Act of 1862, overhauling the federal court system by collapsing federal circuits in the South from five to three while expanding circuits in the North from four to six. The old ninth circuit, for example, included just Arkansas and Mississippi. The new ninth included Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Minnesota instead. Arkansas became part of the sixth, and Mississippi, the fifth.

In 1862, after Campbell’s resignation and McLean’s death, Lincoln filled three open Supreme Court seats with loyal Republicans Noah H. Swayne of Ohio, Samuel Freeman Miller of Iowa and David Davis of Illinois. The high court now had three Republicans and three Southerners.

The 1863 Prize cases tested whether Republicans had managed to secure a friendly court. At issue was whether the Union could seize American ships sailing into blockaded Confederate ports. In a 5-4 ruling, the high court — including all three Lincoln appointees — said yes.

Congressional Republicans spied a way to expand the court while solving what amounted to a geopolitical judicial problem. In 1863, Congress created a new tenth circuit by adding Oregon, which had become a state in 1859, to California’s circuit. The Tenth Circuit Act also added a tenth Supreme Court justice. Lincoln elevated pro-Union Democrat Stephen Field to that seat.

And after Chief Justice Taney died in 1864, Lincoln selected his political rival, Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, an architect of national monetary policy, to replace him. With Chase, Lincoln succeeded in creating a pro-administration high court.

Unpacking the Court

After Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, President Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, who succeeded him, soon began undoing Lincoln’s achievements. He was a Unionist Democrat given the vice presidency as an olive branch to the South. He rewarded that gesture in part by pardoning rank and file Confederates. Johnson also opposed civil rights for newly-freed African Americans.

He also threatened to appoint like-minded judges. But the Republican-dominated Congress blocked Johnson from elevating unreconstructed Rebels to the high court. The Judicial Circuits Act of 1866 shrank the number of federal circuits to seven and held that no Supreme Court vacancies would be filled until just seven justices remained.

The Philadelphia Evening Telegraph’s Democratic editor sighed that at least Republicans “cannot pack the Supreme Court at this moment.”

Courting paper money

Republicans refused to consider nominating Johnson in 1868, picking General Ulysses S. Grant instead. He won, and after President Grant’s inauguration, Congress passed the Circuit Judges Act of 1869, raising back to nine the number of Supreme Court justices.

Shortly after, Republicans faced a financial problem of their own making.

Beginning in 1862, Congress had passed three Legal Tender Acts — initially to help finance the war, authorizing debt payments using paper money not backed by gold or silver. Then-Treasury Secretary and current Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase had crafted the legislation.

But in an 1870 case, Hepburn v. Griswold, Chase reversed himself in a 4-3 decision, ruling the Legal Tender Acts unconstitutional. That threatened national monetary policy and Republicans’ cozy relationship with industries reliant on government sponsorship.

President Grant, preparing for Chase’s ruling, was already working on a political solution. On the day of the Hepburn decision, he appointed two pro-paper-money Supreme Court nominees, William Strong of Pennsylvania and Joseph P. Bradley of New York. Comparing the Republican administration to “a brokerage office,” a Democratic newspaper howled that “the attempt to pack the supreme court to secure a desired judicial decision … (has) brought shame and humiliation to an entire people.”

It also brought a Republican majority to the high court for the first time.

Chief Justice Chase opposed revisiting the paper money issue. But the Supreme Court about-faced, ruling 5-4 in the 1871 cases Knox v. Lee and Parker v. Davis that the government could indeed print paper money to pay debts. Chase died in 1873, and his successor Morrison Waite championed the Republican pro-business agenda.

Careful what you wish for

Republican transformation of the federal judiciary in the 1860s and 1870s served the party well in the Civil War and constructed a legal framework for a modernizing industrial economy.

But in the end Lincoln and Grant’s high court appointments ended up being disastrous for civil rights. Justices Bradley, Miller, Strong and Waite tended to constrain civil rights protections like the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees equal protection of laws. Their rulings in United States v. Cruikshank in 1876 and Civil Rights Cases in 1883 both sounded the retreat on Black civil rights.

In remaking the court in Republicans’ image, the party got what it wanted — but not what was needed to fulfill the promise of “a new birth of freedom.”

Calvin Schermerhorn, Professor of History, Arizona State University

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

Outrage after Amy Coney Barrett claims she has no “firm views” on climate crisis

Environmentalists were appalled—if not necessarily surprised—by Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s statement Tuesday that she does not “have firm views” on climate change, an ostensibly neutral comment that critics said is tantamount to denial of the science.

“Quite simply, if you’re neutral on climate change, you’re complicit in the collapse of the planetary ecosystem upon which the survival of every living thing depends,” meteorologist Eric Holthaus wrotelate Tuesday in response to Barrett’s remarks. 

Asked by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.)—an outspoken opponent of bold climate action—whether she has “opinions” on climate change, Barrett said during Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that she is “certainly not a scientist.”

“I mean, I’ve read things about climate change,” the judge added. “I would not say that I have firm views on it.”

Watch:

Barrett’s comments drew immediate backlash from environmentalists and experts who noted that one need not be a scientist to recognize the reality of human-caused climate change.

“Not being an astronomer, I can’t really offer an opinion on whether a giant asteroid crashing into the planet would be desirable,” joked 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben.

In his newsletter on Tuesday, Holthaus wrote that he is “pretty f’n pissed” at Barrett’s casual refusal to acknowledge the reality of the “most consequential issue of our time.”

“It’s the line ‘I’m certainly not a scientist’ that is perhaps so surreal,” wrote Holthaus. “This has been the standard, canned answer that climate deniers have given for years. But now it’s 2020. We’re in a pandemic. You don’t need to be a scientist to be able to listen to scientists. For someone whose ENTIRE JOB depends on carefully evaluating evidence, not having any ‘firm views’ on climate change is an unrecoverable fatal flaw.”

Andy Rowell, a staff blogger for advocacy group Oil Change International, notedTuesday that while Barrett’s record on cases related to the environment “is sparse, there are deep alarm bells ringing.”

“Our colleagues at Earthjustice have been fighting in the courts on behalf of our planet and its people for decades,” Rowell noted. “They have expressed ‘deep concern that the rush to confirm Amy Coney Barrett could threaten our shared future.’ Earthjustice also argues that ‘Judge Barrett appears willing to undermine our environmental laws’ and that her ‘record demonstrates her willingness to interpret environmental laws like the Clean Water Act narrowly in favor of industry interests.'”

The Daily Poster‘s David Sirota, Andrew Perez, and Walker Bragman reportedWednesday morning that as Senate Republicans rush ahead with Barrett’s confirmation process, the Supreme Court is “preparing to hear a climate case involving fossil fuel giants, including Shell Oil, where her father spent much of his career.”

“Less than two weeks before the confirmation hearings, the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal by Royal Dutch Shell and other oil giants that are being sued by cities and states for the climate damage those companies created,” the journalists wrote. “Shell and the others are asking justices to allow the case to be heard in federal court… The upcoming climate case is particularly important for the fossil fuel industry as it seeks to ward off a wave of climate litigation.”

How fascism has converged with capitalism to redefine government

The looming election has brought forward intensifying debates over a capitalism in crisis, rising nationalism and state power, and the possibility of a renewed fascism. Polarized politics and ideologies alongside long-accumulated social problems and movements shape the objects and tones of debate. Can fascism happen here; is it underway? Or can current capitalism avoid a return to fascism? Such questions reflect the high stakes of the election and this moment in history.

Should the state—the institution that organizes, enforces, and adjudicates the rules governing our behavior in society—exist in capitalism? That question has been important chiefly for certain ideologues who defend capitalism. Their major idea is that the problems of modern society are caused by the state. They are not caused by the employer-employee structure of capitalist enterprises or the markets, unequal distributions of wealth, and other institutions those enterprises support. Those ideologues imagine a pure, perfect, or good capitalism undistorted by any state apparatus. The capitalism they seek to achieve is very utopian. They conclude that by reducing the state (bad by definition), modern capitalism’s problems can also be reduced. By eliminating the state, a thereby purified capitalism will solve those problems. From libertarians to Republican Party hacks, this ideology serves to deflect the justified resentment and anger of capitalism’s victims away from capitalism and onto the state.

A contrary view holds that the state always existed throughout the history of societies in which the capitalist economic system prevailed. In them, the state—like other institutions—reflected each society’s particular conditions, conflicts, and movement. The capitalist economy rested on a foundation of enterprises whose internal organization divided participating individuals into a minority (employers) and a majority (employees). The minority owned and operated the enterprises, making all of its basic decisions: what, how, and where to produce and what to do with output. The majority sold its labor power to the minority, owned little or nothing of the enterprise, and was excluded from the basic enterprise decisions. One result of that basic economic structure was the existence of a state. Another result was a pattern of state interventions in society that reproduced its prevailing capitalist economic system and the employers’ dominant position within it.

Of course, the many internal contradictions of societies in which capitalism prevailed also influenced and shaped the state. Employees, for example, could and often did press the state for interventions that employers did not want. Struggles over the state and its interventions ensued. Individual outcomes varied, but the pattern that emerged over time was a state that reproduced capitalism. Likewise, in pre-capitalist societies such as slavery and feudalism, parallel patterns characterized their states. For considerable periods, those states also reproduced their class structures: masters and slaves in slavery and lords and serfs in feudalism. Usually, when a state no longer reproduced a particular class structure, its end was near.

The evolving conditions and conflicts in each society determined the size, activities, and history of its state. This includes determining whether state power is decentralized, centralized, or a mix of both. Social conditions and conflicts also determined the closeness, the intensity of collaboration, and even the possible merger between the state apparatus and the dominant class within each society. In European capitalism, initial decentralization gave way to a strong tendency toward state centralization. In certain extreme conditions, a centralized state merged with a capitalist class of large, concentrated employers into a system called fascism. The 20th century saw several major examples of fascism rise and fall. Now again fascism looms as a possible resort of capitalisms in trouble.

Usually, the transition from decentralized to centralized states reflected social conditions in which dominant classes needed strengthened state power to reproduce the system they dominated. They feared that otherwise, social conditions would provoke a collapse of their system and/or movements to a different economic system. In either case, their social dominance was at stake. Because that situation now looms on our historical agenda, so too does fascism.

Slave systems could persist in decentralized conditions. State power, perhaps localized within each slave master’s hands, oversaw the reproduction of the system’s two production positions: master and slave. Eventually, when reproduction was threatened—by disruptions to slave markets, slave revolts, or divisive struggles among masters—a separate state was created, given an apparatus, and strengthened. It often had slaves of its own (“state” slaves we might differentiate from “private” slaves owned by persons outside the state). Such a strengthened state was often more closely integrated with masters in a tighter, more coordinated reproduction of slavery. Violence by masters and the state conjointly against slaves recurred often.

In decentralized feudalisms, lords wielded state-type powers alongside their economic positions directing production by their subordinated serfs. Eventually, when pandemics, long-distance trade, serf revolts, or divisive warfare among lords (as dramatized in Shakespeare’s plays) threatened feudalism, a centralized state arose from among contending lords. That state—a supreme lord or king—shared social power with the hierarchy of what we might call “private” lords to reproduce feudalism. In medieval Europe, strengthened feudal states evolved into absolute monarchies. Those were tight alliances between kings and hierarchies of lords within boundaries defining different nations. Those tight alliances deployed violence against serfs, serfs’ revolts, rebellious lords, external threats, and one another.

Capitalism, like its slave and feudal predecessors, emerged in small, decentralized units of production. Capitalist enterprises, like slave and feudal production units (plantations, manors, or workshops), also displayed a system of two basic production positions. In the case of capitalism, those two positions were employer and employee. The differences were that in capitalism, no person owned another (unlike slavery), nor did one person owe religiously sanctioned labor obligations to another (unlike feudalism). Instead, a market in labor power was established over time. Employers were buyers and employees were sellers in a market exchange.

When problems eventually threatened the reproduction of early capitalism, it strengthened its state apparatus much as slavery and feudalism had done. One such problem was opposition by centralized slaveries and feudalisms to the capitalism that had emerged from them. Likewise, as capitalism grew and expanded across the globe, it disrupted other systems in ways they resisted. Violent interventions by strengthened state apparatuses subdued and reorganized them into what eventually became capitalism’s formal and informal colonies. Such interventions encouraged a strong capitalist state and vice versa. The demands and revolts of employees also drove capitalists to construct state apparatuses that could discipline and suppress them. Likewise, “cutthroat” competition among employers required a powerful arbiter to manage and control them.

Even as capitalism spawned a strong state, there was a remarkable hesitancy in doing so that has confused the history of capitalism to this day. The hesitancy arose because early capitalism—the period when emerging capitalist enterprises were relatively small and hampered by powerful slave or feudal states—saw those states as its enemy. Capitalists and their spokespersons wanted the state kept out of the economy, blocked from favoring noncapitalist over capitalist enterprises. They wanted capitalist enterprises and the markets they increasingly dominated to be left alone by the state. Hostility to and thus hesitancy about strong states went from advocating “laissez-faire” in the 17th century to celebrating “the free market” in modern times. In the latter form, it is utopian, an imaginary construct useful for ideological projects justifying capitalism (as “efficient”) and for libertarian slogans. No actual capitalism in recent centuries ever had a free market without state interventions and regulations.

From the 18th through the 20th centuries, capitalism spread globally from its initial centers in western Europe. The state was crucial to that spread via warfare (“opening” regions to trade) and colonizations. Conflicts among capitalists, especially the endemic struggles between competitive and monopoly capitalists and between capitalists from different nations, necessitated state interventions. Capital-labor conflicts and battles were always goads to state strengthening and interventions. Massive standing military establishments, routinized after World War II, generated military-industrial complexes. Those complexes, especially in the leading capitalist and military power after 1945, were just the kind of mergers of state and big capitalists that became models for parallel mergers among other industries and the state.

In the United States, one such parallel merger yielded the medical-industrial complex. There the role of the state was to protect a monopoly shared among four industries: doctors, hospitals, drugmakers and medical device-makers, and health insurance companies. The government enabled and sustains its merger with the medical-industrial complex. It does so in multiple ways. It exempts the complex from antitrust action. Government-subsidized Medicare and Medicaid—public health insurance for the elderly and the poor—carefully leave the younger, healthier, and more profitable clientele to the private health insurance companies. The government avoids buying pharmaceuticals in bulk and passing savings onto the public. Finally, the government has usually blocked and mostly denounced genuinely progressive reforms of this privately profitable medical system as “socialism.”

De facto, if not de yet de jure, mergers of state and capitalist industry punctuated the growth of state power alongside the concentration and centralization of capital.

Now we have much the same happening in finance. Central banks—largely state institutions—long marched in close formations with major private banks in capitalist countries. The Federal Reserve has responded to the three capitalist crashes so far this century by not only greatly increasing its money creation and interest rate reductions but also by extending credit to nonfinancial corporations. The Fed buys corporate bond exchange-traded funds, corporate bonds in the secondary market, and asset-backed securities based on corporate debts. The Fed likewise now owns a third of residential mortgages. Government credit becomes ever more important relative to private credit. The government will soon coordinate its decisions on who gets how much government credit with other government policies including which Chinese companies get banned and which European companies get sanctioned. These financial developments mark more milestones on the road to state-capitalist merger.

Behind the racism, nationalism, and war-mongering that Hitler championed lay the core economic system of fascism. That involved a merger of the state and private big capitalists. The former enforced the conditions of profitability for the latter. In turn, the capitalists accommodated the running of their enterprises to finance, produce, price, and invest in ways supportive of the fascist state’s policies. Expropriation of privately owned means of production targeted selected social sub-groups (such as Jews). Aryanization—not abolition—of private capitalism was the state’s objective.

In contrast, socialists favored the socialization of private capitalists’ enterprises. It was not the merger of the state with private capitalism that socialists sought; it was rather the dispossession of private capitalism. The state was to seize sole possession of means of production to operate a state capitalism. Most socialists saw state capitalism as an intermediate stage necessary to enable the transition to communism. That communism was understood as capitalism’s antithesis: social (not private) property in means of production, government planning (not markets) to organize distribution of resources and products, workers’ control of and running of enterprises, and distribution of output based on need as socially determined.

Fascism’s economic organization is where economic development is now taking capitalism in general and U.S. capitalism in particular. U.S. capitalism now replicates a parallel tendency toward merger with a strong state that characterized slavery and feudalism earlier. Systemic challenges to capitalism’s reproduction are met with growing state power, growing big capitalist business, and eventually their merger into a fascism. Exactly how and when capitalism evolves into fascism varies with the particular conditions and challenges of each national context. Likewise, the internal contradictions of capitalism—for example, its cyclical instability and its tendency toward deepening wealth and income inequality—can provoke mass resistances that can slow, stop, or reverse the evolution, at least for a while, or even redirect economic transition to socialism.

But the tendency of capitalism is toward instability (its cycles), inequality (its upward redistribution of wealth), and fascism (state-capitalist merger). The first 20 years of this new century display these tendencies in stark relief.

Experts dismiss “garbage fire” Hunter Biden exposé in NY Post: “Seems like a complete fabrication”

The Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post published a series of stories on Tuesday surrounding alleged emails between Hunter Biden and officials connected with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which the outlet obtained from a source who met multiple times over the last year with an individual whom the U.S. Treasury Department has sanctioned as an active agent of Russia.

The Post, which published the unverified emails on Wednesday, reported that the information came from Rudy Giuliani. The former LifeLock spokesperson attempted to distance himself from Andrii Derkach last month after the Treasury Department accused the Ukrainian lawmaker of being a Russian agent and running a “covert influence campaign” directed at the 2020 U.S. presidential election since late 2019.

Giuliani met with Derkach in late 2019. He interviewed the Ukrainian parliamentarian, in his role as President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, on a trip aimed at digging up dirt on Joe Biden. The former vice president was then viewed as the Democratic frontrunner for the presidential nomination; he is now the party’s official nominee.

On that trip, Derkach and Giuliani discussed the much-debunked allegations about Biden in a segment which later aired on One America News Network (OAN). Giuliani also broadcast an interview with Derkach on his personal podcast a few months later.

Derkach worked in the interests of the Russian government to inject “false and unsubstantiated narratives concerning U.S. officials in the upcoming 2020 presidential election” into the U.S. media through interviews, press conferences and other statements, according to the Treasury Department. 

His efforts include releasing edited audiotapes purporting to document improprieties by Joe Biden in his dealings as vice president with the Ukrainian government. Derkach’s disinformation also played a key role in a roundly discredited report recently released by the Republican-led Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

The authenticity of the alleged emails published by The Post has not been independently verified. Accusations of corruption against the Bidens have been repeatedly debunked by journalists.

Twitter later blocked sharing of the story after a number of journalists pointed out key falsehoods and holes in the narrative about the information’s authenticity and provenance. That afternoon, the computer repair store owner who claimed to have first come across the alleged emails offered a number of contradictory versions of his own narrative in what journalists described as a “bizarre” and meandering interview.

“At least in 2016, Trump’s allies pushed powerful disinformation,” national security attorney Bradley Moss told Salon. “These last-ditch efforts barely qualify as trying anymore.”

Moss added that several serious questions surround the chain of custody of the emails. 

“It’s a garbage fire story with obscene numbers of legal holes and flaws,” he said.

The emails came to The Post’s attention through Steve Bannon, the former Trump campaign strategist now indicted on federal money laundering and obstruction charges, who told the outlet that they had been in Giuliani’s possession.

Bannon recently appeared in the background of a photograph of Giuliani.

Giuliani told The Post that the emails came from a copy of a hard drive passed to him through his lawyer, Robert Costello, from John Paul Mac Isaac, the owner of a computer repair store in Wilmington, Del., who had notified Giuliani at an unspecified date — allegedly out of fear for his safety, Isaac later told reporters. (Costello has been representing Giuliani in a federal investigation into the former mayor’s business dealings abroad, which reportedly includes his work in Ukraine.)

Isaac, who according to a social media post apparently voted for Trump in 2016, allegedly copied the hard drive from a MacBook laptop, which he claims was dropped off at his shop for repair in April 2019 by someone who called himself Hunter Biden.

In his Wednesday interview with reporters, Isaac claimed that a medical condition had prevented him from actually seeing the person who dropped off the laptop, adding that he believed the computer was Biden’s because it bore a sticker related to the Beau Biden Foundation. The Biden family named the charity group, which focuses on child abuse, after Joe Biden’s son who died of a brain tumor in 2015. The person calling himself Hunter Biden handed over three laptops for repair, Isaac alleged.

The hard drive also contained alleged photos of Hunter Biden, including with drug paraphernalia.

“The computer repair shop giving the hard drive to Giuliani likely exposed that individual to civil and criminal liability under state and federal computer privacy laws,” Moss told Salon. “However, Rudy’s legal situation for receiving stolen property is less clear. And if he isn’t criminally liable for receipt, his dissemination of the material doesn’t change the equation. That would be like charging Glenn Greenwald for publishing Edward Snowden’s documents.”

One of the multiple stories on the subject published Wednesday by The Post included a photo of what the shop owner claimed was a repair ticket. That invoice — which The Post printed without blurring contact information that a search by Salon subsequently linked to Hunter Biden — was dated April 19, 2019.

If Hunter Biden had indeed dropped off the computer, it would have been in the same month in which he stepped down from his position on Burisma’s board of directors and his father announced his candidacy for president. It would have also been the same month in which some outlets in the U.S. press began publishing Giuliani’s allegations of corruption.

The store owner claims that Hunter Biden had never again inquired about the computer containing his alleged emails.

“It seems like a complete fabrication,” former U.S. Attorney and national security law expert Barb McQuade told Salon. “What are the chances that an anonymous person abandons a laptop that contains evidence about the very same conspiracy theory that Trump and Giuliani have been pursuing for more than a year? The subpoena is meaningless, because it has no tie whatsoever to Hunter Biden on its face. This seems like a desperate effort to get this talking point back in the news.”

At the time of the alleged laptop dropoff, Giuliani and his associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman had significantly ramped up their their months-long cooperative effort to dig up dirt regarding the Bidens and Ukraine.

Parnas and Fruman were later arrested at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington as they waited to board an overseas flight. Those arrests were on unrelated campaign finance charges, but they came only one day after the duo met Giuliani for drinks as impeachment hearings were heating up in Congress.

The investigation into Parnas and Fruman soon expanded to Giuliani, who was later reportedly the subject of subpoenas from federal investigators in the Southern District of New York. A lawyer for Parnas told Salon that he would be making arguments in federal court later this month. It is unclear what became of Giuliani’s role in the case.

Neither Parnas’ lawyer, Giuilani nor Isaac responded to Salon’s requests for comment.

The story, which comes as an “October surprise” while voting is underway nationwide in the weeks before Election Day, recalls memories of the bombshell news from the end of the 2016 election cycle: Emails pulled from a laptop confiscated by the FBI upended former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the final days leading up to the election.

At the time, Giuliani — a former assistant U.S. attorney who maintains ties to federal law enforcement  — told Fox News that he knew about a major revelation a few days in advance of former FBI director James Comey’s stunning announcement that the FBI would investigate the emails.

“I do think that all of these revelations about Hillary Clinton finally are beginning to have an impact,” Giuliani said. “He’s got a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next two days.” 

On another program later, he repeated the suggestion: “I mean, I’m talking about some pretty big surprises.”

After Comey’s announcement, Giuliani again took to Fox News, this time to boast.

“I had expected this for the last — honestly, tell you the truth, I thought it was going to be about three, four weeks ago,” he said. “Because back — way back in July this started. So, this has been boiling up.”

“I did nothing to get it out. I had no role in it,” he added. “Did I hear about it? You’re darn right I heard about it, and I can’t even repeat the language that I heard.”

Justice Department wants author of Melania Trump tell-all to hand over profits to government: report

The U.S. Justice Department is accusing the author of a tell-all book about Melania Trump of violating a non-disclosure agreement, Reuters reports.

The DOJ also wants Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who is a former aide to the first lady, to set aside profits from the book for a government trust.

“The United States seeks to hold Ms. Wolkoff to her contractual and fiduciary obligations and to ensure that she is not unjustly enriched by her breach of the duties she freely assumed when she served as an adviser to the first lady,” a copy of the complaint read.

Amy Coney Barrett hints at her real opinion of Roe v. Wade during exchange with Sen. Amy Klobuchar

During Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearing this Tuesday, Senator Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., question the SCOTUS nominee on how she defines “precedent” — or in regards to Roe v. Wade, “super-precedent.”

“How would you define super-precedent,” Barrett asked Klobuchar, who lobbed the question back to Barrett, saying, “I’m asking you.”

“Okay — well, people use ‘super-precedent’ differently,” Barrett said. “The way that it’s used in the scholarship and the way I was using it in the article that you’re reading from was to define cases that are so well-settled that no political actors and no people seriously push for their overruling, and I’m answering a lot of questions about Roe, which I think indicates Roe doesn’t fall in that category, and scholars across the spectrum say that doesn’t mean that Roe should be overruled, but descriptively it does mean that it’s not a case that everyone has accepted and doesn’t call for its overruling.”

Klobuchar then asked if Barrett considers a case such as Brown v. Board of Education as super-precedent, why wouldn’t she apply the same standard to Roe v. Wade.

You can watch the video below via YouTube:

Top Republicans call to punish social media sites for limiting reach of dubious Biden exposé

Top Republicans are lashing out at Facebook and Twitter — and even calling for legal retaliation against the social media platforms — after the two companies decided to limit the spread of a dubious New York Post story about the Democratic presidential nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden.

The Post article suggested Biden and his son behaved improperly with a Ukrainian business leader, but has been criticized for lacking proof for its assertions and for relying on questionable sources. 

“Section 230! Time’s up, @jack,” the Republican House Judiciary Committee’s official account tweeted at Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. “Section 230” refers to part of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that protects online platforms from potential liability for content posted by their users.

“Twitter is attempting to meddle in the election with anti-conservative bias,” Rep. Ken Buck, a Republican from Colorado, posted on Twitter. “@jack is acting like a publisher, making the case yet again to reform Section 230.”

Buck’s views were echoed by another Republican congressman, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who tweeted that “big Tech claims they aren’t biased against Conservatives. So why are they suppressing speech to help the Democrats? Section 230!”

President Donald Trump lashed out against Facebook and Twitter on the latter platform. “So terrible that Facebook and Twitter took down the story of “Smoking Gun” emails related to Sleepy Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in the @NYPost. It is only the beginning for them. There is nothing worse than a corrupt politician. REPEAL SECTION 230,” he wrote. In later tweets, the president posted two subsequent video clips from Fox News related to the Post story. 

Trump has previously been at the forefront of conservatives threatening to revise Section 230 as a way of punishing social media platforms that they perceive as hostile to right-wing views. His efforts have been condemned by legal experts, with Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe telling Salon by email in May that “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.”

His views were echoed at the time by former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade, who wrote to Salon that “Trump is confused about whose First Amendment rights are involved. The First Amendment prohibits the government from abridging the free speech rights of private actors. As President, a government actor, Trump cannot silence a private entity like Twitter based on the content of its message because the First Amendment protects free speech rights.”

Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California–Irvine, expressed the same view, emailing Salon at the time that “Twitter is a private company and it is entitled to include or exclude people as it sees fit. And if Trump tries to bring DOJ forces against social media companies (perhaps raising antitrust concerns) but does so for partisan reasons, then Trump would be violating the First Amendment.”

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggested a different reading of the law, writing on Tuesday that “extending §230 immunity beyond the natural reading of the text can have serious consequences,” that it would “behoove” judges to consider narrowing the law’s scope and arguing that internet companies had benefited from “sweeping protections” beyond what the law intended.

Both Facebook and Twitter defended their decisions regarding the New York Post story by arguing that they were consistent with existing company policies.

“While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook’s third-party fact checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform,” Facebook spokesman Andy Stone tweeted on Wednesday. “This is part of our standard process to reduce the spread of misinformation. We temporarily reduce distribution pending fact-checker review.”

Twitter outright blocked the story, with CNBC reporting that the company felt the story lacked “authoritative reporting around the origins of the information in it.” The company also claimed that the story violates its Hacked Material Policy, which does not “permit the use of our services to directly distribute content obtained through hacking that contains private information, may put people in physical harm or danger, or contains trade secrets.”

The story, which claimed to have unearthed “smoking gun” emails about the relationship between Biden, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy executive, has sparked questions over its veracity because it does not prove that the former vice president talked with the businessman in question and includes evidence allegedly obtained by a laptop repair store owner and presented to the lawyer of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Giuliani has served as Trump’s “personal lawyer,” and the Post is a notoriously right-wing publication and a sister company to Fox News parent Fox Corporation. The Trump campaign and the president himself have tried on previous occasions to smear the Bidens by falsely accusing them of behaving illegally in Ukraine, a smear campaign that culminated in the president’s impeachment earlier this year.

Andrew Bates, a Biden campaign spokesperson, made a statement addressing the odd journalistic inconsistencies in the Post’s reporting: 

Investigations by the press, during impeachment, and even by two Republican-led Senate committees whose work was decried as ‘not legitimate’ and political by a GOP colleague have all reached the same conclusion: that Joe Biden carried out official U.S. policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing. Trump Administration officials have attested to these facts under oath.

The New York Post never asked the Biden campaign about the critical elements of this story. They certainly never raised that Rudy Giuliani – whose discredited conspiracy theories and alliance with figures connected to Russian intelligence have been widely reported – claimed to have such materials. Moreover, we have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.

“The conservative New York Post has a credulous account of how Rudy came across these emails,” commentator Jonathan Chait wrote in New York Magazine. “The Post claims somebody brought the computer to a repair shop in Delaware, but then never bothered to pay for the repair. The shop owner saw that the computer had a sticker for the Beau Biden Foundation. But instead of returning the computer to the Biden family, he made a copy of the hard drive and gave it to Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer, before turning it over to the FBI.”

This is not the first time that the two social media platforms have attracted controversy for their role in controlling the flow of information — or misinformation. Facebook has previously been criticized for not doing enough to crack down on right-wing misinformation. Recently, perhaps in response, the company banned QAnon Facebook groups, Holocaust denial groups and anti-vaccine advertisements.

Twitter stoked Trump’s wrath in May when it fact-checked two of his tweets, prompting him to threaten that he would “strongly regulate” or “close” down social media platforms that “totally silence conservatives voices.” Later that month he signed an executive order that ordered the Federal Communications Commission to examine exempting social media platforms from Section 230 protections.

Trump treats essential workers as expendable, and many Americans are following his dangerous lead

I distinctly remember the first time I saw a yard sign thanking essential workers. It was early March and the streets in my Louisville neighborhood were just becoming desolate enough that when I rode my scooter — an old 50cc cherry-red Honda that caps out at like 40 miles per hour — there were no cars to impatiently rev their engines behind me on 35 mile per hour residential stretches. I was at a stoplight calculating how many rolls of toilet paper and canned beans (a rolling pandemic cliché, I know) when I noticed the sign stuck on a grassy patch in front of a pale yellow bungalow. 

“Thank You, Essential Workers!” was written in big, bold letters above drawings of various employees: a postal worker, a grocery store employee, a sanitation worker, a doctor and nurse. The illustrations were rendered in colorful brush strokes, like something out of a Richard Scarry picture book. The workers looked calm, almost subdued — both a world away from the reality that many of those same workers would spend the next eight months risking their physical health on a daily basis, and an apt depiction of how those workers are expected to keep calm under that immense pressure. 

Their faces — with their gentle U-shaped smiles — are the ones I think of when I see those viral videos of angry customers refusing to wear masks in a grocery store, sweeping their arms across a shelf and sending items flying into the aisles to punctuate their rage. They’re the ones I think of when I hear about members of the food and beverage industry undergoing de-escalation training to better prepare for those encounters. 

And it was their faces I thought of when I heard that two members of the White House housekeeping department had reportedly tested positive for the novel coronavirus following President Donald Trump’s diagnosis on Oct. 2nd. According to Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, “when their tests came back positive, they were told to use ‘discretion’ in discussing it.” 

The situation is problematic for many reasons; as many quickly pointed out, the housekeeping staff members are not likely to receive the same level of medical care Trump did after being air-lifted to Walter Reed. But it is also emblematic of a slow shift over the course of the pandemic’s duration: to many, essential workers are no longer pandemic heroes. They’ve gone back to being cultural givens, employees whose work is taken for granted and who are expected to silently absorb both risk and abuse from consumers. 

The White House serves as a kind of microcosm for this transition. 

“It’s a huge universe of people that most people don’t even know exists at the White House,” Kate Andersen Brower, author of “The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House,” said in an interview on NPR’s Morning Edition last week. 

“There [are] about 90 of them,” she said. “You have butlers, ushers, painters, engineers and plumbers.” 

And while the White House told NPR that with the recent positive results of the President and First lady, “staff wear full PPE and continue to take all necessary precautions, which include updated procedures to protect against cross contamination,” Brower said that isn’t enough. 

“This is still putting them at risk,” she said. “These are people who feel a great deal of pressure to work. They have mortgages to pay. So it is reckless to put them in this position.”

And when the recklessness results in actual diagnoses, like in the case of the two members of the housekeeping staff,  they are essentially told to keep quiet. This expectation of putting on a brave face is present in settings closer to home, as well. 

James M. is a Kroger employee based in Kansas. He asked that his real name not be used because he feared retribution, but provided Salon with proof of employment. 

“Customers are back to complaining about normal everyday things,” he said. “I mean, it’s pretty clear that customers aren’t seeing us as ‘heroes’ or ‘essential workers’ anymore when they refuse to wear masks. Corporate is back to pushing things like friendliness, and adding more tasks for us even though we’re burned out.” 

Kroger is one of several supermarket chains that came under fire for discontinuing their “hero pay” initiative, an additional $2 per hour hazard pay enacted in April, in May. As I reported then, Jonathan Williams — the communications director for the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 400, which is the union representing Kroger store associates — said the union was calling on the company to extend the bonus indefinitely until the end of the pandemic. 

“As much as Kroger wishes it were so, this is not a normal time and we can’t return to normal right now,” Williams said. “As some members have pointed out, while we’re still being required to wear a mask at work, there is still a hazard. There’s still a risk and the dangers are very real. So, if we were ‘heroes’ last week, why aren’t we heroes next week? Nothing has changed.” 

“[That’s] the biggest slap in the face,” James said. “That’s a pretty clear indication of our status.” 

James also reports that customers have become increasingly lax when it comes to pandemic-era precautions like social distancing and wearing masks. 

“It’s like I’m at work every day, anxious about getting sick, but customers are acting like the pandemic is a thing of the past, more concerned about why their coupon didn’t work,” he said. “My coworkers have been physically threatened and verbally abused at a rate seemingly higher than before the pandemic.” 

Anecdotally, evidence of people holding the mindset of the pandemic being behind us — or perhaps behind them personally — seems to have increased in my day-to-day life. For example, I joined a Facebook group in late March that was dedicated to highlighting the efforts of local restaurants. For the first few months, people would share photos of the delicious takeout they’d received or would post information on how neighborhood favorites were navigating curbside delivery. Lately, however, it’s devolved into people complaining about increased menu prices (much of which can be attributed to lingering distribution and supply issues) and mask requirements for indoor dining. 

Last week, my friend who works as an administrative assistant at a doctor’s office said a man in the waiting room thoughtlessly put a pen between his teeth while filling out paperwork. When she brought this to his attention, he laughed it off and said, “No worries, I’m clean,” then playfully tried to poke her with said pen while she recoiled. 

When I was at the grocery store over the weekend, I watched a woman get short with an employee who asked her to walk back a few feet before speaking with him. “I was going to ask you where the almond butter was, but I guess I’ll find it myself,” she huffed. 

When we have a president who has continuously acted like the coronavirus is a hoax, and that any precautions are an overreaction, there’s an obvious trickle-down effect in how that attitude pervades our communities. And when politicians, consumers and corporations pretend the pandemic is over, it’s  frontline workers who pay the price. The advent of the pandemic made us as a society reconsider whose contributions we couldn’t live without — let’s continue to consider and treat essential workers as such.

 

CDC director warns “small gatherings” like Thanksgiving could spread coronavirus

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned America’s governors on Tuesday that “small household gatherings” have been proved to spread the novel coronavirus, a fact that he urged the state executives to keep in mind as their citizens prepare for Thanksgiving.

“In the public square, we’re seeing a higher degree of vigilance and mitigation steps in many jurisdictions,” Dr. Robert Redfield told America’s governors during a Tuesday call, the audio of which was obtained and initially published by CNN. “But what we’re seeing as the increasing threat right now is actually acquisition of infection through small household gatherings. Particularly with Thanksgiving coming up, we think it’s really important to stress the vigilance of these continued mitigation steps in the household setting.”

Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, made similar remarks last week, telling reporters at a media briefing in Massachusetts that “it’s important for all of us to not let our guard down during Thanksgiving. We see that from the High Holy Days, people are just yearning to be together.”

The health experts’ concern has new urgency now, as Johns Hopkins University reported that America’s 7-day average for new daily cases rose above 50,000 for the first time in more than two months on Tuesday. It is now 51,000. The 7-day new case average hovered around 35,000 as recently as one month ago.

Medical experts agree that when people are gathered they should practice social distancing, wear masks and make sure rooms are properly ventilated. All of these steps help to keep people safe from the novel coronavirus, influenza and other respiratory diseases.

“Biologically, both influenza and the common cold are respiratory viruses that share the same airborne modes of transmission as SARS-CoV-2,” Dr. Russell Medford, chairman of the Center for Global Health Innovation and Global Health Crisis Coordination Center, told Salon last month. “The use of face masks, for example, would be expected to not only protect against the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 by infected persons but also influenza and the common cold. Equally important is the growing evidence that supports the use of face-masks to protect the healthy wearer from acquiring respiratory infections such as SARS-CoV2, influenza and the common cold.”

Indeed, while it is widely understood that coughing and sneezing can spread the novel coronavirus, a May study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggested that even normal speaking can also infect people with the virus that causes the disease COVID-19.

“There is a substantial probability that normal speaking causes airborne virus transmission in confined environments,” explained the study’s co-authors.

Facebook bans anti-vax ads — but anti-vax groups remain safe on the platform

On Tuesday, Facebook announced that it will ban ads that promote an anti-vaccine agenda as the country approaches flu season. While the ban will affect paid advertisements with anti-vaccination messaging, Facebook’s move oddly won’t affect organically-shared content that surfaces from the dozens of anti-vax groups known for using the social media platform to radicalize people. 

The announcement was made in a blog post in conjunction with news about “a new flu vaccine information campaign.” Specifically, Facebook said, as part of a new global policy the tech company will prohibit “ads discouraging people from getting vaccinated.”

“We don’t want these ads on our platform,” Kang-Xing Jin, Facebook’s Head of Health, and Rob Leathern, Director of Product Management, wrote in the blog post. “Our goal is to help messages about the safety and efficacy of vaccines reach a broad group of people, while prohibiting ads with misinformation that could harm public health efforts.”

Previously, Facebook prohibited ads that promoted “vaccine hoaxes” that were identified by leading global health organizations—like the World Health Organization (WHO) or the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The policy will reject any ad “explicitly” discouraging a person from getting a vaccine.

“Enforcement will begin over the next few days,” the authors of the announcement said.

However, there are some caveats. Specifically, Facebook ads that advocate for or against legislation or policies about vaccines are still allowed on the social media platform.

“We’ll continue to require anyone running these ads to get authorized and include a ‘Paid for by’ label so people can see who is behind them,” the blog post stated. “We regularly refine our approach around ads that are about social issues to capture debates and discussions around sensitive topics happening on Facebook. Vaccines are no different. While we may narrow enforcement in some areas, we may expand it in others.”

In other words, it’s a loophole. And organic misinformation that promotes anti-vax rhetoric won’t be prohibited, either.

Certainly Facebook is no stranger to dealing with anti-vaccination conspiracies on its platforms. In March 2019, the company announced that it would reject vaccine ads, yet somehow some slipped through the cracks.

According to the announcement, Facebook will be working with organizations like WHO and UNICEF on “public health messaging campaigns to increase immunization rates.”

Facebook has been in the news a lot over the last couple weeks for announcing a series of censorship policies of its content after long resisting being an arbiter of truth on its platform. Recently, the company announced a ban on Holocaust denialism, groups promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory, and a ban on political ads indefinitely after the Nov. 3 election.

However, Facebook continues to resist a zero-tolerance policy, which is what experts say is needed for the social media company to tackle misinformation running rampant on the platform. As STAT News recently reported, Facebook could take a cue from Pinterest, which has implemented a zero-tolerance policy on vaccine misinformation.

For years, anti-vaccination advocates have used Facebook to organically spread public health misinformation, and the social media giant has undoubtedly inadvertently contributed to a growing global vaccine skeptic movement. In May, researchers published a study in Nature that showed a rise in followers of pages promoting anti-vaccine rhetoric on the social media platform between February and October of 2019. In the study, researchers found that there were more pages spreading misinformation about vaccines that were growing faster than those pages that shared actual factual vaccine content.

On Facebook, there are dozens of groups centered around “stopping” mandatory vaccinations in which group members give “health advice” to each other. In one exchange in a popular anti-vaccine group, a woman’s son died from the flu in 2019 when she gave him thyme and elderberries instead of Tamiflu, according to CBS.

According to a new report by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, 31 million people follow anti-vaccine groups on Facebook. Their  researchers found that these groups often “radicalize” those who are skeptical.

“The 64 groups identified in our research provide spaces for anti-vaccine misinformation to be shared with large audiences with little or no opportunity for scrutiny, challenge or oversight,” the report states. “This makes them ripe for the process of radicalisation as posts in line with each group’s prevailing values receive approval in the form of likes, while posters expressing contrary views are swiftly removed.”

In 2019, the World Health Organization declared “vaccine hesitancy” as a public health threat. More troubling, only about half of U.S. adults said they would definitely or probably get a COVID-19 vaccine, according to Pew Research Center.

“There’s been a lot of anti-science, anti-public health framing of the pandemic in recent times,” Dr. Monica Schoch-Spana, a medical anthropologist and senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said in a statement.

“Martin Eden” star Luca Marinelli on the struggle of the artist as individualist

Luca Marinelli, best known to American audiences for his role as a warrior in “The Old Guard,” gives a soulful performance as the title character in “Martin Eden,” director Pietro Marcello’s vigorous adaptation of the Jack London novel. Martin is a poor young sailor who lives with his sister Giulia (Autilia Ranieri) and her disdainful husband, Bernardo (Marco Leonardi). When he rescues Arturo (Giustiniano Alpi) from some trouble one afternoon, he meets the wealthy Orsini family and falls for Elena (Jessica Cressy) — much to her parents’ chagrin. 

Elena inspires Martin to become a writer and he educates himself to achieve this goal. But Martin writes “sad things” and struggles to publish. 

“Martin Eden” shows how the kindness of Maria (Carmen Pommella) a widow, and his friendship with Russ Brissenden (Carlo Cecchi), an intellectual, helps Martin realize his dreams to be a writer. As he pursues success, however, his relationship with Elena changes. Moreover, he is branded as a Socialist, which makes him both uneasy and famous.

Marinelli, who is in every scene of the film, is extraordinary as Martin. An early scene has him staring curiously at a painting of a ship, observing how it appears differently from a distance and up-close. Marinelli is often filmed in close-up throughout “Martin Eden” and his eyes and expressions show how he grows and changes from a young, hopeful young man full of desire and wonder —  one who maintains his virtue and pride as he becomes educated (reading Herbert Spencer) — only to become a cynical, contemptuous writer frustrated by the world that that celebrates him. 

It’s a shrewd performance, and Marinelli exudes charm and sex appeal as young, humble Martin. But he becomes unlikable once Martin can afford all the things he longed for, (his hair and teeth change, symbolizing his decadence and decay). He also doubles down on his ideas about individualism and class that inspire his passions like love once did.
Marinelli spoke to Salon via Zoom (and with the assistance of a translator) about the character of, and themes in, “Martin Eden.”

Martin needs to write to express himself. You act to express yourself. Why did you choose to become an actor, and how does your work, in films such as “Martin Eden,” create meaning for you? 

This is the question! [Laughs] I really like acting; it was a magnet for me. If I can do this for the rest of my life, I will be very happy. But I don’t know why it’s so fascinating for me. Maybe because I can express myself through it, and maybe because it’s a job you have to collaborate with other people’s thoughts and ideas. It’s a way to continue to play. They always told me in the academy, you have play seriously, as kids do. 

Martin has a hunger to read and chooses Herbert Spencer. I’m curious what books or writers have influenced you? And did you read the Jack London novel to prepare for this role?

I didn’t know the book, but I knew Jack London and “Call of the Wild.” I knew he wrote “Martin Eden” on a boat during a trip. I immediately fell in love with the story and had a connection with the character. I read a lot of what Jack wrote. What I love to read is the Beat Generation. Charles Bukowski. I discovered “Pulp,” which was last novel Bukowski wrote, but it was the first book of his I read. I like Italo Calvino’s “Cosmicomics.” It’s very funny. Now I’m very into graphic novels, but also theater — Shakespeare, Pinter.

Martin is seen working jobs — on ships, in a foundry, on a farm. He wants to write but insists he can’t do office work. I’m curious about the physical and emotional strain of the role getting into Martin’s body and mindset?

We started in a very technical way. I read the book, and I read he’s very strong and has a lot of energy. I started with the body and [became] stronger than I am normally. It was really useful for the character. Then we added all the language Martin used. We were focused on the dialect of Napoli that is peculiar and precise. I had a dialect coach, which helped me find this character. Then I tried to learn what he was reading, Herbert Spencer and all the political philosophy. I tried to understand his feelings and emotions; he approaches things with head and heart. What feelings were behind his every choice? And how did he act with body and dialect? 

Martin is virtuous and proud; he refuses to accept help from others. What observations do you have about Martin’s character, who is stubbornly determined to succeed on his own merits?

I think he is a curious guy, and very courageous; he lives his life like an adventure. He’s very determined and stubborn. I fell in love with his character and his sensibility and with his way of approaching life and people. His struggles to make his own views about politics, love, and society. I love how adventurous he was.

I was charmed by Martin’s friendship with Russ Brissenden, his mentor. Have you ever had that kind of support in your career — a teacher or colleague, someone who influenced you and helped you become who you are? 

That’s a crazy aspect of this movie. Russ is the mentor of Martin Eden, and the actor Carlo Cecchi was and is my mentor when I started acting. My first professional experiences in the theater were with Carlo. That was very powerful. When I was preparing, and talking about the character, Pietro [Marcello, the director] suggested Carlo because he knew Carlo was my mentor. It was a wonderful and moving experience because we had intense scenes together. 

Martin’s love for Elena forms the backbone of the film; he feels he “owes it to her” to be successful because she inspired him. What does love mean to Martin?

Maybe I’m too romantic to answer this question, but love is everything for Martin. He loves everything and that was my approach — to have passion for everything. He is full of passion sailing on a boat, working in a factory, talking with a friend, falling in love with a woman, making love. 

What do you think of how the class struggle is depicted in the film? 

It’s very dramatic. Martin starts from a certain point and social class and he [ascends] to another, but he always thinks about where he came from. It is painful for him that he’s moves so far away from where he was and yet, he is also so far away from where he landed. He is lost. His sensibility is constantly struggling.

Martin’s politics are interesting as well. He gets swept up in socialism, but champions individualism. How do you rationalize his success at the expense of his ideals? 

I read political philosophy and wanted to find balance in what he is saying and his thoughts behind what he was saying. It was important to understand why he was doing what he did. Sometimes he was provoking, sometimes he believed what he was saying. In every public speaking event or interaction he has there was a feeling — and that’s what interested me more than his political views. Why in this moment is Martin thinking this? In life, one day we believe something and then a year passes, and you think something else. 

Martin makes a powerful transformation. Do you think fame could change you? “Martin Eden” certainly proves your magnetism as a leading man, but your participation in “The Old Guard” exposed you to American/global audiences on a larger scale. Are you looking to have a more commercial career? Will there be an “Old Guard 2”?

Fame can change you, and it’s important to have a lot of balance in your life because [acting] is a job that can put you out of balance. It’s very important to stay grounded. This is my way to be healthy in this industry. I want to make “Martin Eden” 2 and 3, and “Old Guard” 2, 3, and 4. Work is important, but to have a private life is important too. To give the industry its due but keep one foot in it and one foot out.

“Martin Eden” is available in select theaters and virtual cinemas on Friday, Oct. 16.

America “wouldn’t survive” a second Trump term: former Bush official

David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, is issuing a dire warning about the state of American democracy should President Donald Trump win a second term.

Writing in The Atlantic, Frum argues bluntly that America “wouldn’t survive” a second Trump term, even as the country is limping to the finish of his first term.

In fact, Frum believes that Trump has already proven that an American president can get away with discarding guardrails in place to keep him in check without suffering significant political consequences.

“Through the Trump years, institutions have failed again and again to check corruption, abuse of power, and even pro-Trump violence,” he writes. “As we near the 2020 vote, the Trump administration is attempting to cripple the Postal Service to alter the election’s outcome. The president has successfully refused to comply with subpoenas from congressional committees chaired by members of the opposing party. He has ignored ethics guidelines, junked rules on security clearances.”

Frum then documents how Trump has shamelessly abused his pardoning powers to save political allies from serving jail time, how he has abused government resources to personally enrich himself, and has even incited political violence without facing any pushback from Congress or the Supreme Court.

“The man the Founders dreaded entered the high office they created — and proceeded to abuse that office in just the ways they feared,” Frum warns. “Now that man is seeking a second term, which would be even more abusive and dangerous.”

Read the whole essay here.

“Good old days for who?”: Harrison rebukes Graham for invoking the “good old days of segregation”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., referenced the “good old days of segregation” while questioning Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett during her confirmation hearings on Wednesday.

Graham, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, began another day of hearings by defending Barrett’s refusal to address a number of critical issues from the previous day.

“One of the reasons you can’t tell us how you would rule is because there’s active litigation coming to the court,” Graham said. “And one of the reasons you can say with confidence that you think Brown v. Board of Education is super-precedent is that you’re not aware of any effort to go back to the good old days of segregation by a legislative body. Is that correct?”

“That is correct,” Barrett responded. “I’ve also said in lectures that Brown was correct as an original matter, and that is the kind of thing — since I’ve said that in writing  — that I can say before the committee.”

The previous day Barrett resisted answering questions from Sen. Chris Coons, D-Conn., about the Affordable Care Act, citing in part the fact that she had written about it in her capacity as an academic.

Graham later followed up a series of questions about decisions legalizing same-sex marriage by questioning whether the issue of polygamy would wind up before the high court.

“Is there any constitutional right to a polygamous relationship?” Graham asked.

“That might be a question that could be litigated,” Barrett replied. “Polygamy, obviously in many places, is illegal now. But that could be an issue somebody might litigate before the court at some point.”

“Somebody might make the argument that it’s possible for three people to love each other genuinely, and that might make its way to court if somebody might make that argument,” Graham said. “is that correct?”

“Somebody could make that argument, yes,” Barrett replied.

Conservative justices had raised the same question while weighing the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which legalized same-sex marriage across the nation. Chief Justice John Roberts, in his dissent, pointed out that some of the reasons the majority gave in support of same-sex marriage “would apply with equal force to the claim of a fundamental right to plural marriage.”

Roberts wrote: “Although the majority randomly inserts the adjective ‘two’ in various places, it offers no reason at all why the two-person element of the core definition of marriage may be preserved while the man-woman element may not. Indeed, from the standpoint of history and tradition, a leap from opposite-sex marriage to same-sex marriage is much greater than one from a two-person union to plural unions, which have deep roots in some cultures around the world.”

The LGBTQ advocacy group Lambda Legal reminded Graham and the Republican-backed judges that marriage equality is not equivalent to polygamy following the suggestion of as much. 

Graham, whose troubled re-election bid is locked in a dead heat with Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison, the first Black man to lead the South Carolina Democratic Party, immediately faced backlash for both remarks.

Adrienne Lawrence, an attorney and the first on-air ESPN personality to sue the network for sexual harassment, pointed out that while Barrett had answered Graham’s polygamy hypothetical, she had declined the previous day to say whether the president had the authority to delay the election.

And Harrison, who has so far been relatively silent on the issue of race, took the opportunity to punch back by tweeting, “[Graham] just called segregation ‘the good old days.’ The good old days for who, Senator?”

At a debate forum last week, Graham said, “If you’re a young African-American or an immigrant, you can go anywhere in this country. You just need to be conservative — not liberal.”

If Harrison defeats Graham, South Carolina — whose secession kicked off the Civil War — would become the first state in U.S. history to send two Black senators to Washington at the same time. Harrison would join sitting Sen. Tim Scott, a Republican.

An extra artery in the human arm is a sign we’re “still evolving,” study says

A new study explores how humans seem to be evolving in a very unexpected way — namely, by having a third artery in some of our forearms.

In an article published by the Journal of Anatomy, scientists from the University of Adelaide in Australia and Flinders University describe how human forearms have a third artery while people are being developed in the womb. That structure, known as the median artery, usually withers away during the first trimester of pregnancy, although it occasionally lingers past that point. Yet over the years anatomists have claimed that more and more people are retaining this extra blood vessel after being born, a process that if continued could eventually mean that human beings’ forearms have effectively evolved.

“A total of 26 median arteries were found in 78 upper limbs obtained from Australians aged 51 to 101 years, who died in the period 2015–2016, a prevalence rate of 33.3%,” the authors write, explaining that they were following up on research from 1995. “Analysis of the literature showed that the presence of the median artery has been significantly increasing… over time, from approximately 10% in people born in the mid‐1880s to approximately 30% by the end of the 20th century.”

Dr. Teghan Lucas from Flinders University in Adelaide, who co-authored the study, explained that there are several possible explanations for why an increasing number of people are keeping this extra blood vessel.

“This increase could have resulted from mutations of genes involved in median artery development or health problems in mothers during pregnancy, or both actually,” Lucas explained, adding that “if this trend continues, a majority of people will have median artery of the forearm by 2100.”

The study’s senior author, Dr. Maciej Henneberg from the University of Adelaide, told Flinders University that the study is important because “this is micro evolution in modern humans and the median artery is a perfect example of how we’re still evolving because people born more recently have a higher prevalence of this artery when compared to humans from previous generations.”

This is not the first time that scientists have speculated about whether recent changes in human anatomy — or the lack therefore — could somehow be connected to evolutionary theory. For years scientists have wondered whether wisdom teeth, or a third set of molars that develop in some people in their late teens or early twenties, might be connected to evolution. A 2012 study by a New York dentist and two researchers at the University of Arkansas argued that wisdom teeth may exist to help people chew the harder foods associated with living in the wild and that, when they become impacted, it is because our jaws have shortened after eating softer foods in our formative years.

According to a pair of 2015 studies from the Journal of Dental Research, roughly 24 percent of people have impacted wisdom teeth and roughly 22 percent are born without them. It is with this last group that evolution may come into play; as Discover Magazine put it last year, “the complete disappearance of third molars in some cases may indeed be an example of recent evolution, in which people lacking wisdom teeth didn’t face dental crowding issues and weren’t at a chewing disadvantage because their diets had softened.”

There are also questions about whether the human appendix is vestigial, or an organ that no longer serves any purpose. Charles Darwin famously speculated that the appendix had once helped human beings digest leaves and other plant matter with a high concentration of cellulose, but that it shrank over the years as human diets changed. More recent research suggests that the appendix has evolved at least 32 times among mammals, contains particular tissues associated with the lymphatic system and can be found in other species (or, at the very least, that they have analogous organs). This indicates that the appendix may help develop beneficial bacteria in our digestive systems.

Update: Dr. Teghan Lucas, a co-author of the study, reached out to Salon after this story was published. Lucas added that “humans are currently in what we call a relaxed state of natural selection, meaning natural selection is not playing as big of a role in our evolution as it used to. This is because we’ve pretty much mastered our environment.”

She added, “In this state of relaxation, more variations from ‘normal’ are getting through in our genes as they are not weeded out as they cause no harm. This relaxed state means that embryonic development is simplified and thus the artery persists until birth and afterwards.”

Trump urges California GOP to continue using fake “official” drop boxes in spite of legal threat

President Donald Trump urged California Republicans to defy a state order to remove fake “official” ballot drop boxes after numerous top officials called them “illegal.”

State Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Secretary of State Alex Padilla on Monday issued an order to the California GOP and three county chapters requiring the removal of unofficial ballot drop boxes erected in front of locations like gyms, gun stores and churches that were falsely marked “official.”

Trump, however, urged the party to fight the order in court.

“You mean only Democrats are allowed to do this? But haven’t the Dems been doing this for years?” the president tweeted, drawing a dubious comparison between the boxes and the legal “ballot harvesting” efforts by Democrats that have drawn his ire. “See you in court. Fight hard Republicans!”

Trump’s call came after Becerra, Padilla and Gov. Gavin Newsom, all Democrats, labeled the Republican effort “illegal.”

“Nothing reeks of desperation quite like the Republican Party organization these days — willing to lie, cheat, and threaten our democracy all for the sake of gaining power,” Newsom tweeted. “These unofficial drop boxes aren’t just misleading, they are illegal.”

Trump’s comments also came after the California Republican Party already vowed to defy Monday’s order.

“Screw you!” Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said in response to Newsom’s tweet, according to Politico. “You created the law, we’re going to ballot harvest.”

Fresno County Republican Chairman Fred Vanderhoof, who installed a dozen collection boxes, including one which was labeled an “Authorized Secure Ballot Drop,” claimed to GVWire that a 2016 ballot harvesting law passed by Democrats allowed the party to install drop boxes falsely marked as “official.”

“We are doing nothing illegal,” he insisted. “The whole ballot harvesting law is purposely designed very loosely so the Democrats can cheat, which they are doing in large numbers. They can do ballot harvesting, but we can’t. That’s what they’re saying, so they’re hypocritical.”

State officials rejected Republican claims that falsely-marked collection boxes were allowed under the law permitting ballot harvesting, which permits a third-party to submit ballots on voters’ behalf.

The offices of the attorney general and secretary of state said in a cease-and-desist order to the GOP that the law required “persons to whom a voter entrusts their ballot to return to county election officials provide their name, signature and relationship to the voter.”

Becerra and Padilla also argued during a Monday conference call that the boxes were “illegal,” because they were designed to trick voters by claiming to be “official.” The boxes lack the security requirements mandated for official collection boxes installed by election officials, they added.

“We hope that the message goes out loud and clear to anyone who is trying to improperly solicit, obtain and manage a citizen’s vote that they are subject to prosecution,” Becerra said. “I’m trying to be careful with how I say this, but the reports we are hearing are disturbing.”

Some voters were stunned when they discovered they had tossed their ballots into an unofficial collection box marked an “Official Ballot Drop Box.”

California GOP spokesman Hector Barajas told The New York Times that Republicans would continue to operate the boxes and not label them to make it clear that they were set up by the party rather than “official” drop boxes set up by the state.

Becerra and Padilla said they would consider legal action if the party fails to comply by their Oct. 15 deadline.

“Anyone who knowingly engages with the tampering or misuse of the vote is subject to prosecution,” Becerra said.

“If they refuse to comply,” Padilla added, “we’ll of course entertain all of our legal options.”

Trump’s latest harebrained scheme to cheat his way to victory fails — but don’t relax yet

Despite days of a seemingly steroid-addled Donald Trump raving about alleged conspiracies against him on Twitter and to any right wing pundit who would listen, it appears Attorney General Bill Barr — usually so indulgent of Trump’s various crimes and corrupt schemes — has decided not to arrest a slate of Trump’s political opponents on falsified charges. 

“‘Unmasking’ probe commissioned by Barr concludes without charges or any public report,” blares the headline at the Washington Post. With that, another of Trump’s hopes that he could abuse his powers to manufacture an “October surprise” to save his re-election goes up in smoke. 

At this point, it’s tempting to offer an explainer about what the supposed “unmasking” scandal is all about, but the problem here is that the whole thing is equal parts opaque and confusing, even for those who are fully immersed in the Fox News Cinematic Universe. It’s a bunch of gobbledygook accusations against Obama White House staff, including former Vice President Joe Biden, that amount to nothing but have been sold at length with great umbrage by the over-acting crowd at Fox News. 

The whole thing is confusing by design. These falsified scandals concocted by Republicans to smear Democrats — Clinton’s emails, Benghazi, Whitewater, whatever the hell Trump and Rudy Giuliani have been trying to imply about Biden and Ukraine — are deliberately dense and confusing, so that no one, not even the most avid Fox News fan, can ever fully understand what they’re supposed to be outraged by. 

The hope is that viewers will tune out the details (because they are indecipherable) and instead simply hear a series of sinister (or foreign-sounding!) buzzwords — “Benghazi,” “emails,” “unmasking,” “Burisma” — and assume that something bad must have happened, even if they don’t understand what. It’s a strategy that’s been pretty successful for Republicans in the past. To this day, no one can explain what was supposedly so bad about Hillary Clinton’s emails, but enough Americans assumed that all the smoke must mean fire that they held the fake scandal against her at the polls in 2016. 

Barr quite clearly opened the “investigation” into this non-scandal in order to pile on more confusing news reports and bolster the illusion that something bad must have happened. Barr likely understood that this phony investigation, like others, would amount to nothing substantive.

And it wasn’t really meant to. The whole point is to drag out the Potemkin investigation until the election, creating a fake and confusing “scandal” that wannabe Trump voters could cling to in order to rationalize voting again for the racist disease vector polluting the Oval Office. 

But Trump, who doesn’t understand the art of subtlety on a good day, got greedy. Trump has been in an obvious downward spiral, brought on by both his humiliating COVID-19 hospitalization and the likely side effects of the powerful drugs he was given to battle it. Unsurprisingly then he’s given a number of incoherent and aggrieved interviews to right wing outlets while also venting regularly on Twitter. In the process, he began screeching demands that Barr arrest a whole slew of Democratic figures on false charges in wild, over-the-top language that frankly removed all plausible deniability that there was anything substantive about the investigation. 

“DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS, THE BIGGEST OF ALL POLITICAL SCANDALS (IN HISTORY)!!! BIDEN, OBAMA AND CROOKED HILLARY LED THIS TREASONOUS PLOT!!! BIDEN SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO RUN – GOT CAUGHT!!!” Trump tweeted in what looks quite a bit like a ‘roid rage spiral last Wednesday. 

The next morning, he appeared on Fox Business to rant at Maria Bartiromo about how this fake scandal is “the greatest political crime in the history of our country” and demanded that Barr arrest and indict Obama, Biden and Hillary Clinton. 

Concocting a fake scandal to smear Democrats requires some amount of restraint. Republican officials can’t just arrest Democrats willy-nilly on false charges that will get thrown out immediately in court. That’s likely to blow back in their faces, as the scandal becomes about abuse of power and turns the innocent people arrested — all of whom are very famous! — into martyrs. 

No, the strategy — which has worked really well! — has been to use federal resources to run a bunch of phony “investigations” that create the illusion of scandal, all without crossing the line into illegal activity that could result in actual consequences for corrupt Republicans.

But Trump, especially when he’s hyped up on steroids and humiliation, couldn’t help himself. He’s the same guy who bragged that he likes to commit sexual assault because “when you’re a star, they let you do it.” He lives to cross lines and test boundaries. He’s also hobbled by impulsive and short-term thinking, and couldn’t see past how powerful he would feel by arresting these people to see how an abuse of power scandal would only damage him. 

Trump gave the game away. Any effort to pretend this “unmasking” investigation was legitimate was now pointless in the face of the angry old psychopath raving about how people who oppose him politically should be arrested.

It’s impossible to read Barr’s mind and conclusively determine if he decided to wrap up this phony investigation — and allow a bunch of Trump-damaging headlines about it — because of Trump’s downward spiral and very public demands that Barr cross the line into blatantly illegal behavior. But it’s hard to deny the timing here. 

This is just the latest in the long list of schemes by Trump to abuse his federal powers to cheat in the 2020 election. Last week, Greg Sargent of the Washington Post listed all the failed conspiracies, from Trump trying to fake a Biden-Ukraine scandal to Trump tear-gassing innocent protesters to Trump trying to rush a COVID-19 vaccine for October to this new effort to levy fake “unmasking” accusations against Democrats. Trump has definitely spent more time abusing his office to cheat in the 2020 election than he has on governing in the past four years. But he’s about as good at conducting corrupt conspiracies as he was at running his business, which is to say, not at all. 

All that said, it would be unwise for anyone to relax just yet. Trump has made his intentions to steal the election quite clear, and while he may be incompetent, he does have plenty of competent people working for him. The conspiracy to steal the election by attacking the mail-in voting system is still up and running. It is still critical that everyone do their part to keep Trump from monkeying with vote-counting in an attempt to steal the election. 

Still, watching Trump’s latest scheme implode is a good sign. He’s very bad at rat-f*cking and keeps getting in the way of the people who actually know how to pull such shenanigans off. He is not the criminal mastermind so many people have convinced themselves he must be, but an incompetent fool who got really lucky in 2016. He can be defeated — as long as people don’t get complacent. 

Pelosi labels Blitzer GOP “apologist” on stimulus: “You really don’t know what you’re talking about”

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., got into a contentious exchange with CNN host Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday after he questioned why she had not accepted President Donald Trump’s stimulus proposal.

House Democrats passed a $2.2 trillion proposal before Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin countered with a $1.8 trillion offer despite Trump’s claim that he was shutting down negotiations. Among other measures, the offer includes $300 billion in aid for states and local governments, another round of $1,200 stimulus payments, $400 per week in supplemental federal unemployment benefits and lawsuit protections for businesses.

Democrats said the proposal was insufficient, calling for $400 billion in additional relief for states and cities and the unemployment boost to be increased to $600 per week. Democrats have also vowed to oppose the liability protections while pushing to add refundable child tax credits to help working parents.

Many Senate Republicans, pushing for a far lower price tag, called Trump’s proposal a “betrayal” of GOP voters. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Trump’s proposal was unlikely to pass with the Senate’s focus on confirming Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. He instead plans to force a vote on a $500 billion plan ahead of the election.

Blitzer suggested on Tuesday that Pelosi’s reluctance was preventing the bill from passing, even though McConnell refused to negotiate for months after Democrats passed its first $3.4 trillion plan in May and has pushed back on the White House offer.

“Many Americans are waiting in food lines for the first time in their lives. Can you look them in the eye, Madam Speaker, and explain why you don’t want to accept the president’s latest stimulus offer?” Blitzer asked.

“I hope you’ll ask the same question of the Republicans on why they don’t want to meet the needs of the American people,” Pelosi replied. “But let me say to those people, because all of my colleagues — we represent these people . . . and their needs are not addressed in the president’s proposal. So when you say to me, ‘Why don’t you accept theirs?’ Why don’t they accept ours?”

“Excuse me for interrupting, Madam Speaker, but they really need the money right now,” Blitzer pressed. “Even members of your own caucus, Madam Speaker, want to accept this deal.”

Blitzer quoted Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who cited the urgent need to get aid to struggling Americans quickly in calling for Democrats to back the proposal.

“We have a moral obligation to do something,” Khanna said this week. “We are the party that stands for the working poor.”

Pelosi dismissed Khanna’s comments as she accused Blitzer of being a Republican “apologist.”

“What I say to you is: I don’t know if you’re always an apologist — and many of your colleagues — for the Republican position,” she said. “Ro Khanna, that’s nice. That isn’t what we’re going to do.”

“People need help now,” she added. “But it’s no use giving them a false thing just because the president wants to put a check with his name on it in the mail that we should not be doing all we can to help people pay the rent, put food on the table and enhance benefits.”

Blitzer continued to press the speaker.

“There are millions of Americans who have lost their jobs. They can’t pay their rent. The kids need the food,” he said. “$1.8 trillion, and the president just tweeted, ‘stimulus, go big or go home.’ He wants more. Why not work out a deal with him and don’t let the perfect, as they say here in Washington, be the enemy of the good?”

“I will not let the wrong be the enemy of the right,” Pelosi responded.

“What’s wrong with $1.8 trillion?” the CNN host asked.

“You know what? Do you have any idea what the difference is between the spending that they have in their bill and that we have in our bill?” Pelosi asked. “Do you realize that they have come back and said all these things for child tax credits and earned income tax credits, helping people who have lost their jobs are eliminated in their bill?”

Blitzer noted that former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang had also called for Democrats to back the proposal.

“It’s infuriating that so many Americans are hurting, and we’re still waiting on a relief bill that should have been passed months ago,” Yang told CNN this week.

Pelosi dismissed the remarks, arguing that neither Yang nor Khanna were not familiar with the bill’s more arcane details.

“Honest to God, you really — I can’t get over it, because Andrew Yang is lovely. Ro Khanna — he’s lovely. They are not negotiating this situation,” she said. “They have no idea of the particulars. They have no idea of what the language is here.”

Blitzer continued to press Pelosi on why she would not negotiate a deal directly with the president.

“With all due respect — and we’ve known each other a long time — you really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pelosi said, arguing that Blitzer did not “even know” how the money in the proposal would be spent.

Blitzer again cited Democrats who “want a deal, because so many people right now are suffering.”

“You evidently do not respect the chairman of the committees who wrote these bills, and I wish you would respect the knowledge that goes into meeting the needs of the American people,” Pelosi replied, accusing the host of “defending the administration all this time with no knowledge of the difference between our two bills.”

“Madam Speaker, these are incredibly difficult times right now, and we’ll leave it on that note,” Blitzer said, trying to go to break.

“No, we’ll leave it on the note that you are not right on this, Wolf. And I hate to say that to you,” Pelosi interjected. “But I feel confident about it, and I feel confident about my colleagues and I feel confidence in my chairs.”

Blitzer said it was “not about me” but struggling Americans.

“And we represent them,” Pelosi said.

“Every day is critically, critically important,” Blitzer said, again trying to end the interview.

“Thanks so much for your sensitivity to our constituents’ needs,” Pelosi said sarcastically.

“I am sensitive to them, because I see them on the street begging for food, begging for money,” Blitzer said.

“Have you fed them?” the speaker asked. “We feed them. We feed them.”

You can watch the interview below via YouTube: 

Yes, Biden should pack the court: It’s time to fight back against Mitch McConnell’s power-grabs

The first day of questioning in the Amy Coney Barrett Supreme Court confirmation hearings was one for the books. The ritual of strong ideological jurists pretending to have never given a thought to the issues of the day is not unprecedented, but the context for it this time around should be unheard of. We are only three weeks away from a national referendum on the president and his party which, in any functioning democracy, would require that decisions about lifetime appointments be postponed until that referendum is decided.

But we don’t live in a functioning democracy at the moment, so we are unable to stop a power-mad Republican party from ramming through this appointment despite the fact that the president himself has said publicly that he wants the seat filled in order to ensure a majority will rule in his favor when election disputes go before the court. He and his party have already put such a plan in motion by foreshadowing their intention to contest any outcome not in their favor.

That is the context in which our latest Supreme Court justice will be confirmed on a party line vote. The legitimacy of the appointment and the authority of the court will forever be corrupted by such a raw partisan power play. Any person of real integrity, particularly one who will be serving in a position for which personal honor and superior judgment are paramount job requirements, would refuse to be seated under such tainted circumstances.

Coney Barrett is clearly not such a person, and her answers on the first day of questioning make it clear that she is as unconcerned with her reputation as the Republicans who plan to install her no matter the cost to the stability of our institutions are with their own. 

She is obviously a right wing extremist. But she also refused to say that the president is unable to single-handedly delay an election and she won’t commit to recusal on cases about the election even though the conflict of interest and appearance of bias is so obvious a child could see it. She couldn’t even say that a president must commit to a peaceful transfer of power.

Sadly, the appointment cannot be stopped. And it is the second time in the last four years that Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and his accomplices have seized a seat on the court without any regard as to whether the majority of the country sees it as legitimate. It’s as if they prefer that the people who don’t vote for them see that they are impotent to stop them. That’s a demonstration of pure power. And they have made the bet that the other side does not have the will to fight back.

But they may have finally gone too far. It’s not just the court. The entire GOP establishment collaborating with Donald Trump for the past four years on myriad assaults on our democracy has raised awareness that the Republican establishment is no longer a political faction but has instead devolved into an elevated version of an organized crime family. Their cynical use of Trump for their own purposes without regard to the carnage and destruction he has brought upon this nation (including tens of thousands of preventable deaths) has exposed their so-called ideology as nothing more than a mercenary will to power.

Democrats, belatedly recognizing this fact, have started thinking seriously about how to save the country. It’s almost too late, but if they manage to win despite the GOP’s concerted efforts to derail a free and fair election, they have the chance to restore our democratic system.

The possibilities range from eliminating the filibuster — an easy and imperative move if they plan to ever enact vital legislation — to pushing efforts toward D.C. statehood and admission of Puerto Rico (should their people choose it). But in the wake of this unprecedented power grab on the Supreme Court, the talk has necessarily turned to expanding the court so that it will properly reflect the country for which it makes momentous decisions.

Needless to say this has the media wringing its hands, mostly because Democratic nominee Joe Biden won’t say whether he would back such a move. He is wisely refusing to submit to their harangues, knowing full well that they are itching to turn this issue into another “Hillary’s emails.” And of course the Republicans are shrieking like rabid howler monkeys at the mere idea that Democrats might finally realize they can use their constitutional powers to rebalance the scales.

Considering what they have done, the Republicans do not have a leg to stand on. Their abuse of the “advise and consent” role in the nomination process makes any protestations about fairness laughable. Moreover, the number on the court has changed many times in the past. The Constitution does not designate a specific number on the court, which some of those “originalists” should consider may have been on purpose, as one of those “checks and balances” we used to be taught were so important.

It hasn’t been done recently, but that’s because we haven’t had one of the political parties go completely rogue and start abusing the system to place extremists throughout the federal judiciary in quite a while.

Back in 2013, then-Congressman Tom Cotton introduced a bill in the House called the “Stop Court-Packing Act” which would have eliminated three seats on the D.C. Court of Appeals. That seems like a strange title, but it gives away the game. He was trying to stop President Obama from being able to fill those three empty seats. Senator John Cornyn, R-Texas, agreed, writing a piece in the National Review called “Don’t let the Democrats pack the DC Circuit.” Keep in mind that these were legitimate vacancies.

As it happens, McConnell kept those and many other seats open so that a Republicans could fill them, so they needn’t have worried. And he’s very proud of it:

After McConnell refused to even hold a hearing for President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland to fill Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat, Republicans announced that they were prepared to block all of Hillary Clinton’s nominees if she were to win the 2016 presidential election. They said the court could run with eight justices going forward (something that they are now insisting would be completely unacceptable). And, as it happens, Republican governors all over the country have been trying to expand their Supreme Courts.

Biden has said that he’s “not a fan” of the idea of expanding the Supreme Court, which is not surprising. Very few Democrats want to do it. It’s going to be a bloody battle with a sanctimonious GOP suddenly rediscovering the necessity for norms and a media desperate to prove they are “fair and balanced” after four years of Trump. But if Democrats win and then don’t do what’s necessary to rebalance the judiciary and repudiate what these rogue Republicans have done, average Americans will pay a very steep price for their ineffectuality.