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Registered foreign agent Pam Bondi accuses Joe Biden of self-dealing in Republican convention speech

Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a registered lobbyist for the government of Qatar, alleged that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden had engaged in self-dealing and nepotism during her Tuesday night speech at the Republican National Convention.

“I fought corruption, and I know what it looks like — whether it’s done by people wearing pinstripe suits or orange jumpsuits,” Bondi said. “But when you look at [Biden’s] 47-year career in politics, the people who benefited are his family members — not the American people.”

Bondi recounted familiar allegations from the impeachment saga against President Donald Trump, questioning Biden’s motives for convincing the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor whom the U.S. and its Western allies believed to be corrupt. 

“We all know about Joe’s son, Hunter Biden. A corrupt Ukrainian oligarch put Hunter on the board of his gas company, even though he had no experience in Ukraine or in the energy sector. None,” Bondi said. “Yet he was paid millions to do nothing.”

Though these accusations have long been debunked, Bondi nonetheless resurfaced them.

Bondi was hired by the White House as a consultant during impeachment proceedings. She was also photographed multiple times with Lev Parnas, one Rudy Giuliani’s associates, who along with business partner Igor Fruman acted as go-betweens and translators during the former LifeLock spokesperson’s campaign to dig up dirt on Biden in Ukraine.

Parnas and Fruman are currently under indictment in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) as part of a broader investigation, which is now said to extend to Giuliani.

“Clearly, Lev Parnas liked to take pictures with a lot of people,” Bondi said in an interview with NBC’s Today Show. “He showed up at events pretty much everywhere where Republicans were.”

When Bondi was elected as the attorney general of the Sunshine State, her transition team included a South Florida-based white collar attorney named Jon Sale. Giuliani has told Salon that Sale, a friend from law school who worked with him at the SDNY, was the person who connected him to Parnas. Sale was also among a number of Giuliani associates who reviewed Parnas’ sham business Fraud Guarantee ahead of securing a $500,000 loan paid by an investor to Giuliani on Fraud Guarantee’s behalf.

When the White House hired Bondi last fall, she cut off her lobbying work on behalf of the Qatari government, which she had represented in her capacity as a senior partner at the Washington lobbying shop Ballard Partners. The firm is run by Brian Ballard, a prominent Republican fundraiser with close ties to President Donald Trump.

In April 2020, Bondi re-registered as a foreign agent of Qatar, again in her capacity with Ballard Partners.

Federal authorities subpoenaed Ballard Partners in November 2019 as part of the investigation into Giuliani’s associates. Brian Ballard had paid Parnas at least $22,500 for referring business from the Turkish government, which in May 2017 agreed to pay Ballard Partners $1.5 million over the next year. It then renewed the contract for $750,000 one year later, according to federal lobbying records.

The month before Bondi joined the White House impeachment team, the Department of Justice indicted Turkey’s state-run bank Halkbank — at the time a Ballard client — for evading Iran sanctions.

The U.S. government currently accuses Qatar of bribing FIFA executive committee officials to give the Middle Eastern nation hosting privileges for the 2022 World Cup.

Bondi’s relationship with Trump, which dates back several years, has come under scrutiny before. In 2013, when Bondi was Florida attorney general, the Trump Foundation — the president’s sham, now-defunct charitable organization — made an unlawful $25,000 donation to a group affiliated with Bondi while her office was mulling opening an investigation into Trump University. Bondi’s office chose not to investigate.

The Trump Foundation shut down in late 2018 amid allegations from New York’s attorney general of engaging in “a shocking pattern of illegality,” including unlawfully coordinating with Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

As part of a settlement in that investigation, Trump’s three adult children — who were officers with the foundation — were compelled to take mandatory training to ensure they did not repeat the misconduct in the future.

The day before Bondi’s address to the Republican National Committee, the attorney general’s office asked a judge to compel one of those children, Eric Trump, to testify in an ongoing civil investigation into whether President Donald Trump’s private business unlawfully manipulated the value of its assets in order to secure loans or other tax and financial benefits.

Eric Trump spoke after Bondi on Tuesday night.

How Trump inspired “Lingua Franca,” Isabel Sandoval’s romantic tale of a trans Filipina immigrant

In the new-to-Netflix film “Lingua Franca,” viewers follow the story of Olivia  — played by the film’s director and producer Isabel Sandoval — a trans woman who recently immigrated from the Philippines and is now working as a caregiver for Olga (Lynn Cohen), an eldery Russian woman in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach neighborhood. 

Initially, Olivia’s main motivation is to secure a green card to stay in America, but she unexpectedly falls for Olga’s adult grandson, Alex (Eamon Farren), who doesn’t know that she is trans. However, she is eventually outed, and her safety, sense of self and immigration status are threatened. 

“Lingua Franca” originally debuted as part of the 2019 Venice International Film Festival Venice Days program, where it made history as the first film directed and starring an openly trans woman of color to screen in competition. It is now being released by Ava DuVernay‘s ARRAY, a grassroots distribution, arts and advocacy collective focused on films by people of color and women.

Sandoval spoke with Salon about the inception of the film, her desire to subtly chronicle New York City’s immigration in her film, and what it was like working with ARRAY. 

From the top, one of the things that I found most interesting about this film is that we have the title, “Lingua Franca,” which refers to a kind of bridge language that allows two people from different backgrounds to communicate. But in this film, what is really important is what’s left unsaid between Olivia and Alex. Was that irony intentional? 

Yes, that was the intention. As a filmmaker, I’ve always been kind of fascinated with languages, but also silence. You know, the dialogue that the characters speak, how they communicate, not purely to express and articulate how they really feel, but to obfuscate and distract from what they really mean. 

There are the silences and the pauses when we’re just observing the characters in solitude and revealing more truth about what’s going on inside them. 

You wear a lot of hats in this production. You wrote, directed, edited and produced it, in addition to acting in the role of Olivia. What made you realize you wanted to tell her story? 

You know, a French filmmaker, [Jean-Luc Godard] once said that filmmakers make the same move over and over again, so they revisit the same themes, and are obsessed with the same conflicts and issues that are perhaps unresolved in their own lives. They feel that it’s a go-to theme. 

[For me], it’s women with secrets, or women who are at a power disadvantage or are marginalized, or made to confront very personal choices. And make private decisions in a fraught sociopolitical milieu and setting 

And yeah, after I finished my second feature, “Apparition,” I started my gender transition and that’s when I started writing a romantic drama about a trans woman living in Brooklyn who will become involved with a man who is not aware that she is transgender. 

But it wasn’t until Trump got elected — I was halfway through writing the script . . . that really influenced and colored what would become the prevailing mood and tone of the film. I was plunged into a kind of existential crisis and I felt really anxious and tense and just uncertain about what’s going to happen to minorities and people like me, both on the level of someone who’s wanting to be a citizen, and also as a filmmaker who’s writing a film about the current situation. 

Because I’ve come from a country that had experienced, you know, been put under a dictatorship, I felt that everything that was going on in the U.S. at the time just hit really close to home. That’s really the mood that I wanted to capture and distill and hopefully I did. 

Speaking of marginalized populations and your desire to share their stories, I thought it was an interesting choice that two of the main characters in Olivia’s orbit — her love interest Alex and his grandmother Olga — are not just generically “white.” Olga is an elderly Russian woman living in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach neighborhood. Why did you make that choice to include her immigration story? 

I feel my own experience having lived in New York City, it really is a place populated by immigrants. You know, for the most part, people have moved to New York City from other countries, whether they are first, second or third generation. In fact, I feel like when you visit the different neighborhoods and boroughs — Queens and Brooklyn — every few streets is a totally different ethnic neighborhood. You know, Italian, Irish, Greek, Filipino, Russian. 

It kind of shows you the last 200 years of the history of immigration in New York City. I wanted “Lingua Franca” to kind of document that in a way. As an immigrant, I’m more conscious of other immigrant groups around New York City and that’s what I wanted to chronicle and show — that it is ultimately a story between immigrants. 

Filipino narratives are rarely seen in mainstream American film or television. Do you hope that “Lingua Franca” will open the door for more? 

I mean, I’m definitely going to make more movies that center Filipino and Filipino-American experiences, but it’s tricky for this film because it’s not a commercial or mainstream production. I feel like even after the success of “Crazy Rich Asians,” which was meant to be studio entertainment and did really well at the box office, I feel like these kinds of movies are considered more anomaly and just “trendy.” 

But I’ve been really heartened by the positive response to a film like “Lingua Franca,” because it talks about a very particular and — when you think of its commercial prospects — a very niche experience and perspective. And for it to be received well, I hope it encourages other aspiring filmmakers and artists to tell the stories they have wanted to tell. I also think it was a kind of political statement for me to be both the talent in front of and behind the camera, making a film at this time. 

Speaking of your experience behind the camera, as you mentioned, this is your third feature film — preceded by “Señorita” or “Apparition.” How do you think your aesthetic as a director has developed, and how do you think “Lingua Franca” showcases it? 

Certainly, I feel like I’ve been heavily influenced by slow cinema and artists from Europe and Asia — Ingmar Bergman, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, as well as Wong Kar-wai. I felt like the first two films, I was making deliberate nods and homages to the works of those directors. I thought making those references, cinematic references — I felt like in “Lingua Franca,” I outgrew that in some sense. 

Even though there are references to the works of master filmmakers in my own work and in “Lingua Franca,” I appropriated those as a means to express and articulate my own ideas and vision for this film. I conceived “Lingua Franca” with my own idiosyncratic and distinctive vision for it and kind of just borrowed, so to speak, from the cinematic masters if I felt like there was a way to make it mine. 

What was it like collaborating with Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY for the release of this project?  

I feel very much at home with ARRAY and having Ava release a film like “Lingua Franca” because she is also someone who started outside the industry and created her own opportunity and did things her own way. I think both of us kind of have a very DIY approach to things in that, you know, she worked as a publicist before. I don’t think Ava went to film school, but she was an autodidact. She learned as she went along.  

That’s also my own strategy and my approach about my work and my own career. When I made this film, i wasn’t trying to make a film that would necessarily fit the “Sundance formula” or South by Southwest. I made a film that I really wanted to make, even though people may not end up liking it, but really taking creative and aesthetic risks. That fortunately paid off and [it] was validated by festivals like Venice and London, and now it’s getting picked up by Ava DuVernay, and she has always championed and amplified the voices of underrepresented filmmakers, so I’m very ecstatic and honored that she is releasing the film. 

“Lingua Franca” is currently streaming on Netflix.

Tear gas sprayed on Portland protesters revealed to contain toxic metal compounds

The city of Portland recently sent the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) information they requested about the chemicals contained in the crowd control agents that have been sprayed on Black Lives Matter protesters by law enforcement since May — and their documents reveal that the tear gas contains chemicals that are apt to pose a health risk to those exposed, particularly given the high quantities sprayed. The documents provide insight into the potential health and environmental hazards posed by the tear gas that has blanketed protesters in the streets of downtown Portland nearly every night for months.

The documents also confirm that the city of Portland sources its tear gas from Safariland, LLC, a “security products” manufacturer that has faced scrutiny for its role in supplying tear gas used by law enforcement to suppress protests over the death of George Floyd.

The documents sent to DEQ by Portland include a Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for “Flameless Tri-Chamber Grenade, CS” and a Safety Data Sheet for “Skat Shell 40 mm Multiple Projectile Round, CS,” both manufactured by Defense Technology, a subsidiary of Safariland, LLC. These types of technical documents are required to be written for industrially produced chemicals and substances, and explain the hazards that said substances pose to human health as well as environmental health.

“We asked [the city of Portland] what is in the tear gas and the quantities, and that is what they sent back to us,” Susan Mills, a public affairs specialist at the Oregon DEQ, told Salon by email.

CS gas refers to the active ingredient in tear gas, 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile, the incapacitating agent that causes tearing and burning sensations in the eyes, mouth, nose and sinuses.

As Salon reported yesterday, Mills said the agency sent a letter to the city of Portland last month asking the city to conduct additional pollution testing to see whether the constant tear-gassing could have caused lasting environmental damage through stormwater discharges. Tear gas is a common crowd control agent, but is not often used with such regularity in a single location, which prompted the investigation into the potential environmental effects. 

“Since then, we have received their monitoring plan,” Mills explained. “However, between the time the letter was sent and when the plan was received back by DEQ, it rained in the city and Portland BES [Bureau of Environmental Services] conducted sampling based on the specific requirements laid out. We are still waiting for results.”

Mills said that, although DEQ instructed BES to submit their results within two weeks of receiving them, the results may “take longer than usual” to arrive because some were sent out of state for testing. She said that the Oregon DEQ does not know either the quantity of chemicals used in the tear gas sprayed by city police, nor “the chemicals and quantities used by the federal government while they were in Portland.”

“In the meantime, we understand that Portland BES is using their authority to protect the storm drains in downtown Portland,” Mills added.

Salon also spoke with Diane Dulken, public information officer for BES.

“We’ve got to put this in perspective here,” Dulken told Salon. “This is a focused area where we’re seeing deployment of CS gas, and because there was a concentrated deployment of CS gas near the Justice Center, and we saw documented residue that we believe was flushed into the storm drain. . . . Because of that, we are taking action and sampling that area and seeing if we can identify if there was an elevated level of certain chemicals. Those are the sampling that we should have results by in mid-September.”

She later added by email, “While sampling results take a few weeks to analyze, our pollution prevention actions were immediate. Along with sampling, we also cleaned out the storm drains within a day of receiving credible reports of possible CS residue being flushed down storm drains.”

The material safety data sheet for the brand of tear gas used by Portland Police reveals that the chemicals in Safariland’s “Flameless Tri-Chamber Grenade, CS” (meaning containing CS gas)” include barium chromate, manganese powder, lead chromate, nitrocellulose, red iron oxide, titanium powder, zirconium powder, potassium chlorate, sugar, magnesium carbonate and CS gas itself. Barium chromate is known to be toxic; upon heating, lead chromate releases toxic lead fumes. 

Dr. Lewis S. Nelson — the professor and chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine, director of the Division of Medical Toxicology at the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and senior consultant at the New Jersey Poison Information & Education System — spoke to Salon about the potential health risks of these chemicals.

Nelson told Salon that the other chemicals besides CS were “fillers and incipients and other additives that provide smoke and basically coverage, so that you can see [the gas], and it could work as a screen. . . .  they’re all metal derivatives.” Nelson said that these were potential causes for concern in that “lead is a problem. Manganese is a problem. These things, if you’re exposed to chronically or very high concentrations, you can develop real toxic syndromes. The problem with all of these in this venue is pulmonary irritation and eye irritation and throat irritation, to some extent.”

Salon asked Nelson about the Oregon DEQ’s concern that the large quantity of tear gas used against protesters could have contaminated the water supply.

“Good question,” Nelson said pointedly. “It’s probably going to be meaningless, but I would agree with you that having extra lead in the water cannot in any way be a good thing,” he added. “I think the amount that this is going to add to a reservoir full of water, especially after it undergoes its cleaning process, is going to be fairly small, right? Most of these metals are not problematic if you eat them in small quantities, even lead. . . .  So the amount that it’s going to dilute out into is going to ultimately be very small.”

He said that this does not mean there is no danger, noting that “if somebody were to drink water that was heavily contaminated with lead chromate, for example, they could have symptomatic consequential lead poisoning.” His observation was that “it would take a very specific situation. It would be very unlikely to happen. Putting anything in the water supply is not something I’d like to do.” Even flushing medications down the toilet, he pointed out, has a “tiny little” effect on the chemicals in the water supply.

“The question is, does it reach a biological threshold of concern? And the answer for most of these would really be very unlikely,” Nelson told Salon.

According to the safety data sheet, the “dangerous components” in the “Skat Shell 40 mm Multiple Projectile Round, CS” have resulted in the European Union classifying them as a “fire or projection hazard,” “toxic if swallowed,” “toxic if inhaled,” capable of causing allergy or asthma symptoms or breathing difficulties if inhaled, and potentially “toxic to aquatic life with long lasting effects.” 

Photos from protesters from the past few months reveal that some of the tear gas purportedly sprayed on Portlanders was a different variety from either of the two Safariland-manufactured brands the city mentioned in their letter to DEQ. Indeed, an article published in the Portland Mercury on August 4 showed a photo of exploded tear gas canisters “collected at downtown Portland protests over the last two months.” Those cans were of the brand “Instantaneous Blast CS,” also manufactured by Safariland’s subsidiary Defense Technology, but with different internal chemicals. The safety data sheet for Instantaneous Blast says that it contains diiron trioxide, magnesium oxide, zinc metal, potassium perchlorate, aluminum powder zirconium powder, and lead dithiocyanate, among other metallic compounds.

Salon has reached out to Safariland, LLC, which is located in Jacksonville, about the exact amounts of each chemical in their crowd control agents. We have not received a response as of the time of this writing.

Trump campaign paid $2.3 million in donor funds to president’s private businesses: FEC filings

When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, he promised to “drain the swamp” and declare war on crony capitalism — and he insisted that if he was elected, there would be a strict separation between his presidency and his business interests. But Dan Alexander, in Forbes, reports that according to Federal Election Commission filings, Trump’s campaign has so far paid $2.3 million in campaign funds to his private businesses.

“The most recent expenses look familiar,” Alexander notes. “The president accepted $38,000 in rent last month through Trump Tower Commercial LLC, the entity that owns his Fifth Avenue skyscraper.”

In July, according to the FEC filings, Trump’s campaign paid $8000 to the Trump Corporation for “legal and IT consulting.” And Trump’s campaign also coordinated with the Republican National Committee to pay Trump Tower Commercial LLC $225,000.

In July, the FEC filings show, Trump Hotel Collection received $1,000 from his campaign. And some of the $2.3 million went to Trump Restaurants LLC.

According to Alexander, the Trump Restaurants payments “may be connected to a kiosk in the basement of Trump Tower that sells campaign memorabilia. It’s hard to imagine that the kiosk has been doing much business amid the coronavirus crisis, but the campaign has continued to pay its rent: $3000 per month. Trump Restaurants LLC has gotten $117,000 since its owner became president.”

Alexander reports, “Trump’s machinations have been going on for years now. Forbes first reported on money moving from his reelection campaign to his business in 2018. The amount has more than doubled since then.”

Business Insider’s Sonam Sheth, discussing the FEC filings and Forbes’ reporting, notes, “This isn’t the first time the president’s campaign has become entangled with his personal finances. In July, the Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold reported that Trump’s campaign sent nearly $400,000 to the Trump Organization in just two days.”

According to Sheth, “The RNC has spent more than $2 million at Trump Organization hotels and resorts. And Trump’s campaign, which is funded in part by donations from the president’s supporters and big-dollar donors, has spent more than $14 million at his properties.”

Trump demands that Joe Biden submit to a drug test ahead of the presidential debates

In an interview with the Washington Examiner on Wednesday, President Donald Trump demanded that both himself and Joe Biden submit to a drug test ahead of the presidential debates, arguing that there is “no way” that Biden suddenly got this good at debating.

“Nobody thought that he was even going to win. Because his debate performances were so bad,” said Trump. “Frankly, his best performance was against Bernie. We’re going to call for a drug test, by the way, because his best performance was against Bernie. It wasn’t that he was Winston Churchill because he wasn’t, but it was a normal, boring debate. You know, nothing amazing happened. And we are going to call for a drug test because there’s no way — you can’t do that.”

“I don’t know how he could have been so incompetent in his debate performances and then all of a sudden be OK against Bernie,” added Trump. “My point is, if you go back and watch some of those numerous debates, he was so bad. He wasn’t even coherent. And against Bernie, he was. And we’re calling for a drug test.”

It is unclear who would perform the drug tests Trump is calling for, or whether he would make their results public.

Lindsey Graham asks why Jacob Blake “didn’t yield” before being shot in the back by Kenosha police

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., raised questions Tuesday about why Jacob Blake, the 29-year-old Black father filmed being shot in the back by police in Kenosha, Wis., “didn’t yield” to demands from law enforcement officials.

Graham made the remarks at a press conference announcing the endorsement of the South Carolina Fraternal Order of Police. A reporter asked the three-term incumbent whether protesters might not feel as though their voices had been heard after several months of nationwide demonstrations against police violence and racial injustice.

“Well, one, I don’t know what happened there. Let’s find out. It’s dangerous being a cop,” Graham replied. “I don’t know why the gentleman didn’t yield when he was asked to yield. I don’t know what the facts are.”

Blake was shot Sunday after Kenosha police responded to a domestic disturbance call. Video of the incident shows officers with guns drawn following Blake around the front of a vehicle. One of the officers can be seen grabbing Blake by the shirt as he tries to access the vehicle, and seven shots can be heard on the recording. 

It is unclear from the recording’s audio whether police asked Blake to yield. Witnesses told the Kenosha News that officers used a Taser on Blake prior to the shooting.

Benjamin Crump, an attorney for Blake’s family, said the father had been “breaking up a fight between two women.” He tweeted that Blake’s three sons were in the car at the time of the shooting. 

Blake is paralyzed from the waist down and suffered damage to his kidney, liver and spinal cord, family members and attorneys told CNN.

“He had a bullet go through some or all of his spinal cord — at least one bullet. He has holes in his stomach. He had to have nearly his entire colon and small intestines removed,” family attorney Patrick Salvi Jr. said.

The family intends to file a civil suit against the Kenosha Police Department, Salvi added.

The shooting sparked chaotic protests in Kenosha, which turned deadly Tuesday when two individuals were shot after the county earlier declared an emergency curfew. The county sheriff on Tuesday told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that an armed “militia” had taken to the streets to protect property amid the unrest, though it remains unclear if a member was involved. 

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, called on the National Guard to assist local law enforcement, but turned down President Donald Trump’s offer to send more troops.

On Tuesday, Graham, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, continued, “Here’s the good news: Police are not above the law. There are places where police act with impunity. This is not one of those nations.”

Graham invoked George Floyd’s death in police custody this May as “heinous” and “wrong.” Minnesota prosecutors have charged all four officers involved in the killing, which sparked a nationwide reckoning on race.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice announced Monday that two officers had been placed on administrative leave. The state’s Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) said prosecutors would receive a report on the shooting within 30 days.

“DCI is continuing to review evidence and determine the facts of this incident and will turn over investigative reports to a prosecutor following a complete and thorough investigation,” the department said in a news release.

Graham faces a tight re-election bid in South Carolina, a state which is more than 30% Black. A series of polls show him in a dead heat with Democratic rival Jamie Harrison, who was the first Black official to chair the state’s Democratic Party.

Citing in part the nationwide protests over racial injustice, which might provide “further motivation for turning out African-American voters in South Carolina, the Cook Political Report recently shifted its election forecast slightly more in Harrison’s favor, to “lean Republican.”

Should Harrison emerge victorious, Cook pointed out, “South Carolina — the first state to secede from the Union in 1860 — would become the first state in history to have two Black senators serving at the same time.” The state is also currently represented by Sen. Tim Scott, who is a Republican.

Harrison said in a statement provided to Salon that Graham is blaming the victim.

“South Carolinians and people throughout the country are calling out for reforms to how police use force,” Harrison said. “But instead of delivering solutions, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is blaming the victim and making this pain even worse. This man represents a state that went through a similar ordeal with the shooting death of Walter Scott, another Black man gunned down from behind. It has been five years since that day in North Charleston, and now three months since the killing of George Floyd.”

“Our senior senator held a hearing in June for the cameras, but in true Lindsey Graham fashion, it has been all talk and no action since then. We need so much more than empty words. We must come together across party lines and deliver results that will deliver more equitable policing to communities throughout South Carolina,” Harrison said.

During the press conference Tuesday, Graham called on Harrison to return donations he received from MoveOn.org, which advocates for diverting funds from police departments to other municipal and community programs.

Harrison denies that he wants to defund the police.

“These are political games,” Harrison told Salon. “Lindsey Graham has been in Washington for 25 years, and just yesterday he admitted he only cares about ‘trying to get re-elected.’ I do not support defunding the police, and I’m not going to get into these political games. I’m focused on stopping this deadly pandemic, bringing relief to working families and restoring hope to the millions of South Carolinians statewide.”

Graham’s campaign was called out in late July for digitally darkening Harrison’s face in a campaign ad.

NBA Players sit out games in protest of Jacob Blake shooting

The Milwaukee Bucks will sit out Game 5 of their NBA playoff series to protest the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

The team entered the Disney World-area arena for their Wednesday afternoon game against the Orlando Magic as some players wore t-shirts that read “Protect Kids Not Guns” upon arrival. But the Bucks never took the court for shoot-around prior to game time.

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The Magic, who did come out for shoot-around, headed back to their own locker room with four minutes before game time when it was clear Milwaukee players were not coming out for Game 5. Soon after, NBA reporters tweeted that the Bucks were discussing whether — and ultimately chose to — boycott the game, ESPN reports.

“We’re tired of the killings and the injustice,” Bucks guard George Hill told The Undefeated.

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“FUCK THIS MAN!!!! WE DEMAND CHANGE. SICK OF IT,” LeBron James tweeted.

Soon after the Bucks’ decision, NBA reporter Shams Charania tweeted that the Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder would similarly sit out their Game 5 in solidarity. The Portland Trail Blazers and Los Angeles Lakers will also reportedly boycott their Game 5 Wednesday. The NBA soon confirmed the decision:

In the aftermath of the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of law enforcement, the NBA allowed players to sport social justice messages — “How Many More,” “Black Lives Matter,” “Say Their Names,” “I Can’t Breathe” “Equality” and more — on the back of players’ jersey, as well as placing permanent Black Lives Matter signage on the court.

Chicago Bulls great Scottie Pippen tweeted following the postponed game, “Bucks power. Black power. Nothing but respect for Milwaukee’s players and coaches.”

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Following the Los Angeles Clippers’ Game 5 victory Tuesday, coach Doc Rivers, the son of a police officer, delivered an emotional speech to media that touched on the Jacob Blake shooting and the Republican National Convention’s fear-mongering.

“All you hear is Donald Trump and all of them talking about fear,” Rivers said (via ESPN). “We’re the ones getting killed. We’re the ones getting shot. We’re the ones that we’re denied to live in certain communities. We’ve been hung. We’ve been shot. And all you do is keep hearing about fear.”

Rivers continued, “The training has to change in the police force. The unions have to be taken down in the police force. My dad was a cop. I believe in good cops. We’re not trying to defund the police and take all their money away. We’re trying to get them to protect us, just like they protect everybody else.”

Blake is reportedly in stable condition but paralyzed from the waist down after he was shot seven times in the back by a police officer; Blake was reportedly trying to break up a verbal altercation between two women when police arrived on the scene in Kenosha.

Remembering Eunice Foote, the suffragette-scientist who prophesied climate change

John Tyndall was a mountaineer, a prolific writer of science books, a prominent physicist, a professor of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution of Great Britain and an original member of the X Club, an exclusive Victorian scientific dining club whose members were frequent contributors to the well-regarded journal Nature.

With his doctorate, his social and intellectual friendships and networks with some of the greatest minds of the Victorian period and his easy access to the Royal Institution laboratories, it is no wonder that Tyndall reached the heights of scientific achievement and recognition and that his work still plays an important part in today’s scientific discussions.

For over 160 years Irish-born Tyndall has been credited with the original discovery of the absorption of thermal radiation by carbon dioxide and water vapor — the very cornerstone of our current understanding of the greenhouse effect, climate change, weather and meteorology. He was the first to clearly demonstrate and understand the physical basis of the greenhouse effect.

This, however, was just one of many firsts in the history of climate science. There was a another first from a hidden character only acknowledged in 2011 by Raymond Sorenson, later researched by John Perlin and the main subject of a symposium held in May 2018 at University of California Santa Barbara. This hidden character was a woman, an American amateur scientist and a suffragette who served on the editorial committee for the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, the first women’s rights convention in the United States. 

Three years before Tyndall first published his broad findings in 1859 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Eunice Newton Foote demonstrated the absorption of heat by carbon dioxide and water vapor, made the connection to their variability as a possible cause of climate change and wrote up her findings in a paper entitled “Circumstances affecting the heat of the sun’s rays“. While Foote did not directly detect or explain the physical basis of what we now call the greenhouse effect, she does seem to be the first to suggest that changing amounts of carbon dioxide and water vapor could change the climate.

Certainly, Tyndall’s experiments were more sophisticated than Foote’s and he is rightly credited with establishing the experimental basis for the assumed greenhouse effect, first suggested by Horace Benedict de Saussure in the 1770s and then developed by Joseph Fourier in the 1820s and in 1836 by Claude Pouillet. And yet, while acknowledging the work of these men Tyndall did not reference the work by Foote. Why?

There is some debate about whether Tyndall even knew of Foote’s work. While there was some mention of her paper in various North American publications (i.e. the column’s section of the September 13, 1856 issue of Scientific American reported that her experiment on the effects of the sun’s rays on different gases afforded “abundant evidence of women to investigate any subject with originality and precision”), so far not a single reference to her work has been found in any letter, journal or publication of the major contemporary figures in this field. It would therefore seem possible that very little, if any, significant discussion and/or proper citations/summaries of her work reached England during the time Tyndall was working on and publishing his results.

Did he know about her work and simply ignore it because she was a women and/or an amateur American? Perhaps. Certainly during Victorian England a clear prejudice against women, amateurs and Americans as not quite as capable or professional as British men existed. And Tyndall was certainly no democrat and no supporter of female emancipation.

Did he know about the significance of her work and actively plagiarized it? Maybe, although Roland Jackson, Tyndall’s biographer, general editor of the Tyndall’s correspondence and past Chief Executive of the British Science Association, and Ed Hawkins, professor of climate science at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading, feel that if Tyndall had actually known about Foote’s results he would have started his experiments using CO2 and water vapor. He didn’t. He initially tried dry air, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen before experimenting on CO2 and water vapor. Furthermore, within the scientific community questions of priority were strongly contested and as Jackson points out if anyone had felt “Tyndall had suppressed someone else’s priority for the absorption of radiant heat by carbon dioxide and water vapor, they would have been gleefully vocal in their criticism. Yet no one seems to have protested in Britain or Europe.”

Is the lack of credit for Foote due to a coincidence, predjudice against women/amateurs/and/or Americans or a deliberate omission on Tyndall’s part? Whatever the truth is, and we may never know the truth, it is now clear that Foote’s experiment, while not definitive (there were many uncontrolled factors in her experiment), added to the understanding of climate science. As Katharine Heyhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, points out, even though Foote’s research did not directly establish the physical basis of what we now call the greenhouse effect, she “was the first person to say in print that if carbon dioxide levels were higher, the planet would be warmer” making her results “remarkably prescient.”

While both the professional scientist Tyndall and the amateur scientist Foote clearly deserve a place in the pantheon of past climate scientists and those to come in the future, neither one of them wrote about the impact of human activity on the climate. In fact, it was not until 1938 that Guy Callendar, a British steam engineer and amateur climatologist, made the quantifiable link between global warming and the emission of gas through human activity. Furthermore, as Jackson has cautioned “It is us who claim Tyndall and/or Foote as founders of climate science, not them. While we should certainly honour their achievements, we should not project our current interests and priorities onto their age-old research agenda”.

A previous version of this piece first appeared in Scientific American.

“Let’s get this man out of office”: Comic star Tituss Burgess gets serious about politics

Though he’s best known for his scene-stealing, scene-making character Titus Andromedon on “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” Tituss Burgess doesn’t like to be the center of attention. “My energy hovers at around a two,” the actor, who just earned his fifth Emmy nomination, says. But you wouldn’t guess it from his current schedule.

He’s currently hosting the Quibi cooking competition “Dishmantled,” has a new Netflix karaoke series “Sing On!” coming in September and, later this year, he plays the Reverend James Cleveland in the Aretha Franklin biopic “Respect.” In a recent “Salon Talks,” Burgess opened up about politics, Southern Rock, and of course, pinot noir.

The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Congratulations on your fifth nomination.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I feel so honored, truly. I did not expect it at all, and that is the honest to god truth. I’m so deeply grateful and so moved at the acknowledgement.

Tituss, you said very shortly after your nomination was announced that this one hits a little differently. Everything hits differently every day for all of us. What does it mean to you this year to get this nomination, and what has it meant to you to be part of this show this year?

Obviously, there is the backdrop of the national unrest and all of the social injustice, and the world is giving the appearance of chaos. Those have been marginalized feel even further so now, and I don’t fully know how we got to this. The fact that our industry is able — and I’m not saying that this is why people of color or gay people were acknowledged — but I’m appreciative that there is a more careful examination of the criteria, and of what it means to truly be inclusive and how to recognize a field that is as diverse as the world is. That list should look like the nation that we live in. And it did this year, more so than in recent years. So being on that list meant a lot. It spoke volumes to all of our sort of desires to see real change be implemented into our day to day.

So many of the nominated shows and performances this year in comedy have really been driving the conversation around orientation, around justice, around mental health, around trauma. This show is representative of this bigger conversation that we’re having as a nation.

I can speak from personal experience with [“Kimmy” creators] Tina [Fey] and Robert [Carlock]. They’ve always, always dug their heels deep into talking about issues surrounding race, surrounding social injustice, surrounding the inequality that women often experience, surrounding The Man, and how it’s largely a white male-driven world. They’ve been able to tackle these issues using comedic devices that help make it palatable, and you also see it for exactly what it is. It’s not sugar-coated. They bring focus to areas that perhaps we would just turn a blind eye to. Art usually leads the way as it relates to bringing awareness to things that lie dormant.
 
One of the highlights of watching “Kimmy” this year was seeing you nail it with “Free Bird.” Are you a Skynyrd fan?

I’m ashamed to say I had no idea who that was or what that song was when I sang it. It wasn’t until after we filmed it that I’d gone back and went into a deep, deep, deep dive. I didn’t realize the allegiance and reverence people have for this music and this catalog of music. So I cannot say that I did. I did not. So you got a very honest performance out of me because I had no past points of references.
 
So are you now a Southern Rock fan?
 
Oh, I live for it. I get it. I get it.

You are so closely identified with Titus Andromedon that it doesn’t even look like it’s a performance. It looks like this is just a fully formed human being. I’m curious what it is like when one is so deeply associated with a part to then branch out and be known for another thing. You are all doing all different types of projects, musically, as an actor and as a television personality.

I’m not making a concerted effort to distance myself from anything. Just like you have famous pop stars who have a whole slew of hit songs, but there’s always that one song everyone is going to want to hear. When I first moved into the role and “Pinot Noir” became a viral hit, it seemed to follow me for seasons to come. But then people latched on to other things. I have to believe that if people are playing close enough attention, that they will allow their plates to be filled with all sorts of foods and not just their favorite dish every single day. As it relates to other projects, I go where I’m led.

I look to places where I see a deficit and I look to places inside me that I’ve not had the opportunity to discover or unearth before, and that’s how I choose what I do. If it sticks to the wall and people respond to it, that’s wonderful. If it doesn’t, that is also okay, and we try something else. You can’t make anybody do anything as evidenced by the country that we are living in right now. So I can only hope that people follow me where I go.
 
I feel like you were setting me up when you said the phrase, “If it sticks to the wall,” Tituss, because clearly we’re just going to segue way right into “Dishmantled.” How was this pitched to you and what made you say, “Yes. I want to be the guy who pushes this red button and creates chaos”?
 
It happened very fast. I was at my agent’s office and we were talking about something completely different and something came across his desk and he was like, “Huh.” He’s like, “Well, I’ve got to bring it to you eventually, anyway, so I might as well just ask you now. Do you have any interest in hosting?” I had told CAA when I signed on that I’m an actor. I don’t even want to host dinner parties right now. It is a wholly different skill set and requires some heavy lifting, I think, to make it look easy — of course depending on perhaps the format of the show. So he said, “Well, would you ever want to blow up food onto people?” I just started laughing. I was like, “Sir, what in the hell are you talking about?” Then he explained it, and I just laughed throughout his entire pitch. So I thought if, it sounds this much fun, then it has to be that much fun to do.
 
This is the premise of the show. You launch food at people, and then what happens?
 
They put on this hazmat, they go up inside this sort of shell-like situation. I hit a detonator, and it catapults a dish onto the contestants. These are chefs in their own right. They have 30 minutes to recreate the dish after having tasted it and touched it, because there’s more to putting the meal together than just how it tastes. There are so many components to it. So they use all of their senses except for sight. They’re sliding around this thing and they get really dirty and it’s really funny and they fall and it’s hilarious. I’m the only one that knows what the dish is and what the ingredients are. What’s that show on Nickelodeon with the green goop? The slime, it’s like that.

It’s messy and it’s just been renewed for a second season. And then you’ve got another show that’s coming out very soon on Netflix, “Sing On!” It’s different because it’s not the singing competition that we’ve seen before.
 
Not unlike “Dishmantled,” because — I’m going to say this phrase — the stakes are lower. The stakes are high because this means a lot to the contestants who are competing, but “Dishmantled” is not searching for the next celebrity chef. We’re just having a little fun and giving away a little money. As is evidenced that you’ll see with the “Sing On!” you can win up to $60,000. These are everyday, ordinary Americans who just love to sing and they happen to love karaoke a whole bunch. We’re not giving away a recording contract or a million dollars. They’re doing it purely for the love. And some have donated their money to charity and some put it towards a honeymoon, and it’s just a chance to have some mindless entertainment while we sing through catalogs of some of our favorite hits.
 
It speaks to something that there are these shows coming out now where they are competitions, but they’re also just less serious. It seems like you’re a big part of that somehow, Tituss. What is that makes people think of you to be the person who is the impresario in this world of joyful, delighted, light-spiritedness?
 
I don’t know. Honestly, I’m a silly person, but I’m also really serious, and my energy hovers at about a 2. I don’t like to be the center of attention. So I marvel at how I find myself leading these shows. 
 
You are a serious person and you are a serious actor too. I have to ask you about [the Aretha Franklin biopic] “Respect,” because you have founded a gospel choir in your life. Now you are playing truly one of the hall of fame, all-star American great names.
 
I have such reverence for Dr. James Cleveland. When I was a kid, my mom and my grandmother would put on 45’s of all of his sermons and our choir, before I became the director, we would go through his catalog and sing so many of his songs in church. I just thought it was so full circle for me to be bestowed the honor of portraying him on the big screen.

I didn’t even know how much of an influence he had in cultivating the sound that is Aretha Franklin. He was her piano teacher, coached her vocally when she was younger, was just his friend all around. She looked to him for spiritual guidance, and of course later we get that amazing documentary, “Amazing Grace.”

My first day of shooting – I wasn’t even aware of this until I was doing some digging while we were waiting for the cameras and the lights to be set up – it was his birthday. I just thought, “How lovely, what kismet.” It was wonderful. I’m so proud of this movie. And Jennifer Hudson. We’ve grown quite close. The performance that she turns in, I just am in awe. I’ve always thought she was an extraordinary talent, obviously an extraordinary singer, but the work that she put in in these scenes and the raw emotion that she was able to evoke. I’d sit there and watched her work herself up, and this otherness was literally summoned. You’ll see. It’s beautifully directed by Liesl Tommy. And the entire cast, Forest Whitaker. Oh, what a powerhouse. It just is a remarkable film. I’m so excited.
 
Seeing you and Jennifer Hudson on the same bill, you know there is a song that is deeply connected with both of you. Was there ever a “Sing On!” competition on set for something from “Dreamgirls”?
 
Do you know we never really spoke about it? Even when they would yell, “Cut,” the choir that was there. They would just keep singing and singing and singing and singing. So there wasn’t a real moment to even have an opportunity to emerge. That is so fascinating. We had been talking about everything under the sun except for “Dreamgirls.” I just think that is so funny.

You are not afraid to talk about the issues. You recently voiced your support for Biden and Harris. There are people out there who feel like voting doesn’t matter. There are people who feel like, “What’s the point?” Can you use this moment to just say why you did that? Why you spoke out about who you were supporting for this election and why?

Let me talk from the inside out. We have a terribly flawed governmental system in America. It does not work for most of its citizens. I personally think the Electoral College should be abolished and we should move into the popular vote, and just leave it alone or give a percentage. Say a president or someone running for president just has a slight lead of 2% and at 45 to 46. Well, split that delegate down and give them both what they won of the state, if we’re going to keep that system in place. But that isn’t happening. That is probably not going to happen. We know that we cannot change those infrastructures.

We also know that what is currently in place in the White House and the person currently holding office has further divided us in ways unimaginable. No matter how you cut it, even if you are a Republican, you can’t ignore the hundred, almost 180,000 now, deaths due to the coronavirus because of the mishandling of, or just complete ignorance of science. He fired the pandemic division that was in place a couple of years before the onset of this, getting rid of things left and right, just because he could.

And we’ve also seen the 1%, whose wealth has increased by billions and billions and billions while the rest of the country suffer. Broadway, New York City in particular on a more localized level, just across the street here. All the restaurants around it that relied on the transient nature of tourism and such, it shut down. The list goes on and on and on and on.

Is Biden without a questionable past? No. Is Kamala Harris? No. There are going to be some things that we dislike about all participants who run for president. Something happens to our country or when it’s time for people to run for the presidency. We begin to create this strange ideology where there are humans roaming the Earth, citizens of the United States of America, who do not have a spot or blemish. Whose resume will be so clean and that there will be some sort of perfect candidate.

It just does not exist. Biden and Harris have done more good, I believe, than things that some people find questionable or do not suit their narrative. I will also say the very nature of being a human being means to evolve. And we have to allow both ourselves and those who are going to represent us to look at the world with fresh eyes. Perhaps their view of how we are to go forward doesn’t match with some of the things that they did in the past. But keeping things the way that they are now is just not an option.

And I hate this term of voting for the lesser of two evils. I will not participate in that. I will not denounce Kamala or Biden. I’m in full support of them. Anyone who uses this opportunity to vote for anyone other than them who also is complaining about the economy, complaining about the coronavirus, complaining about the deaths, complaining about the flawed governmental system, is not only shooting themselves in the foot, but it’s putting us in harm’s way. And our country, I will also say, is not designed for drastic changes, as is evidenced by the 2016 election.

This country went so far in a direction that has only had the worst ramifications on us. We need swift and immediate action, but that comes slowly. It just does. Unless you get liposuction, you don’t lose weight overnight. It takes time. And right now, if you aren’t outraged by the removal of the mailboxes, by the locks on the mailboxes . . . The man was even impeached and he’s still in office. And women, by the way, and white women particularly, all of the heinous ways that he’s shown white women and women in general, such blatant disrespect with all of his chauvinistic rhetoric and disregard for the female body.

Could you vote for someone like that? How could you do that? To me, this is the only way out right now. There are people and pundits and bloggers, and everyone wants to be right, sort of expose and gotcha journalism. There’s not one of us who is without fault. There’s not one of us. But there are a person running for president and a person running for vice president who have way more qualifications to run this country and to bring us back together than on the other. It just is point-blank. So I’m hopeful that enough of us are fired up and fatigued and remembering all the mass shootings, remembering all of the things during the coronavirus, remembering all the deaths. Don’t let that stuff be in vain. Don’t let it be in vain. Let’s get this man out of office.

There are now three known cases of patients contracting COVID-19 twice

There are now three known cases around the world of patients who had been previously afflicted by COVID-19 who contracted the virus a second time, months after clearing the first infection. While the idea that coronavirus could infect the body multiple times is alarming, scientists caution that there is not yet any cause for alarm and that such cases are rare.

The first verified case was reported on Monday from Hong Kong, where researchers say that a 33-year-old man who had first been infected with SARS-CoV-2 in late March seems to have been reinfected with the virus earlier this month while traveling through Europe. The Hong Kong scientists claim that they have determined through genetic sequencing that the second infection was a different strain than the first, although they have not yet released the full study to provide researchers with a complete picture of the patient’s medical status.

One day later, Dutch media outlets reported that two individuals — one in the Netherlands, the other in Belgium — had also been seemingly reinfected with the coronavirus. Because the Dutch patient was elderly and had a weakened immune system, it is possible that their age played a role in why the apparent reinfection happened.

Experts who spoke with Salon agree that these developments merely underscore our lack of understanding of the novel coronavirus. Dr. Russell Medford, chairman of the Center for Global Health Innovation and Global Health Crisis Coordination Center, told Salon that the news about the three reinfected (or potentially reinfected) patients does not necessarily indicate that the novel coronavirus is somehow anomalous when compared to other viruses.

“Our understanding of the interaction of the SARS-CoV-2 virus with the human immune system is at a very early stage,” Medford explained by email. “From the genetic data reported for the Hong Kong patient, we can now say that the SARS-CoV-2 virus can re-infect an individual who has recovered from a prior infection. In and of itself, this is not a surprising nor alarming finding as re-infection in humans does occur with other viruses such as the non-SARS coronaviruses, influenza and human papilloma virus.”

He added, “What we must learn from additional studies include whether this is a very rare or common occurrence in people infected with SARS-CoV-2.” Medford said the next step for researchers was to ascertain whether the first infection “confers some protection” against a more severe re-infection, and how these findings relate to our understanding of the immune response. Such knowledge could affect vaccine research, Medford explained. 

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association (APHA) and former secretary of health in Maryland, told Salon by email that one of the most important takeaways from these potential reinfections is that they reveal just how little we know about the novel coronavirus.

“[This] tells us that the immune relationship between humans and this virus is still poorly understood,” Benjamin explained. “What we do know is the human immune response to infection has a wide spectrum which includes resistance to infection (kids who get infected but not sick); people that get sick and recover; people that get sick then recover and then get very, very sick; the recurrence of disease as represented in this single case; and evidence that vaccination will yield partial or full protection.”

He added that there is still a very high chance of developing a vaccine based on what we know today, but “the big question is around how many initial doses we will need and how often we will need to be vaccinated. I am, of course, assuming a safe and effective vaccine emerges.”

Mark Meadows dismisses concerns about possible Hatch Act violations at GOP convention as “hoopla”

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told Politico on Wednesday that “nobody outside of the Beltway really cares” whether administration officials acted unlawfully during events used for the Republican National Convention, dismissing concerns about possible violations of the Hatch Act as “a lot of hoopla.”

“Nobody outside of the Beltway really cares. They expect that Donald Trump is going to promote Republican values — and they would expect that Barack Obama — when he was in office, that he would do the same for Democrats,” Meadows said. “So listen, this is a lot of hoopla that’s being made about things, mainly because the convention has been so unbelievably successful.”

Video of President Donald Trump carrying out official duties in the White House was featured during the Republican National Convention, prompting allegations that individuals who participated in the events violated the Hatch Act, a 1939 federal law intended to limit government employees from becoming an arm of a political campaign.

The second night of the convention included two pre-taped scenes from the White House, presented as part of the event’s programming: an official presidential pardon, and a naturalization ceremony for five new American citizens, featuring acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf administering the Oath of Allegiance. (A recent report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that Wolf was serving at the Department of Homeland Security in violation of federal law.)

“On behalf of everyone here today, I’d like to express my gratitude to you, Mr. President, for hosting this naturalization ceremony here at the White House,” Wolf said.

The Hatch Act bars government officials from participating in political activity in their official capacity. To date, Trump administration officials have been cited more than a dozen times for violating the law.

“What it’s really designed to do is to make sure people like myself and others do not use their political position to try to convince other employees — other federal employees — that they need to vote one way, need to register one way or need to campaign in one way,” Meadows said. “We take it on well beyond the original intent of the Hatch Act.”

A White House official told The Washington Post that the video was fair game, because the naturalization ceremony was part of the president’s official schedule and had been posted to a public website.

“The campaign decided to use the publicly available content for campaign purposes,” the official said. “There was no violation of law.”

The White House “publicized the content of the event on a public website this afternoon and the campaign decided to use the publically [sic] available content for campaign purposes,” an administration official told The Wall Street Journal.

However, the White House press corps was not told about the naturalization ceremony, and it was not previously listed on Trump’s public schedule.

Former White House lawyer in the Obama administration Daniel Jacobson tweeted, “As a lawyer who used to enforce the Hatch Act at the White House, this is absolutely not how it works. If they filmed it knowing and intending that it would be used at the convention (which they obviously did), it violates the law.”

“The Hatch Act makes it illegal for a federal official to, among other things, ‘use his official authority or influence for the purpose of … affecting the result of an election.’ 5 USC 7323(a)(1),” Jacobson added. “Note the phrase ‘for the purpose of.'”

“This is so obviously, blatantly, insultingly a Hatch Act violation that it’s starting to seem like the Trump administration is going out of its way to find new ways to violate the law,” a spokesperson for the government ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington told The Washington Post. “We’ll be filing a complaint.”

While the Hatch Act by and large does not apply to the president, it does extend to executive branch employees.

For example, the military personnel who open the door for Trump in the naturalization ceremony video are in full uniform and on duty in the White House. Wolf executed the ceremony in his official capacity as acting secretary.

A Department of Defense policy written in compliance with the Hatch Act says that “military service members and federal employees acting in their official capacity may not engage in activities that associate the DOD with any partisan political campaign or elections, candidate, cause or issue.”

It was not immediately clear whether Wolf or the soldiers in the video were aware that the event would later be used at the convention.

“You followed the rules,” Trump told the five new U.S. citizens in the video. “You obeyed the laws.”

However, Trump has apparently only publicly participated in one other recorded naturalization ceremony. It took place at the White House on Jan. 19, 2019, as his presidential approval ratings tanked amid the government shutdown he triggered during negotiations to fund construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border — a cornerstone campaign promise.

In an Aug. 17 Washington Post op-ed, Miles Taylor, former DHS chief of staff under Kirstjen Nielsen, alleged that Trump had essentially ran his presidency as if it were inextricable from the campaign.

“The president has tried to turn DHS, the nation’s largest law enforcement agency, into a tool used for his political benefit,” Taylor wrote. “He insisted on a near-total focus on issues that he said were central to his reelection — in particular building a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico.”

On Tuesday, Trump officially nominated Wolf, in a tweet around noon, to become the permanent secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. The naturalization ceremony over which Wolf presided was filmed that same afternoon.

In a statement earlier Tuesday, White House spokesman Judd Deere said that “RNC Convention events will be planned and executed, at whatever the venue, by the Trump Campaign and RNC. Any government employees who may participate will do so in compliance with the Hatch Act.”

Other RNC events which have raised questions about Hatch Act violations include a video of the president issuing a pardon, Melania Trump’s speech from the White House lawn and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Tuesday night endorsement, which was filmed in Israel while Pompeo was on official state business.

Of course the RNC featured anti-choice radical Abby Johnson, who thinks women shouldn’t vote

The notion that there’s anything “pro-life” about the Republican National Convention was already a joke, built as it is on the premise that over 178,000 Americans dead from COVID-19 — 1,234 alone on the second day of the convention — is no big deal. Still, it was spectacular watching the Republican Party — now little more than a personality cult for Donald Trump — give the game away on the “pro-life” lie by inviting an anti-abortion speaker named Abby Johnson, who let slip a few months ago on Twitter that she doesn’t think married women should have the right to vote independent of their husbands. 

That the anti-abortion movement is motivated by misogyny and not by some deep sense of morality was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt when the “pro-lifers” backed Trump in 2016. What the anti-choice movement and Trump have in common is a desire to, as Trump put it, “grab ’em by the pussy“, though Trump was clearly speaking in a more literal sense, whereas anti-choicers want to use the long arm of the law rather than the president’s greasy, stubby fingers.

For whatever reason, anti-choice activists want to maintain this ridiculous myth that their motives are a respect for “life,” rather than a fundamentalist zeal to strip women of basic human rights. So they invited Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood employee who has made a living for years telling a preposterous story, which she repeated once again on Tuesday evening at the RNC, about “an unborn baby fighting back” during an ultrasound-guided abortion. 

In the hours before the convention, however, it was revealed that in May Johnson had tweeted, “I would support bringing back household voting,” adding, with a tee-hee emoji, “How anti-feminist of me.”

“Household voting” is one of those esoteric ideas that pings around Christian fundamentalist circles, which are often organized around the idea that the founding fathers never intended the U.S. to be a secular nation, but rather a Christian nation run on “biblical” principles. 

The concept of “household voting” is that individuals have no right to vote, and there should only be one vote per household, however that is defined. Just in case you’re wondering how this would work in practice, Johnson clarified that in a later tweet: “In a Godly household, the husband would get the final say.”

Johnson has also drawn negative attention for a video in which she argues that police would be justified in profiling her adopted son, who is biracial, while leaving alone “my brown-haired little Irish, very, very pale-skinned, white sons, as they grow up.”

To be clear, there was never any such thing as “household voting” in the U.S. Before the women’s suffrage movement began to make progress in the late 19th century, women simply couldn’t vote anywhere in the country, regardless of their marital or household status. But it’s common in Christian right circles for wacky ideas like this to proliferate, morphing as they go, as in a game of telephone. 

One possible source here is pseudo-historian David Barton, who has spread a great deal of misinformation used to prop up the idea that the U.S. was meant to be a theocracy. Barton argued in a 2014 radio show that bans on women voting weren’t really repressive or misogynistic, but were targeted “to keep the family together” by treating women as part of a “family unit” under “the head of the family.” (Which doesn’t explain why widows and unmarried women living alone were also denied the right to vote.)

Barton later denied that he was calling for women to lose the right to vote, which is also what Abby Johnson says. But there’s no question he was arguing that American men of the 18th and 19th centuries had honorable intentions when they denied women suffrage. 

It’s difficult to ascertain how widespread this concept of “household voting” is within the religious right, as that’s a tightly focused in-group that tends to communicate larglyy through newsletters, radio shows and other methods that conceal their views from the bright light of search engines. Salon found a video on The Blaze, Glenn Beck’s network, in which two fundamentalist podcasters, Summer White Jaeger and Joy Temby, argue in favor of this one-household, one-vote system. 

This idea doesn’t seem to have gotten a whole lot of traction, however, not because of concerns about going too deep into misogyny but because, as commenters at Jaeger and Temby’s website pointed out, this household rule would effectively disenfranchise married women while retaining voting rights for single women who live on their own. That’s a pretty big loophole in what is clearly meant to be a backdoor method to deny women the right to vote.

In trying to defend herself on Twitter Tuesday night, Johnson only dug herself in deeper by tweeting, with a winky emoji, “Yes. So shocking! A husband and wife who are in agreement and a wife who honors her husband as the head of the home. Gasp!! What a weird, biblical concept!!”

She seemed unaware that a major obstacle to designing our voting laws based on a “biblical concept” is not just the 19th Amendment, but the First Amendment. 

Unsurprisingly, there’s a whole lot more about Johnson that’s shady. For one thing, there’s good reason not to trust her tale of converting from a pro-choice Planned Parenthood employee to an anti-choice radical. 

Johnson claims she left the organization because of a moral awakening after seeing a fetus “fight” against an abortion procedure, but legal documents filed by Planned Parenthood in 2009 point toward a different reason: Johnson was put on a performance review plan at the Texas clinic where she worked.

Laura Kaminczak, a friend of Johnson’s, told the Texas Observer in 2010 that the disciplinary action was about the inappropriate use of work email, after she and Johnson had exchanged sexually graphic emails. Kaminczak also said that Johnson was attracted to the lucrative prospect of becoming a religious right figurehead, which promised “$3,000 speaking gigs,” which is a lot more money than you can make working at a nonprofit clinic in rural Texas. 

The discrepancies in Johnson’s story are too numerous to recount here, but perhaps the most important, discovered by Texas Monthly reporter Nate Blakeslee, is that the abortion Johnson claimed to have witnessed simply didn’t happen. And not just because her description of a 13-week fetus “fighting” is silly on its face. Patient records at the clinic where she worked show that there were no ultrasound-guided abortions on that date she has cited, or in the weeks before and after.

In addition to her noxious views on race relations and women’s suffrage, Johnson has also written extensively on her belief that “contraception is NOT okay.”

She says she opposes contraception is because “Birth control was created so that we could separate sex from procreation,” and “you should only have sex when you are open to life.”

Much of the mainstream press is covering the Johnson controversy as a matter of insufficient “vetting” of convention speakers, especially after a different speaker was booted from Tuesday’s program at the last minute for tweeting a bunch of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Johnson, however, was still allowed to speak despite her track record of unscrupulous behavior and blatantly misogynist opinions.

The reason is simple enough: It’s not like there’s some better option. The entire anti-choice movement is rife with liars, grifters and religious fanatics, and whoever they could have swapped in for Johnson would have been just as bad. It’s a movement based on a lie, which is that they’re about “life” and not about upholding the patriarchy. To quote Matthew 7:18, “a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.”

Two killed in Kenosha protest over Jacob Blake shooting as armed “militia” descends to defend stores

Two people were fatally shot and another was injured in protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake on Tuesday, officials in Wisconsin said.

Blake, a 29-year-old Black father of six, is said to be paralyzed. He was shot in the back by police at point blank range in front of three of his children, according to bystander video and statements from his family. The shooting occurred after Blake broke up a fight between two women, witnesses said. 

The shooting sparked days of protests in which numerous vehicles and buildings were vandalized and set on fire in Kenosha, prompting the county to declare an emergency curfew. The county sheriff told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel on Tuesday that an armed “militia” had taken to the streets to protect property amid the unrest.

Police responded late Tuesday night to dozens of gun shots at an area where protesters had gathered, the Kenosha News reported. Two victims were fatally shot, while another was transported to a hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries, according to the Kenosha Police Department. No other details were released.

Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth confirmed one fatality early Wednesday morning, noting that both the shooter and the victim were white. Authorities said they are looking for a “man armed with a long gun,” the Journal-Sentinel reported.

Beth said no one had been taken into custody, though he added that he expects to apprehend the shooter soon.

“I feel very confident we’ll have him in a very short time,” he told the outlet.

A widely shared video posted to Twitter showed a man running with a long gun as a crowd chased after him. Moments later, more shots are heard. Another graphic video showed a man shot in the head, apparently after pursuing the gunman.

“We were all chanting ‘Black Lives Matter’ at the gas station, and then we heard ‘boom, boom.’ And I told my friend, `’That’s not fireworks,'” protester Devin Scott told the Chicago Tribune. “And then this guy with this huge gun runs by us in the middle of the street. And people are yelling, ‘He shot someone! He shot someone!’ And everyone is trying to fight the guy, chasing him. And then he started shooting again.”

Other videos show the man with the long gun heading toward several police tactical vehicles with his hands raised, but the “tactical vehicles drive by him,” according to the Journal-Sentinel.

Many on social media alleged that a member of the armed group was responsible for the shooting, but Beth stressed that he did not know whether the individual was part of the group or whether there was more than one shooter.

“They’re a militia,” he said. “They’re like a vigilante group.”

The Journal-Sentinel identified the group as the self-proclaimed Kenosha Guard, which asked members on Facebook to protect property.

“Any patriots willing to take up arms and defend out [sic] City tonight from the evil thugs?” the group said in one post. “Nondoubt [sic] they are currently planning on the next part of the City to burn tonight!”

The group later published a post directed to Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Miskinis.

“I ask that you do NOT have your officers tell us to go home under threat of arrest as you have done in the past,” the group said. “We are willing to talk to KPD and open a discussion. It is evident, that no matter how many Officers, deputies, and other law enforcement officers that are here, you will still be outnumbered.”

Beth said he had even been asked to deputize citizens to help police the unrest.

“I’ve had people saying, ‘Why don’t you deputize citizens?'” he said. “This is why you don’t deputize citizens with guns to protect Kenosha.”

Beth said the FBI was assisting with the investigation, adding that about 250 law enforcement officers and 250 members of the National Guard had already deployed amid Tuesday’s unrest.

Gov. Tony Evers declared an emergency ahead of the violence.

“We cannot allow the cycle of systemic racism and injustice to continue,” he said. “We also cannot continue going down this path of damage and destruction.”

Blake’s family denounced the vandalism and looting seen in recent days when it spoke Tuesday to the media.

“It doesn’t reflect my son or my family,” Blake’s mother Julia Jackson said. “The violence and the destruction – he would be very unpleased. So I’m really asking and encouraging everyone in Wisconsin and abroad to take a moment in expanding your hearts. Citizens, police officers, firemen, clergy, politicians – do hake up justice on this level, and examine your hearts.”

His father, Jacob Blake Sr., said it would “take a miracle” for his son to walk again.

“They shot my son seven times – seven times – like he didn’t matter,” he said. “But my son matters. He’s a human being, and he matters.”

Letetra Wideman, one of Blake’s sisters, said she was “not sad” and did not want “pity” at the news conference.

“I want change,” she said. “I’m angry, and I’m tired. I haven’t cried one time. I stopped crying years ago. I am numb. I have been watching police murder people who look like me for years.”

RNC Day 2: Far-right fringe views, racial profiling and “household voting” overshadow Melania Trump

First lady Melania Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention was overshadowed by an invitee list ripe with far-right fringe views and multiple likely violations of federal ethics laws.

The first lady headlined the second night after ratings from the first night fell significantly short of last week’s Democratic National Convention, which featured former first lady Michelle Obama. Trump spoke to a maskless crowd, which was not tested for COVID-19 at the White House Rose Garden. The setting raised questions about whether it violated the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from engaging in political activity. The first lady is not a government employee and the president is exempt, but other administration officials likely violated the ethics law throughout the night.

The maskless crowd undercut Trump’s empathetic message to those suffering from the coronavirus, during which she praised her husband’s widely-criticized and haphazard response.

The first lady also discussed her child-focused “Be Best” campaign and reflected on the “racial unrest in our country” as she urged Americans to “come together in a civil manner.” Her husband spent weeks calling peaceful protesters “terrorists” and “thugs,” and federal forces tear-gassed and beat demonstrators.

“I don’t want to use this precious time attacking the other side,” she said. “That kind of talk only serves to divide the country further.”

The first lady also claimed that her husband represented “total honesty,” even though Washington Post fact-checkers have counted more than 20,000 false and misleading claims by the president since he assumed office. Trump appeared to stretch the definition of “honesty” to apply to her husband.

“We all know Donald Trump makes no secrets about how he feels about things,” she said. “Total honesty is what we, as citizens, deserve from our president. Whether you like it or not, you always know what he’s thinking.”

While the first lady drew praise for offering a “moment of calm” amid the convention’s unhinged conspiracy mongering after she was caught plagiarizing Michelle Obama’s speech during the last GOP convention, much of the attention was focused on other women invited to the event.

One scheduled speaker, “Angel Mom” Mary Ann Mendoza, tweeted a lengthy thread hours before the event from a QAnon conspiracy theorist expressing deeply anti-Semitic claims and promoting “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” an anti-Semitic hoax which was popular in Nazi Germany, The Daily Beast reported.

Mendoza was dropped from the line-up after the report, even as Georgia congressional candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene, a QAnon conspiracy theorist, announced that the president had invited her to attend his acceptance speech. Greene has also made anti-Semitic and Islamophobic social media posts, Politico reported earlier this summer.

The second night of the convention featured a speech by Abby Johnson, the former director of a Planned Parenthood clinic who became a staunch anti-choice advocate. Johnson repeated a conversion story she has told numerous times before, though her story about quitting in protest has been widely disputed. She made other false claims during her speech, echoing the dubious conservative refrain that Planned Parenthood “strategically” places clinics in minority areas.

Shortly before her speech, Johnson took to Twitter to advocate for “household voting,” in which each household gets one vote. Her comment doubled down on a tweet from May.

“In a Godly household, the husband would get the final say,” she wrote at the time.

Johnson also drew criticism ahead of her speech over a YouTube video she posted earlier this year in which she argued that it would be “smart” for police to racially profile her adopted biracial son, because “statistically, my brown son is more likely to commit a violent offense over my white sons.”

“Right now, Jude is an adorable, perpetually tan-looking little brown boy,” she said in the video. “But one day, he’s going to grow up, and he’s going to be a tall, probably sort of large, intimidating-looking-maybe brown man. And my other boys are probably going to look like nerdy white guys.”

The second night of the convention also featured the president and acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, who was recently found to have been appointed to his position illegally, presiding over a naturalization ceremony at the White House, itself likely illegal. Trump praised the immigrants for following the rule of law, even though he has cut legal immigration by half, and his administration has denied would-be citizens naturalization ceremonies amid the pandemic.

A White House official claimed that the ceremony did not violate the ethics law, because the White House “publicized the content of the event on a public website this afternoon and the campaign decided to use the publically [sic] available content for campaign purposes.”

However, legal minds pushed back on the claim.

“As a lawyer who used to enforce the Hatch Act at the White House, this is absolutely not how it works,” Daniel Jacobson, a former Obama White House lawyer, tweeted. “If they filmed it knowing and intending that it would be used at the convention (which they obviously did), it violates the law.”

Democrats also accused Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of violating the Hatch Act after he bucked diplomatic tradition to speak at the convention from Jerusalem. Pompeo is the first secretary of state in 75 years to speak at a political convention.

Rep. Joaquin Castro, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, launched an investigation into Pompeo’s appearance, writing that it was “highly unusual, and likely unprecedented, for a sitting secretary of state to speak at a partisan convention for either of the political parties. It appears that it may also be illegal.”

Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi also spoke at the convention, proudly declaring that she “fought corruption,” even though she has been accused of corruption herself after dropping an investigation into Trump University following a $25,000 donation from the Trump Foundation before it was shut down following a New York attorney general probe.

Bondi, without a hint of irony, accused Democratic nominee Joe Biden of nepotism, arguing that during his career “the people who benefited are his family members — not the American people.”

Bondi’s speech came moments before Tiffany Trump, one of the president’s children, spoke at the convention, a day after Donald Trump Jr. spoke on the first night. Eric Trump spoke later in the evening.

Eric Trump claimed that his dad had achieved “peace in the Middle East,” even though his attempt to task Jared Kushner with an insurmountable peace deal was quickly and roundly rejected by Palestine. Eric Trump also praised his father for ending “never-ending wars,” even though the number of troops sent overseas has only grown since he took office.

Larry Kudlow, Trump’s top economic adviser, soon followed with a speech discussing the coronavirus pandemic in the tense.

“It was awful,” he said. “Health and economic impacts were tragic. Hardship and heartbreak were everywhere, but presidential leadership came swiftly and effectively with an extraordinary rescue for health and safety to successfully fight the COVID virus.”

There were more than 36,000 new confirmed cases and more than 1,100 new deaths in the U.S. on Tuesday.

Fact-checkers shook their heads at the rampant dishonesty on display throughout the convention.

“It was another tsunami of untruths on the second night of the Republican National Convention,” The Washington Post’s fact-checkers wrote. After calling the first night a “parade of dishonesty,” CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale said he was overwhelmed Tuesday by a “whole bunch of false claims.”

“It’s really bad on a night with this many people watching to still be broadcasting false information to a country where we’ve lost 176,000 Americans,” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said Tuesday. “The last thing we need is more lies and misinformation about what this virus is.”

The 2020 RNC isn’t a political convention — it’s a celebration of the Trump cult

It’s a political truism that a second-term election campaign is a referendum on the incumbent. And when you have President Trump’s terrible approval rating, the strategists all say that his only real hope is to refocus the electorate on Joe Biden and make voters disapprove of him more than they disapprove of Trump.

Trump doesn’t really require such advice since insulting and degrading his political opponents is what brings the most joy into his life in any case. He would do it even if he didn’t have to. And the Republican convention has featured speakers from both nights who have painted a vivid picture of the dystopian hellscape that awaits America if it makes the mistake of voting for the Democrats this November.

But so far, Republicans have not had much success in creating a new image of Biden himself. Trump and his followers have been saying that he’s a doddering old man for months, but for all the norm-busting of this convention, they haven’t really gone there, at least not yet. They did feature one speaker on Tuesday night, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who served as one of Trump’s defense lawyers at his impeachment trial, who tried to make the case that Biden and his family are corrupt criminals. I’ll be surprised if that left a mark, particularly considering that several of Trump’s previous campaign officials have been charged or convicted of crimes — one of them just last Friday. (This week, the New York attorney general announced an investigation into the Trump Organization that includes subpoenas for Eric Trump.)

Mostly, the GOP seems to have settled instead on a sweeping MAGA-style indictment against Democratic voters as a bunch of socialists and anarchists who are waging a violent assault on everything dear to God-fearing Americans. It would seem they have decided that Joe Biden isn’t enough of a bogeyman to push what Trump calls the “suburban housewives” back to the safety of the Republicans, so they need to scare them to death with visions of antifa and MS-13 stealing into their neighborhoods in the dark of night.

This claim was made explicit in the appearance on Monday by Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who wielded guns at Black Lives Matter protesters who were marching down their residential street. As it happens, the McCloskeys don’t actually live in a suburb — the protests were heading to the mayor’s house, which is near theirs — but they were supposedly speaking for all those terrified white homeowners in cul-de-sacs. The problem is that it’s 2020, and suburban America isn’t just affluent white people who live in McMansions but rather a highly diverse racial and ethnic mixture, as has been true for years.

The “suburban housewives” aren’t freaked out by antifa or Black Lives Matter. They’re freaked out by the COVID pandemic and the terrible economy, by the fact that their kids can’t go to school and by the global shame of our president’s crude, racist behavior. At least until we got to Melania Trump’s alternate-universe speech late on Tuesday night, nothing at the Republican convention has addressed any of that.

So if Republicans aren’t going hard after Joe Biden and aren’t discussing any of the issues that are consuming Americans’ lives in this weird moment of pandemic and economic chaos, what are they talking about? Well, they are talking about their Dear Leader — and when I use that term I’ve never meant it more literally. This RNC isn’t really a political convention at all. It’s a cult meeting.

It’s bad enough when Trump holds cabinet meetings where everyone around the table is expected to thank him for his superior leadership. Sometimes they even thank God for sending him to us. I guess we’ve gotten used to seeing his staff and other members of the administration start every speech with a few words about his superior guidance and direction. This is obviously the sick deal they’ve made with Trump and their consciences.

But there’s something incredibly creepy about the way Trump is using the grandeur and power of the White House itself (which is totally unethical, by the way — what else is new?) to greet average citizens so they can tell him to his face how wonderful he is and thank him for his greatness. These scripted episodes designed to make it seem like he actually has human feelings ended up being a loyalty ritual.

In Trump’s meeting with frontline workers, a nurse was moved to say this:

I am so in awe of your leadership. Honestly, I know many people have said often interesting things but it takes a true leader to be able to ignore all that stuff and take what is right and not be offended by all the words being said. You really do show that positive spirit to us and as nurses I appreciate that.

The president smiled beatifically. In an earlier time he would have held out his hand for her to kiss his ring.

Even worse, in a similar meeting with a group of former overseas hostages who have been brought back to the U.S. during Trump’s term, they went around in a circle to thank him for his benevolence in bringing them home. It wasn’t about them. It was all about him as usual.

I couldn’t help but be reminded of the meeting he took with victims of gun violence in which he had written notes reminding him to say, “I hear you”

On Tuesday he pulled a similar White House stunt, pardoning a man convicted of bank robbery before the cameras and later, as the New York Times put it, “using the majesty of the White House for blatantly political purposes, Mr. Trump appeared during the convention’s second hour as ‘Hail to the Chief’ played and strode to a lectern where five immigrants were waiting to take the oath to become citizens.” This from a man who salivates over the death penalty, cruelly separates families at the border and attempted to ban all people of the Muslim faith from immigrating here. These people were props for the cult leader to present his alleged benevolence to the masses.

And as you’ll recall, before the convention, the platform committee of the RNC gave up the ghost and just said that whatever Trump wants to do is fine with them. There is no agenda and no ideology. There is only Donald Trump, day by day, saying and doing whatever takes his fancy.

Essentially, the first two nights of the RNC have comprised dark warnings about invading hordes of merciless strangers, contrasted with glorious paeans to the greatness of Donald Trump, the mythic (and I do mean mythic) hero of our time. As Monday night speaker Natalie Harp put it:

You have used your strength to make America strong again. Sacrificed the life you built to make America proud again. And risked everything to make America safe again.

I think this observation captures where the Republican Party is today: Culture-war grievance at the bottom facilitating corruption at the top, wrapped up in a cult of personality. To be fair, those first two items are standard-issue modern conservative politics. It’s that last innovation that Donald Trump brought to the party.  

Last call for the 25th Amendment? Trump’s Cabinet won’t depose him — but they should

The president of the United States is relentlessly threatening the right of citizens to exercise their right to vote. He is also saying that he might not leave office if he loses the election, and that the election is “rigged” — unless he wins. He also spends most of his days watching television, raging, fulminating, lying, demanding loyalty of those around him, demeaning his political opponents and trading in conspiracy theories, while creating chaos instead of a plan to address a pandemic that could take 300,000 American lives by the end of the year.

Is such a person fit for this office? Any office? 

As has been the case every single day from the beginning of this horrific tweet-fest mockery of a presidency: It’s 25th Amendment time. 

No, of course it won’t happen — not with the loyalist, anti-democratic ideologues the president has methodically surrounded himself with in his cabinet, likely to this very purpose. But by any objective (i.e., non-cultist) view it should happen — before the upcoming election is further thrown into chaos to frighten off voters.

It won’t happen. But we would fail our duty to this country if we did not pause to note this fearful moment in time, did not look again at the purpose of this critical amendment, and did not call out the Trump administration’s cabinet members who failed to take this step to protect an election and save this democratic republic. 

In “The Twenty-Fifth Amendment: Its Complete History and Earliest Applications,” by John D. Feerick, the author notes that the framers of the Constitution did not spend much time at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 on the subject of presidential succession: 

They seem to have thought they handled the matter adequately by providing for the office of Vice President and by inserting in the Constitution the following clause on presidential succession:

“In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Office shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.” 

This vague language in the Constitution was unworkable in practice and hampered decisions in terms of both presidential inability and vice presidential vacancies. Feerick notes: “For the first 52 years of the existence of the presidency, our nation was remarkably fortunate. No President died in office, although three vacancies did occur in the vice presidency.”

As to what constituted “incapacity” of a president, no one could really say. And in an American tradition, this became a can that would be kicked down the road time and again after each crisis. 

Questions on this score arose numerous times. There was James Madison, who in the summer of 1813 was “indisposed by illness” for weeks; James Garfield, who survived, incapacitated, for an excruciating 80 days after being shot; Chester Arthur, who was diagnosed with Bright’s disease and suffered from “spasmodic nausea, mental depression, and indolence” and who, as a result, developed a very casual approach to his presidency, often not beginning work until noon or one o’clock (which sounds like someone we know); Grover Cleveland, who in the summer of 1893 took a cruise on a yacht and secretly underwent an operation to remove a cancerous growth on the roof of his mouth, which entailed removing a large portion of his upper jaw; William McKinley, who survived an assassin’s bullet for about a week; Woodrow Wilson, who fell ill while on a speaking tour in late September 1919 and then, after returning to the capital, suffered a stroke that paralyzed the left side of his body; Franklin D. Roosevelt, who entered his fourth term in 1945 gravely ill and not able to function to his previous level, dying soon after; and Dwight Eisenhower, who had a heart attack in 1955, and then a stroke in 1957. 

Presidents will, due to ego or a sense of duty, often do anything to hide their incapacities from the public, and even their own cabinet members. Cleveland essentially disappeared for an entire summer, undergoing two procedures and being fitted with an artificial jaw. (When a letter was published in the Philadelphia Press detailing the operations, it was called a “hoax.”) According to Feerick, the first operation took place “while Cleveland was unconscious and strapped to a chair propped up against the yacht’s mast.” Wilson’s condition was hidden from the public, from Congress and from members of his cabinet. Feerick points out that from that time “until the inauguration of Warren G. Harding on March 4, 1921, the country was without the services of an able President.” Before running for his fourth term, FDR is said to have made his own new deal with his physician to simply not tell him any bad news.

The need for more clarity as to presidential succession was ultimately prompted by the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the need for a protocol for naming a new vice president once the current vice president had assumed the White Hous. Feerick writes: “Despite vacancies totaling more than thirty-seven years, no serious effort was made to devise a means for filling a vice presidential vacancy until after the assassination of President Kennedy.”

The 25th Amendment, written and adopted in 1965 to address this issue, was ratified by the necessary 37 states in February 1967. But the question about what constitutes “inability” remained — it was purposely not defined, allowing for interpretation of how a president could become unable to carry out his duties, including due to mental illness.

Sections 1 and 2 deal with succession of the vice president; sections 3 and 4, with the question of inability to carry out the duties of the office. 

Section 3 allows for a president who is cognizant of his own impairment to personally inform Congress in writing that he is unable to carry out his duties. Perhaps one might stretch the interpretation of his writing to Congress. Might that include writing to the world endless missives in ALL CAPS rife with misspellings, bad punctuation and excessive use of exclamation points, all of which point to a level of derangement far beyond the grammatical? 

Seriously, we have a person in the office of the presidency who is mentally and temperamentally unfit for serving the office, as attested to by a petition that was signed by 350 psychiatrists and mental health experts, and delivered to members of Congress in December 2019. 

Yale Medical School professor Dr. Bandy Lee, one of the three authors of the petition (and a frequent interview subject at Salon), described Trump’s continued embrace of conspiracy theories as actually a public health issue because of his ability to draw members of the public into a “shared psychosis at the national level.”

Speaking of mental health experts, Mary Trump, who is the president’s niece and a clinical psychologist, and who recently published the bestseller “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” has said in recent interviews that the best thing anyone could do for Donald Trump would be to remove him from office.

And it’s not just mental health experts who are worried. National security experts are as well. Just hours before Joe Biden gave his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, 73 senior national security officials, nearly all of them Republican, attested to the unfitness of the current occupant of the White House.

In the infamous “Anonymous” 2017 op-ed published in The New York Times, a senior Trump official wrote: “From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.” 

But in the spinning wheel of the Trump administration, many of those officials are gone now, and it is not enough (nor was it ever) to try to shield the country from his worst impulses, which have both deepened and darkened. White supremacists and QAnon followers are just fine folks to him and he openly appeals to them. He and members of his campaign staff worked, sometimes gleefully, with Russian agents to win the last election. It didn’t take a three-year bipartisan investigation to tell us that; any moderately intelligent child would have come to this conclusion from the moment candidate Trump said during a press conference, “Russia, if you’re listening …” (No, he wasn’t joking.) He has continued to make such appeals to foreign leaders to interfere in our election.

Finding himself behind in the polls, Trump’s authoritarian impulses are running hot, and he repeatedly broadcasts his threats to bring down our democracy. He speaks privately with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who no doubt is providing guidance to an eager disciple on the dismal arts of demagoguery and authoritarian rule. 

Trump not only threatens mail-in voting, he is now threatening in-person voting, saying he will be sending thugs of one sort or another to oversee matters.

There’s not time enough before the election for another impeachment, and, really, what would be the point?

Like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, I was a bartender in New York City (in my few years trying to be an actor), and I still know when the time has come for a last call. Section 4 of the amendment provides for the vice president and a majority of principal officers of the executive departments to make a formal declaration to Congress of a president’s inability to serve. It gets complicated from that point. Essentially the president can counter, and the vice president and a majority of the cabinet must then re-counter. And then two-thirds of both houses of Congress have to agree. 

So, to you, Vice President Pence, secretaries Pompeo, Mnuchin, Esper, Barr, Bernhardt, Perdue, Ross, Scalia, Azar, Carson, Chao, Brouillette, DeVos and Wilke: 

Last call for the 25th Amendment. Do your duty. Give up on this election for the sake of having future elections in the country you profess to love, before all is lost.

We well understand that you won’t. But that’s not to say that it should not be done. Because it should. We cannot wait for the election, because the president himself has put the election in peril. This would give Congress one last chance to do its duty, too — though at an even higher standard than impeachment, which only requires a majority in the House.

When Benjamin Franklin was asked by Elizabeth Willing Powel of Philadelphia — a “lady remarkable for her understanding and wit,” according to a contemporary — what kind of government he had helped to found, he told her: “A republic, if you can keep it.” Now the question must be asked again: Can we?

Trump tarnishes another pillar of American science

Here we go again with a tug between politics and science. Our health is hanging in the balance as resentment grows for leaders who care more for image than public health.

Over the objection of doctors, the Trump administration stunningly told the Food and Administration last week it could no longer regulate laboratory tests. It affects a swath of independent lab tests, including those being developed for coronavirus testing. Then, on Sunday, Trump forced the FDA to approve a minimally tested treatment for COVID-19, using the blood plasma of recovered patients.

That’s right. The White House is big-footing the professionals at FDA to skip oversight. The move inevitably will let unregulated, unreliable lab result products and techniques proliferate in a time of pandemic.

Why stop here, one might ask. Why not do the whole job and just shut the FDA, and let the marketplace introduce whatever treatments and vaccine alternatives it may want to sell? Won’t the marketplace just fix it all – or might we still be just a tad concerned about whether health products are safe?

The Justice Department already is prosecuting or settling with companies caught up in 3,600 public complaints for items ranging from non-delivery of protective gear to with fake identification schemes from coronavirus-related product lines.

When Joe Biden criticizes Donald Trump for not having a coordinated plan to confront pandemic issues, banning oversight of laboratory procedures is exactly the sort of thing under discussion. This new policy, announced on the Department of Health and Human Services website, comes months into the pandemic and months into complaints about lagging testing and lengthy delays in reporting test result.

We should keep it in mind this week as Trump and Mike Pence declare at the Republican National Convention that they are leading us out of coronavirus.

New warnings

Basically, the long lag time in finally getting a test result has ensured that additional contact with others, negating the whole usefulness of testing as a guide for self-quarantine.

Now, our public health experts are warning that barring the FDA oversight can result in unreliable coronavirus tests on the market, potentially worsening the testing crisis. The experts say this change is unlikely to solve current testing problems, which at this point are largely the result of shortages of supplies such as swabs and chemical reagents.

As usual, the supporters of change – the political hierarchy at the health department – argue stopping FDA oversight will spur faster introduction of more innovative tests from the marketplace, and that this move eliminates FDA bottlenecks.

Indeed, health Secretary Alex Azar argues that FDA lacks specific authority to regulate laboratory-developed tests. FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn has objected, defending the FDA’s role in overseeing safety of health products, particularly in time of a national emergency.

From that kernel of bureaucratic wrangling, we need to overlay a political landscape in which Democrats think there should be an over-arching nationwide plan on expanding testing and contact tracing. Republicans have favored tasking the states to handle the virus as they will and to be herky-jerky about providing the wherewithal to provide funds or supplies as needed.

At the same time, Trump pops up regularly with instant would-be cures that actually have proved dangerous. The government is handing billions of dollars to selected pharmaceutical companies in a desperate attempt to prime the pumps toward development of a vaccine – without a plan in place for how to distribute or even mandate such a vaccine. The antidote is more likely to be a series of vaccines in any case.

So, if  I understand this correctly, what we have going on is a political fight about a regulatory process that may or may not be contributing to a slow-down in development of lab processing of insufficient expansion of federally underwritten testing. All of this leaves you and me scratching our heads about the value of testing altogether.

Enter politics

The FDA insists it is doing what it has done in past medical emergencies and should be doing in any case – ensuring that testing is accurate and not fraudulent. As testing has expanded, lab process has as well, moving from the big companies to many smaller ones.

The Washington Post reminded us that in February, the administration was relying almost entirely on a test developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention —standard practice during public health crises — but the test was faulty. It took three weeks for the FDA to loosen restrictions that allowed other tests — at that time, mostly laboratory-developed tests — to come to market.

The general supply of swabs, reagents and other parts and pieces needed by a growing number of labs has not kept up.

The insistence of the White House and Republican states in particular to re-open local economies have tried to downplay testing and any lags in reporting the results. And widespread impatience with the wearing of masks and maintaining physical distancing have worsened the situation. Trump pounds his fists that the United States is doing more testing than any other country, but seems to cherry pick statistics from the very real and dangerous spread of contagion. Instead, this White House has a pattern of looking for people or agencies to blame.

It just feels as if this week, it’s the FDA’s turn to carry the burden of impatience.

The bottom line is that lags in test results look bad up the line to the political leaders, who seem extremely willing to throw out all regulation to get to faster results to burnish their political chances just before election.

Telling the FDA not to look at lab procedures won’t cure coronavirus.

Former One America News correspondent Emily Miller gets senior FDA post

Emily Miller, a gun-rights advocate and former senior correspondent for the right-wing One America News Network (OANN), has been appointed as assistant commissioner for media relations at the embattled Food and Drug Administration, Miller confirmed in a tweet.

It’s unclear what Miller’s qualifications for the FDA post are. In her career at OANN, she was accused of fabricating quotes from Hillary Clinton and peddling conspiracy theories alleging that the Obama administration used “smart gun” technology, which permits only authorized users to access a firearm, as a way to “track law-abiding citizens.”

Miller has tweeted frequently about the coronavirus pandemic over the last few months, but her understanding of basic underlying science and health issues appears limited.

A search for Miller’s content on the OANN website today yielded no hits, but several videos are available on the network’s YouTube page, including her exclusive OANN interview with President Donald Trump three years ago.

Trump, apparently unhappy with recent Fox News coverage, has often spoken glowingly of OANN — which has positioned itself significantly to the right of Fox News and has frequently spread even worse misinformation — as a preferred, “fair and balanced” alternative.

Charles Herring, president of OANN, told Salon in a call that Miller’s videos were missing from the network’s website because it automatically deletes older content when it passes a certain age.

“We wouldn’t keep content on the site that’s literally years old,” Herring said. “We don’t leave content available for years and years. We don’t archive ancient articles.”

Herring told Salon that OANN thinks of itself almost exclusively as a national cable news channel, not as a news site. Its content is delivered on-air and through the network’s YouTube page. Miller’s primary role as correspondent was to deliver video packages, primarily on TV.

OANN describes itself on its website as a “national cable network” founded 16 years ago. It differentiates itself from local networks in that it is a paid service, has international reach and posts an official White House correspondent, among other things.

Miller contacted this reporter on Twitter after an initial draft of this story had been filed

Salon had already interviewed Herring at the time and had earlier reached out to the FDA and to Miller with specific questions, but had not heard back. Salon informed Miller of this in a reply and repeated the same questions sent earlier by email, but has not received a response.

The FDA is a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, whose current spokesperson Michael Caputo, a longtime Trump ally, Roger Stone confidant and GOP operative, assumed his post in April. Caputo caught some static over the summer for apparently restricting media access to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist.

“I instruct my team to provide the outlet and point of contact, but not to bother me with the name of the scientist or doctor,” Caputo told Salon in a call. “I can do that.” That would be an unorthodox way to run media relations at any time, not to mention at the federal government’s public health nerve center in the middle of a pandemic.

On the day Miller took over as FDA spokesperson, the agency issued an unusually-worded press release describing the FDA’s emergency authorization of convalescent plasma in COVID patients as “another achievement” in the Trump administration’s fight against the coronavirus.

The press release accompanied a briefing where President Donald Trump, standing beside Dr. Stephen Hahn, the FDA commissioner, touted the authorization as a “breakthrough” and made the false claim that plasma had been “proven to reduce mortality by 35%. It’s a tremendous number.”

Hahn, who echoed Trump’s point, apologized for his role in that press conference the following day.

“I have been criticized for remarks I made Sunday night about the benefits of convalescent plasma. The criticism is entirely justified,” Hahn said in a thread of tweets, posted in the middle of the first night of the Republican National Convention. “What I should have said better is that the data show a relative risk reduction not an absolute risk reduction.”

When veteran health reporter Julie Rovner pointed out in a tweet that the FDA press release headline was unusual, Miller, who had also repeated Hahn’s inaccurate description in a tweet, asked, “How so?”

“FDA press releases don’t trumpet Administration achievements,” Rovner replied.

Miller replied: “So?”

On July 5, in a reply to a tweet from entrepreneur Mark Cuban, Miller wrote, “There is zero scientific study to show there is long term health problems for covid patients. It’s way too soon in the pandemic for doctors to know if the recovery is not full.”

This is not remotely accurate. Three months earlier, the journal Science published an article titled, “For survivors of severe COVID-19, beating the virus is just the beginning,” which cited a number of health professionals discussing the lasting effects of coronavirus infection. These included the probability of increased “risk of future illnesses, including heart attack, stroke, and kidney disease,” among COVID survivors.

During that same Twitter exchange with Cuban, Miller asked another Twitter user where they had found a chart illustrating COVID-19 deaths, saying she had never seen a COVID-19 death chart before.

Two months earlier, in reference to averaged trend lines in charts posted by former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb, Miller asked, “What’s the dotted line through the death chart?”

On July 6, the day after her conversation with Cuban, Miller learned how to isolate data to make her own death chart.

Two days later she shared the technique with President Trump in a reply to a since-deleted tweet:

Trump’s tweet had said that “the death rate from coronavirus is down tenfold.” He deleted that tweet 11 hours later, according to a tweet tracking service on ProPublica.

Nikki Haley tried to argue the U.S. isn’t racist — but she just proved the opposite point

Former Ambassador Nikki Haley delivered one of the starring speeches Monday night at the Republican National Convention, putting a softer face of President Donald Trump’s version of conservatism while joining his rallying cry in the culture war. At one point in her speech, she tried to draw a contrast between the GOP and its Democratic opponents by rejecting criticism of the United States and its history of racism.

But even as she tried to make her case, she undermined the argument.

“In much of the Democratic Party, it’s now fashionable to say that America is racist. That is a lie. America is not a racist country.” she said. “This is personal for me. I am the proud daughter of Indian immigrants. They came to America and settled in a small Southern town. My father wore a turban. My mother wore a sari. I was a brown girl in a Black and white world. We faced discrimination and hardship, but my parents never gave in to grievance and hate. My mom built a successful business. My dad taught 30 years at a historically Black college. And the people of South Carolina chose me as their first minority and first female governor. America is a story that’s a work in progress.”

While she declared from the outset that the United States isn’t racist, the story she tells is deeply shaped by the country’s racism. Her parents, who she takes time to note wore cultural garb that set them apart in the South, faced discrimination. Her father taught at a historically Black college, institutions which have been necessary in U.S. history because of the extreme racism Black Americans have faced in higher education. She pointed out that she was the first governor from a racial minority in South Carolina’s history, a fact notable precisely because it exemplifies how racism has affected who has had access to power.

The last sentence quoted above is the biggest tell. Haley noted that the country is a “work in progress.” But what are we progressing from? As her preceding remarks were meant to reflect, we’re making progress against racism. But being a “work in progress” means we still have further to go. This is a concession that the United States is still a racist country.

So what’s going on here? Why is Haley, undoubtedly an intelligent person, making such an obviously contradictory argument?

The whole night, and likely the Republican National Convention more broadly, is a rather clumsy attempt to thread a needle. Many of the night’s speeches were filled with racist fearmongering, most notably from the McCloskeys, a St. Louis couple facing charges for brandishing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) warned that Democrats want “MS-13” to move in next door.

But while Trump and his allies clearly think that racism is necessary to win in 20020, they want to soften that message so it doesn’t scare off voters who might otherwise vote for them. So the night also featured several Black speakers and people of color like Haley, who mostly served to reassure white Republicans that they can support the president without being racist.

Haley also obliquely referenced her decision as South Carolina governor to remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse. But she referred to it only as a “divisive symbol,” rather than draw attention to the tension between this action and others at the RNC railing against the removal of statues.

Haley clearly wants to be the future of the Republican Party. So she’s trying to walk a fine line of arguing that the country has overcome racism, and may even have more to overcome, while not scaring away the party’s white voters. She tells Americans that the United States is not a “racist country,” suggesting its offensive to say so, even as the story she tells confirms that it is.

Sometimes contradictory messages work in politics. A politician may feel the need to say they’ll fight fiercely against their opponents, even as they also claim to be a uniter. It’s not inconceivable that such messages can be persuasive.

But it’s hard to believe that Haley’s tactic will gain much traction. It’s trying to accomplish too much — wielding the populist and racist impulses in the GOP for her own ends — with too little — hairsplitting wordplay. But it is possible her posturing could help Trump where he needs it the most: comforting white suburban voters that they can vote Republican without being bigots.

Watch the clip below:

“Unprecedented and wrong”: Mike Pompeo slammed for address to GOP convention from Jerusalem

President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign announced Sunday that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will address this week’s Republican National Convention—news that sparked swift criticism both because it’s unprecedented for the nation’s top diplomat to participate in this type of political event and because he will reportedlyspeak from “an undisclosed location” in Jerusalem while he’s there on official travel.

Before meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Monday, Pompeo—a former congressman from Kansas who previously served as CIA director under Trump—wrote Sunday on his personal Twitter account: “Looking forward to sharing with you how my family is more SAFE and more SECURE because of President Trump. See you all on Tuesday night!”

The State Department told an Associated Press correspondent that “Secretary Pompeo will address the convention in his personal capacity. No State Department resources will be used. Staff are not involved in preparing the remarks or in the arrangements for Secretary Pompeo’s appearance. The State Department will not bear any costs in conjunction with this appearance.”

Citing two unnamed sources “close to the secretary,” McClatchy reported Sunday that “Pompeo’s decision to deliver a speech to the Republican National Convention while on official travel to the Middle East was cleared by” his personal attorney as well as lawyers for the State Department, RNC, and White House.

Wendy Sherman, who served as undersecretary of state for political affairs in former President Barack Obama’s administration and led the negotiations for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, told McClatchy that Pompeo’s decision was a “shameful” attempt to appeal to evangelical voters who supported Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and relocating the U.S. Embassy.

“Pompeo speaking from Jerusalem breaks multiple traditions and norms,” Sherman said. “Secretaries of state, as far as I can find, have never appeared at a political convention. They, like the secretary of defense, have been above politics because they stand for America in the world.”

“At a time when peace and security in the Middle East is so tough, this political appearance is more than shameful,” she added. “Jerusalem should not be a prop in the Republican convention. Pompeo should not tarnish his office by this unprecedented action.”

The Times of Israel detailed on Monday how Pompeo’s decision constrasts with his predecessors from at least the past couple decades:

Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry, for instance, sat out the 2016 Democratic convention. And when Obama was officially nominated for a second term in 2012, Hillary Clinton was literally half a world away, traveling to the Cook Islands, Indonesia, China, East Timor, Brunei, and far eastern Russia.

It’s not just Democrats. When Republicans nominated John McCain in 2008, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on a trip to Portugal, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Former U.S. President George W. Bush’s first secretary of state, Colin Powell, likewise did not speak to the 2004 Republican National Convention.

During a campaign event in Wisconsin last week, Trump said that “we moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem,” referring to his 2017 decision to relocate the embassy from Tel Aviv. “That’s for the evangelicals,” the president added. Sherman was far from alone in accusing Trump and Pompeo of exploiting religion and using the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem as a prop for political gain:

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) suggested that Pompeo’s speech could violate the Hatch Act, which restricts federal employees from participating in certain political activities:

Noting on Sunday that “it’s very unusual for a diplomat to get involved in domestic politics” and that “this starts to look like using taxpayer-funded federal resources for a campaign,” Margaret Brennan, moderator of CBS News‘ “Face the Nation,” askedRepublican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel whether taxpayers will be reimbursed for Pompeo’s trip. The chair did not provide a direct answer.

“I can only tell you, Margaret, that the events that we’ve put forward from the RNC and the campaign are going to be paid for by the convention from… the RNC and the campaign,” McDaniel responded. “You know, everything that we’ve put together has changed because of Covid. The president rightly said we’re going to leave Jacksonville because we don’t want to have resources taken away from a city that’s dealing with a pandemic. And he brought it back to the White House, which is his residence.”

“And it’s being paid for by the Republican National Committee and the campaign, not the taxpayers,” McDaniel added. After Brennan asked whether she was confirming that Pompeo’s trip will be reimbursed by the campaign, the chair said that “I’m not confirming anything having to do with Secretary Pompeo’s trip. I am just saying the programming, the staging, everything that we’re doing will be paid for by the Republican National Committee and the campaign.”

RNC speaker booted after sharing a blatantly anti-Semitic message hours before the event began

Mary Ann Mendoza, a so-called “Angel mom,” was scheduled to speak Tuesday for the second night of the Republican National Convention. Hours before she was set to appear before the country, Mendoza sent out a tweet sharing a vile and pernicious anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. CNN reported that she will no longer appear at the event.

The Daily Beast was among the first outlets to report on the tweet. It was deleted after she posted it, but a screenshot was preserved below:

The thread it linked to remained, detailing a darkly conspiratorial history claiming that Jewish bankers formed a cabal and plotted against the rest of the world. It said, in part, that this plan sought to: “Use Economic Warfare. Rob The ‘Goyim’ Of Their Landed Properties And Industries With A Combination Of High Taxes And Unfair Competition. … Make The Goyim Destroy Each Other So There Will Only Be The Proletariat Left In The World, With A Few Millionaires Devoted To Our Cause, And Sufficient Police And Soldiers To Protect Our Interest.”

This is as clear and indisputable as anti-Semitism gets. The theory also included references to the modern QAnon conspiracy theory.

After the Daily Beast report, CNN reported that she had been pulled as a speaker:

The Daily Beast reported that Mendoza tweeted an apology after the outlet published its story:

I retweeted a very long thread earlier without reading every post within the thread. My apologies for not paying attention to the intent of the whole message. That does not reflect my feelings or personal thoughts whatsoever.

— Angel Mom Mary Ann Mendoza
TEXT EMPOWER TO 88022 (@mamendoza480) August 25, 2020

Parker Malloy noted, however, that Mendoza has previously posted tweets that played into the same anti-Semitic conspiracy theories:

Mendoza, whose son was reportedly killed by a drunk driver who was not permitted to be in the United States, has appeared on stage with Trump before. Some anti-Semites have linked conspiracy theories about Jewish people to unauthorized immigration.

Mendoza is not the only person scheduled to speak at the RNC with disturbing beliefs far outside the mainstream. Abby Johnson, an anti-abortion activist set to appear, has previously said that it would be “smart” for police to racially profile her biracial son. She has also voiced support for limiting women’s rights to vote.

Republicans have frequently attacked Democrats in recent years for supposed cases anti-Semitism. However, many in the GOP, including Trump, have made use of anti-Semitic tropes repeatedly, and the party frequently ignores or downplays anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in its own ranks.

 

“Morning Joe” hosts left speechless by “cranks and misfits” on parade during RNC

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough was gobsmacked by the parade of “cranks and misfits” on display during the Republican National Convention’s first night of programming.

The “Morning Joe” host opened Tuesday’s broadcast with a comparison between an over-the-top speech from Kimberly Guilfoyle — a former Fox News broadcaster and Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend — and a similar speech given by “The Office” character Dwight Schrute.

“Ladies and gentlemen, your 2020 Republican National Convention, wow,” Scarborough began. “Good morning, it’s — I just — you know, I just don’t know where to go with what we all saw yesterday and what we saw last night. I was thinking back, people deeply offended in 1992 by Pat Buchanan’s speech and, I mean, let me tell you something, that was [Winston] Churchill in the House of Commons in 1940 compared to everything we saw last night — a bizarre collection of alternative facts and alternative realities told by cranks and misfits that would never be allowed inside any convention before this.”

“The couple that carried guns outside their house and pointing at Black Lives Matter protesters saying Joe Biden wants to abolish the suburbs,” he continued. “You go down the whole list and, of course, Donald Trump — even had Donald Trump yesterday, even with his people begging him, stay on message, try to paint Joe Biden as a left-winger. Instead, he repeated his lie that Barack Obama spied on his campaign in 2016, something that has been disproven time and time again, and his own aides were so discouraged that he did it because he can’t stay on script.”

“But, you know, you had Don Jr. saying that the choice was between — this is very funny, actually — church, work and school, or rioting, looting and vandalism,’ Scarborough added. “Yes, Don Jr. and Donald Trump is the paragon of church, work and school. You just go down the list. Even Nikki Haley, whatever she wants, I hope it’s worth it for her.”

Sen. Steve Daines won’t meet with constituents, but keeps taking taxpayer-funded trips to China

A leading Democratic group accused Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., of hypocrisy for campaign ads touting Daines as tough on China after he repeatedly met with Chinese Communist Party officials on trips paid for by taxpayers — while avoiding town halls with his constituents back home.

Daines, who holds a narrow lead over Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock in what looks to be a tight Senate race, has launched a new ad criticizing China over the coronavirus pandemic and vowing to “break our reliance on China” to help constituents back home in Montana.

But Daines’ Democratic critics say he has spent a lot more time cozying up to Chinese leaders since taking office than his own state’s residents.

Daines reported spending at least $67,283 on 10 congressional delegations overseas between 2015 and 2019, according to a review of his foreign travel financial reports. He visited China on at least five of those trips between April 2016 and September 2019.

“I’ve led congressional visits to China every year since I’ve been in the United States Senate,” he bragged during a Senate hearing in 2018, and has been seen meeting with numerous top Chinese Communist Party officials since taking office.

Daines, who lived in China during his career at the consumer goods conglomerate Procter & Gamble, said at another hearing that he was uniquely qualified to work on issues related to China “as someone who spent over five years living” in the country.

But the jet-setting freshman senator has drawn criticism in his home state for dodging his constituents. Democratic groups have made Daines’ refusal to meet with Montana residents a key issue in the campaign.

“It’s no surprise Steve Daines would rather spend time rubbing elbows overseas than answering to his constituents about why he’s constantly voted to strip them of their health care as a senator and send their jobs abroad while working in the private sector,” Matt Corridoni, a spokesman for the Democratic Senate Majority PAC, told Salon. The group has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into ads opposing Daines.

Local news outlets have criticized Daines for the refusal to hold town halls for years and voters have held protests as he continued to avoid constituents.

The Helena Independent Record reported in 2017 that the senator had listed just one public “town hall” in more than two years.

“Steve Daines hasn’t held a town hall in over 1000 days,” The Montana Post reported last year. Daines and Rep. Greg Gianforte, R-Mont., “refuse to hold town halls in Montana, fearing the kind of confrontation that ensnared former Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz in Salt Lake last year,” High Country News reported in 2018, citing a contentious town hall at which constituents chanted “do your job” at the former Utah congressman.

The Montana news outlet Last Best News reported in 2018 that Daines had instead opted to hold “tele-town-halls,” which the outlet noted had been panned as a “sham that protects Daines from having to answer difficult questions.” Daines has also required voters to pre-register for his tele-town halls.

An editorial in the Missoulian pleaded for Daines to “come home and face his constituents,” arguing that tele-town-halls “should never replace face-to-face meetings between Montanans and our elected officials.”

When Daines has held in-person events, they often featured a “tailored audience,” the Independent Record reported.

He has also dodged constituents at other in-person events. Daines “declined to meet with the two-dozen people who had gathered to participate in what the senator’s office had billed as a meeting with ‘local officials, community leaders and constituents,'” while touring a local brewery in 2018, according to Last Best News. “Daines arrived early and privately toured the brewing plant before leaving through the back door, bypassing those who believed the senator would be meeting with them in an open forum.”

“I was under the impression we were going to get to meet with him today, per the press release he sent out inviting conversation with his constituents,” Missoula City Council member Julie Merritt told the outlet. “That’s obviously being declined. I just saw him get in the car and drive away as he sneaked out the back door.”

Daines arrived early for another event and left before he was advertised to speak. Daines went to a motorcycle dealership for an event touting the Republican tax cuts in 2018 an hour earlier than expected and finished speaking before the event was even scheduled to start, according to the local news outlet Ravalli Republic.

“I think this is despicable,” Dan Harper, a member of the group Back Country Horsemen who went to see Daines speak, told the outlet. “We just happened to be here early. I had planned to be here at 1:15, and if I had I would have missed everything. I resent that. This is not how our government works.'”

Daines’ campaign did not respond to questions from Salon.

By comparison, Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., has held “at least 14 in-person, publicly announced town halls” since 2015, as well as “dozens of Facebook Lives town halls,” Tester spokeswoman Sarah Feldman told Salon.

Tester has also spent much less time traveling overseas, taking just four congressional delegations abroad since 2007, according to a review of his foreign travel reports.

Unlike Tester, Daines has also bucked tradition and refused to publish his official schedule online.

Daines has been more forthcoming about buddying up to Chinese leaders.

In 2017, Daines, who said he brought his wife along on the trip, said in a Fox Business interview that he had met with Chinese officials to press for their assistance in sanctioning North Korea.

“We’re very clear— we need their help,” he said. “This needs to be done with China’s help and we’ll see. I didn’t get a definitive response but they certainly heard our request.”

Daines later thanked the Chinese for their help in 2018 after another trip.

“The Chinese have been helping us in that regard, and it’s having an effect on North Korea,” he said. “We met with people who had first-hand knowledge about what’s going on in North Korea, and we made that point to the Chinese leadership to keep that pressure on.”

Chinese officials celebrated the visits as evidence that the “US congress values China-US relations.”

In 2018, Daines’ office said in a press release that he traveled to China to call out the country over religious freedom but the Financial Times reported that Daines used the trip to try to “calm” Chinese officials who were “angry” over the Trump administration’s moves to develop closer ties to Taiwan and “focused his closing remarks on their concerns about US-Taiwan relations.”

A Chinese news outlet reported that Daines and other Republican senators told Chinese officials that the relationship between the U.S. and China was “one of the most important bilateral relations in the world, adding that there was no reason for both countries to have conflict.” Chinese state TV reported that the meeting was to “calm jitters” about Trump’s tariffs on China and “move things back on track” in trade negotiations. Chinese state-owned media also reported that the delegation led by Daines told the Chinese that “Congress is willing to help settle trade frictions through a mutually beneficial and win-win method so … as to ensure that the development of the U.S.-China relations will continue to benefit the two peoples.”

Trump, who bragged about his improving relationship with the Chinese during trade talks before souring on the country after he was widely criticized over the federal response to the coronavirus, praised Daines’ efforts last year.

“China asked for the meeting, they have a lot of respect for Sen. Daines,” he told reporters in September.

But the meeting alarmed some pro-Trump China hawks.

Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, who was described as a “shadow chief of staff” in the Trump administration by a former top aide, warned that Daines and Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., “may well be undercutting” the trade talks.

“The meetings … were arranged quite apart from the White House and may in fact threaten any progress with China already made by President Trump and his top negotiating team,” he warned in September. “The two senators who would hardly make, at least in my opinion, good emissaries under any circumstance, because both have a significant history of outsourcing American jobs while working in the private sector.”

Daines has long been accused of helping Procter & Gamble outsource jobs because he helped set up new factories in China while the company shuttered plants in the United States. But officials at the company have pushed back against claims that Daines was involved in any outsourcing decisions.

Dobbs later issued a correction after Daines denied that he was involved in outsourcing.

The Senate Majority PAC accused Daines of hypocrisy for touting his tough stance on China while developing close relationships with the Chinese Community Party.

“He can try and hide from his record but Montana voters know the truth: Steve Daines can’t be trusted to put them first. It’s no wonder he’s been called ‘China’s ambassador’ — his hypocritical ‘tough talk’ on China is just another sign that he’s a typical D.C. politician who is looking out for himself,” Corridoni said.

Daines has taken five other trips to other countries, where he’s met with numerous world leaders. One of the congressional delegations was to Russia during the week of July 4, which was criticized by Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank for “posing for propaganda photos with Russian officials” on the same day the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report confirming that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election, and the same day that Russian agents accused of poisoning two people in Britain.

The delegation, Milbank wrote, avoided “the risk of offending their hosts” by not meeting with opposition figures and choosing to “soft-pedal their criticism of the Russian government, leading Russian politicians and state media to mock them as supplicants.”

“On Russian state television, presenters and guests mocked the U.S. congressional delegation for appearing to put a weak foot forward, noting how the message of tough talk they promised in Washington ‘changed a bit’ by the time they got to Moscow,” the Post reported.

Though Daines and other senators have tried to frame their congressional delegations as focused on delivering tough talk from the U.S., a Russian member of parliament said it was “one of the easiest” meetings of his life, according to the Post.

The trip also drew criticism reflecting Daines’ refusal to meet with constituents.

“Can you guess when the last time Steve Daines says he held a town hall with Montanans? According to Steve Daines’ own admission, the last time he held an event billed as a town hall was 848 days ago,” The Montana Post reported in 2018. “We all know the last time Steve Daines met with the Russians.”

Natalia Dyer criticizes media for sexualizing “Stranger Things” kids: “I feel protective over them”

Streaming giant Netflix generated controversy last week after it promoted its upcoming movie “Cuties” with a poster that sexualized its pre-teen characters. While the streamer’s blockbuster series “Stranger Things” treats its teenage characters age appropriately, star Natalia Dyer says the media doesn’t always follow suit. Dyer stars as Nancy Wheeler in “Stranger Things” and tells The Independent in a new interview that her younger co-stars are often over-sexualized in the media. The young “Stranger Things” cast includes Millie Bobby Brown and Finn Wolfhard, among others.

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“There are so many layers going on here. I generally feel like, to me, it’s over-sexualizing them,” Dyer said when the topic of how her young co-stars are portrayed in the media came up. “I feel protective over the younger kids even though they’re not kids anymore, they’re teens. They’re all great people and all having to grow up in very crazy circumstances. As a private person, I just feel like, leave people alone – unless you’re talking about their work or what they want to talk about.”

“It’s a very tricky and complex issue,” Dyer added, noting the sexualization of young actors is “a cultural issue, there must be a bigger concept behind it as to why. Just let people be the people that they are, without any judgement.”

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As The Independent notes, Millie Bobby Brown was only 13 years old when W Magazine included her on a list of reasons why television is “sexier than ever.” Brown was included alongside the likes of Nicole Kidman and James Franco. Wolfhard made a statement in November 2017 calling it “gross” how a model made a sexually-charged comment about him when he was just 14 years old.

Dyer has mostly avoided the media spotlight outside of promoting projects like “Stranger Things” or her latest indie film project “Yes, God, Yes” (read IndieWire’s glowing review). The actress said, “It’s very like, ‘Oh my gosh, I just want to go to the grocery store and get some milk. I don’t want to take a photo everywhere I go.’ At first, it was jarring. There are fans everywhere. It’s a difficult thing to navigate.”

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“Stranger Things 4” is expected to hit Netflix sometime in 2021.