Night two of the virtual DNC held aloft the party’s true stars: America and her people

Night two of the United States’ first virtual Democratic National Convention initially made me wonder how we were going to make it through this upright and awake.

I’m referring to the convention itself, not 2020.

The festivities began with 17 of the party’s rising stars, all under 50, delivering the keynote address. Each offered their perspective on the world from various cities, states and cultural constituencies. Together they followed the party’s prescribed script to a point, only diverging to personalize their contributions with their own stories before coming together on message in a chorus.

This friendly show of unity was nice and positive and astronomically boring, through no fault of any individual or their collective effort. Honestly, what could possibly top that opening-night knockout from Michelle Obama?

Only America itself.

America showed up in the form of Jacquelyn Brittany, the New York Times security officer who met Democratic nominee Joe Biden in an elevator and became the person to nominate him for president. It showed up in its fullness by way of the DNC’s first-ever virtual roll call, which included Khizr Khan, the Gold Star father of an army captain killed in action in Iraq in 2004, who joined from his hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia, to cast that’s state’s votes.

In 2016, Khan’s appearance at the Democratic convention was a forceful rebuke to the then-GOP candidate Donald Trump’s hateful anti-immigrant rhetoric. His Tuesday night appearance took on a different meaning in a presidential election that in many ways is haunted by the 2017 Unite the Right rally … in his own community.

America showed up in the unexpected appearance of Matthew Shepard’s parents Judy and Dennis, who cast Wyoming’s votes and reminded us of the ever-present need to protect LGTBQIA+ rights and safety. The Shepards are keeping their son’s legacy alive through passionate activism, and simply in being seen they send a forceful message to voters and the community they stand for and with.

Scenic vista by mesmerizing view, delegates from all 50 states and seven U.S territories announced their vote tallies for the Democratic nomination, which of course overwhelmingly fell to Joe Biden on a night whose messaging was devoted to illustrating the party’s emphasis on affordable health care, a promise to contain the pandemic, and calls to shore up our national security and reputation and to protect and welcome immigrants back to our shores.

Biden’s Tuesday night message was one of empathy, effectively conveyed in a segment in which Americans talked about the ways in which the Affordable Care Act enabled them to battle diseases and conditions that otherwise would have killed them, ending with a speech from activist Ady Barkan, who lives with ALS.

Representing every state was an intercultural, intergenerational mixture of politicians, students, community leaders and activists, solid everyday folks and figures thrust into public life out of necessity, not choice.

Some offered messages in their short speeches. Others delivered what they wanted the world to understand by their very presence, such as registered nurse Scheena Iyande, who cast New York’s votes, and Filipino-born Amy Agbayani, who announced Hawaii’s delegate allotment.

Still others were made memorable by their unintentionally humorous showings on behalf of their home states, such as Rhode Island’s spokesman hailing his home as the “calamari comeback state.” A masked man stood nearby with a platter of golden battered and fried cephalopods, and social media memes schooled in their wake almost immediately.

This is how DNC organizers answered the question of how a major party could handle a pandemic version of its convention, a circumstance that makes business as usual impossible despite the Democrats’ pro forma staging.

Traditions like this are about as needed as a crowded convention center floor teeming with strangers in coordinated t-shirts and party flair. Where’s the sales pitch in that when we have blue skies, open beaches and a view of what our nation looks like without a consultant’s staging — and without traffic, for that matter?

Tuesday’s list of speakers included those considered to be the party’s big guns at past conventions, including former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, and former secretary of state and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and former acting attorney general Sally Yates, fired by Trump in 2017 after she refused to defend the Muslim travel enacted by executive order, also appeared, along with freshman New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who seconded the nomination of Bernie Sanders.

Other everyman scenes worked too, particularly that of Biden accepting his nomination in a local library in Delaware, and his wife Jill Biden’s headliner speech. It wasn’t as substantial as Michelle Obama‘s, but her graceful, seamless walk-and-talk through the halls of a local school was silken enough to impress Aaron Sorkin himself.

The Democrats’ modern legacy was represented by video testimonials from John F. Kennedy’s daughter Caroline and her son, Jack Schlossberg; by the Carters and Clinton, although the latter is perhaps not the promotional asset he was in years’ past.

They played the roles they’re supposed to, mainly bludgeoning Trump’s failure to lead and citing time and again his “it is what it is” reaction to a death toll that now tops 172,000. Kerry landed the night’s greatest body blow with his summation of Trump’s international reputation. “When this president goes overseas, it isn’t a goodwill mission, it’s a blooper reel,” he said, later adding. “America deserves a president who is looked up to, not laughed at.”

Not every element of Tuesday’s DNC telecast worked. For example, as likable as “Black-ish” star Tracee Ellis Ross is, her earnest presentation as the event’s moderator, throwing from one set piece to another, at times gave the evening the air of a PBS fund drive. By the third time someone reminded us of the texting code I half wondered whether I’d get a tote bag or a “Downton Abbey” DVD box set for my efforts.

In stepping out of the studio and offering a visual manifestation of its recurring theme of “We the People,” the Democrats created a fine made-for-TV version of a socially distant roll call by reminding us of what we have — and what we are so painfully being kept from experiencing first hand. Linking prairie vistas to ocean fronts and cityscapes, and even to the interiors of community spaces, asks us to appreciate the manifold differences in where we live and who we are.

Maybe somewhere out there somebody is missing the gossipy potential to be had in parsing the finer details — the color of a poorly chosen tie or a glaring pantsuit, the level of natural ease in a candidate’s gait or smile — for meaning. But in an election where the urgency of the common voter’s voice contains a life-or-death significance, and in an era defined by feeling so far apart from others, here was a view of how proudly and wildly diverse America is, geographically and culturally.

That successful visual also makes one wonder what is to be gained in going back to the previous way of doing this business, other than following longstanding rules of how conventions are done. Tradition can be a blessing in a situation such as this because we know what to expect. Plus, there’s a benefit in following class dictates as well as explaining them, which could have helped viewers better understand what led to Ocasio-Cortez’s nomination speech in support of Sanders.

That was a planned ceremonial honor acknowledging the number of delegates Sanders secured in his run for the presidency — about one-fourth of the total, even though he ended his campaign in March — and the fact that the Vermont senator is clearly close to the end of his time on the national stage. Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the convention chair, explained what Ocasio-Cortez was doing. We would all have benefited from a bit more explanation in the moment, but none was forthcoming on CNN or MSNBC.

Yet some onlookers were so taken aback by her remarks that a few online explanations followed afterward, including via tweet from AOC herself.

That didn’t stop some news outlets, even NBC, from characterizing her speech as some sort of coup:

“In one of the shortest speeches of the DNC, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez did not endorse Joe Biden,” read a tweet from the NBC News official account, quoting Ocasio-Cortez’s seconding of “Bernard Sanders of Vermont for president of the United States of America.”

At least MSNBC ran the roll call without interruption. CNN broke in with a block of commercials, which had the misfortune of robbing the channels’ viewers of hearing Hawaii’s Agbayani offering this message to fellow immigrants, essential workers on the front lines, military service members and parents: “No matter where we came from, immigrants belong in our country’s long fight for justice. We belong in the America we are building together.”

The lesson here is that this convention is best enjoyed by watching C-SPAN.

Circumstances being what they are, the failings could have been far worse. The political version of this festival for policy and lawmaking squares could have been a festival of actual squares, and one that some people navigate better than others.

Take that opener, for example. Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams brought the speech train into the station with her version of the refrain every co-headliner shared, warning about the dire implications of not voting Democratic and conveying a message of calm and reason, if not hope.

Her smiling face held the center position anchoring the many friendly tiles around her, reflecting the party as a varied mosaic of age, culture, backgrounds, identities and ideas. They’re all up-and-comers, and Abrams herself is a celebrity within the party — even if she didn’t get the running-mate spot that went to Sen. Kamala Harris, who will speak on Wednesday night.

AOC used her brief time wisely to concisely spell out the progressive Democrats’ platform in her nominating speech — the one that Sanders foregrounded and that she will clearly carry forward. But in terms of heft and emotional resonance, what she said simply provided decent theater in the moment. The outward-looking views of our land, its people, their vision, their concerns — and that pile of fried snackable squid — that’s what’ll stick with us in the long run.

Not matter how heavy a historical moment feels while we’re in it, the fame these political figures enjoy will fade with time. Watching the nation’s people stand in their communities and be seen and counted is a sign that won’t get old, and I hope it repeats itself four years from now.

Unlike Republicans, Democrats can govern. But can they fight?

As America heads into its quadrennial circus of nominating conventions (this year’s even more surreal because of the pandemic), it’s important to understand the real difference between America’s two political parties at this point in history.

Instead of “left” versus “right,” think of two different core competences.

The Democratic Party is basically a governing party, organized around developing and implementing public policies. The Republican Party has become an attack party, organized around developing and implementing political vitriol. Democrats legislate. Republicans fulminate.

In theory, politics requires both capacities — to govern, but also to fight to attain and retain power. The dysfunction today is that Republicans can’t govern and Democrats can’t fight.

Donald Trump is the culmination of a half century of GOP belligerence. Richard Nixon’s “dirty tricks” were followed by Republican operative Lee Atwater’s smear tactics, Newt Gingrich’s take-no-prisoners reign as House speaker, the “Swift-boating” of John Kerry, and the GOP’s increasingly blatant uses of racism and xenophobia to build an overwhelmingly white, rural base.

Atwater, trained in the southern swamp of the modern Republican Party, once noted: “Republicans in the South could not win elections by talking about issues. You had to make the case that the other guy, the other candidate, is a bad guy.” Over time, the GOP’s core competence came to be vilification.

The stars of today’s Republican Party, in addition to Trump, are all pugilists: Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio; Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Georgia’s Brian Kemp; Fox News’s Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson; and attack dogs like Rudolph Giuliani and Roger Stone.

But Republicans don’t have a clue how to govern. They’re hopeless at developing and implementing public policies or managing government. They can’t even agree on basics like how to respond to the pandemic or what to replace Obamacare with.

Meanwhile, the central competence of the Democratic Party is running government — designing policies and managing the system. Once in office, Democrats spend countless hours cobbling together legislative and regulatory initiatives. They overflow with economic and policy advisers, programs, plans, and goals.

But Democrats are lousy at bare knuckles political fighting. Their campaigns proffer policies but are often devoid of passion. (Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid was little more than a long list of detailed proposals.) Democrats seem stunned when their GOP opponents pillory them with lies, rage, and ad hominem attacks.

This has put Democrats at a competitive disadvantage. Political campaigns might once have been about party platforms, but today’s electorate is angrier and more cynical. Policy ideas rarely make headlines; conflict does. Social media favor explosive revelations, including bald lies. No one remembers Hillary Clinton’s policy ideas from 2016; they only remember Trump’s attacks on her emails.

As a result, the party that’s mainly good at attacking has been winning elections — and pushed into governing, which it’s bad at. In 2016, the GOP won the presidency, along with control over both chambers of Congress and most governorships. On the other hand, the party that’s mainly good a governing has been losing elections — pushed into the role of opposition and attack, which it’s bad at. (House speaker Nancy Pelosi, however, seems to have a natural gift for it.)

This dysfunction has become particularly obvious — and deadly — in the current national emergency. Trump and Senate Republicans have let the pandemic and economic downturn become catastrophes. They have no capacity to develop and implement strategies for dealing with them. Their knee-jerk response is to attack — China, Democrats, public health officials, protesters, “lazy” people who won’t work.

Democrats know what to do — House Democrats passed a comprehensive coronavirus bill in May, and several Democratic governors have been enormously effective — but they’ve lacked power to put a national strategy into effect.

All this may change in a few months when Americans have an opportunity to replace the party that’s bad at governing with the one that’s good at it. After all, Joe Biden has been at it for most of the past half century.

Trump and the GOP will pull out all the stops, of course. They’ve already started mindless, smarmy attacks.

The big question hovering over the election is whether Democrats can summon enough fight to win against the predictable barrage. Biden’s choice of running mate, Kamala Harris, bodes well in this regard. Quite apart from all her other attributes, she’s a fierce fighter.

Democratic Convention hits Trump where it hurts: On lack of pandemic preparedness

On the first night of the Democrats’ 2020 national convention, one thing was clear. This time would be different. No crowds, buttons, placards or party swag. The coronavirus pandemic was an ever-present theme.

Still, there was a virtual National Anthem and everyday people offering their thoughts on the upcoming election and the state of the nation. A young woman whose father, a Donald Trump voter, died of COVID-19, was among them. A list of marquee speakers including Sen. Bernie Sanders and former first lady Michelle Obama spoke directly into the camera.

Our partners at PolitiFact noted that “nothing jumped out as Pants on Fire false” during the course of the evening. Some claims, they went on to say, were interestingly accurate. Others could have used more context.

We focus here on two points related to the Trump administration’s pandemic preparedness.

“Vice President Biden and President Obama assembled a pandemic playbook to make sure that America was prepared and protected. The Trump administration disbanded the pandemic response team that was given to them.” — Eva Longoria Bastón

Longoria is largely correct on both points.

After the 2014 Ebola crisis, the Obama administration created a document titled “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents.”

The National Security Council developed the guidebook in 2016 with the goal of assisting leaders “in coordinating a complex U.S. Government response to a high-consequence emerging disease threat anywhere in the world.” It outlined questions to ask, who should be asked to get the answers and what key decisions should be made.

Politico reported on the document in March, but White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany dismissed the playbook’s usefulness when asked about it in May.

As for the pandemic response team, the Trump White House reorganized the team that oversaw global health security issues under former national security adviser John Bolton. Tom Bossert, a homeland security adviser who recommended strong defenses against disease and biological warfare, was pushed out by Bolton in April 2018, The Washington Post reported. In May 2018, the top White House official in charge of the U.S. response to pandemics, Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer, left the administration and was not replaced.

Neither White House official nor their teams, which were responsible for coordinating the U.S. response to pandemic outbreaks across agencies, were replaced before the coronavirus arrived.

In November 2019, a bipartisan group of lawmakers and experts brought together by the Center for Strategic and International Studies to focus on U.S. global health security formally recommended that health security leadership on the NSC be restored.

— Jon Greenberg, PolitiFact

“And our current federal government is dysfunctional and incompetent. It couldn’t fight off the virus. In fact, it didn’t even see it coming. The European virus infected the Northeast while the White House was still fixated on China.” — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo

There is evidence that suggests Cuomo is right. The disease most likely arrived in Europe from China, but it was travel from Europe to the United States that brought the disease to New York.

Researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai traced the strains of the COVID-19 virus — which was circulating in late January and was responsible for the New York City COVID-19 outbreak — back to Europe.

The study, published in July, examined the genomic sequences of the COVID-19 virus based on samples taken from confirmed COVID cases in the Mount Sinai Health System. The cases were traced through March and represented a large number of New York City neighborhoods. Only one strain was closely related to COVID-19 strains circulating in Asia.

“These results show that SARS-CoV-2 came to the New York City area predominantly via Europe through untracked transmissions,” said Dr. Viviana Simon, professor of microbiology and infectious diseases at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, in a press release.

Cuomo’s charge that the Trump administration was fixated only on the spread from China has some merit as well. Beginning in mid-January, the U.S. started screening travelers arriving from Wuhan, China, where the COVID-19 outbreak started. Then on Jan. 31, President Trump banned non-U.S. citizens from traveling from China into the United States. But U.S. citizens could still travel back from China, as long as they observed a 14-day quarantine upon arrival. No such travel limits were put in place for Europe until mid-March.

— Victoria Knight, Kaiser Health News

This story was produced in partnership with PolitiFact.

Trump dropped into Iowa — and didn’t even try to understand the devastation

IOWA CITY, Iowa — Amid the rubble of uprooted trees and fallen power lines, my teenage son set up his climate strike protest last Friday for the 79th consecutive week, holding up a wobbly handmade sign: “Wake up, Iowa. Climate action plan now.”

We were still without electricity or internet on Friday morning, four days into riding out the aftermath of the hurricane-level “derecho” storm that devastated a 770-mile swath of the heartland from South Dakota to Ohio, and left a million residents without power, along with widespread damage.

It also left an estimated 40% of Iowa’s corn crop in ruins, flattening millions of acres and the state’s key economic generator in a matter of minutes.

We were the lucky ones. In his 30-minute briefing at an Iowa airport on Tuesday, President Trump didn’t bother to tour the storm damage in Cedar Rapids, where tens of thousands of residents have remained without power, water and shelter, camping in tents along the streets as extreme weather refugees in an undeniable humanitarian crisis.

This includes African and Southeast Asian immigrants in Cedar Rapids who have been displaced from their own countries as climate refugees.

Despite Trump’s Twitter claim that he has fully signed off on Iowa’s presidential disaster relief request for nearly $4 billion on Monday, the White House has omitted any individual assistance for homeowners, thousands of whom took damage to their homes, according to FEMA officials.

Only days away from starting school in one of only two states in the union without a mask requirement, the image of my son standing alone on the side of a battered street was not only a reminder of the precariousness of our times beyond our current crisis.

Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Trump-loving Republican, inexplicably waited an entire week after the derecho leveled mile after mile of the state to formally request presidential disaster relief. That served as a stark reminder of the state’s and the nation’s blundering inaction on the dual crises of COVID-19 and climate change facing my son’s generation.

While Iowa continues to falter in its COVID response, declared as a “red zone” by an internal White House coronavirus task force report last month, the climate strikers have refused to attend school on Fridays for more than a year as a way to call out our state and nation’s failure to to declare a climate emergency.

Their motto, inspired by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg: It’s time for leaders to act on science, and treat all crises as a crisis.

A term coined in the 1880s by a University of Iowa scientist, Danish immigrant Gustavus Hinrichs, as a “straight blow of the prairies,” the derecho is also a devastating rejoinder to our nation’s business-as-usual policies — be it a flawed response to the COVID outbreak, or the stunning inaction to the unfolding climate crisis — that adapting to a failed system is not “adaptation.” It’s failure.

Instead of failing our children — or allowing the failure of policy-makers in Iowa and in Washington to place our children on the edge of becoming a lost generation — perhaps it’s time to hit the pause button, pull our kids from school and focus full-time on climate solutions.

The derecho didn’t just level our state. It leveled our confidence in statewide and federal leadership.

That may sound hyperbolic, but as teenagers in a family that has personally experienced the pandemic, as well as historic flooding, fires and catastrophic storms within their brief lifetimes, my kids recognize that they are living in age of potential environmental collapse — and it’s terrifying.

Their response, as climate strikers, is incorrigibly defiant: School can wait — most schools in Cedar Rapids have been severely damaged. Adults first need to deal with the COVID and climate crises.

“We teenagers and children shouldn’t have to take the responsibility,” Thunberg told our town last fall, when she joined my son’s climate strike in Iowa City. “But right now the world leaders keep acting like children and somebody needs to be the adult in the room.”

I’m not sure the adults in the room were listening.

In defiance of the Paris climate agreement, the Trump administration continues to roll back environmental regulations, including recent methane leakage rules for gas and oil companies. Here in Iowa, despite record production of wind energy, greenhouse gas emissions rose by 3.3% last year as our state went through three historic floods and record heat waves and fires swept from the Arctic to Australia to the mega-droughts of the American Southwest.

Three months ago, our children watched in astonishment as Gov. Reynolds was recognized at a special White House celebration for “turning the corner” on COVID cases, in the same week that a single slaughterhouse in nearby Waterloo, Iowa, recorded 1,300 coronavirus cases and several deaths among its workers, an outbreak that remains among thee nation’s worst.

In the state that has the highest per capita rate of COVID cases in the Midwest, with 50,000 cases and nearly 1,000 deaths among just 3 million residents, is it not failure to send our kids to school in the coming days? Their local school district should still be considered unsafe, according to a recent Times Opinion analysis based on guidelines from the Harvard Global Health Institute, since it consistently records more than 25 cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 people.

Not according to Reynolds, whose “Return to Learn” mandate sets benchmarks for shifting to online learning at three times the rate of COVID positivity recommended by the World Health Organization. Reynolds rebuked an AP reporter earlier this month for “scare tactics that’s being laid out by the media,” after he asked her about school board and teacher concerns over contracting the virus. A few days later, an AP report uncovered a “horrifying data glitch” in COVID data collection in Iowa, finding that the “Iowa Department of Public Health has inadvertently been reporting fewer new infections and a smaller percentage of daily positive tests.”

It gets worse, according to our kids.

The derecho was not the only climate phenomenon this past week: As Death Valley in California set a record at 130 degrees Fahrenheit — possibly the highest temperature ever recorded anywhere on the planet — the last fully intact ice shelf in Canada collapsed, and scientists declared that Greenland’s melting ice sheet has reached a point of no return. Millions of people have been displaced by flooding in China, India and Yemen in the last month, just as a new report was released that our kids have lived through the hottest decade in human history.

“We strike because 11,000 scientists warned of ‘untold suffering’ if we fail to act quickly on our climate crisis,” my son wrote in the university newspaper last winter, citing a global “Declaration of Climate Emergency” that was largely overlooked by our political leaders.

When Wall Street consulting firms like Moody’s Analytics warn the nation that impending climate change could result in a loss of an unfathomable $69 trillion during my son’s lifetime, it’s time to act on such warnings in a new way.

We need climate schools, not COVID schools, that reflect the realities of 2020 — not the antiquated policies of the past.

Our kids need to learn where their electricity comes from, visit solar farms and wind turbines, and see the importance of transitioning to renewable energy and a smart grid, instead of relying on 20th-century coal-fired power plants.

Instead of rushing our kids into knowingly unsafe schools for the first trimester (seven weeks), we should work with youth in our heartland communities to replant trees, especially in towns like Cedar Rapids, which has now lost 50% of its tree canopy.

In an agricultural state that still imports 90% of its food, we need to visit farms and learn about regenerative agriculture initiatives to save our soil and protect our quality, and even restore native prairies — 99% of which have been destroyed in Iowa.

With the inevitable delay and suspension of classes in schools across the nation this fall, why not have our children and schools focus on a curriculum of climate change from the growing pools of resources from scientists, climate experts, journalists, storytellers and artists, and the experiences of those in frontline communities?

Climate scientists are begging to be heard. With the Big Ten football season canceled, perhaps we can finally listen to them with the magnitude they deserve, as if a collapsing ice sheet were as important as watching grown men chase a pigskin in a stadium.

How much more outrageous is this proposal than sending our kids into incubators and chaotic hallways of the COVID virus?

How more irrational is this proposal than sending our kids to school at all, as the climate crisis unfolds before their eyes?

As celebrated theorist Buckminister Fuller concluded: “You never change things by fighting against the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.”

Or, as my son says on his street corner every week, climate strike sign in hand: Wake up, Iowa.

Rudy Giuliani accidentally tweets Google search on “dementia,” presumably targeting Biden

Former LifeLock spokesperson Rudy Giuliani appears to have extended his streak of high-profile technological gaffes by accidentally typing an intended Google search into a tweet and then posting it.

The subject of the former New York City mayor’s search/tweet appears to have been related to a forthcoming “major exposé” Giuliani claims he will unveil about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s cognitive ability. Giuliani teased the revelation in another tweet later that same day.

“Does dsm have 5 definitions of dementia and” tweeted Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s former informal cybersecurity adviser, who once butt-dialed an NBC News reporter in the middle of a sensitive conversation and left a three-minute-long self-incriminating voicemail message.

It didn’t take long for America’s Mayor to delete the apparent error, but resourceful Twitter users snapped screenshots before it was lost to the sands of time:

One of those times when the question answers itself #dementia @RudyGiuliani pic.twitter.com/vvjthTbjMk

— Rutherford B. Goode (@RPDtweets) August 18, 2020

Hours later, Giuliani tweeted a photograph of himself seated by a microphone and wearing the earphones he uses to record his podcast, reading a copy of the fifth edition of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” (DSM-V) — the chief authority for psychiatric diagnoses. Giuliani seems to have inserted a few sheets of printer paper into the section he’s reading.

The photo is captioned: “Currently doing research on a major exposé. This will completely shake the 2020 Presidential election. Stay tuned.”

Currently doing research on a major exposé. This will completely shake the 2020 Presidential election. Stay tuned. pic.twitter.com/5QvSgbNwXL

— Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) August 18, 2020

It appears from a short text conversation with Salon that Giuliani thought he’d deleted his tweet before anyone noticed. When asked whether he’d seen people mocking him for the apparent mistake, Giuliani replied:

What do you mean

When Salon showed him one of the tweets, Giuliani stopped replying, though his read receipts indicated he had seen the message.

In a follow-up conversation, Giuliani’s communications director, Christianné Allen, told Salon in a text message, “At this moment I cannot elaborate further than what was shared this afternoon.”

But a combination of the two tweets suggests that Giuliani had been conducting online research into the contents of the DSM-V — on the same day he posted a photo of himself reading a physical copy of the book — in preparation for delivering a supposedly devastating analysis of Biden’s cognitive ability for a “major exposé” on his podcast, “Common Sense.”

No such episode has yet aired.

Although Giuliani nominally runs a global cybersecurity firm, his awkward relationship to technology has become legendary. In November 2019, amid House impeachment hearings on the Ukraine scandal, in which Giuliani played a central role, Salon reported that the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York had accidentally texted what appeared to be a password to a Salon correspondent.

Giuliani, who has since confirmed to Salon that the aforementioned text was indeed a password, has routinely attempted to skewer Biden’s intellect, but has himself become infamous for rambling media appearances. In response to Giuliani’s attacks on Biden’s intelligence in July, “Morning Joe” rolled a supercut of some of Giuliani’s lowlights as a Trump surrogate.

“I don’t understand it!” said host Joe Scarborough. “I just don’t understand why Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani and all these people who have a greatest hits package of being cognitively impaired would point to anybody else and suggest they’re cognitively impaired. We’ve been saying this for a long time. Donald Trump can’t attack Joe Biden on this issue, because for every clip they find, we can find 10 clips that make them look even more concerning.”

Giuliani’s last attempt at a “major exposé” of Biden led directly to the impeachment of his client, the president of the United States.

AOC welcomes help from anti-Trump Republicans but rejects John Kasich’s attempt to define party

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Monday welcomed the Democratic National Committee’s attempt to gather as much anti-Trump energy as possible ahead of the general election by reaching out to leaders from across the political spectrum, but made clear that she will reject any attempt by so-called “moderate” Republicans who are invited to the party’s convention to define what the Democratic Party stands for.

The New York Democrat responded to a “BuzzFeed” interview in which former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican who is speaking at the Democratic National Convention Monday night, downplayed the significance of Ocasio-Cortez’s rise in the party over the past two years.

Claiming the American electorate is, by and large, “moderate,” Kasich dismissed Ocasio-Cortez as being “extreme” and representative of a small minority of Democratic voters.

“Because AOC gets outsized publicity doesn’t mean she represents the Democratic Party,” said Kasich, who ran against President Donald Trump in the Republican primary in 2016 and has been a vocal critic of the president. “She’s just a part, just some member of it.”

Kasich is one of several Republicans speaking at the convention on Monday night. While citing the importance of Republicans like Kasich rejecting Trump, Ocasio-Cortez made clear that the Democratic Party shouldn’t allow GOP supporters of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to dictate the party’s overall message to voters.

“Something tells me a Republican who fights against women’s rights doesn’t get to say who is or isn’t representative of the Democratic Party,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

It’s great that Kasich has woken up &realized the importance of supporting a Biden-Harris ticket. I hope he gets through to GOP voters.

Yet also, something tells me a Republican who fights against women’s rights doesn’t get to say who is or isn’t representative of the Dem party. https://t.co/38h6JGpbMj

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 17, 2020

While Kasich is right to back former Biden over Trump in the election, the congresswoman added, he is still “an anti-choice extremist” and “is not a friend to workers.”

It’s great that Kasich has woken up &realized the importance of supporting a Biden-Harris ticket. I hope he gets through to GOP voters.

Yet also, something tells me a Republican who fights against women’s rights doesn’t get to say who is or isn’t representative of the Dem party. https://t.co/38h6JGpbMj

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 17, 2020

In 2018, when he was governor of Ohio, Kasich signed into law a ban on second trimester dilation-and-evacuation abortions, a common medical method of terminating a pregnancy. Under the law doctors who perform the procedure could face a fourth-degree felony and up to 18 months in prison. In 2019, a federal court ordered the state not to enforce the portion of the law that would penalize providers.

Kasich also attempted to gut collective bargaining rights for 715,000 state employees — but was overruled by Ohio voters when the bill he signed was put up for a referendum.

“We can build bridges and not lose sight of our values,” said Ocasio-Cortez, who is slated to speak for one minute at the convention.

Contrary to Kasich’s claims, Ocasio-Cortez’s views on the climate, healthcare, and the economy are actually in line with those of a majority of Americans, particularly Democratic voters.

In April, a month into the public health and economic crises which have forced millions of people off their employer-sponsored healthcare coverage, a Hill-HarrisX poll found that 69% of respondents supported Medicare for All. Polling last year found nearly two-thirds of Americans supported a Green New Deal to create jobs while combating the climate crisis, including 86% of Democrats. Sixty-four percent of respondents to a Reuters poll in January backed a wealth tax for the wealthiest Americans, including 77% of Democrats and 53% of Republicans.

Writer and organizer Melissa Ryan slammed Kasich for his dismissal of Ocasio-Cortez, suggesting that the Democratic Party’s embrace of an “anti-choice union buster” would convince few on-the-fence voters to back Biden while shoving aside a popular progressive whose views are in line with most Democratic voters.

“Courting John Kasich might net some Independents and disgruntled Republicans, which is fine for this election,” tweeted “New York Times” op-ed writer Wajahat Ali. “But Democrats would be wise courting progressives if they want to thrive in the future. Stop being afraid of the label and personalities like AOC who will keep rising.”

Veterans Affairs scrambles to find alternatives to USPS as medication shipments slow down: report

On Tuesday, CNN reported that the Department of Veterans Affairs is increasingly trying to use alternatives to the Postal Service as critical shipments of veterans’ medication is delayed, including private competitors like UPS and FedEx.

“The VA acknowledged the change in an email to a veterans group called Disabled Vets of America after it raised the issue on behalf of patients who had reported significant delays in receiving medication from USPS in recent weeks amid a nationwide slowdown, according to a copy of the correspondence reviewed by CNN,” reported Zachary Cohen. Areas where the VA is switching to private delivery service “include Detroit, parts of New York and New Jersey, which were identified as hotspots with delivery delays, according to the VA email to veterans group.”

“VA has experienced an influx in mail-order prescriptions during the coronavirus pandemic as entry restrictions at facilities have prevented large numbers of patients from refilling their medications in person, a regional VA official told CNN,” the report continued.

The VA maintains that it is not completely unprecedented for the agency to use private delivery services, and that most medications still being shipped by USPS arrive within three days. However, according to the Military Times, some senators have reported that they have heard from “hundreds” of veterans who have been waiting for vital medications for weeks, some of whom have missed doses as a result.

Faced with public outrage and state lawsuits over USPS policy changes blamed for delays, President Donald Trump’s newly-appointed postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, announced on Tuesday the Postal Service would pause the changes ahead of the November election.

7 damning revelations from the new Senate report on Trump and Russia

Long after any debate about whether President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia’s 2016 election interference might lead to his impeachment had fizzled out, the Senate Intelligence Committee dropped a bomb of a report on Tuesday including explosive new details of the sordid affair.

While the new report doesn’t completely upend the story of the 2016 campaign as we knew it — much of the outline of the conduct was contained in former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report and previous news articles — it highlights new details and facts that emphasize the duplicity going on behind the scenes. It completely undermines the notion, pushed by the president and attorney general, that there was no basis for the investigation and shows there is ample evidence for what was once widely discussed as “collusion.” And this is particularly significant because the report was developed by a committee led by Republicans — they can’t be painted as enemies of the president, as Mueller’s team was.

Here are seven of the most striking details from the new report:

1. Paul Manafort worked closely with a “Russian intelligence officer.”

Among the most explosive allegations in the Mueller report were the ties between Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager for the summer of 2016, and Russia. In particular, he had a series of contacts and meetings with Konstantin Kilimnik, who was known to have a past with Russian intelligence.

But the committee’s report is much more explicit about Kilimnik’s role:

Manafort hired and worked increasingly closely with a Russian national, Konstantin Kilimnik. Kilimnik is a Russian intelligence officer. Kilimnik became an integral part of Manafort’s operations in Ukraine and Russia, serving as Manafort’s primary liaison to Deripaska and eventually managing Manafort’s office in Kyiv. Kilimnik and Manafort formed a close and lasting relationship that endured to the 2016 U.S. elections and beyond. [emphasis added]

And it noted: “On August 18, 2016, Kilimnik told a journalist in private that he had ‘almost daily contacts with Manafort these days on this ‘Ukraine crisis.'”

“The report states flatly that Konstantin Kilimnik is a Russian intelligence officer,” noted NBC reporter Ken Dilanian. “So let that sink in: Donald Trump’s campaign chairman worked closely with a Russian intelligence officer. What say those who argue the FBI had no reason to investigate?”

2. Kilimnik and Manafort are even potentially tied to the criminal hacking of Democratic emails.

Kilimnik’s links to Russian intelligence and Mueller’s finding that Manafort shared internal campaign data with him were some of the most explosive revelations in the entire scandal. And the Senate report makes those findings even more inflammatory by tying Kilimnik to the hack-and-leak operation, the most significant aspect of the Russian attack on 2016:

Some evidence suggests Kilimnik may be connected to the GRU hack-and-leak operation related to the 2016 U.S. election. This assessment is based on a body of fragmentary information.

The information that follows is redacted.

The report also says: “Two pieces of information, however, raise the possibility of Manafort’s potential connection to the hack-and-leak operations.” What follows is redacted.

3. Trump discussed WikiLeaks with Stone during his 2016 campaign

In written responses during Mueller’s investigation, Trump denied recalling having communications with Roger Stone about WikiLeaks’s leaking of the hacked Democratic emails in 2016. A lot of evidence already suggested that was false and that Trump likely lied to Mueller about it — which would be a crime.

The Senate report lays out the contradiction clearly:

Trump, in written responses to the SCO, stated: “I do not recall discussing WikiLeaks with [Stone], nor do I recall being aware of Mr. Stone having discussed WikiLeaks. with individuals associated with my campaign.”1624 Trump further claimed that he had “no recollection of the specifics of any conversations I had with Mr. Stone between June 1, 2016 and November 8, 2016.”1625 Despite Trump’s recollection, the Committee ass~sses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his Campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions.

“Damning,” said Lawfare’s Quinta Jurecic, “especially in light of newly unredacted material from the Mueller report that suggests Mueller also thought Trump had lied to him about conversations re Wikileaks.”

4. Stone e-mailed draft tweets to Trump attacking Hillary Clinton for her anti-Russia views

The report explained:

On Sunday July 31, at 9:15 p.m., the day after speaking at length with Manafort, Stone called Gates. Ten minutes later, Stone had two phone calls with Trump that lasted over ten minutes. Stone then emailed Jessica Macchia, one of Trump’s assistants, eight draft tweets for Trump, under the subject line “Tweets Mr. Trump requested last night.”1552 Many of the draft tweets attacked Clinton for her adversarial posture toward Russia and mentioned a new peace deal with Putin, such as “I want a new detente with Russia under Putin.”

Politico’s Natasha Bertrand noted that Stone was suggesting these tweets even while he was trying to act as a conduit between the campaign and WikiLeaks.

5. Stone wanted WikiLeaks to drop new hacked emails after the Access Hollywood tape went live — and it did.

The report explained:

At approximately 4 p.m. on October 7, The Washington Post released the Access Hollywood tape. Witnesses involved in Trump’s debate preparation recalled that the team first heard of the tape about an hour prior to its public release. According to Jerome Corsi, however, news of the release also made its way to Roger Stone. Corsi and Stone spoke twice that day at length: once at 1:42 p.m. for 18 minutes, and once at 2:18 p.m. for 21 minutes. Corsi recalled learning from Stone that the Access Hollywood tape would be coming out, and that Stone “[w]anted the Podesta stuff to balance the news cycle” either “right then or at least coincident.” According to Corsi, Stone also told him to have WikiLeaks “drop the Podesta emails immediately.”

…

Corsi recalled previewing the Access Hollywood tape with conference call participants during one or two calls that day: a WorldNetDaily staff call at 1 :08 p.m., or a 2 p.m. call involving Total Banking Solutions that included Malloch. Corsi remembered telling conference participants that the tape was a problem and to contact Assange. Corsi then “watched all day to see what Assap.ge would do,” and when the Podesta emails were released, he thought to himself that Malloch “had finally got to Assange.”However, Corsi later told investigators that he did,not call Malloch or Stone after the WikiLeaks release to convey this reaction because, in contradiction to his earlier statements, he was “doubtful” that Malloch had succeeded.

…

After the Podesta emails were released on October 7, 2016, Trump and senior Campaign officials acknowledged internally and to Stone that Stone had predicted the WikiLeaks release about Podesta.

6. Kilimnik helped push the story that Ukraine intervened in 2016, but the committee found no evidence to support that view.

The report explained:

The Committee observed numerous Russian-government actors from late 2016 until at ;east January 2020 consistently spreading overlapping false narratives which sought to discredit investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections and spread false information about the events of 2016. Manafort, Kilimnik, Deripaska, and others associated with Deripaska participated in these influence operations. As part of these efforts, Manafort and Kilimnik both sought to promote the narrative that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered in the 2016 U.s: election and that the “ledger” naming payments to Manafort was fake.

It added:

Kilimnik appeared to be under the impression that Trump believed that Ukraine interfered. Kilimnik made this statement in a private email with a journalist, making the accuracy of the statement is difficult to assess. The Committee’s efforts focused on investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. However, during the course of the investigation, the Committee identified no reliable evidence that the Ukrainian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.

Fiona Hill, Trump’s former White House aide specializing in Russian affairs, famously called the Ukraine allegations a “fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”

7. The committee believed that WikiLeaks was actively collaborating with Russia, despite its claims to the contrary.

“Although WikiLeaks seeks to portray itself as a legitimate media organization, its disclosures have jeopardized the safety and privacy of individual Americans and foreign allies because WikiLeaks has made only minimal, and sometimes no efforts to redact sensitive information, and does not seem to weigh whether its disclosures add any public interest value,” the report noted.

It continued:

The Russian government has pursued a relationship with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks that includes formal partnerships with state-owned media platforms, government assistance for WikiLeaks associates and sources, and information sharing. This relationship has existed since at least 2012 and reflects an alignment between the Russian government and WikiLeaks in seeking to undermine U.S. institutions and security.

And then, in one heavily redacted section, the report leaves one sentence uncovered: “However, the Committee found significant evidence to suggest that, in the summer of 2016, WikiLeaks was knowingly collaborating with Russian government officials.”

“Patriot Act” is the toughest show to lose right now

Co-creator Hasan Minhaj announced on Twitter Tuesday morning that “Patriot Act” would not be returning for new episodes. While the news wasn’t entirely shocking given the uncertainties facing so much of TV production right now, that doesn’t make it any less disheartening.

“Patriot Act” had the breadth of a show that aired for far longer than its nearly two-year Netflix run. With an eye toward explaining some of the brewing sociopolitical fracture points while giving context for the unintended consequences of everyday life that so many people take for granted, “Patriot Act” packaged Minhaj’s personal hosting touch with a thorough dive into each weekly topic.

The key factor that’s separated out comedian-led shows like “Patriot Act” is exploring in which direction information flows. If these segments are just stand-up bits dotted with a few news clippings and some fancy photoshops, viewers can feel the hollowness. What made the best “Patriot Act” episodes engaging is that it derived its purpose from what it was trying to convey rather than simple aesthetics. The result was a show that managed to do both, providing helpful background introductions to international political malfeasance, corrupt lobbying practices, and the cultural impact of emerging trends both welcome and not.

There’s no denying that the disappearance of studio audiences hurt “Patriot Act” more than most other late night or weekly comedy shows. The show’s run of eight episodes during quarantine has maintained that same meticulous attention to detail, but a key piece of the “Patriot Act” spirit was audience interaction. Minhaj noticeably drew energy from the vocal crowd at the show’s tapings. Where the cadence of other hosts come at a fairly regular clip, Minhaj seemingly gave himself more freedom to let certain points sink in, sometimes to even let some deserved indignation simmer for just a little longer than usual. In turn, “Patriot Act” — the brainchild of Minhaj and writer/co-creator Prashanth Venkataramanujam — was a show built around a monologue that felt most like a conversation. There was even crowdwork! The laughs didn’t come from a faceless hoard. They were real people who were responding to the way Minhaj was addressing issues that meant something to them.

Read more from IndieWire: Brave new world: The advent of coronavirus scripted TV

For the majority who only got to watch Minhaj on a screen, “Patriot Act” respected them too. While the show found ways to address topics that gave potential entry points to viewers from a number of different backgrounds, “Patriot Act” knew when to let a joke breathe without overexplaining it, especially when Minhaj dropped in a reference to a musician or the NBA. (I only wish the Kings had done better in the bubble the last few weeks — a playoff spot would have at least softened this blow.)

It’s frustrating to see that Netflix, which touted the show’s debut with an “unprecedented” 32-episode order, won’t be going forward with it. Even when the show premiered in fall 2018, there was a tiny dose of skepticism toward Netflix’s “late night” strategy given the short leash the network had given “The Break with Michelle Wolf,” another show that ended far sooner than it should have. Netflix continues to have plenty of informational programming coupled with plenty of personality (the various “Explained” co-productions with Vox and the recently-released “Connected” among them). But going forward, there’s nothing on the Netflix roster that will fill that has the flexibility to respond to ongoing events with the immediacy that “Patriot Act” did. (IndieWire reached out to Netflix for comment; no official statement was released.)

What makes this news even tougher is that plenty of the topics “Patriot Act” has covered over the past two years remain relevant, too. Just look at the four episodes from last August: Video game development may not be an issue that’s top of mind right now, but it dovetails with a lot of ideas about worker exploitation that have rippled through the last six months. An uptick in opioid overdoses in quarantine brings a new perspective to the show’s episode on the explosion of fentanyl use. And a pair of episodes on public transportation insufficiencies and the dangers of cruise ships are proof that “Patriot Act” was tapped into ideas that the current health crisis exacerbated but certainly didn’t create.

So even though there wasn’t an imminent, viable way to return to the energy of a show that took full advantage of its world-class lighting and display setup, this is still a tough loss to take. It’s as much about losing “Patriot Act” from a post-vaccine world as much as it is knowing that it was still providing vital updates with Minhaj still hosting by himself. Over the past two years, whether it was helping to direct viewers to information about tenants’ rights during a historic wave of evictions or directly confronting world leaders with the consequences of their own policies, “Patriot Act” strove to make a tangible difference in the flow of global events. That will always have value, especially in an environment where plenty of shows seem content to merely observe from afar.

All past episodes of “Patriot Act” are available to stream on Netflix.

The recession is creating another generation gap

The coronavirus pandemic has not only taken over 170,000 lives in the United States as of the time of this writing, but has wreaked economic havoc in the process. Yet the damage, though terrible for most Americans, has been felt in different ways by different generations, with younger people experiencing disproportionate struggles when it comes to unemployment and achieving major life milestones. In a sense, the economy’s path of destruction is the opposite of the virus’s — in that the COVID-19 mortality rate is linearly correlated with age; while the worst economic effects are felt by the youngest working-age Americans.

Notably, the average duration of unemployment has dramatically increased since the onset of the pandemic. This means a lot more now than it did prior to the pandemic, because the unemployment rate itself has surged: after staying at or below 5 percent from December 2015 through March 2020, it skyrocketed to 14.7 percent in April and has stayed in the double digits ever since. (As of July, the unemployment rate was 10.2 percent.) With more people unemployed than ever, the consequences of needing to spend longer unemployed are even starker.

This consequence has been born the most by Americans from their mid-20s to their mid-30s, although older Americans have also been quite hard hit. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average duration of unemployment in May 2020 was 10.7 weeks for Americans who are at or above 65 years of age, 11.8 weeks for Americans between the ages of 45 and 64, 9.7 weeks for Americans between the ages of 35 and 44, 12.2 weeks for Americans from 25 to 34, 9.9 weeks for Americans from 20 to 24 and 8.6 weeks for Americans between the ages of 16 and 19. This means that the longest stretches have been endured by Millennials (who were born from 1981 to 1996), followed by Americans who are middle aged and senior citizens.

Young people have also suffered the horrors of unemployment much more than their older counterparts. By contrast, the latest data indicates that younger people are experiencing higher rates of unemployment than older ones in the pandemic era. But this time around, Millennials and Generation Z have much higher unemployment rates than their Boomer and Gen X counterparts — twice as high, in many cases. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that, as of July, 19.3 percent of Americans between the ages of 16 and 19 were unemployed — almost one in five. That number was comparable for Americans between the ages of 20 and 24, to 18.3 percent; and 11.4 percent for Americans between the ages of 25 and 34.

But there’s a dramatic drop-off as you look at older workers. Only 8.1 percent of 35 to 44 year olds were unemployed, 7.8 percent of 45-55 year olds, and 8.8 percent of the 55 and older workforce. In other words, the youngest generations are experiencing unemployment rates twice as high as those 35 and older. That’s a huge generational gap.

There are other statistics which suggest that young people have borne a disproportionate share of the economic burden during this recession. An online pay service provider for U.S. small businesses, Gusto, found that workers under the age of 25 were laid off at a rate 93 percent higher than those who were over 35.

That’s inflicted a psychological toll on Generation Z, who have become more risk-averse as a result of the economic setback. A senior researcher at Pew Research Center has commented that his data finds older Americans are more concerned about the health consequences of the pandemic while younger adults are more upset about the economic impact.

Many Millennials, who are slightly older than Gen Z, are suffering their second recession. Indeed, many Millennials were just entering the workforce when the 2008 recession hit, causing some to dub them “the unluckiest generation.” As a result, Millennials have struggled more than their antecedents to achieve such milestones as getting married, starting a career, buying a home, having children and in general achieving financial independence.

If the 2020 economic setback had been the first major downfall since the Great Depression, Millennials would most likely be in a better position to endure it. Instead it has become the economic equivalent of a one-two punch, forcing millennials who were already struggling or had just begun to recover from the last crash to be knocked back by another one.

From skydiving planes to DEA moles, “The Syndicate” explores the fall of a marijuana-smuggling ring

In October 2014, SWAT team officers and DEA agents kicked down the doors of 32 people around Denver, all members of a massive marijuana-smuggling ring. For almost five years, the group had fooled regulators overseeing Colorado’s medical marijuana industry by operating seemingly legitimate growhouses, all the while trafficking its harvests out of state using cars — and skydiving planes.

Yep, skydiving planes.

In his new podcast “The Syndicate,” journalist Chris Walker goes beyond some of the case’s flashy details, speaking to both the members of the criminal organization and the law enforcement agents who took them down, and uncovers how the push for legal marijuana in some states actually drives up black market demand nationally.

Walker spoke with Salon about how long he waited to report this story, how the members of “The Syndicate” gamed the medical marijuana system, and what it would take for federal legalization to actually work.

Tell me a little bit about how you became acquainted with the story that’s presented in “The Syndicate.” You were living in Colorado when the major drug bust happened, right?

Right, so in 2015 when this group was busted, or at least a grand jury indictment was handed down, I was working as a staff writer for the second largest newspaper in Denver, which is actually an alternative weekly. This press conference made a splash. I mean, it was the largest pot bust in Colorado since the state had legalized recreational weed in 2012. And it was just shocking the size and scale of this black market operation.

They were using skydiving planes to ship pot out of state. It was a collection of all these college friends and their family members that came from Minnesota to Colorado to hide undercover in the legal market. So they got plenty of attention at the time, there was a big press conference at the Colorado Attorney General’s office, and every outlet in Denver and many around the country, as well, covered this story.

But there were limitations. At that time, there were 32 court cases that came out of this, and the state of Colorado wanted to make sure that it could successfully prosecute each of those cases without additional media coverage marring their legal cases.

So, the state’s stayed tight-lipped about this for about four years, but I knew that I if I could ever get access to some of the operatives who were allegedly involved in this group, as well as get the law enforcement side, it would just be a fascinating insight into how black market groups operate. Moreover, it would answer this main question in my mind, “If Colorado had a seemingly thriving legal market, why would you take risks to set up this massive black market operation?”

Right. I think there’s this misconception that in an era of increased marijuana legalization that there’s less “need” for a black market, or that smuggling is on the decline — but what is the reality of the situation?

Right, so the reality of the situation is that weed is still illegal at the federal level, and not all states have legal weed. There are some states that just don’t have a legal market, so by definition, the only place where you can buy cannabis in those states is “the black market.”

But that’s not to say that there isn’t also a thriving black market in states that have legalized weed. That’s a whole other set of issues. I mean, California is experiencing problems on that front because weed is so heavily taxed there that many people are still choosing to use their street dealer rather than buying it a dispensary. So there are well-established markets in both states that have legal cannabis and in states that don’t.

Well — and you address this in the podcast — but what is the reality like for someone who is growing illegally who wants to start growing legally? It’s not as simple as walking down to the county clerk and getting a permit.

So in many states, including Colorado where this story is based, they’ve actually handed down a lot of control over the cannabis industry to local municipalities and cities. Then there is state involvement as well. There are decisions and various powers given to authorities to award licenses depending on what the municipality’s comfort level with how many pot shops they’ll allow and how many grow facilities they will allow. Cannabis is a big business and there’s a lot of consumer demand for it, so the competition for a limited number of licenses is really stiff.

And what we’re seeing right now is a sort of corporatization in the cannabis industry and big Wall Street-backed companies that are starting in multiple states. We’re seeing multimillion dollar bidding wars for the limited licenses that come up in the new markets. So the idea of being a small “mom and pop” operation and starting from humble roots — pardon the pun — is just not feasible in many places.

One of the questions that is raised in “The Syndicate” is about how the medical marijuana system can be gamed, like it was by the alleged ringleader Tri Nguyen. Could you talk some about that?

This really gets to why many of these group members originated in Minnesota and came to Colorado, which had a legal market. So, let’s start from the standpoint of someone trying to start a large, illegal marijuana grow. If you’re doing that in a state like Minnesota, you have a couple options. You can try to do it outside, but that’s seriously exposed and easy to see from the air. You could try to do it inside, but that requires huge amounts of electricity and then you have to deal with the huge amount of waste that comes with harvesting cannabis. You’d have to be continually hiding that from, you know, even like your local garbage collector.

So, in Denver, there are over 600 cannabis cultivation facilities. That’s just in the city of Denver alone.

And they [the members of “The Syndicate”] were also taking advantage of an antiquated law in Colorado called the caregiving program. The state of Colorado expanded the program in 2008 and quickly registered so many caregivers that the state couldn’t really monitor what each and every one of them was going.

Under the caregiving program, they could grow up to 500 plants. So what this group did is they all registered as caregivers and then pooled all their pot together. They had paperwork that was official and signed by the state of Colorado. And they did have registered patients as well, but they were using all their allotted plants to really grow for the black market and ship it out of state.

And then in conjunction with what I was saying earlier, too, they could establish their warehouse right next to the hundreds of legitimate ones that are spread throughout the city.

On that note, you mentioned that you knew early on that you wanted to speak with people on both sides — you know, growing and distributing, and then on the law enforcement side. What did it look like when you were trying to gain access to some of these people?

So, the law enforcement side, that’s easier to answer. I approached the Colorado Department of Law. It was a fairly impressive investigation. I mean, it thoroughly dismantled this group. They figured out pretty much every person who was involved in it for a span of four years. So I approached the state and say, “Hey, I can tell you spent a lot of resources and time on this investigation, and I want to help you spotlight the work that you did, and also find out what this says about the black market.”

Colorado was on board, but they wanted to wrap up all their court cases before revealing more information at the time. Pretty much every other reporter in Denver had moved on from the story. They’d covered the bust, but they were on to other things. So, I had to wait until April 2019 for all the court cases to be concluded. The reason for that is that one personally actually went on the lam and it took until 2019 to locate him in North Carolina and prompt extradite him back to Colorado.

But once that happened, I was able to see a lot of evidence that existed around this case that I knew existed, but was sealed to me before — which included about 100 hours of recorded interrogation tape with 20 tapes.

Then approaching alleged members of this group was a whole other path that I had to go down. I spent considerable time trying to get in touch with each and every person. You some, some people didn’t want to talk about this, some people believe they were subjected to overzealous law enforcement and some people, you know, wanted to just sort of address the errors of their pasts and express remorse for what they had done.

Every single person was different,so those conversations were always interesting for me to test out. You know, how can I work with this individual to get their story out there in a respectful, but also truthful way, to make sure that I wasn’t getting spun as well?

Was that a fear of yours? I mean, how did you balance wanting to spotlight the work law enforcement did, while also giving voice to people on the other side of this bust — all without feeling like either side was playing you?

Yeah, it’s tough because I feel like in these situations, the truth always lies somewhere in between, right? Law enforcement would certainly tell this story one way. Then if you only had the perspective of the drug smuggling group, it would be skewed in another direction. I had to make a lot of decisions about what was a fair way to portray certain situations.

Here’s an example. The show covers some pretty dramatic SWAT raids that happened when the group was busted. This is a part of the story that is told very differently depending on who you talk to. On the drug smuggler side, it was a horrific experience, having a SWAT team bust through your windows and explode flash bangs in your home and terrorize your family. Then on the law enforcement side, it’s like, “Oh, well, this is absolutely justified because these people are so dangerous.”

The truth is probably somewhere in between in that it was probably overzealous on the side of the SWAT team, but there was probably some justification in that these guys were involved in a pretty shady underworld.

Well, and something that I found interesting about this reported podcast is that there are a lot of flashy details — like, skydiving drug mules, buried bags of cash, partying, cocaine. It sounds like a movie. How much of that was present in the initial media coverage surrounding “The Syndicate” drug bust?

Some of those details did come out in the initial media coverage and press conference around the bust in 2015. Because the state of Colorado is just as savvy as anyone else about garnering media attention, they knew that they could probably get more coverage of their investigation if they talked about the fact like “Oh, by the way, they were also shipping up to 900 pounds of per trip on these skydiving planes.”

For me as a journalist that specializes in narrative stories, I feel like some of those details are necessary if you’re really going to delve into a lot of policy angles and bigger picture questions about the law and justice in the United States. You need some of those more cinematic elements to just kind of coax your audience into some of the more intellectual questions that arise from these types of stories.

What are some of the policy issues that you’re hoping people maybe do consider if they’re listening to “The Syndicate”?

I think the first and most immediate one, or the most obvious one, is just this question of federal legalization. Would we have as much black market activity, and would a group like this have been able to pull off the feat they did, if we had just across-the-country legal cannabis? The answer is probably no.

I mean, I do some editorializing at the end of this show. I think it is an argument for taking cannabis off the schedule of drugs, or at least getting it out of Schedule I drug classification at the federal level.

Polls show that two thirds of Americans favor recreational pot and around 80% favor medical marijuana. That’s just like a massive wave of support for federal legalization, which could immediately tackle part of this problem.

But even if you were to do that, then this is returning the conversation again to states like California and, to some extent, Colorado. Legalizing weed nationally is just not going to solve the problem overnight. You still need to make sure that consumers can find weed in conveniently available locations. This has happened in Canada, for instance, where there are jurisdictions with just no pot shops, so everyone in that jurisdiction who wants to buy weed has to get it from a black market dealer, right?

And then even if you have legal dispensaries, you’ll also need to ensure supply and then also have a competitive price. If there is a huge markup, the vast majority of buyers are still going to turn to the black market because they’re just like, “No, I’m not willing to pay twice as much to get weed from a dispensary.”

So, all of which to say, federal legalization is a step towards combating some of these problems, but it’s a long road ahead. There’s a lot of considerations that need to be carefully weighed to make sure we can slowly chip away at the black market.

New episodes of “The Syndicate” debut every Tuesday. You can listen to the first three episodes here or listen in the player below.

“Fridge Wars” and “Chef & My Fridge” reflect the leftovers-style cooking we’re all doing now

Think about what your refrigerator looks like in that two to three day window before you finally break down and head back to the grocery store — especially now, during the pandemic.

You know what I’m talking about; the vegetables are starting to wilt, there’s a nearly empty carton of eggs and while there isn’t enough leftover pasta to reheat for a full meal, there’s too much to just toss it out.

There’s probably a lot of random items, too, like that half-full tub of shrimp paste you dip into occasionally to make curries, or maybe an unopened culinary gift — homemade pickles or a jar sourdough starter from a friend who was going through a bread phase — you’ve been waiting to use. (You also almost certainly have a surplus of chickpeas.)

During that window, it takes some creativity to throw together an even moderately tasty dinner. And that concept — culinary ingenuity in the face of the mundanity of week-to-week home cooking — is exactly what makes the CW’s “Fridge Wars” and its predecessor, Korean import “Chef & My Fridge,” the only kind of cooking competition shows I want to watch right now.

The premise of “Fridge Wars”is simple: Two competing professional chefs are challenged to cook a gourmet meal using only the ingredients taken from the refrigerators of ordinary families. Unlike programs like “Chopped” or “Iron Chef,” there isn’t a pantry of additional ingredients or spices for the contestants to draw from. What you see is what you get.

The meals are then served to and judged by the families whose fridges were raided. The chefs don’t get to speak with them beforehand, so they have to try to assess their tastes based on the items in and on the refrigerator, like family vacation photos and activity calendars.

Sometimes they’re cooking for a group of roommates whose reliance on meal delivery apps have rendered their fridge a ticking time bomb of styrofoam-packaged meals ready to expire; other times, they’re preparing a meal for a blended Icelandic-Vietnamese family with a fishmonger father.

There’s the occasional random last-minute challenge thrown at the competitors, but the meat of the show is in watching someone engage in the all too relatable act of attempting to transform freezer-burned chicken and an assortment of oddball condiments into something sumptuous. Their endeavors can alternately inspire awe or perhaps a little schadenfreude, but each episode made me realize I could definitely be a little more nimble in my own pandemic-era kitchen.

For example, in the face-off between Nicole Gomes and Dustin Gallagher which aired Aug. 16, the two chefs were presented with a fridge that belonged to a healthy-ish, but pretty picky, family of five who are fueled by boxed lasagnas, raw vegetable slices, and Costco-sized wedges of cheese. Most of the stuff that tends to appear on “pantry staple” lists — like citrus, spices and grains — were nowhere to be found.

But the chefs immediately adapt. Gallagher pulses Old El Paso hard taco shells to create the basis of a kind of faux-polenta. Meanwhile Gomes digs around for something (anything!) that could lend a little zing to her curry, before finally finding a tub of olives from the grocery store buffet that were stuffed with shaved garlic, which she promptly extracts and chops.

The family members’ reviews are mixed — the kids are hesitant to even try Gomes’ curry and Gallagher’s tzatziki-based Caesar dressing, while their parents are more game — but I finished watching the episode ready to raid my own refrigerator and see what I could cook up.

I feel the same way after watching “Chef & My Fridge,” a culinary competition program that first debuted on South Korea’s JTBC network in 2014. Instead of raiding the kitchens of average families, chefs are challenged to cook from the refrigerators of celebrities, ranging from K-pop stars to actors and comedians, many of whom (like in the case of legendary actor Lee Deok-hwa) have no idea what’s even in there.

“The project that turns your leftovers into an amazing dish!” the show’s title sequence promises. “The best chefs in Korea will take care of your fridge!”

Where “Fridge Wars” is a little more muted — with a sleek set and a light, percussive soundtrack — “Chef & My Fridge” has all the exuberance popular in many East Asian variety programs. There’s enthusiastic live commentary, ribbing from the audience, boi-oi-oing sound effects when bottles are opened and a cute animated cat as a mascot. Check out this Korean-language clip in which Gordon Ramsay is a guest competitor:

In the nearly 200 episodes that have been filmed, a lot of different culinary traditions have been represented, from Korean to Japanese to Bulgarian — though thus far, only male chefs have been tapped to participate, which is a ridiculous oversight. Regardless, it’s amazing what the chefs can do in the 15 minutes (!) they have to compete; this is the show that made me question why I had never put hollandaise on a grilled cheese sandwich for brunch, or used granola as a coating for pork belly, which could then be served over a savory oatmeal-congee hybrid.

In an era where we’re all cooking from home more often — and grocery store trips have likely become either a rare treat or a something more akin to an anxiety-inducing mission away from homebase — the enthusiasm shown by the contestants on both “Fridge Wars” and “Chef & My Fridge” for barren or bizarrely-stocked kitchens is energizing. While like me, you may not have the skills of a professional chef, both programs will hopefully inspire you to survey the contents of your own refrigerator with a chef’s eye.

“Fridge Wars” airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on The CW or can be found on the CW app/website. A selection of translated episodes of “Chef & My Fridge” are streaming on Netflix.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy donated big to GOP, Trump — his wife got ambassador post

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a top donor to President Trump’s election campaign and the former head fundraiser for the Republican National Convention, made a series of major donations to the Trump campaign and Senate Republicans leading up to his wife’s nomination as U.S. ambassador to Canada, federal election records show.

In the weeks surrounding his wife’s nomination, DeJoy gave the Trump Victory PAC $360,600. He also gave a $35,000 maximum donation to the Senate GOP election committee, which is chaired by one of the senators now tasked with confirming his wife, Aldona Wos, for the Ottawa post. That donation came the day after Trump announced his intention to nominate her.

Two other senators on the Foreign Relations Committee have also taken money from DeJoy or Wos, and now must weigh her qualifications for the ambassadorship, raising questions about potential conflicts of interest.

In recent weeks, pressure has mounted on DeJoy, who caught fierce backlash from Democrats and U.S. Postal Service employees alike last week after reports that the USPS had warned 46 states that mail ballots might not be delivered on time for Election Day, potentially disenfranchising millions of voters.

Numerous recent reports have detailed how policy changes handed down under DeJoy have cut overtime and slowed down mail delivery across the country. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a letter to DeJoy last week that he had “confirmed that contrary to prior denials and statements minimizing these changes, the Postal Service recently instituted operational changes” shortly after he assumed office.

Those changes, they said, “now threaten the timely delivery of mail — including medicines for seniors, paychecks for workers, and absentee ballots for voters — that is essential to millions of Americans.”

DeJoy’s ascension to postmaster general dovetails with his wife’s trajectory to the ambassadorial post in Canada, and both now find themselves under scrutiny.

Ambassadorships are frequently awarded to top political campaign donors, and that practice is certainly not limited to the Trump administration — though it offers plenty of examples. Former EU ambassador Gordon Sondland, for instance, who became a key figure in the Ukraine impeachment scandal, was accused of having “bought” his position after he gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee.

Wos, in fact, may stand out among Trump appointees as one of the more qualified for her position: In 2004, she was named ambassador to Estonia under President George W. Bush.

However, the same pay-for-play questions arose at the time because of DeJoy’s major financial support for Bush ahead of the 2004 election. Wos served in the position for 18 months, less than half of one presidential term, stepping down in December 2006.

But experts and Democratic officials suggest that he timing in this case suggests something beyond the cynical D.C. norm of a campaign megadonor reaping a reward. DeJoy not only gave big to Trump’s campaign and inauguration, he continued giving to Trump and other influential Republicans after the president took office — indeed, regularly throughout his term — and his donations have escalated at key points along the ambassadorship’s timeline.

“Although it is not a surprise that a person nominated to serve as an ambassador is a large campaign donor, these donations are remarkably close in time with the nomination process,” said Kedric Payne, general counsel and senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center. “Generally, you would expect an attempt to at least avoid the appearance of a quid pro quo with suspiciously timed contributions. This may strain the public’s trust, to assume that the contributions during the nomination process are coincidences.”

Senate officials familiar with the matter acknowledged to Salon that the timing is suspect, even considering the “norm” of ambassadorships as political gifts. In an email to Salon, House Oversight Committee chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., expressed skepticism about the entire affair.

“The Postal Service — and the Postmaster General — should be nonpartisan, independent, and free from undue influence from the White House. However, this Postmaster General is just the opposite,” Maloney said.

“He was chosen for his position after he donated millions of dollars to Donald Trump’s campaign and served as the Republican National Convention finance co-chair. The President then nominated Mr. DeJoy’s wife for a plum ambassador position, and they both continue to have significant stakes in the assets of competitors of the Postal Service,” she continued. “The American people do not want the Postal Service politicized in this way — they just want their mail, medicines, and mail-in ballots delivered in a timely way.”

The continuous flow of donations is unique to the Trump administration and in many ways a consequence of the president’s endless campaign. Unlike his predecessors, Trump essentially left the store open: He opened his 2020 campaign for donations unusually early, filing with the FEC on Jan. 20, 2017 — the day of his inauguration. Together with the Republican Party, Trump’s team established in 2018 what Politico described as an “unprecedented reelection machine” with Trump Victory, the campaign’s joint fundraising committee with the party that allows for unlimited donations — an unusually early date in the election cycle for such a joint committee.

Throughout Trump’s term, DeJoy has given heavily to Trump Victory, as well as to Republican committees, on a timeline that aligns in key moments with Wos’ ambassadorial nomination.

The day after the White House announced that Trump would nominate Wos as ambassador to Canada, DeJoy made a maximum $35,000 donation to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), filings show. The NRSC is the only official committee dedicated to electing Republican senators.

Furthermore, the Senate oversees the confirmation of U.S. ambassadors. The current chair of the NRSC, Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — which is currently holding confirmation proceedings for Wos.

DeJoy has made several maximum donations to the NRSC over the years, including when Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., was NSRC chair, according to federal filings. Gardner also sits on the Foreign Relations Committee.

In June 2017, Trump named Kelly Craft — who along with her husband had donated more than $2 million to the Trump campaign — as U.S. ambassador to Canada. Only days before that announcement, DeJoy and Wos both made donations to Trump Victory, giving $100,000 and $2,700, respectively, on June 6. (Wos’ first contribution to the committee of $2,700 was at the time the individual donation limit to a candidate.) At that time, DeJoy had not contributed to Trump Victory since making a $4,000 donation in October 2016.

Craft served until 2019, when on Feb. 22, Trump announced his intention to nominate her to replace UN ambassador Nikki Haley as she departed the administration. He formally sent Craft’s nomination to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on May 2 of that year, and the committee heard her nomination on June 19.

During that same timeframe, FEC records show, DeJoy significantly ramped up his giving to Trump Victory.

He and Wos each donated $35,000 to Trump Victory on Jan. 22, 2019, according to FEC records. Following the Feb. 22 announcement that the Canadian ambassadorship would be opening up, DeJoy poured in hundreds of thousands, records show: He gave a total of $320,000 to Trump Victory in the three months between April 3 and June 17, 2019, when he made his largest donation to the fund to date — $120,000. A few days later, Trump was reported to be considering Wos for the position.

Craft moved into the UN post in August, and her role in Canada was temporarily filled by career diplomat Richard Mills.

Trump later moved Mills to the UN on Jan. 6, 2020, where he now works under Craft. Federal filings show that a month before that move, DeJoy gave $35,000 to the NRSC — the maximum annual limit to that committee. DeJoy then donated another $150,000 to Trump Victory on Jan. 15 in two separate chunks, at the time his largest single-day contribution.

Then, on Feb. 11, the White House announced that Trump would nominate Wos as the next U.S. ambassador to Canada. The next day, FEC flings show, DeJoy made another annual maximum donation of $35,000 to the NRSC.

Then, on Feb. 19, 2020, the week after the White House announcement and DeJoy’s NSRC donation, he made his biggest single donation to Trump Victory to date: $210,600. Six days later, on Feb. 25, Trump officially nominated Wos.

Further, FEC records show that two other Republican senators who sit on the Foreign Relations Committee received donations from DeJoy and Wos. The couple gave a combined $10,000 — at the time maxing out — to then-presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, and DeJoy contributed $5,000 to Sen. Lindsey Graham’s 2014 campaign.

A Graham spokesperson did not reply to Salon’s request for comment. Romney’s office did not immediately reply, nor did press officers for the NRSC. A USPS spokesperson was unable to provide comment on the donations.

The timeline also aligns with DeJoy’s own ascent to postmaster general.

On Jan. 6, 2020, the same day that Wos’ predecessor Mills was moved to the UN, then-Postmaster General Megan Brennan agreed to postpone her planned retirement until the USPS could find a successor. This was seen as a signal that the USPS Board of Governors was considering nominating an outsider.

Later that month, DeJoy gave $150,000 to Trump Victory, followed by $210,600 the next month.

In a rare break with the president, Graham has defended the USPS in the face of Trump’s attacks to block funding: “The idea of cutting the Postal Service’s budget is not the right approach,” he said in a Washington Post article from last weekend, adding that he believes the president is “trying to stop what he sees as an effort to have mass mail-in voting.”

Romney has also spoken out.

“My biggest concern, frankly, with regards to voting fraud has been that there would be some kind of hacking of our voting electronic systems, and that voting machines or tabulating equipment would be hacked,” Romney said in a Friday interview with the Sutherland Institute.

“When politicians attack a judicial system, attack a voting system . . . attack a free press, these things threaten the foundation upon which not only our own democracy rests but democracies around the world rest,” he added.

If the donations are enough to push Romney, Graham and Young to recuse themselves from Wos’ confirmation hearings, it could throw her confirmation into doubt.

All executive branch nominees are required to disclose financial records to the Senate ahead of their confirmation hearings, and committees usually do due diligence on campaign donations. An official with the Foreign Relations Committee could not immediately confirm to Salon whether Wos voluntarily disclosed the donor history outlined above.

DeJoy himself is scheduled to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee Friday. The House of Representatives has called DeJoy to testify next Monday about what many Democrats and other observers see as a troubling pattern to suppress votes in November’s general election. House Democrats threatened DeJoy with arrest if he does not appear, and he has said he will comply.

“This is what collusion looks like”: GOP-led Senate report “far more devastating” than Mueller probe

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s final report on its bipartisan Russia investigation revealed even more numerous contacts between President Donald Trump’s advisers and Russian operatives than former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

The committee, which is chaired by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., on Tuesday released its fifth and final report, totaling nearly 1,000 pages, following a three-year bipartsian investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The report documents the extent to which Russia sought to influence the election — and members of Trump’s team welcoming their assistance.

“The Senate report — even more extensive than the Mueller investigation — paints a far more devastating picture of Russian intelligence operatives’ access to the Trump campaign, describing far more insidious connections than even Mueller did in his report,” Politico’s Kyle Cheney wrote.

The report, like Mueller’s, did not conclude that Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia, but it found that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort worked with a “Russian intelligence officer” and handed him internal campaign data. The report also suggested that Manafort might also be linked to Russia’s hack of the Clinton campaign.

“The committee obtained some information suggesting that the Russian intelligence officer, with whom Manafort had a longstanding relationship, may have been connected to the G.R.U.’s hack-and-leak operation targeting the 2016 U.S. election,” the committee’s Democrats wrote. “This is what collusion looks like.”

The report found that Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime associate of Manafort, was a “Russian intelligence officer” who might be connected to Russia’s “hack and leak operation.” (Manafort provided internal Trump campaign polling data to Kilimnik.)

The committee wasn't able to determine why Manafort shared polling data with KILIMNIK but also suggested he might have been connected to the hack and dump of Democratic emails by the GRU. pic.twitter.com/hEGubMnT6O

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 18, 2020

While the Senate Russia report mentioned Kilimnik 819 times, the House Republican report did not mention him once. The Senate report also found that Kilimnik later “almost certainly helped arrange some of the first public messaging that Ukraine had interfered in the U.S. election.” Trump has repeatedly echoed the claim that Ukraine interfered in the election — not Russia.

Another part of the report also cited evidence raising the “possibility of Manafort’s potential connection” to the hack and leak operation, though the evidence was redacted.

Senate Intel report also raises the enormously consequential possibility that Manafort was involved in the hack-and-leak operations against the Democrats.

But it cites two redacted pieces of information that "raise the possibility of Manafort's potential connection" pic.twitter.com/TOsvAiRjbQ

— Dustin Volz (@dnvolz) August 18, 2020

The report described Trump’s former campaign chief as a “grave counterintelligence threat,” who worked with Russian operatives before and after the election.

Senate Intelligence Committee report concludes Paul Manafort was a "grave counterintelligence threat" to the Trump campaign who worked with people with ties to to Russia's government before and after the election pic.twitter.com/SrN6ClcLGZ

— Dustin Volz (@dnvolz) August 18, 2020

The report also found that Trump did discuss WikiLeaks with longtime adviser Roger Stone, even though he told Mueller’s team that he did “not recall” doing so. It also revealed that Stone directed an associate to request a leak of hacked emails by Clinton’s top aide when the infamous Access Hollywood tape dropped. The emails were published a half hour after the release.

Like the Mueller report, the Senate report also detailed efforts by Trump and his team to impede the years-long probe.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chairman of the committee, urged the public to “review the documented evidence of the unprecedented and massive intervention campaign waged on behalf of then-candidate Donald Trump by Russians and their operatives and reach their own independent conclusions.”

Rubio, however, tried to spin the report as favorable for the president.

“We can say, without any hesitation, that the committee found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election,” he said in a statement.

“What the committee did find however is very troubling,” he added. “We found irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling.”

But Rubio’s statement brushed over actions by Trump’s advisers, as well as the president’s own statements to investigators.

One part of the report notes that Trump told Mueller in written responses that he did “not recall” discussing WikiLeaks with longtime adviser Roger Stone, who was later convicted in the former special counsel’s probe before being granted clemency by the president.

“Despite Trump’s recollection, the committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions,” the report said.

Trump told Mueller in written answers that he recalled no conversations with Stone about WikiLeaks.

SSCI: "The Committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his Campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions." pic.twitter.com/zQYuwkCeP5

— Dustin Volz (@dnvolz) August 18, 2020

The report also noted that WikiLeaks “likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort” by publishing stolen Democratic emails.

Stone “obtained information indicating” that Clinton campaign chief John Podesta would “be a target of an upcoming release, prior to WikiLeaks releasing Podesta’s emails . . . Stone then communicated his information to Trump,” the report said.

WikiLeaks/Assange has long maintained Russia was not the source of the hacked Democratic materials. But the committee says it "found significant evidence to suggest that, in the summer of 2016, WikiLeaks
was knowingly collaborating with Russian government officials.” (208) pic.twitter.com/vC1kSbgkN0

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) August 18, 2020

Stone directed an associate to tell WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to “drop the Podesta emails immediately” the day the Trump campaign learned about the looming Access Hollywood tape.

Some details about the day of the Access Hollywood tape/Podesta emails release: Trump campaign team heard about the tape an hour before its release. Stone told Corsi to get Assange to "drop the Podesta emails immediately." WikiLeaks did so 30 min after tape published. (249) pic.twitter.com/rKfDnJ511f

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) August 18, 2020

The report also noted that the Senate investigation was met with “unprecedented potential executive privilege claims” from the White House.

“The committee was surprised by these assertions, because they were made inconsistently and because they have no basis in law,” the report said.

SSCI says it probe was significantly impeded due to unexpected claims of executive privilege from WH counsel’s office on behalf of transition team.

“The committee was surprised by these assertions because they were made inconsistently and because they have no basis in law." pic.twitter.com/ywwAK30Nwp

— Dustin Volz (@dnvolz) August 18, 2020

“The Trump campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort,” the report added.

Senate Intelligence report on Trump campaign & #WikiLeaks / DNC hack

"The Trump Campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort" pic.twitter.com/i74ssUZaNG

— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) August 18, 2020

The report further concluded that Donald Trump Jr. might have obstructed the investigation, but the panel declined to pursue the issue due to “time and resource considerations.”

Apparently, Kushner, Don Jr. and K.T. McFarland all appeared unaware that they were part of a joint defense agreement pic.twitter.com/xRe5D8c0oC

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 18, 2020

Trump Jr. participated in the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya about obtaining dirt on Hillary Clinton. Veselnitskaya’s ties to the Russian government “were far more extensive and concerning than what had been publicly known,” the report said.

The report concluded by warning that “what happened to the United States in 2016 should be an alarm bell.”

“Russia is actively interfering again in the 2020 U.S. election to assist Donald Trump, and some of the president’s associates are amplifying those efforts,” the report said. “The Russian intelligence services’ assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process, and Trump and his associates’ participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats” to the homeland.

The report ends "the Russian intelligence services' assault on the integrity of the 2016 US electoral process and Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats" to US nat sec. pic.twitter.com/9v3p8SQgux

— Michael McAuliff (@mmcauliff) August 18, 2020

How the pandemic is straining our friendships

I’m ashamed to admit that I waited a month before telling a friend that I wasn’t going to attend her wedding. When the pandemic hit in March, we texted back and forth about her wedding plans. She had been engaged in February, and said they were still going forth with the wedding as normal. At the time, who could blame her? In March, nobody would have guessed — or perhaps accepted — that the rest of the year would be totally shot.

So when I received an invitation in the mail last month and saw that she and her fiancé were moving forward with the September wedding — without pandemic precautions — I didn’t have to think twice about RSVPing “regretfully decline.” I care about my friend, but I’m not risking my life — or the life of my partner, who is an essential worker — to fly across the country and attend a wedding.

Still, I felt guilty, and feared my RSVP would affect our friendship. Yet it also made me reflect on the odd nature of friendships amid the pandemic, given that many of us can’t physically see or interact with our friends — or, in other cases like mine, we are riven by differences of opinion on safety precautions.

According to research published in the journal American Psychologist, a study of 1,545 people found that there was no change in mean levels of loneliness before and after the pandemic. That suggests that most of us have kept our relationships going, despite stay-at-home orders and social distancing recommendations.

“We were surprised by the overall remarkable resilience in response to COVID-19,” Martina Luchetti, PhD, an assistant professor at the Florida State University College of Medicine and lead author of the study published in the journal American Psychologist, said in a statement. “The pandemic is something that everyone is going through, and just knowing that you are not alone and that everyone is going through the same restrictions and difficulties may be enough in the short term to keep feelings of loneliness down.”

While this may be generally true, as the researchers noted, there have been individual-level changes to people and their relationships. Sure, people have found news ways to connect with and support one another, but the government’s piecemeal approach and politicization of safeguard measures have been tough on some friendships. David Bakke, a 48-year-old in Atlanta, Georgia, who works at National Air Warehouse, said his friendships have been “strained” during the pandemic.

“There have been mask disagreements, politician discussions that didn’t go well, and a whole host of other contingencies that haven’t fared well with people who I thought were my friends,” Bakke said. “I’ve met a few new folks online from participation in various social websites, and that has helped, but overall I’m rather disappointed in how things have played out.”

On a more positive note, Bakke said, there have been some friends who he’s been able to develop a “more positive” relationship with because they share similar beliefs and safeguards around the coronavirus.

“I feel sad about the relationships that have been damaged of late, but I am not regretful,” Bakke said.

Kelly Hancock, a registered dental hygienist and oral health care provider in Georgia, said she’s also felt some strain in her friendships. Hancock said she doesn’t feel like she’s been able to be a good friend to her close friend who just had her first baby.

“Of course I have texted her and called to check in, but nothing like I would have if we were not in this situation,” Hancock said. “When I was pregnant, she was there with me every step of the way bringing gifts and stopping by; unfortunately I haven’t been able to do the same in return.”

Hancock said she hasn’t even been able to see the baby yet. Indeed, as a front-line worker who comes in contact with many different people every day, she doesn’t want to risk exposing the baby and mother.

Rohan Arora, a 19-year-old living in Richmond, Virginia, said he sees many people his age losing friends. For Arora, he has become closer with his family.

“In general, I think people my age have actually lost friends, but they have gotten closer to their close friends and family,” Arora said. “Many of my friends and I are texting and calling much less than the frequency we talked to one another during the semester pre-pandemic.”

In some cases, a pause in normal life has led some people to make new friends. Paul Deane, founder of The Snow Trekker, told Salon in general people have become friendlier in his neighborhood. Neighbors stop to have long chats with each other; something that never really happened before the pandemic.

“I think it is because people have been locked inside their houses and are relieved to talk to someone new,” Deane said.

Vindy Teja, who is a professional life & divorce coach, said before the lockdown she was already focused on strengthening current relationships, and that doing that during lockdown has been a good way to cope.

“I have found giving and receiving support within friendship is to be, without a doubt, a valuable antidote to stressful and uncertain times like the one we’re facing now,” Teja said.

Nathalie Theodore, JD, LCSW, a psychotherapist in Chicago, agreed that maintaining friendships during this time is crucial for our mental health.

“Friendships help us feel connected and supported, which contributes to our overall sense of well-being and security during a time that feels very uncertain,” Theodore said. “It’s important to remember that we’re all experiencing the effects of chronic stress right now—so not only do you need your friends, but they also need you now more than ever.”

Theodore added that navigating friendships and social distancing can be tricky.

“People have varying degrees of comfort when it comes to socializing during a pandemic, so it’s important to agree on guidelines ahead of time to avoid conflict,” Theodore said.

As for me, I’m still not sure about the future of my friendship with my bride-to-be friend. I will send a wedding gift and wish her the best, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned about this wedding taking place. There is a certain irony here, I’m aware — knowing that the ritual of marriage is ancient, spans across cultures, and speaks to the deep human need for connection, love and support. Having weighed my options, I believe the best way for me to be supportive is to avoid getting or spreading the coronavirus, which would mar what should be a day of joy. Perhaps that’s the best a friend can do.

Trump donor Louis DeJoy “suspending” changes to US Postal Service “until after the election”

Trump-appointed postmaster general Louis DeJoy said on Tuesday that he is “suspending” recent policies that he has enacted that have slowed down mail delivery throughout the United States.

According to NBC News White House correspondent Geoff Bennett, DeJoy said that he did not want to give any appearance of impropriety by slowing down mail delivery weeks ahead of an election that is expected to see a record number of mail-in ballots.

“To avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail, I am suspending these initiatives until after the election is concluded,” DeJoy said.

According to the Wall Street Journal, DeJoy said he will stop “removing mail processing equipment and collection boxes” until after the election, while also saying that “overtime hours will continue to be approved as needed to process mail.”

Under DeJoy’s leadership, the United States Postal Service in recent weeks has removed mail-sorting machines and clamped down on overtime hours, which has led to widespread delays in mail delivery.

House Democrats reconvened from August recess this week to address alarming reports about mail delays occurring just before millions of Americans prepare to cast their ballots by mail in the 2020 election.

Trump compounded fears that he wanted to use the Post Office to suppress mail-in voting when he said recently that he didn’t want to give the Post Office money that it needed to handle ballots in this fall’s election.

Trump rages that Fox News has “changed” as network hosts praise Michelle Obama’s “great speech”

President Donald Trump lashed out at Fox News on Monday over its coverage of the Democratic National Convention despite appearing on the network just hours earlier.

Trump on Sunday complained that the network’s weekend news hosts were “not watchable” and “worse than Fake News @CNN.” He doubled down on his criticism on Monday, despite appearing on “Fox & Friends” that very morning, criticizing the network’s decision to air the Democratic Convention like every other news network.

“Fox will broadcast them more than they broadcast us. You know that,” Trump claimed during a speech in Minnesota, even though the network’s primetime lineup has been compared to North Korean state TV by critics for its fawning praise of the president and the hosts’ close ties to him.

Trump predicted that the network would “go down the tubes” if he is not re-elected.

“They have certainly changed a lot. Fox has changed a lot,” Trump said. “They’re probably turning off right now as I speak, but I don’t care. I tell the truth. One of the biggest differences between this year and four years ago is Fox. Fox is from a different planet — and too bad.”

Though the network’s primetime opinion hosts have continued to echo Trump’s talking points and attack his opponents, Trump’s relationship with the network’s “news” side hosts has been strained, especially after a contentious interview last month with host Chris Wallace.

That dynamic was on full display Monday during the network’s convention coverage as Wallace and other hosts praised former first lady Michelle Obama’s speech tearing into Trump.

“Whenever we look to this White House for some leadership, or consultation or any semblance of steadiness, what we get instead is chaos, division and a total and utter lack of empathy,” Obama said, adding that Trump was “the wrong president for our country.”

“He has had more than enough time . . . He is clearly in over his head,” she said. “He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us.”

Echoing Trump’s response to the number of coronavirus deaths on his watch, she added: “It is what it is.”

https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1295606641602297857

The Fox panel, which did not include the network’s Trump apologists, hailed the speech.

“She has the ability to connect with people through the screen. You got the sense when you talk about authenticity. She has it in spades,” host Dana Perino said. “She has that voice, she has clarity and she knows what she is out there wanting to do. She was trying to get everybody to really focus. And then she had a call to action: Ask for your ballot tonight. I think that the DNC, if they look over the course of the night, the first virtual convention of our history — I think they would say that Michelle Obama stuck the landing.”

Wallace agreed that Obama made a “heck of a contribution” to Biden’s campaign.

“She really flayed, sliced and diced Donald Trump, talking about the chaos, and confusion and lack of empathy, especially coming from this president and from this White House,” he said.

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Analyst Juan Williams praised Obama’s “great speech.” Conservative pundit Brit Hume added, “For someone who doesn’t like politics, she certainly is good at it.”

Later in the broadcast, anchor Bret Baier explicitly pushed back on Trump’s criticism.

“Listen, I just want to say, Fox News has not changed,” he said. “We have covered both parties’ conventions from the beginning of this network fully and fairly from all sides — and we will continue to.”

https://twitter.com/TVNewsHQ/status/1295562727465910272

Sen. Lindsey Graham’s seat moves further within Democratic rival Jaime Harrison’s reach: analysis

The influential election analysis publication Cook Political Report shifted its ranking this week of the contest for Sen. Lindsey Graham’s South Carolina seat from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican,” a reflection of recent gains made by the incumbent’s Democratic rival Jaime Harrison in the state.

“While there are still large hurdles that remain for Harrison to become the first Democrat elected to the Senate from South Carolina since 1998, it’s clear this race is becoming more competitive, and Graham faces an incredibly strong challenge,” Cook political analyst Jessica Taylor wrote Monday. “In the races in our Likely Republican column, this is also the one some national Republicans view as the more competitive. We are moving South Carolina from Likely to Lean Republican.”

Taylor pointed to a number of data points suggesting Harrison has picked up genuine momentum in the Palmetto State.

First, Harrison out-raised Graham in the first two straight quarters, and he stands about even with the three-term incumbent in the current cycle: Graham’s $30.9 million to Harrison’s $29 million, through the end of June.

Second is South Carolina’s relationship to the twin, urgent phenomena of the coronavirus pandemic and a national reckoning on race, the combination of which Taylor said “could help the Democratic challenger boost African-American turnout and woo white, college educated suburban voters to his side.”

“[T]he uncertainty and anger amidst the COVID pandemic — including a surge last month in South Carolina — has done just that,” Taylor continued.

The nationwide protests over racial injustice born in early June also benefit Harrison, who is Black, with “further motivation for turning out African-American voters in the state,” she added. (In late July, Graham’s campaign was called out for digitally darkening Harrison’s face in a campaign ad.)

Should Harrison emerge victorious, Taylor 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.

Graham, the chair of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, still holds an edge in Taylor’s estimation. But polls are consistently falling in favor of the underdog. She highlights a recent Quinnipiac University poll conducted July 30 through Aug. 3, which pegged the race at a statistical tie. Perhaps equally troubling for Graham, his approval rating was in the red, with 47% disapproving of his job performance and 43% approving of it.

The same poll showed independent voters in the state pulling 10 points in Harrison’s favor, who also led among Palmetto State women by a margin of five points. Taylor noted that “that slim advantage seems to be driven by Black women, since Graham is still winning white women by 26 points.” She added that Harrison was leading by 19 points among college-educated women and seven points among suburban voters.

Harrison, however, has been riding close with Graham for months now after a poll in late May showed the two in a statistical dead heat.

Though Republicans said their internal polling shows Graham with a bigger lead — per Taylor — publicly available internal Democratic polling aligns with Quinnipiac’s results. An internal survey last month from Cornell Belcher at Brilliant Corners Research & Strategies carried out on behalf of the Harrison campaign showed Graham up 43% to 41%. It included Libertarian and Constitution Party candidates, perhaps a boon for Harrison given Graham’s low favorability numbers.

Anecdotally, some Republicans appear to be nervous. An unnamed South Carolina Republican operative told Taylor that Harrison was running “a centrist Democratic campaign focused on dinner table issues that has captured a lot of disaffected moderates” and had put serious legwork into leveraging demographic realignments.

Harrison, former chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party and longtime aide to Democratic Rep. James Clyburn, told Salon in the first of a two-part interview that he saw a bellwether in 2018’s Republican-to-Democratic flip in the state’s 1st Congressional District in Charleston, a district which Trump won by 13 points in 2016.

“We’ve already seen change here,” he said. “Folks told us that we couldn’t pick up a congressional district, and guess what we did in 2018? Joe Cunningham won a district that we hadn’t won in 20, 30 years. And we won a state Senate race that year that we hadn’t won in 20, 30 years. For the first time, we have a Democratic-controlled city council in Greenville, the heart of the conservative vote.”

“Once again, the race has shifted in favor of Jaime Harrison’s movement to bring hope back to all 46 counties of South Carolina,” Harrison campaign spokesperson Guy King told Salon in a statement about the Cook ranking shift.

“Lindsey Graham’s response to this pandemic has made it clear: The people of this state are tired of an elected official more concerned about playing political games than he is about finding solutions to urgent problems,” King said. “Every day, more voters are turning towards Jaime Harrison, who they know will bring back integrity and principled leadership to this U.S. Senate seat.”

Cook’s shift appears part of a more broad trend the publication has noticed. In late July, it changed the national outlook for the Senate: Democrats are now favored to take back the upper chamber, thanks in large part to the main forces re-shaping the South Carolina matchup — the pandemic and racial justice.

“Taken together, that’s not just a perfect storm for Democrats,” Cook said, “but perhaps a perfect tsunami.”

James Clyburn to Fox & Friends host: “Don’t blame every Black person for some exception to the rule”

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) scolded Fox News host Brian Kilmeade for blaming “every Black person” for violence seen in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by a Minneapolis police officer.

“When it comes to racial justice, there’s no one more important than you than anybody else to get it right,” Kilmeade told Clyburn during an Monday appearance on “Fox & Friends.” “And that’s why I’ve been so personally disappointed to see the violence overwhelm the protests.”

“You’ve heard me speak out against this forever,” Clyburn pointed out. “We talked about this. We talked about our experience back in the ’60s when we got hijacked. John Lewis never asked anybody to burn anything. We were overtaken by the slogan ‘burn, baby burn.’ You can’t blame John Lewis for that.”

“Of course not,” Kilmeade interrupted. “Then why are you letting it get hijacked again? Why are you letting your message get hijacked and smothered?”

“You’re telling me that I’m letting it get hijacked?” Clyburn asked.

“Yes!” Kilmeade exclaimed.

Clyburn reminded the Fox News host that white supremacists had infiltrated the protests in Minneapolis to instigate violence.

“That’s what’s happening here,” the South Carolina Democrat noted. “You can’t blame those people who are protesting.”

Kilmeade pressed: “I didn’t hear anybody disseminate between Antifa and Black Lives Matter.”

“That’s not what I advocated,” Clyburn insisted. “Look at my 60-year record. I’m not to blame for anybody who wants to misuse any event. That is not what I am. That is not what we are. And I don’t want you assigning that to me.”

“I don’t blame every white person for that guy on your show earlier who’s now getting life for terrorizing a whole state, killing people,” he continued. “I don’t blame every white person for that. So don’t blame every Black person for some exception to the rule.”

“Good point,” Kilmeade agreed.

You can watch the video below from YouTube:

Fox News host Chris Wallace suggests “peaceful transition of power” may not happen if Trump loses

Fox News host Chris Wallace warned on Tuesday that a “peaceful transition of power” could be in jeopardy if President Donald Trump loses the 2020 election.

Wallace made the remarks after Trump suggested on Monday that the only way he would lose the election “is if the election is rigged.”

“This is troubling,” Wallace said. “He did it in my interview with him three weeks ago. He’s done it repeatedly before and since. The argument that if he loses, it’s because the election was stolen from him, not because of a majority of Americans voted against him, you know, obviously one of the things that we treasure in this country is the peaceful transition of power.”

“I’m not saying Joe Biden is going to win,” he continued. “But if that should happen and there’s certainly a possibility that it will, one would hope that whoever wins, whoever loses, that both sides will agree that was the judgement of the American people and they’re going to abide by it.”

You can watch the video below via YouTube:

The pesticide that caused bee colonies to collapse is killing birds now

Environmentalists and farmers were relieved to discover that the mysterious and sudden drop in bee populations in the past decade turned out to be linked to neonicotinoids, a class of insecticides that are chemically akin to nicotine. Solving that mystery was not merely important to ecologists, but also crucial to human survival: if major bee communities become extinct or near-extinct, it could devastate human food sources.

Yet as history shows, pesticides applied to kill one type of pest don’t generally stay confined to those animals. (See also: DDT.) Horrifyingly but perhaps unsurprisingly, scientists now believe that bees aren’t the only animals that are adversely affected by neonicotinoids. Many bird species, too, appear to be in decline as a result of neonicotinoids trickling up through the food chain.

According to a new research paper published in Nature Sustainability, rising use of neonicotinoids led to a drop in bird biodiversity in the United States between 2008 and 2014, scientists say. While bird populations have been steadily dropping anyway — the authors note that the bird population in the United States has dropped by an estimated 29 percent since 1970 — the researchers were able to separate out the general drop in bird biodiversity from the specific drop that appeared to be due to neonicotinoid spraying.

“Although neonicotinoid [pesticides] are applied at lower rates per acre than non-neonicotinoids, they are considerably more toxic to insects and generally persist longer in the environment,” the authors explain. Because birds can ingest neonicotinoids when they eat crop seeds or aquatic or emergent insects, there appears to be a correlation between consuming the pesticide and a decline in some bird populations.

Authors Yijia Li, Ruiqing Miao and Madhu Khanna were able to separate data out at the county level in the United States. They found that a “100 kilogram increase in neonicotinoid use per county” led to a 2.2% decrease in the grassland bird population (which primarily nest in grasslands); a 1.4% decrease in the non-grassland bird population; a 1.6% decrease in insectivorous bird populations (which primarily rely on insects for their diets) and a 1.5 percent decrease in non-insectivorous bird populations.

Those numbers might seem small, but they note that the effects of neonicotinoids become much larger over time, given that there are fewer birds available to mate and reproduce. The effect of neonicotinoids on bird populations is “substantially larger when the persistent effects of neonicotinoids on bird populations are considered through their reducing the number of birds left to reproduce,” they write. Taking account of that, they find that “the average annual effect of neonicotinoids on grassland birds is [a decline of] 12% and on insectivorous birds is 5%.”

In case one doubted the relationship between these pesticides and bird populations, there is another, very telling data point. In counties where neonicotinoid use declined, bird populations actually increased. “We do find a few counties in the northeastern and western United States where the use of neonicotinoids decreased over this period, leading to a small positive impact on bird populations,” the researchers write.

This is not the first study to draw attention to the possible impact that neonicotinoids could have on birds. Last year researchers at the University of Saskatchewan found that the pesticide imidacloprid, which is also a neonicotinoid, had a negative impact on the ability of migrating birds to lead healthy lives and successfully reproduce. In that study, white-crowned sparrows lost weight and delayed migrating after ingesting just a small amount of the pesticide.

The new study about neonicotinoids’ impact on birds forms the crux of a larger body of concern over the ways in which pesticides affect vital insect populations, particularly bees. In 2017 European scientists revealed that neonicotinoids can have a negative impact on pollinator health during normal agricultural conditions. They tested the effects of crops treated with neonicotinoids for three different bee species across three separate countries (Germany, Hungary and the United Kingdom). The scientists found that there was a negative correlation between neonicotinoid residues and reproductivity among two species of wild bees, indicating that neonicotinoids may lead to “a reduced capacity of bee species to establish new populations in the year following exposure.”

Another study, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution in 2017, examined the impact of the pesticide on bumblebee queens and found that “exposure to neonicotinoid insecticides could have dramatic impacts on bumblebee queens, leading to fewer bumblebee colonies, less pollination, and ultimately population extinctions.”

Bees are estimated to be responsible for pollinating more than 70 of the top 100 crops that make up 90 percent of people’s diets, and are crucial to the production of a number of commonly used products including elastic, musical instrument varnish, medical wound dressings, cotton, lip balm, skin cream and cotton.

Jared Kushner dismisses “hysterical” reports, calls 170,000 coronavirus deaths a “success story”

Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner doubled down this week on his claim that his father-in-law President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has been a “success” even as the number of deaths in the U.S. surpassed 170,000.

Kushner touted the administration’s response as a “great success story” in April, predicting that “a lot of the country should be back to normal” by June and that the country would be “really rocking again” by July.

Instead, large swaths of the Sun Belt and other states saw new large outbreaks, setting records for daily infections as states which rushed to lift lockdowns were forced to roll back their reopenings. Many large cities are planning to keep schools closed this fall, and many colleges are planning for online-only learning after recent reopenings have quickly been followed by new outbreaks.

The tenuous economic condition has left tens of millions out of work, and Trump and Senate Republicans continue to block an extension of federal unemployment benefits which House Democrats approved in May. Tens of millions face eviction in the coming weeks and months, and countless businesses have permanently closed.

The U.S. has now reported 5.4 million infections and more than 170,000 confirmed coronavirus deaths, though both numbers are likely larger. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recently described the outbreak in the U.S. as the worst in the world.

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer pressed Kushner on Monday about whether he still thought the response has been a success.

“Are 170,000 dead Americans — would you still suggest that this has been a success story?” Blitzer asked.

“Yes,” Kushner replied. “Look, there’s a lot of challenges. This has been a global pandemic — a lot of unprecedented challenges.”

The comments came two weeks after Vanity Fair reported that Kushner, who led a “shadow” White House coronavirus task force filled with college friends and tech bros, spiked the administration’s nationwide strategy because the pandemic was largely affecting “blue states.”

“One thousand Americans dying every day?” Blitzer asked. “That’s not a success, right?”

“One American, you know, dying every day is too much,” Kushner said. “But if you look at where we were back in April, we had 2,500 Americans dying a day.”

Wolf asks Jared Kushner about several claims he made during an April TV appearance, including calling the federal government's response a success story. "1,000 Americans dying every day is not a success, right?" pic.twitter.com/u0aZuFm6iQ

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) August 17, 2020

In another interview with CNBC, Kushner praised Trump for choosing “not to politicize” the pandemic, even though the president has repeatedly done so.

“I think President Trump has dealt with it in a very responsible way,” Kushner said, even though Trump has repeatedly sought to downplay the pandemic while pushing back against efforts which would help contain it.

“You heard all these hysterical reports about doctors on the front lines not being able to get masks, not having enough ventilators. You had governors requesting a lot more ventilators than they needed,” Kushner claimed. “And again, every patient in America that needed a ventilator got a ventilator. President Trump distributed them properly.”

The “hysterical reports” came from frontline doctors and hospitals themselves, who reported alarming personal protective equipment shortages to the Health and Human Services inspector general. Though states ultimately did not run out of ventilators because mitigation efforts prevented the worst-case scenarios predicted by epidemiological models, Trump largely left the acquisition of life-saving supplies to individual states, forcing them to bid against one another for vital equipment.

Asked whether he had any regrets about the White House response, Kushner said “there’s always things you could do differently.”

“But again, this is an unprecedented challenge, and I think [Trump’s] made a lot of right decisions,” Kushner said. “We have 50 states, which means you have 50 CEOs, and his job is to work with all of them.”

One of those “CEOs,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose state was the hardest-hit in the early part of the pandemic, faulted the Trump administration for ignoring the threat of the virus coming from Europe while Trump was “fixated on China.”

“The virus had been attacking us for months before they even knew it was here. We saw the failure of a government that tried to deny the virus, then tried to ignore it and then tried to politicize it,” Cuomo said in a Monday speech at the Democratic National Convention. “The failed federal government that watched New York get ambushed by their negligence, and then watched New York suffer but all through it learned nothing.”

DNC’s first night was claustrophobic and grim: A compelling mirror of life in America

Going into the Democratic National Convention, most of the punditry was skeptical. Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, this convention would be virtual and largely audience-free, robbing organizers of their usual tricks — loud applause, crowd shots, effusive spectacle — typically employed to cover up the inherent corniness of repeated appeals to unity and decency that tend to define Democratic events. Sure enough, within seconds of the convention starting, the Statlers and Waldorfs of Twitter were griping that the whole thing was lame and boring.

But what shortly became evident was that, despite the quiet and stilted nature of a convention dominated by social distancing, the evening ended up being quite successful. Arguably, in fact, it was successful because of the limits caused by the coronavirus.

Instead of a star-studded extravaganza meant to elicit maximum applause lines, the focus was on interviewing ordinary citizens, activists and local politicians about their experiences on the ground in our tumultuous times.

Without the need to pander for applause, the Democrats were able to put together a program that had a somber, even mournful tone more appropriate for our times than the typically giddy, party-down atmosphere of political conventions. The producers leaned into the situation to create an aesthetic of isolation and grief, one that reflected the unfortunate reality of Americans watching at home suffering low-grade trauma and depression from all that has happened in the past few months. Even the awkwardness of watching both politicians and ordinary citizens talking on Zoom served as a reminder of the current hell we’re all caught up in, and drove home the “we’re all in this together” message that Joe Biden’s campaign is pushing.

The family of George Floyd, whose killing by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kicked off the summer’s intense Black Lives Matter protests, held a genuinely moving moment of silence with random Americans on Zoom. A woman named Kristen Urquiza spoke about her father’s death of COVID-19 after trusting Trump’s assurances that it was safe to go out.

“His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump,” Urquiza said of her father. “And for that, he paid with his life.”

That basically set the entire tone of the night. But that’s what life is like in this country now. We’re a nation of Miss Havishams, consumed by loneliness and nostalgia for things we used to take for granted, like eating out or singing karaoke or just saying hi to someone on the sidewalk without worrying that it’s going to spread a deadly disease.

The whole thing felt like a massive version of every Zoom “happy hour” we, the people, have been having — an event you think will be fun but is mostly people being sad and talking about the coronavirus.

The media heavily hyped the presence of former Ohio Gov. John Kasich and other Republicans on the speakers’ list, eager as always to stoke intra-party tensions among Democrats. But in truth, the second most important spot of the night went to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who identifies as a democratic socialist. The message was pretty obviously “big tent” and not “screw the left,” and that reflects the general strategy of Biden’s campaign, which focuses heavily on symbolism that panders to moderates while embracing a policy platform that appeals more to the left.

Sanders turned out to be a perfect speaker for the night. After an hour and a half of virtual commiseration with the rest of the country about how terrible things are, Sanders turned on the passion and righteous fury. It was incredibly welcome, helping convert all that sadness and grief into anger.

“Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Trump golfs,” Sanders said, putting the blame squarely on Trump for putting “our lives and health in jeopardy” and “rejecting science” and emphasizing that returning to even a semblance of normality means electing Biden.

But Sanders didn’t sacrifice any of his leftist bona fides in this endorsement of Biden, arguing that “we have moved this country in a bold new direction,” but emphasizing that “if Donald Trump is re-elected, all of the progress we have made will be in jeopardy.”

The night ended with Michelle Obama, bringing a strong vibe of Mom who will comfort you without resorting to lies about how the dog isn’t dead, but was sent to live on a farm. I mean that as the highest form compliment, because reassuring-but-not-bullshitting is exactly what we all need right now.

“You know I tell you exactly what I’m feeling. You know I hate politics,” Obama said, adding, “If you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me — they can and they will.”

Obama focused her pitch heavily on those female voters, mostly mothers, who polls show may have voted for Trump in 2016 but are looking at the horror show that is our country now and feeling doubts.

“Right now, kids in this country are seeing what happens when we stop requiring empathy of one another,” she said. “They’re looking around wondering if we’ve been lying to them this whole time about who we are and what we truly value.”

Everyone expected the convention format to be a joke, as there was no way it could equal the goofy Americana spectacle we’re used to. And the first night of this unprecedented DNC definitely was not normal in any way. But then, neither are our lives. I found myself feeling grateful to the Democratic Party for not trying to fake it.

The goofy Zoom shots, the applause-free speeches, the politicians who aren’t any better at finding a good backdrop than we are? Sure, it was awkward. But it was also that rarest of qualities in politics: Authentic. It will be hard to keep that up for four nights, but I must admit — I’m incredibly curious to see if the Democratic Party can pull it off.

PPE shortage could last years, experts warn

Shortages of personal protective equipment and medical supplies could persist for years without strategic government intervention, officials from health care and manufacturing industries have predicted.

Officials said logistical challenges continue seven months after the coronavirus reached the United States, as the flu season approaches and as some state emergency management agencies prepare for a fall surge in COVID-19 cases.

Although the disarray is not as widespread as it was this spring, hospitals said rolling shortages of supplies range from specialized beds to disposable isolation gowns to thermometers.

“A few weeks ago, we were having a very difficult time getting the sanitary wipes. You just couldn’t get them,” said Dr. Bernard Klein, chief executive of Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills, California, near Los Angeles. “We actually had to manufacture our own.”

This same dynamic has played out across a number of critical supplies in his hospital. First masks, then isolation gowns and now a specialized bed that allows nurses to turn COVID-19 patients onto their bellies — equipment that helps workers with what can otherwise be a six-person job.

“We’ve seen whole families come to our hospital with COVID, and several members hospitalized at the same time,” said Klein. “It’s very, very sad.”

Testing supplies ran short as the predominantly Latino community served by Providence Holy Cross was hit hard by COVID, and even as nearby hospitals could process 15-minute tests.

“If we had a more coordinated response with a partnership between the medical field, the government and the private industry, it would help improve the supply chain to the areas that need it most,” Klein said.

Klein said he expected to deal with equipment and supply shortages throughout 2021, especially as flu season approaches.

“Most people focus on those N95 respirators,” said Carmela Coyle, CEO of the California Hospital Association, an industry group that represents more than 400 hospitals across one of America’s hardest-hit states.

She said she believed COVID-19-related supply challenges will persist through 2022.

“We have been challenged with shortages of isolation gowns, face shields, which you’re now starting to see in public places. Any one piece that’s in shortage or not available creates risk for patients and for health care workers,” said Coyle.

At the same time, trade associations representing manufacturers said persuading customers to shift to American suppliers had been difficult.

“I also have industry that’s working only at 10-20% capacity, who can make PPE in our own backyard, but have no orders,” said Kim Glas, CEO of the National Council of Textile Organizations, whose members make reusable cloth gowns.

Manufacturers in her organization have made “hundreds of millions of products,” but, without long-term government contracts, many are apprehensive to invest in the equipment needed to scale up the business and eventually lower prices.

“If there continues to be an upward trajectory of COVID-19 cases, not just in the U.S. but globally, you can see those supply chains breaking down again,” Glas said. “It is a health care security issue.”

For the past two decades, personal protective equipment was supplied to health care institutions in lean supply chains in the same way toilet paper was to grocery stores. Chains between major manufacturers and end users were so efficient, there was no need to stockpile goods.

But in March, the supply chain broke when major Asian PPE exporters embargoed materials or shut down just as demand increased exponentially. Thus, health care institutions were in much the same position as regular grocery shoppers, who were trying to buy great quantities of a product they never needed to stockpile before.

“I am very concerned about long-term PPE shortages for the foreseeable future,” said Dr. Susan Bailey, president of the American Medical Association.

“There’s no question the situation is better than it was a couple of months ago,” said Bailey. However, many health care organizations, including her own, have struggled to obtain PPE. Bailey practices at a 10-doctor allergy clinic and was met with a 10,000-mask minimum when they tried to order N95 respirators.

“We have not seen evidence of a long-term strategic plan for the manufacture, acquisition and distribution of PPE” from the government, said Bailey. “The supply chain needs to be strengthened dramatically, and we need less dependence on foreign goods to manufacture our own PPE in the U.S.”

Some products have now come back to be made in the U.S. — although factories are not expected to be able to reach demand until mid-2021.

“A lot has been done in the last six months,” said Rousse. “We are largely out of the hole, and we have planted the seeds to render the United States self-sufficient,” said Dave Rousse, president of the Association of the Nonwoven Fabrics Industry.

In 2019, 850 tons of the material used in disposable masks was made in the U.S. Around 10,000 tons is expected to be made in 2021, satisfying perhaps 80% of demand. But PPE is a suite of items — including gloves, gowns and face shields — not all of which have seen the same success.

“Thermometers are becoming a real issue,” said Cindy Juhas, chief strategy officer of CME, an American health care product distributor. “They’re expecting even a problem with needles and syringes for the amount of vaccines they have to make,” she said.

Federal government efforts to address the supply chain have foundered. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, in charge of the COVID-19 response, told congressional interviewers in June it had “no involvement” in distributing PPE to hot spots.

Project Airbridge, an initiative headed by Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, flew PPE from international suppliers to the U.S. at taxpayer expense but was phased out. And the government has not responded to the AMA’s calls for more distribution data.

Arguably, Klein is among the best placed to weather such disruptions. He is part of a 51-hospital chain with purchasing power, and among the institutions that distributors prioritize when selling supplies. But tribulations continue even in hospitals, as shortages have pushed buyers to look directly for manufacturers, often through a swamp of companies that have sprung up overnight.

Now distributors are being called upon not just by their traditional customers — hospitals and long-term care homes — but by nearly every segment of society. First responders, schools, clinics and even food businesses are all buying medical equipment now.

“There’s going to be lots of other shortages we haven’t even thought about,” said Juhas.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.