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Exclusive: Trump campaign kept paying Kayleigh McEnany after White House hiring

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany received $12,000 in payroll payments from the Trump campaign after her official appointment to a position in the Trump administration, as federal election filings examined by Salon show. That would be a clear ethical breach, and could indicate violations of the laws governing campaign finance and payments to political appointees.

The campaign reported the payments on April 16 and May 1, in the amount of McEnany’s regular $6,000 biweekly salary, and filed the disbursements as “payroll” expenses. Another filing, viewable here, shows the campaign reimbursed McEnany for $524.57 in travel expenses on May 26.

Prior to joining the administration, McEnany served as spokeswoman for the Trump campaign. The White House released a statement officially naming McEnany as its press secretary on April 8. Though she did not give her first official briefing until May 1, she had already released official statements and spoken on behalf of the White House in media interviews. McEnany confirmed to Salon in a phone interview that April 13 was her official start date at the White House.

“The campaign overpaid me, and I immediately paid them back,” McEnany said, claiming that “every penny has been paid back in the overlap.”

Trump’s press secretary added that the reimbursement was for “travel for a rally” when she “had been unable to get a bill from the Hilton, which they provided many months after because of COVID timing.”

McEnany did not provide evidence of this, or point Salon to any government or campaign records that could substantiate her claims. Following the call with McEnany, a White House press officer sent Salon an off-the-record email. When Salon requested further information on the record. McEnany then emailed a statement about what she characterized as a “mistaken payment.”

I learned of the campaign’s mistaken payment on May 2nd, and I immediately contacted Trump Campaign CFO Sean Dollman to notify him of the error. The campaign’s mistaken payment has been paid back to ensure there was no overlapping payment beyond my April 13th start date at the White House.

Salon asked McEnany to provide evidence to support her claims, but did not receive an answer. Neither McEnany, the Trump campaign nor the White House has yet provided evidence that she “immediately” repaid the campaign.

When shown the filing, a senior FEC official directed Salon’s questions to the campaign.

Trump campaign spokesperson Tim Murtaugh told Salon in a phone call that he would only begin to discuss the payments in an off-the-record conversation. Salon did not agree to this and Murtaugh later emailed the following statement: 

There was a clerical error in the recording of Kayleigh McEnany’s termination date when she left the campaign and as a result continued being paid by our payroll provider. Kayleigh immediately notified the campaign of the error. She has reimbursed the payroll company for the full amount she was mistakenly paid. Kayleigh handled everything properly.

The campaign did not provide any evidence of this repayment. FEC records show the payment came to McEnany directly from the Trump campaign, not from a payroll company. Neither Salon nor campaign finance experts could find evidence of any reimbursement in FEC filings.

“If she really gave the money back so quickly in May, before the FEC report was filed in June, the campaign probably never would have reported that payment in the first place,” said Kedric Payne, general counsel and senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, in a phone interview. 

“But if she did pay the campaign back, and they did report it like they’re required to do, then that reimbursement should be in the FEC filings,” Payne continued. “I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt to explain where it is, or show it later if there was some filing mistake, but it’s not clear from what I see in the campaign’s filings that there was any reimbursement received for these payments.”

“Campaign funds are meant for bona fide campaign expenditures,” Ciarra Torres-Spelliscy, campaign finance law expert at Stetson University and former fellow at Brennan Center for Justice, told Salon.

“There are, however, laws about federal employees which limit outside income,” she added, citing 18 U.S.C. § 209 — “Salary of Government officials and employees payable only by United States” —which reads:

Salary of Government officials and employees payable only by the United States prohibits employees from being paid by someone other than the United States for doing their official Government duties. For example, a highly paid executive of a corporation, upon entering Government service, could not accept an offer from her former employer to make up the difference between her Government salary and the compensation she received from her former employer.

That law makes an exception for “special government employees,” as well as “employees serving without compensation.” Such examples include former ambassador Kurt Volker, who served the Trump administration as an unpaid “special envoy” to Ukraine while drawing his full salary as an executive at the lobbying firm BGR.

McEnany has never said she was working for the White House for free.

“Since these are officially ‘payroll’ payments, and not individually itemized services, it appears she was a salaried employee while also working in her official administration capacity,” Virginia Canter, chief ethics counsel for the government watchdog CREW, told Salon. “If she was on salary while also drawing White House pay, then she might be subject to criminal statutes and other conflicts of interests, such as unlawfully supplementing government income.”

Jerry Goldfeder, an election and campaign finance expert at Stroock LLP, was blunt. 

“Not permissible,” he told Salon. “A federal employee cannot simultaneously be an employee or consultant of a campaign.”

“18 U.S.C. Section 209 says you can’t pay somebody from a third party to do government services,” added Payne of the Campaign Legal Center. “But there’s also a section in the Code of Federal Regulations barring payments to political appointees.”

That code points to Executive Order 12674, which reads in part: “No employee who is appointed by the President to a full-time noncareer position in the executive branch … shall receive any earned income for any outside employment or activity performed during that Presidential appointment.”

“The White House and the campaign need to provide evidence to explain what was going on here, and we need accountability if there was a conflict,” Payne said. “But I don’t at all put it beyond this White House to try to talk itself out of this.”

Canter also expressed concern.

“It would be much cleaner not to be joining the White House from an active campaign with monies owed by the campaign to a White House employee,” she said.

All three of McEnany’s overlapping campaign payments were addressed to her at 725 Fifth Avenue in New York — the address of Trump Tower.

McEnany has apparently never lived at Trump Tower or listed it as an address, but the Trump campaign lists the building as one of its “headquarters” and reportedly keeps a skeleton staff there to justify paying an exorbitant rent. Ryann McEnany, Kayleigh’s sister, also has her $2,538 biweekly campaign payments addressed to Trump Tower.

In 2018, McEnany’s driver’s license and car registration listed a residential address in Edgewater, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from Manhattan. She cast a mail-in absentee ballot in Florida that year, which might have been a violation of election law.

Goldman Sachs CEO opens for Chainsmokers at crowded Hamptons charity show, outrage ensues

Although the U.S. is still coping with a deadly pandemic that has so far killed more than 147,000 of its residents, the Chainsmokers headlined a crowded drive-in charity concert in the Hamptons on Saturday that, according to Bloomberg News, was attended by “a couple of thousand people.” And the deejay at the high-end event (where some paid up to $25,000 for a parking spot) was Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon.

Bloomberg’s Amanda L. Gordon reports, “Solomon was on stage for an hour, just him and a turntable on an elevated platform, mask around neck, surrounded by animations of cherries and his deejay name, D-Sol, in flashing bubble letters. He put his hand up in the air, playing electronic dance beat takes on popular songs — not unlike the Chainsmokers, with more Fleetwood Mac than Coldplay. Giant plumes of smoke went up in front of the stage as the sky turned pink and orange.”

According to Gordon, the organizers of the show, In the Know Experiences, “seemed vigilant, with temperature checks and frequent announcements about wearing masks when moving around the venue. Still, there were clusters of friends dancing and mingling close together with masks off.” And TMZ reported that even though “precautions were in place,” there were “a heck of a lot of people in that area”— which, TMZ reported, “still looked a little dicey.”

Twitter users have been commenting on the amount of social distancing that was practiced at the show:

Profits from the event went to No Kid Hungry, Southampton Fresh Air Home and the Children’s Medical Fund of New York.

Trump asks federal judge to block prosecutor from “taking any action to enforce” tax subpoena

According to The New York Times, President Donald Trump is continuing his push to block New York’s subpoena for his tax returns.

“President Trump on Monday mounted his most forceful and detailed legal attack yet on the subpoena for his tax returns by the Manhattan district attorney, arguing the request was ‘wildly overbroad’ and ‘issued in bad faith,’ a new court filing shows,” reported Benjamin Weiser and William K. Rashbaum. “Mr. Trump’s lawyers asked a federal judge in Manhattan to declare that the subpoena from the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat, was ‘invalid and unenforceable.'”

“They also asked that the judge issue an order barring Mr. Vance from ‘taking any action to enforce’ the subpoena — which sought years of tax and other financial records from his accountants — and that he block Mr. Trump’s accounting firm from turning over any of the information,” continued the report.

In a 7-2 ruling at the beginning of July, the Supreme Court rejected the president’s claim that he has absolute immunity from subpoenas on his finances. However, they sent the matter down to a lower court for further review, all but guaranteeing the district attorney will not receive Trump’s tax returns until after the election.

 

CDC warns many young adults with COVID-19 report severe long-term side effects

In states like Oregon, the recent growth in coronavirus cases comes in large part from younger people in their 20s and 30s, who have been contracting the virus at higher rates than the at-risk elderly. That may be because younger people have the perception that they are at lower risk for mortality, and thus are less invested in self-quarantining behavior. 

Now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is trying to quash this popular misconception that younger people simply don’t get very bad cases of coronavirus. Indeed, as the CDC pointed out in a report, many young people are suffering severe long-term health consequences after contracting the disease — even though their over rate of mortality is quite low. 

In its regular Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) writes that “prolonged symptom duration and disability are common in adults hospitalized with [COVID-19].”

The CDC conducted a multistate telephone survey of a random sample of adults between April 15 and June 25, 2020. In this survey, the researchers found that roughly 19 percent of adults between the ages of 18 and 34 who had tested positive for COVID-19 did not return to their usual state of health within two to three weeks after they were tested.

The sample size of adults within that category was small (nine out of 48), but still consistent with larger data which shows that younger populations should not consider themselves immune to serious health consequences if they contract COVID-19.

The report also found that — after adjusting for sex, age and race/ethnicity — being obese and reporting a psychiatric condition were associated with odds more than two-fold of a patient not returning to their previous state of health after being infected.

“This report indicates that even among symptomatic adults tested in outpatient settings, it might take weeks for resolution of symptoms and return to usual health,” the CDC writes. “Not returning to usual health within 2-3 weeks of testing was reported by approximately one-third of respondents. Even among young adults aged 18-34 years with no chronic medical conditions, nearly one in five reported that they had not returned to their usual state of health 14-21 days after testing. In contrast, over 90 percent of outpatients with influenza recover within approximately two weeks of having a positive test result.”

The CDC report tracks with anecdotal evidence from young COVID-19 survivors. Recently, CNN profiled multiple people under 30 who contracted COVID-19 and suffered severe and lasting side effects. A 28-year-old UK man reported “brain fog, difficulty concentrating and problems with short-term memory that make reading, writing and speaking harder.” A 28-year-old American woman reported that she now has to use an inhaler, and even speaking made her feel winded. 

Speaking to Salon last month, Dr. Henry F. Raymond, associate professor and epidemiologist at the Rutgers School of Public Health, explained why we know so little about how the coronavirus will impact younger Americans who get infected.

“Thirty-five years into the HIV epidemic, we still don’t know things about the dynamics of HIV infection,” Raymond explained. “We know the basics, but we actually don’t know who’s going to be the next group to be most at risk. To think that after December, January, February, March, April, May and June — seven months — we would have a handle on this whole thing is a little unbelievable to me.”

Salon also spoke earlier this month with Dr. Russell Medford, chairman of the Center for Global Health Innovation and Global Health Crisis Coordination Center, about the misperception that young people do not need to be concerned about coronavirus infections.

“The coronavirus affects both old and young,” Dr. Russell Medford, chairman of the Center for Global Health Innovation and Global Health Crisis Coordination Center, told Salon. “What’s clear is, in terms of the impact of the virus on, it causes severe symptoms and death in the young. It’s much less severe in the young, but the young are infected significantly and in large numbers. We are seeing our hospital beds and ICU beds being filled up with young patients now in Florida and Texas, that are in the hospital and undergoing intensive treatment because of their infection by coronavirus.”

Armed supporters of Louie Gohmert accused of assaulting rival campaign’s staffer at pro-police rally

A Democrat running against Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tex., alleged that one of the Republican’s supporters assaulted his campaign manager amid dueling protests Sunday in Tyler, Texas.

A camera crew from local news outlet KETK captured the moment a brawl broke out between members of a protest group who came out in support of demonstrators in Portland and counter-protesters who attended a “Back the Blue” event in support of federal officers deployed to the city.

Hank Gilbert, a Texas rancher facing Gohmert in his re-election race, identified one of the men as his campaign manager, Ryan Miller.

Gilbert claimed on Twitter that Miller was “assaulted and beat up” by “Blue Lives Matter protesters” while officers from the Tyler Police Department “drove around the square waving at the [Blue Lives Matter] protesters who were chanting ‘Louie! Louie!'”

Gilbert also posted a photo of one of his supporters appearing to be choked by one of the “Back the Blue” demonstrators.

KETK posted a video of the incident.

Gilbert’s campaign later issued a statement saying it had filed a police report with the department.

“Miller was attacked by at least four protesters, some of whom were armed, and sustained blows to the head and other parts of his body, as well as a large gash under his eye,” the campaign said in a statement to local news outlet KLTV. “The incident occurred as officers from the Tyler Police Department drove around the square idly, waving at the Blue Lives Matter counter-protesters who had come to support Gilbert’s opponent. “

The police department denied the allegations. Officials responded to a fight and broke it up when they arrived at the scene, spokesman Andy Erbaugh told KLTV. No arrests were made, but charges may be filed at a later time, he added.

Gilbert called on the Texas Rangers to investigate the police response to the incident.

“The Tyler police were idly driving around the square in their patrol cars and waving at the counter-protesters who were heavily armed,” Gilbert said a statement. “They didn’t get on the square until the violence was well underway and weren’t even near the scene of the actual protest until Ryan had already been beaten up. This is after we were told by the city last week there would be a sufficient police presence downtown for our rally.”

Gilbert said he would also ask the FBI to investigate whether the “Back the Blue” organizers staged the protest in order to stoke violence.

“We fully intend to make sure that felony charges are brought against the person who stole Ryan’s brand new iPhone, which costs enough that theft of that device is a felony in Texas,” he said. “We also intend to ensure that those who attacked Ryan are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Nancy Nichols, a local Democratic official, told the Tyler Morning Telegraph that she was also punched in the chest by “Back the Blue” protesters.

“I’m 65, and I get punched,” she claimed, adding that three other protesters, whom she described as Trump supporters, allegedly surrounded her husband, causing him to fall.

“The Trump people were forcing us against the Memorial wall. I said to Mike, ‘Now. Let’s go,’ several times. The man in overalls moved into Mike’s space yelling continually,” she claimed. “I stepped between them just as the man in the overalls threw a punch that hit me in my left breast. Mike dropped the cable, and we moved quickly against and along the memorial wall and away from the crowd.”

Gilbert was one of the organizers of the protest in support of Portland demonstrators, though he said it was not associated with his campaign. Vince Leibowitz, one of Gilbert’s advisers, told the Tyler Morning Telegraph that the armed “Back the Blue” demonstrators deterred supporters from attending the event.

“We had more than 100 people RSVP to participate in this protest, and were flooded with calls, texts and emails in the 20 minutes before it began with folks telling us they would not be getting out of their cars after seeing the mass of armed counter-protesters who had descended upon the square,” he claimed. 

Audrey Spanko, a local Democratic state Senate candidate, called the incident “intimidation methods in an attempt to scare East Texans.”

“In East Texas, we should show respect to everyone exercising their constitutional right to peacefully protest, not shout them down and try to intimidate them,” she said. “Protesters should not be met with hostility — or especially physical assault — from people who simply don’t want to hear what they have to say.”

Republican plan to cut enhanced unemployment benefits by $400 would cost 3.4 million jobs: analysis

Republicans are set to unveil a plan to drastically slash enhanced federal unemployment benefits even as economists warn the move could cost the country millions of jobs and shrink the economy.

Senate Republicans have claimed that American workers who bring in a higher weekly rate than before the pandemic are disincentivized from going back to the office.

“It certainly does not have the backing that it had before because of many small businesses that have come forward and said that people just don’t want to come back — that they were making more than they did when they worked,” Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., a senior member of the Finance Committee, told NBC News earlier this month. 

However, there is no evidence that the increased payments have resulted in Americans refusing to return to work. Though House Democrats approved a full extension on the benefit in May, Senate Republicans plan to counter with a proposal to reduce the payment to $200 until states can implement a system which would reduce the total benefit from around 120% of previous salaries to 70% of previous salaries, according to The Washington Post.

It is unclear whether states would be able to implement such a system. The original plan in March to replace 100% of previous salaries came undone due to concerns that aging state systems could not handle doing so, leading to the flat $600-per-week payment. The National Association of State Workforce Agencies warned that it could take “eight to 20 weeks or more” for states to implement such a system.

Republicans are intent on slashing the payment.

“We’re not going to use taxpayer money to pay people more to stay home,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said over the weekend, despite a surging pandemic.

A study by researchers at Yale published on Monday showed that workers who received more in unemployment benefits than their previous salary returned to their jobs at the same rate as those who got less from unemployment than their salary.

More than 30 million people are relying on the unemployment benefits, which expire this week. The vast majority have no option but to stay home since the number of unemployed Americans is more than three times higher the number of job openings.

Though there is little evidence to support the Republican claim that the enhanced unemployment benefits have made it difficult for businesses to bring back workers, several analyses have shown that the additional spending by unemployed people has helped prop up the economy amid a drop in spending by those still employed.

Mark Zandi, the chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, projected that cutting federal unemployment benefits from $600 to $200 would cost the economy nearly 1 million jobs by the end of the year and increase unemployment by 0.6%.

“While this enhanced UI is only one of the many ways lawmakers have helped hard-pressed households during the pandemic, letting it expire or even renewing it at a lower amount will be a significant hit to the economy,” Zandi wrote. “With unemployment still firmly in double digits and seemingly set to go higher regardless of what lawmakers do now, this would seem a poor policy choice.”

A separate analysis from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute projected that reducing federal unemployment benefits by $400 would cost the US 3.4 million jobs and shrink the economy by 2.5% over the next year.

The move would reduce Americans’ personal income by about $339 billion over the next 12 months, costing the U.S. about 2.5% in gross domestic product and resulting in 3.388 million fewer jobs created over that time period, according to the analysis.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., cited the analysis on Twitter to show that the “Republican scheme to hurt unemployed Americans” will result in “needless pain for millions of families struggling because of the COVID-19 crisis.”

“Let’s be clear: if you lost your job through no fault of your own and can’t go back to work because the Trump administration has mismanaged the crisis, Republicans want you to take a pay cut of 30 percent or even more,” Schumer said.

A recent poll found that the majority of Americans support extending the $600-per-week benefit beyond July.

“Most Americans know we need to extend unemployment insurance for working families impacted by this crisis,” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said. “Senate Republicans need to stop complicating this issue and extend this lifeline for families nationwide.”

Economist Paul Krugman warned that slashing benefits would “deepen the slump” caused by the coronavirus.

“Is this cruel or is it stupid?” he asked. “Yes.”

The pushback against how Black suffering and victims of violence are depicted in art

Samaria Rice — the mother of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old Black boy who was killed in Cleveland in 2014 by a white police officer — has said that she wakes up every day not knowing how or where she is going to see her son’s death depicted by artists. 

“I’m not normal because of what America has done to my family,” Rice said in a recent interview with Cleveland.com. “I’m just dealing with it. I can’t even have my son in peace. That’s what it feels like.”

Earlier this summer, the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art canceled “The Breath of Empty Space,” a planned exhibition by New York artist Shaun Leonardo. The solo show, which interprets the police killings of unarmed Black and Latino men and boys, would have featured charcoal illustrations based on the surveillance video of Tamir Rice’s death; it also included depictions of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Rodney King, and Laquan McDonald. 

According to the New York Times, Leonardo, who identifies as Afro-Latino, accused the museum of  censorship. However, Jill Snyder, the museum’s director, said she had been approached by local Black activists and museum staff who communicated that “this work stirs the trauma back up for the very community that it is intending to reach, and also that there is a way in which institutions like moCa Cleveland put that pain and trauma on display disrespectfully and somewhat gratuitously — that there is a performative aspect to our presentation of it.”

Samaria Rice told Cleveland.com she found the exhibition to be “so messed up.”

“This is absurd to want to use this as art,” she said. Rice has since requested that Leonardo no longer display his charcoal illustrations of Tamir’s last moments; the images are still currently displayed on Leonardo’s website.  

As protests surrounding the recent killings of George Floyd, David McAtee and Breonna Taylor continue all across the country, renewed attention is being paid to these artists whose work deals with violence against Black individuals and police brutality. However, questions continue to be raised by activists and members of the arts community about whether the final moments of victims’ lives should ever become images for public consumption, framed and hung on the museum walls. 

Dr. Kaila Story is a professor at the University of Louisville who studies the intersections of gender, sexuality, and race, as well as the co-host of the Strange Fruit podcast. She says that she is always hesitant to celebrate artwork that depicts violence against Black people — especially when it is created by white artists. 

“My first question is always about what genuine interest does a white artist have and depicting Black people through the lens of state violence,” Story said. “And to me, the interest seems to be not to pay homage to these people or the person depicted. But it’s more about the cachet, the notoriety, the thoughts of fame that might come from illustrating Black folks in this way — because it would be considered timely, cutting-edge or controversial, right?” 

One such example of this is when Dana Schutz, a white American artist, decided to paint the mutilated face of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955. The abstract rendering was based on a widely reproduced photograph of Till’s corpse in his casket. 

“I made this painting in August of 2016 after a summer that felt like a state of emergency — there were constant mass shootings, racist rallies filled with hate speech, and an escalating number of camera-phone videos of innocent Black men being shot by police,” Schutz told Artnet. “The photograph of Emmett Till felt analogous to the time: what was hidden was now revealed.” 

The painting was selected to be part of the 2017 Whitney Biennial, sparking immediate controversy. Protesters — including performance artist Parke Bright — entered the gallery and blocked the painting from view and demanded its removal from the museum because “the subject matter is not Schutz’s” and the experience of “Black suffering” was not hers from which to gain notoriety.

And while Schutz later clarified that the painting would not be sold, a number of Black artists and activists questioned her motivations in making it in the first place. In an open letter to the Whitney, visual artist Hannah Black wrote: “This painting should not be acceptable to anyone who cares or pretends to care about Black people, because it is not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit or fun, though the practice has been normalized for a long time.” 

“You can have empathy and you can want justice for Black people and freedom for Black people, without having to depict the ways that they are disregarded and dehumanized,” Story said. “My question would be for [Schutz]: Why not do your regular paintings and then if you have a discussion about your regular work, talk about the anti-Blackness that exists in our world?” 

Story also said there is a real problem of white artists not interrogating the lack of diversity in the art world itself, as well as the physical spaces where their art is on display. “They’re creating art in a vacuum,” she said. 

According to a 2015 report by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, mid- and upper-level museum and curatorial positions are overwhelmingly white. Non-Hispanic white people constitute 84% of near-top-tier positions, while Asians represent 5%, Black people represent 4%, and Hispanic people represent 3%.

This can lead to museums feeling like a “white space,” a term defined by Yale sociologist Elijah Anderson as public and private spaces that are occupied by predominantly white individuals. Anderson wrote that Black individuals may often consider these spaces to be informally “off-limits” for them. This, he wrote, results in spaces where people of color are typically “absent, not expected, or marginalized when present.”

Following the 2015 opening of the Whitney Museum of American Art, First Lady Michelle Obama linked “white spaces” and arts institutions during her comments for the dedication of the building:

You see, there are so many kids in this country who look at places like museums and concert halls and other cultural centers and they think to themselves, well, that’s not a place for me, for someone who looks like me, for someone who comes from my neighborhood. In fact, I guarantee you that right now, there are kids living less than a mile from here who would never in a million years dream that they would be welcome in this museum. And growing up on the Southside of Chicago, I was one of those kids myself.

Story wonders if Leonardo’s exhibition or Schutz’s Whitney Biennial piece would have gotten greenlighted in the first place if this perception of “white spaces” did not exist. 

“I do think that if there had been more Black folks involved in the chain of museum command for these particular artists’ exhibits, at least the artists would have been more thoughtful about how they focused on the last moments of their subjects,” she said. 

This isn’t to say that museums should shy away from including work that deals with tough and timely issues like police brutality and anti-Blackness. Current curators and museum leaders do however have to be prepared to engage with their visitors in conversations that are equally difficult and timely. 

Miranda Lash was the co-curator of “Southern Accent,” a contemporary art exhibition that featured over 60 artists’ work that questioned and explored the complexities of the American South. It opened at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in 2016 before traveling to Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky. 

The exhibition featured Kara Walker’s 2005 short art film, “8 Possible Beginnings or: The Creation of African-America.” Walker is known for her haunting and subversive silhouette images of African American stereotypes; this film put them in motion.  

“Projections of blacks on a slave ship are intercut with daguerreotypes from the period, showing the journey across the Middle Passage,” wrote Hilton Als for The New Yorker in 2007. “A great black head rears up and swallows some black stick figures: the motherland. A black male slave has sex with a puny white slave owner, but only after fellating himself, to the sound of cheerful antebellum ditties. The black male slave gives birth to a child, one of various smiling Topsy-like angels who hover throughout the movie.” 

In one of the final scenes, Walker has rendered an enslaved man hanging from a tree, while a young Black woman flees, pursued by a white man. Walker and her daughter quietly state: “Maybe all of this will dream away, and I will disappear.”

Lash said it was important to present that piece within the proper context, complete with descriptive labels that let viewers know what they were about to see, as well as appropriate supplementary programming. Additionally, Lash had in-depth discussions with the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research — an education and research center at the University of Louisville that focuses on building a “bridge between research and action for racial and social justice — that informed docent trainings. 

The same types of preparations took place when the museum presented “…while the dew is still on the roses…,” a solo exhibition by Kingston-born artist Ebony G. Patterson, whose intricate weavings and textiles address issues of violence against young Black men, as well as topics of youth culture and masculinity. 

“I felt comfortable with showing the work because it included a lot of context,” Lash said. “There were labels. The artist was more than willing to talk about the work. We recorded videos of her talking about it. She did live talks in the galleries, for the public, for students for docents. We recorded panels, and there was a catalogue. I felt there was ample opportunity for people to delve into the artist’s intentions and understand why she was doing it a certain way and understand it as an artist’s interpretation of a difficult subject matter.” 

That said, Lash also feels there are certain images that aren’t necessarily right for public consumption. She brings up how Emmett Till’s casket is now on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. 

“And the position of the coffin is in such a way that viewers can’t see the body,” she said. “And that just really made this impression on me that there are some spaces, either literally or conceptually, where the eye must stop.” 

Kaila Story agrees. She would also encourage more museums, especially now, instead to consider displaying artwork that is celebratory of the Black experience, like Amy Sherald or Kehinde Wiley. 

“As Black people, we know every single day how anti-Black this world is,” she said. “We don’t need artistic reminders of how unjust, unfair and dehumanizing our society is — we just don’t.”

 

Feds used “excessive” force on “peaceful” protesters to clear area for Trump photo-op, officer says

U.S. Park Police committed “excessive use of force” in an “unprovoked escalation” last month when they violently cleared protesters from Lafayette Square in Washington to make room for President Donald Trump’s Bible-toting photo op, according to the congressional testimony of an Army National Guard commander who was on the ground.

“Members of the committee, the events I witnessed at Lafayette Square on the evening of June 1 were deeply disturbing to me and to fellow National Guardsmen. Having served in a combat zone, and understanding how to assess threat environments, at no time did I feel threatened by the protesters or assess them to be violent,” Adam DeMarco, an Iraq veteran and current major in the D.C. National Guard, said in written testimony submitted ahead of a hearing scheduled for Tuesday.

“In addition, considering the principles of proportionality of force and the fundamental strategy of graduated responses specific to civil disturbance operations, it was my observation that the use of force against demonstrators in the clearing operation was an unnecessary escalation of the use of force. From my observation, those demonstrators – our fellow American citizens – were engaged in the peaceful expression of their First Amendment rights,” he wrote. “Yet, they were subjected to an unprovoked escalation and excessive use of force.”

Demarco, who was acting as a liaison between Park Police and the D.C. National Guard, said he was standing near the statue of former President Andrew Jackson when Attorney General William Barr and other senior administration officials gathered nearby. The order to clear the park came 40 minutes early, well ahead of the 7 p.m. local time curfew and immediately after he observed Barr consult with Park Police officials, he claimed.

The account challenges key claims in the Trump administration’s explanation for clearing the protesters just minutes before the president walked through the area to stage a photo-op in front of a boarded-up historic church, where he held aloft a Bible and made no remarks.

“There was no correlation between our tactical plan of moving the perimeter out by one block and the president’s going over to the church,” Barr said at a June 4 press conference.

The House Natural Resources Committee is holding the hearing about the incident, where law enforcement, backed by the National Guard, unleashed tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang shells against peaceful demonstrators on live TV across the street from the White House. The action came at the height of unrest which roiled the country after the death of George Floyd in police custody.

DeMarco also claimed that the officers’ legally required warnings were “barely audible” to him, and he did not think the protesters could hear them. Officers moved on the crowd without even warning the National Guard troops present, DeMarco further claimed. He also challenged the government’s narrative that law enforcement did not use tear gas on the protesters:

I did not know what orders or rules of engagement had been issued to the Park Police concerning the use of force against the demonstrators. I asked my Park Police liaison if tear gas would be used because I had observed tear gas cannisters affixed to Park Police officers’ vests, and I knew that tear gas had been used against demonstrators the previous evening. The Park Police liaison told me that tear gas would not be employed.

“From what I could observe, the demonstrators were behaving peacefully,” when Park Police, the Secret Service and unidentified forces believed to be affiliated with the Department of Justice routed the crowd, DeMarco said.

He added that Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had conferred in the park with Barr, had warned DeMarco to keep his troops in check.

“General Milley told me to ensure that National Guard personnel remained calm, adding that we were there to respect the demonstrators’ First Amendment rights,” DeMarco wrote.

Milley has since apologized for his presence at Lafayette, saying: “I should not have been there. My presence in that moment, and in that environment, created the perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”

Milley has not expressed similar regrets for appearing on the D.C. streets later that night as military helicopters performed counterinsurgency tactics over peaceful protesters.

Trump’s fascist crackdown is a political stunt — Democrats should impeach him again

For the past week or more, many folks in media and politics, including those of us at Salon, have been accusing Donald Trump of sending federal police into Portland, Oregon — and now a bit further north in Seattle — almost entirely to stoke violence that he thinks will help him win re-election. Not that such speculation was a big reach, of course. It was plainly obvious that politics, not any real concern about “law and order,” was driving Trump’s decision.

For one thing, while protests against police brutality have been ongoing in those cities since the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May, they were largely winding down — until Trump’s goons showed up and started snatching people without cause, beating protesters and tear-gassing peaceful crowds. For another thing, local and state politicians in Oregon have pleaded with Trump and his minions — especially acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf — to pull out the federal police, who are geared up to look like an invading army. Oregon’s attorney general has filed suit against the federal government over this abuse of power, although a federal judge denied her request for a restraining order. Third, if Trump actually gave a crap about protecting Americans, he would be focused on fighting the coronavirus, not a bunch of young people setting off fireworks and spray-painting buildings. 

But now White House aides have come right out and admitted that the reason Trump is waging war on American cities and terrorizing peaceful protesters is because he thinks it will look awesome in his campaign ads. 

In an article published Friday, the Washington Post reported that “Trump’s campaign officials say that the president wants to amplify his law-and-order message” and that Portland was chosen not because of any real threat to anyone’s safety in the city, but because Trump and his aides felt it was the best “theater for his fight.”

Trump has shown far more interest in this campaign stunt — one that involves tear-gassing, beating and terrorizing real people for the purposes of campaign advertising — than he ever has in the fight against the coronavirus. Trump gets up early in the morning, the Post reported, eager to call Wolf “for real-time updates from the front.”

Trump’s behavior isn’t just gross and sadistic. It is also an abuse of power and a misuse of taxpayer funds, which are being deployed openly for the purpose of creating campaign materials. The fact that he’s using the bodies of innocent people as props in his brutal campaign theater just makes the entire situation worse.

Under the circumstances, as wearying as it is to say this, the Democrats need to impeach Trump. Yes, again. 

Over the weekend, the editorial page editor at the Washington Post, Fred Hiatt, published an op-ed detailing the many impeachable offenses Trump has committed since he was formally impeached by the House of Representatives last December. (He was acquitted in the Senate, despite being obviously guilty of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, because 52 of the 53 Republicans in the chamber — the exception being Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah — refused to convict him.) 

Trump’s “abuse of law-enforcement powers” with “the recent, reckless deployment of federal forces into U.S. cities for political purposes” is an impeachable offense, Hiatt argues. He points out that this offense dwarfs even the abuse of law enforcement powers of previous weeks, such as Trump’s dismissal of Justice Department officials for investigating his abundant corruption and abusing his presidential powers to let his criminal cronies off the hook. 

Hiatt says he’s “not suggesting that the House should again impeach the president” so close to the election, when it should be left up to “the voters to render judgment.”

That sounds reasonable at first, but Hiatt overlooks a crucial factor: Trump’s abuse of law enforcement powers is putting the well-being and even the lives of Americans in peril, while also illegally trying to stomp out their First Amendment rights. Unless someone stops him, Trump will continue to escalate these tactics — and there’s a real chance people could be killed by these federal goons. (Trump’s provocations have already led to one inadvertent death, when a motorist shot a protester in Austin, Texas.) Impeachment may be the only way for Congress to stop Trump’s unjustified violence against the citizens he was supposedly elected to serve. 

Back in December, Trump was caught red-handed in the act of trying to cheat in the 2020 elections by using his office’s powers to blackmail the president of Ukraine to aid a smear campaign against Trump’s Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden. These attacks on Portland and Seattle are the same thing: Trump is abusing his powers in order to create a false campaign narrative about “violent anarchists” that he hopes can be used to distract from his immense failings as president. 

The punditocracy may view the impeachment of Trump in 2019 as a failure, since the Senate, run by corrupt Republicans, failed to convict him.

In truth, the impeachment served at least one important purpose: It stopped Trump’s illegal scheme to blackmail Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, in its tracks.

Remember, Zelensky was about to give in to Trump’s threats and promise a phony Biden “investigation” in exchange for the military aid Congress had already authorized, but Trump was withholding. An CNN interview was scheduled for September, in which Zelensky likely intended to do Trump’s bidding and smear Biden. But when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced an official impeachment inquiry, drawing attention to Trump’s criminal behavior, Zelensky’s interview was canceled. 

While it’s not certain that Trump would pull back his federal police in the face of another impeachment inquiry, previous experience shows that he can be compelled to scale down his corrupt schemes in the face of exposure on the level that an impeachment inquiry brings. Considering that people’s health and lives are on the line, it’s worth making the effort. Congress has a duty to protect Americans from a violent president who is waging war on them for political gain. 

It’s tempting to debate the politics of this, of course. One side would argue that holding impeachment hearings highlighting Trump’s abuse of power — which could feature witnesses such as the local politicians and victims of federal police tactics — will help focus the public’s attentions on Trump’s corruption. The other side would argue that it’s a distraction from the ongoing issues of the pandemic and collapsing economy, and could backfire if the public decides the impeachment itself is political. Pelosi, no doubt, would not be keen to spend time on another impeachment process as Democrats in Congress are trying to rescue the country from economic catastrophe, in the face of Republican intransigence. 

But what was true last December is still true now: Ultimately, there’s no way to know for certain how impeachment hearings would play out politically.

What is known, however, is the morality of this situation. What Trump is doing is illegal and immoral. It’s incumbent on those who actually care about the safety of Americans to do whatever they can to stop his cynical campaign of violence against citizens who are exercising their free speech rights. Oregon is already fighting this in the courts. Congress needs to back state officials up by invoking the only power that has so far worked to curtail Trump’s abuses: Impeachment. 

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton attempts to defend his remarks calling slavery a “necessary evil”

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas is attempting to defend remarks in which he called slavery a “necessary evil.”

Cotton first made the controversial comment in an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette interview published Sunday.

“We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country, because otherwise, we can’t understand our country,” he said. “As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.”

Cotton was defending legislation he proposed, which would withhold federal funds from schools that use the New York Times’ “1619 Project” as part of their history curricula.

“The 1619 Project” explores the legacies of racism and slavery, and the contributions Black Americans have made to the national narrative. It defines slavery as the central American story and argues for making America’s birth year 1619, or the year in which the first slaves arrived from Africa.

Though the project won a Pulitzer Prize, conservatives have criticized the work as politicized and ideological. Cotton attacked the paper’s “premise” that America was “irredeemable” and racist “to the core.”

“The entire premise of the New York Times’ factually, historically flawed 1619 Project . . . is that America is at root a systemically racist country to the core and irredeemable. I reject that root and branch,” Cotton said. “America is a great and noble country founded on the proposition that all mankind is created equal. We have always struggled to live up to that promise, but no country has ever done more to achieve it.”

The comments drew widespread backlash, including from historians and the project’s founder, Nikol Hannah Jones.

“If chattel slavery — heritable, generational, permanent, race-based slavery where it was legal to rape, torture, and sell human beings for profit — were a ‘necessary evil’ as @TomCottonAR says, it’s hard to imagine what cannot be justified if it is a means to an end,” she tweeted.

But Cotton denied that he was calling the enslavement of Black people a “necessary evil,” merely offering his own analysis of the Founding Fathers views.

Hannah-Jones challenged him to disavow those views.

“Were the Founders right or wrong, @TomCottonAR, when they called slavery a ‘necessary evil upon which the Union was built’?” she asked on Twitter. “Because either you agree with their assessment of slavery as necessary or you admit they were lying and it was just an evil and dishonorable choice. Which?”

Cotton has not responded.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/tom-cotton-slavery-necessary-evil-new-york-times-1619-project-school-curriculum 

Cotton’s attack on the New York Times comes one month after catching backlash for his “Send in the military” op-ed, in which he argued that U.S. cities needed federal troops to come in and help quash civil unrest in the wake of the death of George Floyd.

The paper was blasted online by liberals and some of the paper’s own staff, many posting the line “Running this puts Black @nytimes staff in danger” on Twitter. Hannah-Jones also pushed back on her paper.

The fallout led to the resignation of the Times’ opinion editor, James Bennet, as well as the release of an editor’s note saying Cotton’s op-ed fell “short of our standards” and “should not have been published.”

Cotton referenced that note Saturday in another tweet attacking The Times.

Martha McSally trails by 12 points as a slew of new polls signal trouble for Republican Senate races

Retired astronaut Mark Kelly’s lead over Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., swelled to double-digits in a new poll as a slew of recent surveys signaled tough races for Republicans in Senate races.

Kelly, the husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz., leads McSally 53-41 in a new NBC News-Marist poll. Two other polls, one from CNN and another from CNBC, showed Kelly leading by 7 points.

Kelly has consistently outraised the Republican incumbent, more recently raising $12.8 million to McSally’s $8.9 million in the second quarter of this year.

McSally, who was appointed to the former Senate seat of the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., after losing her own Senate race to Sen. Kirsten Synema, D-Ariz., has long been one of the most vulnerable Republicans facing re-election this year. McSally has tried to tie her fortunes to that of President Donald Trump, who carried the state by fewer than four points in 2016. The NBC-Marist poll shows Trump trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden by five points, a much smaller margin than McSally’s race.

The Cook Political Report shifted McSally’s race from “Toss Up” to “Lean” Democrat last week.

“The bottom fell out for us at the end of May and June,” a Republican strategist told the outlet.

The Arizona poll is one of several surveys released this weekend showing Republicans struggling in key races as the president’s approval rating sags amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has now killed more than 146,000 people in the U.S., and a deepening financial crisis.

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., trails Democrat Cal Cunningham 50-41, according to an NBC-Marist poll. That is right in line with an earlier CNBC poll which showed Cunningham leading by seven points, and a PPP survey which showed him up by 8 points. Cunningham also broke the state’s Senate fundraising record last quarter, bringing in a $7.4 million haul.

Like McSally, Tillis has tried to boost his re-election chances by moving closer to Trump. Politico described him as “Trump’s new best friend in North Carolina” last year. But Trump’s fortunes are shaping up even worse in the state than in Arizona. Biden leads Trump 51-44 in North Carolina, according to the NBC-Marist poll.

Republicans also got more bad news in Michigan, where Republican John James is running against Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., after losing another Senate race to Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., in 2018. A CNN poll shows Peters leading 54-38, making it the third straight poll showing James trailing by double-digits.

The latest surveys come amid weeks of rough polls for other vulnerable Senate Republicans such as Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, and Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo.

The Cook Political report projected Democrats were favored to win back the Senate for the first time last week as it shifted McSally and Ernst’s races toward Democrats.

“Something remarkable would have to happen for Republicans to still have control of the Senate after November,” a Republican pollster told the outlet. “It’s grim. There’s just so many places where Democrats either have the upper hand or are competitive in states that six months ago we wouldn’t have considered at risk.”

“If you’re an incumbent in a bad environment sitting at 44 percent, you should be pretty damn scared,” added a Republican strategist. “The expanding map has made it really hard, and there’s just a lot of Democratic momentum right now.”

Fox News host Jesse Watters retracts comments praising QAnon for uncovering “a lot of great stuff”

Fox News host Jesse Watters has walked back comments he made praising the bizarre QAnon conspiracy theory during a Saturday interview with Eric Trump.

Watters called QAnon a “fringe group” — which he does not “support or believe in” — in a statement to Mediaite one day after he praised it for uncovering “a lot of great stuff.”.

QAnon is a conspiracy theory that started on the imageboard 4chan in which a would-be secret operative with classified information posts clues to followers about the “deep state” and a baseless plot by President Donald Trump to destroy a global sex trafficking ring allegedly involving high-profile Democrats and their celebrity supporters.

What began as a widely-mocked fringe group has now grown into a widely-mocked insurgency within the Republican Party. There are numerous QAnon supporters and boosters running in Republican races around the country. Oregon Republicans recently nominated a QAnon conspiracy theorist as their U.S. Senate candidate.

Twitter recently cracked down on a network of accounts linked to QAnon over their “potential to lead to offline harm.” Facebook is preparing similar steps, according to The New York Times. QAnon adherents have pushed the Pizzagate conspiracy, a baseless claim that high-profile Democrats were running a child sex ring out of a Washington pizzeria which was followed by a shooting, and more recently, a bizarre claim that the furniture outlet Wayfair was secretly trafficking missing children in ads for high-priced storage cabinets.  

Watters took issue with the ban during his Saturday interview with Eric Trump.

“Twitter has basically cracked down and eliminated about 7,000 accounts and another 100,000 accounts are now in the cross-hairs.” he said. “Do you think this is an attempt to interfere in an election? Because, you know, Q can do some crazy stuff with the pizza stuff and the Wayfair stuff, but they also uncovered a lot of great stuff when it comes to Epstein and the deep state.”

Many of the QAnon “deep state” claims have been debunked and, as NBC News reporter Ben Collins noted, it has not “uncovered a lot of great stuff when it comes to Epstein.”

“The Epstein reporting was by actual reporters at newspapers, bastardized by Q to fit a narrative about Satanic child cannibalism,” Collins wrote on Twitter. “Deeply irresponsible garbage by Fox News.”

After questioning whether blocking accounts linked to the fringe group would qualify as “election interference,” Watters compared the group to the anti-fascist movement Antifa.

“I never saw Q as dangerous as Antifa. But Antifa gets to run wild on the internet, what do you think is going on there?” Watters asked.

Eric Trump, who has promoted the conspiracy theory on Instagram, did not engage with the QAnon comments but agreed with Watters’ assertion that cracking down on the baseless conspiracy theory was tantamount to election interference.

“They are literally putting their finger on the scales of a U.S. election,” Trump argued.

“You have some little dweeb in Silicon Valley, who’s 22 years old. He’s a tech savant,” he said. “He’s running Twitter or one of these companies, and he literally has his finger on the power of a presidential election.”

Journalists condemned Watters and Fox for praising the group on the air.

“I can’t begin to tell you how validating this segment will be for QAnon followers and how dangerous that is,” journalist Yashar Ali wrote. “QAnon followers are deeply detached from reality and they constantly look for validation of their beliefs. They look for what they see as codes from people they support. A top Fox News host endorsing QAnon while the president’s son nods along is all they need.”

Watters later issued a statement walking the comments back.

“While discussing the double standard of big tech censorship,” he said Sunday, “I mentioned the conspiracy group QAnon, which I don’t support or believe in. My comments should not be mistaken for giving credence to this fringe platform.”

Rise and fall of a mini-Trump: With Florida a global epicenter, Ron DeSantis can shut up now

It was a little startling to hear President Trump announce that he would throw out the first ball at a New York Yankees game next month — now that the delayed and shortened Major League Baseball season is underway — since has refused to do this since he became president. But since Dr. Anthony Fauci was getting so much good press in anticipation of his season-opening foray to the mound in Washington, Trump was clearly jealous, and no doubt pleased to learn there would be no crowd in Yankee Stadium to boo him. But then Fauci got ribbed mercilessly in the press for his wild pitch, and Trump was perhaps reminded that he might not be able to do much better. So over the weekend he announced to the nation that he was just too busy.

Our very busy president played golf on Saturday, and spent most of Sunday retweeting images of his paramilitary raid on Portland, rando sh**posters and conspiracy theories. He even retweeted a whiny lament about the greatness of hydroxychloroquine, a golden oldie at this point. So I’m sure the country feels much relieved by Trump’s “new tone” that the media keeps going on about, and no doubt the catastrophic collapse of his already tepid poll numbers will reverse itself immediately.

Meanwhile COVID-19 continues to ravage the nation and no matter how hard new campaign manager Bill Stepien and the rest of his team try to get him to take it seriously, Trump is simply unable to do it. He reluctantly had to cancel his convention extravaganza in Jacksonville — which had been moved from Charlotte at his insistence — mainly because even Republican diehards didn’t want to travel into the epicenter of America’s massive surge in cases.

Trump’s fatuous spin that this was another of his “strong” decisions to keep the country safe at all costs fell flat since there are endless clips of him expressing disdain for anyone who thought that staging a crowded political convention in the middle of a raging pandemic might not be a great idea. He has never demonstrated interest in keeping the country safe from this pandemic. He just wants to keep “his numbers” down, and that’s not the same thing.

This news had to hit Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, especially hard. He had lobbied hard for the convention when Trump had his temper tantrum last month over North Carolina’s refusal to guarantee that his fans would be able to attend speeches in the indoor event center without wearing masks or practicing social distancing. DeSantis was more than happy to guarantee the Trumpers a good time without all those unpleasant COVID guidelines. But even then the clock was ticking on Florida’s exploding caseload

If you want to see the perfect realization of the Trump administration’s pandemic policy, look to Florida. It is certainly true that the virus has surged in a number of other states, including Texas, Arizona and California. The first two, like Florida, were driven to open too rapidly by Republican governors, while California’s surge seems to be linked to general overconfidence — people failed to observe safe guidelines once the lockdown orders were lifted. Florida isn’t alone in this surge and it won’t be the last state to experience one.

But only in Florida did the governor appear on TV and have a full-blown Trumpian whine-fest in May because he wasn’t getting enough credit for keeping cases lower in Florida than New York:

DeSantis spoke too soon and opened his state much too fast. Florida is now the one of the global epicenters of this virus and it’s not getting better anytime soon. Every day since July 10 the state has averaged more than 10,000 new cases per day. According to the New York Times, the state has had 423,800 cases and 5,854 deaths from the virus so far.

DeSantis bears the brunt of the blame for all of this. His main concern from the beginning was to reopen for business at all costs — in the apparent conviction that people would forget about the virus as soon as they could go back to the malls — and the results are there for all to see. Throughout the crisis he has been belligerent, stubborn, unsympathetic, cavalier and self-centered. He issues orders but refuses to offer state support to make them work. He is, in short, exactly like Trump.

The Washington Post published an in-depth look at the DeSantis administration’s response to the pandemic, and it’s devastating. Just as Trump refuses to listen to experts, Desantis shoved aside his scientists and stopped public health briefings altogether. He refutes the models if they don’t suit his purpose and spins the data to sound better than it is. Some of the state’s top experts have left in the middle of the crisis.

As the virus spread out of control in Florida, decision-making became increasingly shaped by politics and divorced from scientific evidence, according to interviews with 64 current and former state and administration officials, health administrators, epidemiologists, political operatives and hospital executives. The crisis in Florida, these observers say, has revealed the shortcomings of a response built on shifting metrics, influenced by a small group of advisers and tethered at every stage to the Trump administration, which has no unified plan for addressing the national health emergency but has pushed for states to reopen.

When DeSantis insisted on reopening Florida’s economy early, Trump cheered him on. In fact, the Post reports that Trump gleefully told advisers that Florida’s supposed success gave other states the validation to open prematurely as well. DeSantis returned the favor by backing Trump’s play all the way, refusing to enact measures like mask-wearing that might have helped mitigate the surge. The Post reports that Trump administration officials “regularly sent reports and clips of DeSantis bragging about Florida not having cases early in the outbreak, to argue that many states were overreacting and, at times, that seasonal heat could cure the virus.”

Like his hero and mentor, DeSantis can’t find time to talk to his experts but does have time to talk to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, which he has done numerous times as the virus has exploded in his state.

DeSantis was a backbench congressman who won the 2018 gubernatorial election largely because of Trump’s endorsement and he’s been a loyal henchman from the beginning. It was assumed all along that he could help deliver Florida to Trump this November and that his future might well include an address on Pennsylvania Avenue. (Yes, he is that ambitious.)

But lashing himself to the Trump Train was a risky move from the outset, and it doesn’t look like it’s paying off. The latest Quinnipiac poll has Biden leading Trump by 13 points in the Sunshine State, 51% to 38%. DeSantis isn’t doing any better. In April, 50% of Florida voters approved of his handling of the pandemic. That’s now down to 38%, the same number who back Trump’s re-election.

Florida elected a mini-Trump in 2018 and got a Trump mega-disaster in 2020. Now the whole country is paying the price.

The Trump campaign’s legal strategy includes suing this tiny TV station

This year, President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign filed defamation lawsuits against three of the country’s most prominent news outlets: The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN. Then it filed another suit against a somewhat lower-profile news organization: northern Wisconsin’s WJFW-TV, which serves the 134th-largest market in the country.

The Trump campaign sued the station over what it claims is a false and defamatory ad WJFW aired that showed Trump downplaying the threat of the coronavirus as a line tracking new COVID-19 infections ticks up and up on the screen.

Dozens of stations ran the ad. But the Trump campaign chose to sue just NBC-affiliate WJFW, which is owned by a relatively small company that only has two other local TV stations, both in Bangor, Maine. The campaign did not initially sue the political organization that produced the ad. That group later joined the case as a defendant.

The curious lawsuit is part of a larger, aggressive and exceedingly expensive legal operation by the Trump campaign that’s the focus of our latest “Trump, Inc.” podcast.

The campaign has spent over $16 million on litigation and other legal costs — more than any past presidential campaign and more than 10 times what presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden has spent on legal services, according to disclosures.

Trump has long boasted about his penchant for filing lawsuits. The president and his businesses have reportedly filed over 2,000 lawsuits. After losing a 2006 defamation lawsuit against the journalist Tim O’Brien, Trump told the Post that he knew he couldn’t win, but he sued anyway. “I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and they spent a whole lot more,” Trump said. “I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about.”

As with other areas, Trump has taken his approach to running his personal life and business to the presidency.

Multiple media law experts told us that the suit against tiny WJFW has little chance of succeeding. Susan Seager, a media defense lawyer and adjunct professor at The University of California, Irvine, School of Law, said, “The courts are very deferential and very protective of opinions about public figures and political issues.”

So if Trump isn’t likely to win, what might he be trying to do? Matthew Sanderson, who served as counsel for Sens. John McCain and Mitt Romney, said he thinks the Trump campaign is “engaging in scare tactics.”

“The reason in my opinion that the Trump campaign is filing these types of lawsuits is not necessarily to punish the Wisconsin station — they’re not going to be successful,” Sanderson said. “The reason they’re doing this is to send a message to the rest of the stations to be careful” about running anti-Trump ads.

Unlike many other states, Wisconsin doesn’t have a law that makes complainants pay for defendants’ legal costs if a defamation suit ends up being dismissed as frivolous.

Seager estimates that fighting a defamation lawsuit brought by a high-profile group like the Trump campaign could cost anywhere from $100,000 to $250,000, just to go through the process of getting it dismissed.

We asked the Trump campaign and its lawyers about the suit and why they chose WJFW. They did not respond.

The TV station commented, through a lawyer, that “WJFW has no choice but to fight the Trump campaign’s attempt to bully a small-market broadcaster into surrendering its First Amendment rights. The public counts on local broadcasters, especially in an election year, to remain free to air criticisms of public officials.”

Of course, one critical difference between lawsuits Trump used to file in his business dealings and the ones his campaign is filing is that Trump no longer has to use his own money. His donors are picking up the tab.

Trump’s disclosures show his campaign has paid about $200,000 to the firm handling the Wisconsin case.

The campaign has also paid $3.3 million to the firm of attorney Charles Harder, who specializes in high-profile reputation defense lawsuits. Harder is representing the Trump campaign in the three other defamation suits against media organizations. Harder is perhaps best known as the lawyer who successfully sued Gawker into bankruptcy on Hulk Hogan’s behalf while being surreptitiously funded by venture capitalist Peter Thiel.

Another set of expenses in the disclosures is also interesting. It shows the Trump campaign spent $95,161 on “legal & IT consulting” paid to … “The Trump Corporation.” Neither the campaign nor Trump’s company responded to questions about those charges.

This story is co-published with WNYC.

Stay up to date with email updates about WNYC and ProPublica’s investigations into the president’s business practices.

Administration eases rules to give laid-off workers more time to sign up for COBRA

People who’ve been laid off or furloughed from their jobs now have significantly more time to decide whether to hang on to their employer-sponsored health insurance, according to a recent federal rule.

Under the federal law known as COBRA, people who lose their job-based coverage because of a layoff or a reduction in their hours generally have 60 days to decide whether to continue their health insurance. But under the new rule, that clock doesn’t start ticking until the end of the COVID-19 “outbreak period,” which started March 1 and continues for 60 days after the COVID-19 national emergency ends. That end date hasn’t been determined yet.

By extending the time frame to sign up for COBRA coverage, people have at least 120 days to decide whether they want to elect COBRA, and possibly longer depending on when they lost their jobs.

Take the example of someone who was laid off in April, and imagine that the national emergency ends Aug. 31. Sixty days after that date takes the person to the end of October. Then the regular 60-day COBRA election period would start after that. So, under this example, someone whose employer coverage ended at the beginning of May could have until the end of December to make a decision about whether to sign up for COBRA, with coverage retroactive to the beginning of May.

Some health policy experts question the usefulness of the change, given how expensive COBRA coverage can be for consumers, and how limited its reach: It isn’t an option for people who are uninsured or self-employed or who work for small companies.

“For ideological reasons, this administration can’t do anything to expand on the Affordable Care Act’s safety net,” said Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms. “So they’re using these other vehicles. But it’s really a fig leaf. It doesn’t do much to actually help people.”

What does this rule change mean for workers? If you have lost your job, here are some things to consider.

Playing a waiting game

Under the new rule, workers can keep their COBRA options open far longer than before. It’s always been the case that people could take a wait-and-see approach to signing up for COBRA during the first 60 days after losing their coverage. If they needed care during that time, they could elect COBRA, pay the back premiums and continue their coverage. But if they didn’t need care during that time, they could save a chunk of money on premiums before opting for other coverage to kick in after the 60-day period.

Now, people have even more time to wait and see. Under the rule, once the administration declares the national emergency over, laid-off workers would get 120 days to decide whether to purchase their job-based insurance — 60 days under the new rule and the regular 60 days allowed as part of the COBRA law.

“It becomes a long-term unpaid insurance policy,” said Jason Levitis, a nonresident fellow at the Center for Health Policy at the Brookings Institution. “There’s no reason to enroll until something bad happens.”

This is not without risk, consumer advocates point out. Someone who has a serious medical emergency — a car accident or a stroke — might not be able to process their COBRA paperwork before they need medical care.

Waiting too long could also affect people’s ability to sign up for other coverage. When people lose job-based coverage, it triggers a special enrollment period that allows them to sign up for new coverage on their state health insurance marketplace for up to 60 days afterward.

“You could miss your opportunity to enroll in the [insurance] exchange” created under the Affordable Care Act, said Katy Johnson, senior counsel for health policy at the American Benefits Council, an employer advocacy group.

Don’t count on the boss to clue you in

Employers are not mandated to tell people promptly about their eligibility for COBRA. The same federal rule that gives workers more time to sign up for COBRA also pushes back the notification requirements for employers.

“Once an employer lays you off, they don’t have to notify you that you’re eligible for COBRA until after the emergency period,” said Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at KFF, the Kaiser Family Foundation. (KHN is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)

For many employers, especially large ones that outsource their benefits administration, notifications are routine and are continuing despite the federal change, said Alan Silver, a senior director at benefits consultant Willis Towers Watson. However, for smaller companies with fewer than 200 workers, getting the information out might be an issue, Silver said.

Costs can be jaw-dropping

Opting for COBRA is expensive because workers have to pay both their portion of the premium and their employer’s share, plus a 2% administrative fee. A 48-year-old paid $599 a month on average for individual COBRA coverage last year, according to a KFF analysis.

In addition, if people elect COBRA several months after losing their coverage, they could be on the hook for thousands of dollars in back premiums.

The upside for former employees is that sticking with their previous employer’s plan means they don’t have to start from scratch paying down a new deductible on a new plan. Nor do they have to find new doctors, as often happens when people switch health plans and provider networks change.

Ten percent of workers laid off or furloughed because of the coronavirus pandemic reported they had COBRA coverage, according to a survey conducted last spring by the Commonwealth Fund.

The COBRA extension is available only to people who worked at firms with 20 or more employees and had job-sponsored coverage before being laid off or furloughed. If the company goes out of business, there’s no health insurance to continue to buy.

Might hospitals step in to pay premiums?

Employers are typically not big fans of the program. Workers who elect COBRA are typically older and sicker than others with employer coverage, the KFF analysis found. They may have serious medical conditions that make them expensive to cover and raise employer costs.

Some policy experts are concerned that giving people more time to sign up for COBRA leaves the door open for hospitals or other providers to offer to pay sick patients’ back premiums in order to increase their own payment above what they’d receive if someone were on Medicaid or uninsured. Doing so could be a boon for some patients but raise health care costs for employers, said Christopher Condeluci, a health care lawyer who does legal and policy work around the Affordable Care Act and ERISA issues.

“Employers are worried,” said Pollitz. After getting laid off, “what if you’re uninsured and you wind up in the hospital six months in, and then the hospital social worker learns you’re eligible for COBRA and offers to pay your premium?”

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.

ACLU’s David Cole: “If Trump seeks to stay in power after losing the election,” we’ll be ready

Donald Trump and his regime are using the rule of law and democracy as their personal punching bags.

In Portland, Oregon, and elsewhere, Trump has unleashed a secret police force that may include “private contractors” (better known as mercenaries), along with Homeland Security, and other forces against Black Lives Matter, anti-fascist activists and other protesters.

These Americans are exercising their constitutionally-guaranteed rights of free speech and assembly. In response, the Trump regime is kidnapping people off the streets, detaining them illegally, unnecessarily escalating the violence and engaging in wholesale violations of civil liberties and human rights.

Trump has publicly promised to unleash his federal goon squad — which reportedly numbers more than 50,000 — against Democratic-controlled cities across the United States.  

Trump has repeatedly signaled that he will not leave office if defeated by Joe Biden in the 2020 election. His move from autocrat to full-on fascist is almost complete. Matters are so dire that the Democrats, a few responsible Republicans and other senior civilian and retired military officials, among others, are strategizing for a scenario that may include widespread violence on and after Election Day if Trump refuses to concede defeat or step down on Inauguration Day.

The Boston Globe offers these details about this recent political wargaming session:

“All of our scenarios ended in both street-level violence and political impasse,” said Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown law professor and former Defense Department official who co-organized the group known as the Transition Integrity Project. She described what they found in bleak terms: “The law is essentially … it’s almost helpless against a president who’s willing to ignore it.”

The group used “a role-playing game that is a fixture of military and national security planning … [and] envisioned a dark 11 weeks between Election Day and Inauguration Day,” during which Trump and his allies “used every apparatus of government … to hold onto power,” while Democrats rely on court rulings and street demonstrations:

In multiple scenarios, officials on both sides homed in on narrowly decided swing states with divided governments, such as Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina, hoping to persuade officials there to essentially send two different results to Congress. If a state’s election is disputed, a legislature controlled by one party and governor of another each could send competing slates of electors backing their party’s candidate.

Both sides turned out massive street protests that Trump sought to control — in one scenario he invoked the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to use military forces to quell unrest. The scenario that began with a narrow Biden win ended with Trump refusing to leave the White House, burning government documents, and having to be escorted out by the Secret Service. (The team playing Biden in that scenario, meanwhile, sought to patch things up with Republicans by appointing moderate Republican governors, including Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, to Cabinet positions.)

The group even conjured up the most contentious possible scenario, one in which Trump once again won the Electoral College but Biden refused to concede after winning the popular vote by a significant margin. In this far-fetched hypothetical universe, Trump gave an interview to The Intercept, arguing that Bernie Sanders would have won the election had Democrats nominated him, while Biden urged California and other West Coast states to threaten secession unless democratic reforms were made.

Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr, along with other members of the president’s cabal, have enlisted John Yoo, author of George W. Bush’s infamous “torture memo,” in an effort to subvert the Constitution by manufacturing a legal justification for Trump to ignore Congress and any other restraints on his power.

The precedent for all of Trump’s real and potential crimes was clearly established when Senate Republicans refused to convict Donald Trump for his attempted extortion against the Ukrainian as part of a plot to influence the 2020 election.

Trump continues to use the office of the presidency as means to enrich himself, his family and his surrounding circle of sycophants, at the literal expense of the American people. Trump is a self-styled mafia boss turned president and the most corrupt person to ever occupy the Oval Office.

As dire as matters are in America in this year of pandemic, economic collapse, and a failing democracy there is room for some hope.

From the corporeal politics of the George Floyd protests to legal challenges in the courts, the American people are resisting the Trump tsunami. The American Civil Liberties Union is one of the most prominent organizations fighting to protect the rule of law in America and the civil liberties and human rights of the American people.

David Cole is national legal director of the ACLU, the United States’ largest and oldest civil liberties organization. Cole is also the Hon. George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy at Georgetown University.

He has also litigated numerous cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and is the author or editor of 10 books. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the Nation, the New York Review of Books and other leading publications.

Cole’s essay “Can Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Survive a Second Trump Term?” was featured in a recent special issue of Washington Monthly which focused on what could happen to the United States if Donald Trump wins a second term.

In this conversation, Cole details that Trump is one of the greatest threats to the American people’s civil and human rights in recent history — a threat amplified by the deadly challenges of the coronavirus pandemic. Cole highlights efforts by the ACLU to help people of conscience organize and engage in corporeal politics and direct action. He also explains how the ACLU is working with other civil society groups to defend the rights of immigrants, women, nonwhite people, protesters, journalists and other targeted groups in the Age of Trump.

Finally, Cole warns that the American people must vote on Election Day in overwhelming numbers as though their rights literally depend on it — and assures us that if Trump tries to remain in office after losing the 2020 election, the ACLU will be ready.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Given the tumult that is the Age of Trump, how are you feeling?

If you are not to some degree traumatized and deeply concerned, then you are not fully human. What we are seeing with the Trump administration is unlike anything that I have ever faced. I was very involved in the civil liberties cases after 9/11, but this is just on an entirely different scale. What the Trump administration is doing with the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the rule of law more generally is impacting everybody — and that include the attorneys at the ACLU and myself as well. The only way to manage this emotionally is to know that this too shall pass. Here at the ACLU we are making sure that we are doing the best to get through this challenging moment with Donald Trump in a way that is true to our principles, effective and smart.

I am also a big believer in the power of civil society — the private institutions central to checking government overreach such as the ACLU, the press, the academy and other institutions that are really important to a functioning democracy. Civil society is so very crucial right now.

How would you assess the health of American civil society, given Trump and his regime’s assault on democracy and freedom?

American civil society has done a fantastic job in the Age of Trump, in the sense that people have not sat back and accepted what is going on in a fatalistic fashion. Instead we have stepped up, come together, organized and pushed back.

We saw this with the Women’s March and how people went out to airports in droves to protest the Trump administration’s Muslim ban. People also marched in the streets to protest Trump’s revocation of protection for DACA and the Dreamers.

The ACLU has gone from 400,000 members, before Trump was elected, to 1.8 million members after he took office. The New York Times and the Washington Post have some of the highest subscription rates in their history. Collectively, these are all indicators of the power of American civil society. It signals to a sense among our citizens that you do not just submit and surrender to these threats against civil liberties and freedom — instead you come together and support civil society organizations that are fighting back.

Here at the ACLU we just launched a direct-action group called People Power. This is the first time in 100 years that the ACLU has had a direct-action component. People Power has grown from zero people to over a half a million people who have identified as People Power activists, and have taken some concrete action in the real world as People Power activists, with our support, and reported back to us on that activity. I think our civil society is very strong.

One of the large differences between Donald Trump and for example autocrats and authoritarians such as Viktor Orbán in Hungary or Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey is that Trump has tried to do the same things against NGOs, the academy, the news media, reporters and journalists and other parts of civil society — and has failed because of pushback by the American people.

Donald Trump is lawless. He literally believes that the rule of law does not apply to him. How is the ACLU trying to stop this assault?

No president does everything that we want him to do. Every president has engaged in what we view as unlawful actions. The ACLU has been in existence for 100 years. We’ve sued every president over the course of that time. We’ve sued Obama, we sued Clinton, we sued the Bushes and we’ve sued Trump. But the ACLU has sued Donald Trump more than any of the prior presidents because he is so dismissive of any legal constraints. The courts have repeatedly pushed back against Donald Trump and he has lost more cases than any prior president. It is also important to note that Trump has also appointed many judges to the courts.

The decisions from the Supreme Court, ruling against the Trump administration on its revocation of DACA and on its refusal to recognize that federal law protects LGBT employees, reinforces the point that the health of our system rests on checks and balances. 

But as I have always said, we cannot rely on institutional checks and balances alone. We, the citizenry, are a check ourselves — through our exercise of the right to dissent, to associate with like-minded people, to assemble in the streets and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Those checks have never been more important. The anti-racist police demonstrations illustrate their power.

Authoritarians test norms as a way of ultimately breaking them. The abnormal becomes normalized and democracy eventually succumbs to authoritarianism. For example, Trump may not have gotten everything he and his adviser Stephen Miller wanted with their “Muslim ban,” but they did get 90 percent or so of it. How do we measure the impact of the legal cases the Trump administration has won in court?

It is very disturbing. From immigrants’ rights to LGBT rights, racial justice, reproductive freedom and many other issues, things have not been good. In the long term the way we assess America under Trump is what happens on Nov. 3. If the American people say to themselves that it is fine with them that we have a president who sought to separate families. We have a president who sought to deny undocumented teens who learn they’re pregnant while they’re in federal custody access to a doctor so that they can get an abortion, which is their constitutional right. We have a president who is trying to put a citizenship question on the census in order to deter immigrants from responding, in order to advantage the Republican Party at the disadvantage of the Democratic Party. We have a president who has called white supremacists “very fine people.” If on Nov. 3, the American people say, “Hey, that’s fine with me” and re-elect Trump, then the norms have really been broken.

But if instead there is a resounding rejection of Donald Trump, then I think the lesson we draw as a country is that when a president challenges norms in the way that Donald Trump has, then such behavior has consequences. A president who behaves that way will be rejected by the American people. Ultimately, it is up to the American people. If Trump is rejected on Nov. 3, it is an object lesson in how not to behave as president. Future American presidents would learn that lesson.

As an organization, how is the ACLU prioritizing its responses to Donald Trump and his administration’s tsunami of lawlessness?

It is exhausting. The ACLU is an across-the-board civil rights and civil liberties organization. But we prioritize where we see threats being greatest at any particular time. With the Trump administration, the ACLU has prioritized immigrants’ rights, reproductive freedom and voting rights. We are, of course, still fighting for LGBT rights and racial justice and the like.

But that’s where he’s put his resources: xenophobic efforts to scapegoat immigrants, efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade and deny women access to reproductive health care, and efforts to suppress the vote, use the census to ensure the success of the Republican Party even if they don’t have majoritarian support in a democracy. Over time, the ACLU has brought many lawsuits to protect immigrants’ rights and to make sure that women have access to reproductive health care, and that the American people can vote in a moment when the Republican Party does not want majority rule.

The immigration lawyers are working especially hard because in the context of the COVID pandemic, we really need to get people out of immigration detention. Being detained right now is a lethal situation. The immigration lawyers were challenging all the anti-asylum policies. Now they’re trying to get people out of these detention centers where they may die if the COVID infection gets in there.

In terms of women’s reproductive freedoms, many states are exploiting the pandemic to further their anti-abortion agenda. The ACLU is in court seeking emergency injunctions to keep abortion clinics open in order to allow people to get the essential medical services they need.

What do Donald Trump and his agents want? How are they trying to achieve their goals?

I believe that Donald Trump is a pure narcissist. What he wants is attention and to be re-elected. I do not believe that he has many principles other than those.

Why is Trump so hostile to immigrants? Because it plays to his base. The same is true for Trump’s efforts to take away women’s reproductive rights. The answer to virtually every question about Trump is: Does it play to his base or not? That strategy has worked for him to the degree of pleasing his built-in voters but has not worked in terms of him expanding his support with the American people in any meaningful sense.

Virtually everything Donald Trump has done — with the exception of the tax cuts — is unilateral through executive order. Well, that means that everything Donald Trump has done unilaterally through executive order can be undone using the same power. If the American people vote like their rights depend on it, they can correct many of Trump’s wrongs in the first 100 days by electing a new president.

Donald Trump and his agents have taken the Office of Civil Rights, which is supposed to protect the rights of marginalized and vulnerable individuals and communities, and transformed into a tool for expanding the power of right-wing Christian evangelicals and Christian nationalists to impose their will on other people. How did the OCR become so perverted and twisted?

The Office of Civil Rights is a disaster under this administration, with both Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr. The OCR exists to protect the rights of the marginalized and the vulnerable. The OCR has historically focused on monitoring police abuse and responding to local police departments that are systematically discriminating and violating the civil rights of African Americans and Latinos and other marginalized groups. The OCR has also pushed for increased voting access, again for historically marginalized groups. Trump does not care about those things. He does not want to empower minority communities. Trump cares about suppressing those minority communities.

This means that the Trump administration has pulled back from any meaningful monitoring or enforcement with respect to local policing. Trump has also done nothing to enforce voting rights. In fact, Trump is doing everything he can to suppress voting rights. What the Trump administration has done with the Office of Civil Rights is one of many outrageous things, which means it is hard to pay attention given the scale of his torrent of abuses.  

What are some of the most egregious examples of how the Trump regime is taking away fundamental human and civil rights in this country?

Immigration. Denying people the right to apply for asylum in ways that are directly contrary to the statute if they face persecution abroad. Detaining people when they do not need to be detained, especially immigrants. Trump is detaining people to stop them from seeking asylum. That attack on immigration is one of the many egregious things that the Trump administration has done. The list is very long.

Trump and his administration have repeatedly threatened protesters and others exercising their rights of free speech and freedom of assembly with violence, imprisonment, lawsuits and other punishments. How is the ACLU intervening?  

This is our bread-and-butter work. We have long defended the right to demonstrate, and sued government officials who impose unreasonable restrictions on that right. In connection with the protests of police abuse in recent weeks, we have sued Trump and Barr for gassing peaceful demonstrators in Lafayette Park so the president could have a photo-op carrying a Bible, Los Angeles for its overly broad curfew, and Seattle for its use of chemical irritants and flash grenades against protesters. 

During the George Floyd protests, the police, National Guard and other government forces repeatedly targeted reporters and journalists with tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets. Reporters and journalists, as well as others, have suffered serious life-threatening injuries from so-called non-lethal weapons. 

Journalists must have the right to cover protests in a free society. The ACLU recently sued state and local police in Minnesota for attacks on journalists during the protests there. We fully support both the right to protest and the right of the press to shine a light on protests. As to the protests themselves, we’ve long been critical of police abuse, including those directed at people of color. We wholeheartedly support demands to spend less money on police and more money on interventions that affirmatively support people in inner-city communities, where opportunities are most limited and the risk of both police abuse and victimization from crime are greatest. We think we can and should spend more on education, aftercare, housing and job training and less on police and prisons. 

America’s descent into authoritarianism continues. The Trump regime is now literally using de facto secret police to detain and “disappear” protesters in Portland. Trump is planning to unleash similar forces all over the country against Democratic-led cities. By doing this, Trump is violating long-standing and basic understandings of law and justice in America to create a state of terror as a means to help him win the 2020 election.

Trump’s introduction of federal forces into cities where they are not wanted is almost certain to increase the likelihood of violent confrontations and abuse. We have already sued over the situation in Portland, Oregon, and are working with our affiliates to respond to abuses as they arise.

As part of his reign of terror against Americans who dare to dissent and stand up to him, Trump is trying to criminalize dissent. He has basically declared war on any Americans who disagree with him, calling them Nazis, “anti-American,” “enemies,” “the radical left” and other slurs.

The president is supposed to be the president for all the people, not a divider in chief. He has shown himself to be as thin-skinned as any public figure in living memory, and he is increasingly lashing out at those who disagree with him — not only in his speeches, but with efforts to muzzle critics like Michael Cohen and reward loyalists who commit crimes for him, like Roger Stone. But as is often the case with heavy-handed government efforts to suppress or penalize critics, it’s not working. The ranks of those who disagree with him are growing in size and volume, and his support is dropping precipitously. Could it be that democracy is working?

If Donald Trump wins a second term in office, what do you want to prepare the American people for?

Such an outcome would send a deeply disturbing signal to the rest of the world. Such an outcome would also say something very troubling and disturbing about the United States and its people. Trump will get more Supreme Court appointments. He will double down on his anti-immigrant measures because he will see that it worked for his re-election. He will double down on overturning Roe v. Wade and denying women their fundamental freedoms and equal status in this society. There are many horrific things that will happen if Donald Trump is re-elected.

The only real response, in my opinion, is to push back, organize, and build a movement to reject him. But the American people do not have to wait for Election Day. We can do that now. That’s what we’ve been doing at the ACLU. We are not a partisan organization, so we don’t endorse candidates for elective office. But the ACLU does believe that voting is a critical part of being a citizen because the ultimate guardian of civil liberties and civil rights are the people themselves. The ballot box is one of the most important places to exercise those rights. The American people should vote like their rights depend on it.

What will the ACLU do if Donald Trump refuses to leave office after the election, or perhaps goes so far as to impose martial law?

The United States has always seen peaceful transitions to power. That is one thing which distinguishes the United States from too many other countries. We as Americans must keep it that way. Rest assured that if Trump seeks to stay in power after losing the election, we here at the ACLU will do everything in our power to challenge his actions. 

100 days away: Donald Trump hits a new low ahead of election

Sunday marked 100 days until President Donald Trump is expected to face off against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden—and new polls on the coronavirus pandemic, the economy, and the opinions of voters in key battleground states suggest Americans are increasingly unhappy with Trump.

National polling results released Sunday by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 80% of U.S. adults across the political spectrum think the country is headed in the wrong direction. Only 8% of Democrats and 31% of Republicans—both record lows—say the nation is headed in the right direction.

Approval of Trump’s handling the Covid-19 pandemic also hit a record low, with just 32% respondents saying they approve. Similarly, only 36% said they approve of how the president has handled education and healthcare. Although more respondents (48%) said they approve of how Trump has handled the economy, that percentage still represented a significant drop from January, before the pandemic led tens of thousands of Americans to lose their jobs with limited support from the federal government.

Overall, 61% of Americans currently disapprove of Trump’s performance as president, which is a slight drop from earlier this year but still aligns with the public opinion throughout his first term. The poll was conducted July 16-20 and the margin of sampling error for all adults is +/- 4.3 percentage points.

Mounting frustration with the president could benefit Biden at the ballot box. As the AP reported in a piece about the polling results Sunday:

Biden’s campaign is eager to keep the final months of the campaign focused squarely on Trump, confident that the former vice president can emerge victorious if the contest is a referendum on whether the current commander in chief has succeeded during his four years in office.

“People are sick and tired of a government that is divided and broken and unable to get things done,” said Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager. “What people feel like they’re getting from Trump right now is a hodgepodge mess of self-interested political talk.”

Biden is now leading in three battleground states that Trump won in the 2016 general election, according to CNN polling conducted by SSRS and released Sunday.

Among registered voters, the polling showed, the former vice president leads the current president 52% to 40% in Michigan, 51% to 46% in Florida,and 49% to 45% in Arizona. Trump’s overall disapproval rating is also notable in all three states: 57% in Michigan, 54% in Arizona, and 51% in Florida.

An even greater share of voters across all three states—60% in Arizona, 59% in Michigan, and 57% in Florida—disapprove of how Trump has handled the Covid-19 crisis, the pollsters found. The surveys were conducted July 18-24 and have a margin of sampling error of +/- 3.6 percentage points.

The polls on Sunday followed survey results released Friday by MoveOn Political Action that suggested Trump’s ongoing crackdown on protests in Portland, Oregon and his threats to send federal agents into other major U.S. cities could have consequences at the ballot box for not only him but also Republican senators facing re-election.

Those surveys conducted by Public Policy Polling showed that registered voters in Arizona, Maine, and North Carolina “don’t like what [Trump] is doing and are fed up” with Sens. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) “carrying water for him as he trundles toward authoritarianism,” tweeted MoveOn.

The advocacy group called on Congress to pass legislation to block the administration from replicating the conditions in Portland in other cities and “investigate this abuse of Trump’s power.” MoveOn added that “we all need to do our part, including by voting out Trump and his enablers.”

Stewart Boss, a spokesperson for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, told The Hill Sunday that voters have rushed to support Democratic candidates as Trump has seen his approval ratings drop during the pandemic and resulting economic crisis.

“While Republicans have mismanaged the response to this unprecedented public health and economic crisis, our momentum has grown as Democrats have expanded the Senate map and our potential paths to ending Mitch McConnell’s majority with 100 days to go,” Boss said, referencing the upper chamber’s GOP leader.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a former presidential primary candidate who is now a contender for Biden’s vice presidency, wrote in a series of tweets Sunday that there are only 100 days until the election, the country is facing multiple crises, “and Trump is unable to govern at even the most elementary level.”

“The next 100 days will decide what kind of country we build together,” Warren concluded. “We know this won’t be easy. Nothing important ever is. We don’t take on this fight because it’s easy—we take on this fight because it’s right. And I’m proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with you in it.”

Paul Krugman condemns Republicans for planning to cut unemployment as the crisis deepens

The U.S. Department of Labor released some new unemployment figures on Thursday, reporting that 1.4 million new unemployment claims were received last week — which, Guardian reporter Dominic Rushe notes, was “up 109,000 from the previous week” and comes after a period of decreasing unemployment. Liberal economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman discusses the bad economic news in a Twitter thread, lambasting Senate Republicans for wanting to cut unemployment benefits at a time when so many Americans are out of work.

“The unemployment claims number was terrible by any normal standard, although it’s kind of the new normal,” Krugman tweets. “It’s one of various indicators suggesting a stall in the economic recovery.”

In February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. had an unemployment rate of only 3.5%. But U.S. unemployment greatly increased as the coronavirus crisis accelerated and many brick-and-mortar businesses found themselves facing stay-at-home orders, social distancing restrictions, and a population terrified of the pandemic. U.S. unemployment, the BLS reported, reached 14.7% in April and decreased to 13.3% in May and 11.1% in June. But now, as the number of new coronavirus infections surges in many states, the Labor Department is reporting an increase in unemployment claims.

And according to Krugman, there is no way to sugarcoat the fact that the U.S. continues to cope with double-digit unemployment.

In his thread, Krugman explains, “We really don’t know whether the next official employment number, which will be for ‘July’ but actually a snapshot of the 2nd week, will be a small positive or negative. Politically that may matter; the reality is that either way, we’re stuck deep in a hole.”

In light of that “reality,” Krugman adds, the last thing Senate Republicans should be doing is slashing unemployment aid.

“It’s a really terrible time to be cutting off aid to 30 million unemployed Americans,” Krugman warns. “But that’s what Rs in the Senate are doing, apparently believing that restaurant workers etc. are living the good life on the dole and need to be forced back into their petri dishes.”

 

Twitter hack exposes broader threat to democracy and society

In case 2020 wasn’t dystopian enough, hackers on July 15 hijacked the Twitter accounts of former President Barack Obama, presidential hopeful Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Kim Kardashian and Apple, among others. Each hijacked account posted a similar fake message. The high-profile individual or company wanted to philanthropically give back to the community during COVID-19 and would double any donations made to a bitcoin wallet, identical messages said. The donations followed.

The hack on the surface may appear to be a run-of-the-mill financial scam. But the breach has chilling implications for democracy.

Serious political implications

As a scholar of internet governance and infrastructure, I see the underlying cybercrimes of this incident, such as hacking accounts and financial fraud, as far less concerning than the society-wide political implications. Social media — and Twitter in particular — is now the public sphere. Using a hijacked account, it would be simple to wreak economic damage, start a national security crisis or create a social panic.

Consider some of the potential threats to society posed by the takeover of technology infrastructure.

  • Market stability. Coordinated rogue tweets from the accounts of Apple, Facebook, Google, Netflix and Microsoft could easily crash the stock market, at least temporarily, eroding confidence in markets.

  • Societal panic. A false warning about an impending terrorist attack from a major media company account could create a dangerous public panic.

  • National security. Twitter is the platform of choice for President Donald Trump. A foreign adversary hijacking his account and announcing a nuclear strike on North Korea could be catastrophic.

  • Democracy. Hijacked accounts could sow well-timed political disinformation that sways or seeks to delegitimize the 2020 presidential election.

As such, what happened is not about financial crime. It is a serious threat to us all.

Screen shot of Joe Biden's hacked account.

Screen shot of Joe Biden’s hacked account. Twitter via the New York Times

Politicians are rightly calling for hearings and investigations. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform ranking member, Kentucky Republican James Comer, issued a letter demanding answers from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey about what happened. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered a full investigation of the hack, warning that “Foreign interference remains a grave threat to our democracy.”

The FBI is investigating the incident.

Social engineering

On the day of the attack, Dorsey tweeted, “Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened.” But what did happen?

Twitter disclosed that approximately 130 accounts were affected and that “attackers were able to gain control of the accounts and then send Tweets from those accounts.” The affected accounts seemed to be “verified accounts” with the blue check mark meant to authenticate the identities of high-profile public figures.

Because these accounts are potential hacking targets, Twitter recommends additional security such as having a second log-in verification check, and requiring personal information such as a phone number to reset a password.

How were the accounts taken over? There are two general possibilities: Either hackers gained the login credentials, including passwords, or gained access to systems from inside the company. Twitter has, as of this writing, described the attack as having “successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.” In other words, it may have originated inside Twitter’s secure system.

But this explanation raises more questions. Are Twitter employees (or hackers) with unauthorized access to “internal systems” actually able to tweet from the account of someone like Joe Biden? Another major question is whether the hackers also were able to read the private direct messages in each of these accounts.

To begin to regain trust, Twitter will have to clarify what happened and explain what the company will do to mitigate such an attack in the future.

In terms of the tactics used, Twitter described the incident as having used social engineering, a term that refers to a cyberattack exploiting some human action. Examples include phishing attacks that prompt someone to click on a malicious link in an email or divulge a password or personal information. These techniques date back decades, such as the infamous I Love You attack of 2000, when emails with the subject line “I Love You” prompted people to download a virus-infected file, creating massive economic damage to companies. It can be a range of activities aimed at deceiving people into providing information useful to another party, such as a hacker trying to penetrate a company’s network.

The essential feature of a social engineering attack is that a human being is prompted to make an error in judgment. If anyone ever thought an individual has no agency in cybersecurity, simply recall the Democratic National Committee email data breach in advance of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. That incident in part originated via a phishing attack that tricked someone into disclosing email credentials. Cybersecurity is a problem of human psychology and cyberliteracy as well as a complex technical area. Not only do Twitter employees appear to be victims of social engineering, according to the initial explanation, but so too were those people who were tricked into giving bitcoin donations.

Not just a tech company problem

Cybersecurity is the great human rights issue of our time simply because the security of everything in our society — from elections to health care to the economy — is dependent upon the security of the digital world. Private companies now mediate the public sphere and so they bear great responsibility for this security. From the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal to the Yahoo! data breach, tech companies have had trust problems. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic lays bare how much we need the digital world and must get cybersecurity right.

The disclosure that the Twitter hack originated via a social engineering technique is a reminder that cybersecurity is an individual human responsibility as much as a technical or institutional one. We are all responsible. Twitter was originally not designed to be something so politically relevant. Now we all know it is. That’s why this latest attack is so serious.

Laura DeNardis, Professor and Interim Dean, American University School of Communication

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

“Is Texas going blue?”: Internal GOP polls show Trump losing

Taking a look at polling in Texas that shows presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden with a slight lead over Donald Trump, an MSNBC analyst claimed internal GOP polls show similar results which is very bad news for the president.

Speaking with host Alex Witt, Texas Tribune Washington Bureau Chief Abby Livingston was asked about the president’s problems in the normally reliable conservative state.

“Is Texas going blue?” host Witt asked. “Last time it did that was 1976, Jimmy Carter won by 51 percent. What are the odds this is time?”

“Better than they’ve been in a long time, at least since Bill Clinton was president,” Livingston replied. “The internal polling is matching this. This is a serious situation for Republicans. I think the question going into the fall is, will some of these Republicans who support Joe Biden come home to the GOP or whether these numbers hold if the national parties start investing serious resources into the state — could they move one direction or the other with a concerted television campaign.”

“So, if you have to put odds now, today being a snapshot, we know they can change in any given amount of time and we have plenty of time for it to change between now and November 3rd, but what do you think is behind this possibility of Texas voting for a Democrat?” Witt pressed.

“Well, you were just speaking to a reporter in Michigan and the exact opposite of what happened in the rust belt went down in Texas on November 2016,” she explained. “We saw parts of Texas that should be Republican move toward the Democratic Party. So I think what is driving this is down-ballot. You have House legislative candidates getting out the vote and maybe even destigmatizing what it is to be a Democrat in the state of Texas. I also think the state has an affinity for him. If you remember, Texas kind of sealed the nomination after South Carolina for Joe Biden in a way no one really saw coming.”

Watch below:

Washington Post’s head editor details a whole new list of Trump’s impeachable offenses

President Donald Trump has already been impeached once, and it didn’t even include the ten examples of obstruction of justice during special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. But in just the past month, Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt outlined many, many more.

Writing Sunday, Hiatt walked through the Articles in the Constitution that Trump has violated in the past four weeks. He noted that in June, Trump decided that his ability to win in November depended on reopening the economy, even if it put Americans’ lives at risk. Meanwhile, the White House, Fox News and elected Republicans in the House and Senate waged a “bizarre campaign to discredit the nation’s top infectious-disease doctor, Anthony S. Fauci.” Even if Trump is demanding businesses all reopen, Trump has belittled testing, saying that it is the reason COVID-19 cases are so high.

“My month-old Article 2, abuse of law-enforcement powers, will have to be retopped, because the offenses I included a month ago pale beside the recent, reckless deployment of federal forces into U.S. cities for political purposes,” wrote Hiatt.

He cited Post reporter Ruth Marcus, who explained Trump’s actions attacking Portland, Oregon is “unconstitutional.” Sending federal agents in dressed as military members to throw protesters into unmarked vans so that Trump can get campaign footage is one charge.

“My Article 3, abuse of appointment power, will have to be updated, too, now that the courageous Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman has been not only drummed out of the White House but bullied out of the military altogether,” Hiatt wrote.

“Article 4, abuse of power in foreign affairs, gets a new count,” he continued. “The original cited Trump’s acquiescence to China’s concentration camps in western China in exchange for the campaign help of promising to buy soybeans from Midwest farmers.”

Then there’s the matter of Trump ignoring Russia issuing a bounty for the lives of American soldiers in Afghanistan.

In the past, Trump has been charged with violating the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which prevents a president from earning money off of his position. There are a whole new slate of examples.

“We would need some new articles as well, starting with Article 5: Abuse of power for personal enrichment,” cited Hiatt. “The New York Times reports that the U.S. ambassador to Britain told several people in 2018 that Trump was pushing him to get the British government to steer the lucrative British Open golf tournament to a Trump-owned resort in Scotland. He hasn’t landed the tournament yet. But attempted sleaze is still sleaze.”

He noted that if there’s a need for actual profits, Post reporter David Fahrenthold has been slowly working to uncover those for the three years Trump has been in office. Just in this election cycle alone, Trump has scored more than $4 million from the Republican Party and his own campaign.

“Article 6 would be abuse of the reprieve and pardon power,” Hiatt said. “The Constitution allows the president to free felons, including one who has been convicted of lying to Congress and the FBI to protect the president. That doesn’t make it okay.”

Article 7 could be a charge against Trump for trying to take down the U.S. electoral process.

“The president’s lies about the possibility of fraud in mail-in balloting, combined with his threats to disregard the results of the election, wouldn’t register as transgressions in the U.S. criminal code,” Hiatt closed. “But could there be any higher crime and misdemeanor than deliberately seeking to suppress the vote, seed chaos and lay the groundwork to obstruct a peaceful transfer of power?”

He noted that he isn’t suggesting that Congress act with these crimes. Still, if the Senate goes Democratic in November, it’s entirely possible that Congress could vote to impeach in 2021 to show any future presidents that they can’t get away with breaking the law the way Trump did.

A cap on income might seem radical — but it was once a mainstream idea in American politics

Five months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt delivered a radio address that has unfortunately faded into obscurity. Embedded within that 1942 speech, Roosevelt laid the ideological foundations for establishing a cap on the annual income that the wealthiest Americans should be allowed to earn, and which structurally comes at the expense of everyone else.

His argument was summed up in a single quote:

Indeed in these days, when every available dollar should go to the war effort, I do not think that any American citizen should have a net income in excess of $25,000 per year after payment of taxes.

The context is important here: America was in the middle of fighting World War II and still struggled with the lingering socioeconomic trauma of the Great Depression. Roosevelt’s goal was to keep the cost of living down, and he advocated a number of measures to achieve this. In addition to establishing a cap on income, he also wanted to increase corporate taxes, establish price and rent ceilings, ration essential commodities and stabilize wages, among other things. The immediate objective was helping Americans economically survive the crises of global war and economic catastrophe, although as he made clear in his 1944 State of the Union address, he also wanted to lay the foundations for protecting Americans’ economic rights over the long term.

This brings us to 2020. Right now, America is facing the worst economic setback since the Great Depression, one that has exposed the structural flaws of capitalism in ways unimaginable mere months ago. While many of America’s problems were exacerbated by President Donald Trump’s incompetent governing, there are underlying systemic issues that would have existed regardless of who occupied the White House in 2020. Income inequality has gotten worse year after year. Global warming is presenting humanity with an impending existential calamity that will make the ongoing pandemic pale in comparison. And the ongoing economic setback is likely to lead to chronic unemployment for millions of people long after the “depression” phase of this crisis has subsided.

In other words: Between global warming and the pandemic, the depression and structural income inequality in general, it is clear that America lives in a state of existential crisis that impacts every citizen in ways analogous to the threats that existed during World War II. The question is, would Roosevelt’s proposed income cap — which, adjusted for inflation, would equal just under $400,000 today — be helpful in the modern era? And given its mainstream attention then, is it really so radical an idea?

The economists to whom I spoke had varying opinions on the political viability of an income cap. Yet all agreed that if income could be successfully taxed in such a way, it would do a great deal to not only reduce class inequality, but fix many of the other problems threatening our planet.

“Absolutely. Absolutely,” Dr. Richard D. Wolff, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told Salon when asked if the revenue acquired by putting a cap on that income could pay for programs like universal free health care, free college, improving socioeconomic opportunity and paying for job-creating infrastructure. He emphasized that, because there are a lot of numbers in any hypothetical program like this which are simply not readily known, it is impossible to offer informed analysis on how much money could be allocated for what. At the same time, he emphasized that the revenue could be freed up — and that, in the grand scheme of things, establishing an income cap isn’t really that radical.

After all, there is a crucial difference between income and wealth.

“Most of the conversations are about income, [but] relatively few are about wealth in the United States,” Wolff told Salon. “This is mirrored by the fact that there are 8 million varieties of actual and proposed income tax schemes, but actually very few wealth tax proposals or schemes in the United States about the most important forms of wealth, which are stocks, bonds, cash, treasury securities, and all of that crap [which] is not taxed.”

He added, “The only wealth tax that basically exists in the United States is a tax on what is called tangible wealth by which has meant land buildings, inventories of stores, automobiles, things like that. The federal government does not tax those things. And state governments very, very rarely do. It is the local government that taxes, land buildings, automobiles to raise municipal revenue.”

“There is no reason for that,” Wolff emphasized. “It is stupid, incompetent, haphazard. It means that if you own a car in one town, you pay a different tax.”

This is relevant because, although the rich would not doubt claim that an income cap would destroy their ability to live the high life, in fact “this is only taxing income, it’s not taxing all forms of wealth, which would essentially be a way of saying you could still accumulate massive empires. It’s just the income itself would be limited.”

Wolff added, “I personally do not believe that anyone should have an obscene amount of wealth. I don’t think it’s necessary. I don’t think it’s moral.”

Gabriel Mathy, a macroeconomist at American University, shared his thoughts with Salon by email after arguing that the income cap proposed by Roosevelt would be a bit higher than my own estimate. (“Relative to income per person back then converted to now, that’s worth over $1 million.”)

“Figuring out how much income that would raise would require a full accounting of the wealth out there. However, the top one percent of earners is about at $400,000, so we can use that as a rough approximation: how much money could we get by taxing the top one percent over $400k?” Mathy posed to Salon.

He speculated that many of the super-rich would avoid this kind of cap by emigrating and renouncing their American citizenship, and added that it would be difficult to politically implement. “Even if many Americans do not expect to become rich, they think about the possibility of making it and wouldn’t want to prevent entrepreneurs from becoming wealthy,” he mused. As a result, he suggested a different approach — a wealth tax that involves the rich paying more of their income as taxes.

“Rather than a 100 percent wealth and income tax after a certain threshold, there would be a wealth and income tax at a lower rate, say two to six percent depending on the level of wealth and a 50 percent bracket for high income earners,” Mathy told Salon. “This would result in a lot less capital flight, and would raise a lot more revenue. And there were a lot more studies done of the effects of higher wealth taxes (and higher income taxes) that can be consulted. It’s an interesting question to think about these wealth and income caps, but we’ve seen inheritance taxes trending downward: if we can’t even get a fair, higher rate of tax on inheritances, an institution that generates an un-American aristocracy of wealth, can we really expect to get a wealth cap?”

That said, he agreed that if a wealth cap was able to be implemented, it would “reduce the role of the wealthy in our society, and would reduce their influence in pushing destructive policies.”

Thomas Ferguson, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts Boston, had observations that echoed those of Wolff and Mathy.

“In a globalized world, I’d be very cautious about proposing an income level,” Ferguson told Salon by email. “Lots of people own assets and receive income from abroad, which doesn’t need to be reported here. These folks would escape; note also that foreign firms can make political contributions in the US quite legally. You can own the firm abroad and direct it in the US. More broadly the whole question of corporate contributions, which don’t appear as any individual’s income unless the companies distribute it, needs to be addressed.”

He suggested two remedies that could address those weaknesses: “I am sure what is needed is tight regulation of offshore accounts. I also think public funding of candidates, as I’ve long argued, will help a lot, even if you can’t regulate all political money.”

Norman Solomon, national director of RootsAction.org and a Sanders delegate from California to the 2020 Democratic National Convention, expressed admiration for Roosevelt’s idea to Salon, noting that it was more radical than anything proposed by the Sanders campaign.

“It’s fascinating to me that in the usual vernacular of politics and mass media, the word redistribution has been trashed and it’s seen as like a third rail,” Solomon explained. “I think even a lot of liberals have argued that. No, we’re not trying to redistribute the wealth. I certainly agree, but I think there’s a throughline here beginning with the success of the DLC [the centrist Democratic nonprofit known as the Democratic Leadership Council] and the emergence of the Bill Clinton-style of Democratic Party so-called ‘leadership.'”

One of the most common criticisms of income cap proposals is that they would remove incentives for people to work hard or be innovative. Wolff strongly disagreed with that argument.

“The notion that you can only incentivize a person by means of money, and that it’s either the most important or the ultimate [motivator], that is a really psychological infantilized kind of thinking. It’s just silly,” Wolff explained. To illustrate his point, he laid out a hypothetical scenario.

“Suppose a person who made an unusual achievement by working very hard was given an extraordinary set of honors in the community, a day would be set aside to honor what this person had done, and it would be explained to the coworkers or to those in the larger community of which this person was a part,” Wolff said. “A gift that had been paid for by a tiny portion of public taxes would be given to this person, a type to enable them to have a nice vacation or to build an extension on their house. Something nice and reasonable that showed the appreciation of a community for something that a person had done.” As he argued, the psychological incentive to work hard for that reason — or simply out of the innate human instinct for pride in one’s work, especially when those achievements are widely recognized by others — is powerful.

“There’s absolutely no reason to believe that you would get one iota less of a motivated response from people from that reward, as opposed to giving them $175 billion as the reward that Jeffrey Bezos gets for being a glorified delivery boy,” Wolff told Salon.

Will a COVID-19 vaccine be the “October surprise” that saves Trump’s re-election campaign?

President Donald Trump’s painfully inadequate response to the coronavirus pandemic has been crushing him in recent election polls: one poll after another has shown him trailing former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee — some of them by double digits. But Politico reporter Adam Cancryn, in an article published on July 22, wonders if perhaps there will be enough progress on a COVID-19 vaccine for Trump to enjoy an “October surprise” that saves his reelection campaign and helps him win a second term.

The World Health Organization’s Mike Ryan has said that although “good progress” is being made, it will probably be early 2021 before COVID-19 vaccines start to become available. And Cancryn notes that “Trump’s bet that a proven-effective coronavirus vaccine will be the October surprise to catapult him into a second term is facing increasingly long odds.” However, the Politico journalist notes, “that doesn’t mean he won’t find just enough reason to declare victory anyway.”

Cancryn explains, “While the race to find an effective vaccine for COVID-19 has crucial implications for nations around the world, it also carries political ramifications in the United States — with Trump banking heavily on finding a vaccine to quell both the pandemic and mounting unhappiness over his handling of the coronavirus response. Buoyed by a series of encouraging early trial results, the (Trump) Administration is laying the groundwork for a high-profile rollout of initial coronavirus vaccines in as little as three months. It’s a best-case timetable that also tracks with the final weeks before the November 3 election.”

According to Cancryn, the Trump White House’s Operation Warped Speed “has poured billions of dollars into developing a vaccine in record time, funding several efforts in parallel and buying up doses of the experimental shots in a wager that one will ultimately pay off.”

Cancryn reports that “several top vaccine experts” told Politico it could “take well into 2021 to produce and distribute the hundreds of millions of shots needed to inoculate the entire country.” However, the reporter wonders if early clinical trials could give Trump “the opportunity to seize on them as a potential game-changer.”

“While the Trump Administration has insisted that it won’t cut corners on safety — a vow the vaccine developers have taken as well — it’s left the door open to short-circuiting the process before those trials are complete,” Cancryn reports. “The (Food and Drug Administration) guidelines indicate the Administration could issue emergency authorizations as soon as it’s convinced a vaccine is safe and effective, clearing it for distribution to the public.”

John Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College, is among the medical experts who is worried that a COVID-19 vaccine will be rushed rather than adequately tested.

Moore told Politico, “That’s the concern — not that Trump might boost his poll ratings by a couple percent, but that we could make a catastrophic mistake. Anything in October is going to be politicized, and the last thing this pandemic needs is more politicization.”

Barry Bloom, an infectious disease expert at Harvard University, told Politico, “There is clearly a political goal for the president to say, ‘I’ve delivered a vaccine.’ But we will not know in three months, or six months — by January — how long the antibodies last.”

Did the Supreme Court grant Trump new powers to reshape health care by upholding DACA?

President Donald Trump came into office vowing to repeal and replace Obamacare. While he successfully neutralized the health care law’s requirement that everyone carry insurance, the law remains in effect.

When Fox News host Chris Wallace noted that Trump has yet to put forward a replacement plan, Trump told him to stay tuned.

“We’re signing a health care plan within two weeks, a full and complete health care plan that the Supreme Court decision on DACA gave me the right to do,” Trump said July 19 on “Fox News Sunday.”

“The Supreme Court gave the president of the United States powers that nobody thought the president had.”

Trump said he would “do things on immigration, on health care, on other things that we’ve never done before.”

We wanted to know if the Supreme Court really did that. So we ran the president’s words by a number of people who study constitutional and administrative law. We heard several reasons why the Supreme Court might not have said what Trump thinks it said.

The likely source

We asked the White House press office for the basis of Trump’s assertion and never heard back. Several law professors pointed to a National Review article by University of California-Berkeley law professor John Yoo, best known as authoring a legal justification that led to waterboarding enemy combatants during the George W. Bush administration.

In the article, Yoo argues that when the Supreme Court ruled against the administration’s rollback of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, the court made it more difficult for new presidents to unwind the policies of their predecessors.

How might this give Trump new power?

In theory, Trump could enact a policy, even one judged illegal by the courts, and the person who follows him into office would need to jump through a number of hoops to undo it.

Yoo wasn’t sure if Trump could use the argument to make sweeping changes in health care, saying it “depends on what the administration policy actually says.”

But as Yoo sees it, should Trump establish a new program, the ruling “requires his successor to follow a burdensome process, which could take a year or more, to repeal it.”

Many legal experts disagree with Yoo’s interpretation. Before we go there, we need to recap the court’s DACA decision.

Court sends DHS back to the drawing table

President Barack Obama created DACA on the grounds that every administration has to allocate limited prosecution resources. Obama argued that it was more important to deport violent criminals, drug dealers and thieves than people who had come into the country illegally when they were little. So long as they had committed no serious offenses and met other criteria, they could apply to avoid deportation.

Under Trump, the Department of Homeland Security moved to end DACA. Supporters of the program sued, saying that under the Administrative Procedure Act, that action was arbitrary. In its June 18 ruling, a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court agreed.

The ruling describes how Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen got in a procedural bind when she inherited the decision of her predecessor (Acting Secretary Elaine Duke) to end the program. She erred, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, because instead of making the case for ending DACA as her own decision, she came up with new reasons to justify the earlier move.

“Because Nielsen chose not to take new action, she was limited to elaborating on the agency’s original reasons,” Roberts wrote. “But her reasoning bears little relationship to that of her predecessor and consists primarily of impermissible ‘post hoc rationalization.'”

The court didn’t say Homeland Security couldn’t change the policy. It said the Administrative Procedure Act requires an agency to consider the key options it faces and explain why it chose the one it picked. With DACA, it said the change needed to show a fuller vetting of its choices.

No new power created

So while Trump technically lost that case, he is using the ruling (and Yoo’s theory) to voice confidence that he can do things no one thought possible.

Legal scholars give several reasons that might be off the mark. Broadly, they say the court’s ruling changed nothing.

“It’s a straightforward application of long-standing administrative law doctrine that dates back at least to President Ronald Reagan,” said Cary Coglianese, director of the Penn Program on Regulation and a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania. “Agencies have to explain why they are doing something. They have to look at the plausible alternatives and give a reason for the one they selected.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh also did not see a new take on an old law. In his dissenting opinion, he called the ruling on the Administrative Procedure Act “narrow.”

In a similar vein, the court left intact the specific power behind DACA of selective enforcement of the law.

“That’s an ordinary part of executive branch practice, and nothing in the Supreme Court’s DACA decision should be read to authorize anything beyond that simple practice,” said Yale University law professor Cristina Rodríguez.

The path to undoing this sort of executive action may not be as long as Yoo described. The court spelled out how Nielsen could have ended DACA without much delay, said Eric Freedman, professor of constitutional law at Hofstra University Law School.

“If she had considered other possible solutions, what she did would have been fine,” Freedman said. “She would have complied with the Administrative Procedure Act and no one would have enjoined her.”

There is also something unusual about DACA itself that makes it less of a model for other steps Trump might take.

The program was in place for quite a while before Trump tried to end it. As a result, about 700,000 people ultimately counted on it. The court said that reliance on the program should have factored into the decision to end it.

A new policy from Trump wouldn’t have time to accumulate that critical mass.

“Anything Trump does now will be enjoined tomorrow,” said Josh Blackman at the South Texas College of Law. “So there will be no reliance, and the next administration could do what it wanted.”

Blackman said the court’s ruling did create some murkiness around challenging the legality of an unwanted policy. But he said an agency could justify a change strictly for reasons of policy, not law.

Lastly, the DACA decision was about a policy not to enforce the law in certain circumstances. Robert Chesney at the University of Texas Law School said that focus also limits the scope of the ruling.

“If Trump wants to create new rules, the example does not fit in the first place,” Chesney said.

A “full and complete health care plan” and major immigration changes would likely require new government actions. Without new laws from Congress, that would be out of reach.

This story was produced in partnership with PolitiFact.