Розділ: Політика
Trump Suggests Delaying US Presidential Election
For the first time, U.S. President Donald Trump is suggesting delaying this year’s election.
Trump, on Twitter on Thursday morning, alleged, without evidence, that mail-in balloting would be make the 2020 presidential balloting the “most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history.”
The president added: “It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2020The president does not have the power to delay the election, which is to be held November 3rd. The date is set by Congress under the Constitution. Bipartisan condemnation
During a hearing on Capitol Hill, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was asked by Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia about Trump’s tweet. Pompeo, who is fourth in the line of succession to the presidency, said that he did not want to make a legal judgment on the fly about whether it is possible to delay the election, but “in the end, the Department of Justice and others will make that legal determination.”Trump’s tweet quickly prompted bipartisan condemnation. This is not an idea anyone, especially the president, should float, said Ari Fleischer, who was a White House press secretary in the administration of President George W. Bush, a Republican. “I would quickly delete this tweet,” if he were president, Fleischer said.Democratic Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico said the fact that the president “is even suggesting it is a serious, chilling attack on the democratic process. All members of Congress — and the administration— should speak out.” Election officials, civil rights groups and historians also are criticizing the president’s suggestion. “No, Mr. President. No. You don’t have the power to move the election. Nor should it be moved,” tweeted Federal Election Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, a Democratic appointee. “States and localities are asking you and Congress for funds so they can properly run the safe and secure elections all Americans want. Why don’t you work on that?” No, Mr. President. No. You don’t have the power to move the election. Nor should it be moved. States and localities are asking you and Congress for funds so they can properly run the safe and secure elections all Americans want. Why don’t you work on that?— Ellen L 😷 Weintraub (@EllenLWeintraub) July 30, 2020“This is America. We are a democracy, not a dictatorship,” said Dale Ho, director of the voting rights project of the American Civil Liberties Union. “The Constitution sets the date for the election in November. Nothing President Trump says, does, or tweets can change that fact.”
Delaying the election would violate American law, wrote presidential historian Michael Beschloss on Twitter.
“Never in American history—not even during the Civil War and World War II–has there been a successful move to ‘Delay the Election’ for President,” said Beschloss, the author of ten books about American history.Never in American history—not even during the Civil War and World War II–has there been a successful move to “Delay the Election” for President.— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) July 30, 2020“It’s a desperate attempt to distract attention from the worsening COVID-19 crisis and an imploding economy,” said presidential historian David Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Akron. “Trump has attempted to destroy confidence in American institutions and norms from the very beginning, even right after the 2016 election — an election he won — by claiming falsely that millions of people voted illegally He knows he may well lose in 2020 but is trying to get his supporters not to believe the results. It’s right out of George Orwell’s “1984”: ‘The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,’” Cohen told VOA. Polls indicate Trump is significantly trailing the presumptive Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden in key battleground states. Biden previously suggested Trump will try to delay the election. “Mark my words — I think he is going to try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can’t be held,” Biden said at a virtual fundraiser on April 24. A spokesman for the Trump reelection campaign, Hogan Gidley, explained that the president “is just raising a question about the chaos Democrats have created with their insistence on all mail-in voting. They are using coronavirus as their means to try to institute universal mail-in voting, which means sending every registered voter a ballot whether they asked for one or not.”In a statement to VOA, Gidley added that “voter rolls are notoriously full of bad addresses for people who have moved, are non-citizens, or are even deceased. Universal mail-in voting invites chaos and severe delays in results, as proven by the New York congressional primary, where we still don’t know who won after more than a month.”Both the National Association of State Election Directors and the National Association of Secretaries of State told VOA on Thursday that they are unaware of any developments that could have an impact on the security of this year’s election.The director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Chris Krebs, told the Brookings Institution on July 17th, “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. The 2020 election will be the most secure election in modern history.”US Officials Promising ‘Most Secure Election in Modern History’The officials say while the November presidential election will not be risk free, defense and back-up systems should guarantee a free and fair resultKrebs said that said at least 92% of U.S. states now have systems in place to ensure there is a paper record of every vote cast, making it easier to audit election results to make sure no one is able to tamper with the tally. And that number could rise as a growing number of states are expected to turn to mail-in ballots instead of in-person voting because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.VOA’s Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.
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By Polityk | 07/30/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Civil Rights Icon Rep. John Lewis to be Buried Thursday
U.S. civil rights icon Congressman John Lewis is set to be laid to rest Thursday after a funeral service in Atlanta.Former Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are expected to be among the mourners at the funeral at Ebenezer Baptist Church, a historic site where Martin Luther King Jr. preached. Obama is expected to speak at the service.Lewis will then be buried at South-View Cemetery in Atlanta.He died last week from pancreatic cancer at the age of 80.Lewis served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 33 years as the congressman from Georgia’s 5th congressional district that includes Atlanta.Mourners lined the streets along the route where a hearse carrying Lewis’ body traveled Wednesday on its way to the state capitol.Many people stood in long lines to file past the flag-draped coffin, with viewing hours extended late to try to accommodate all who wanted to pay their respects.At a ceremony, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp called Lewis a “beloved Georgian, an American hero and a friend to all who sought a better, fairer, more united society.”Thursday’s services mark the last in a week of celebrations of Lewis’ life. His body was carried Sunday across a bridge in Selma, Alabama where as a young man in 1965 he was among civil rights marchers beaten by state troopers. His body lay in state for two days at the U.S. Capitol in Washington before being taken to Georgia.
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By Polityk | 07/30/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
John Lewis to be Buried Thursday
U.S. civil rights icon Congressman John Lewis is set to be laid to rest Thursday after a funeral service in Atlanta.Former Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are expected to be among the mourners at the funeral at Ebenezer Baptist Church, a historic site where Martin Luther King Jr. preached. Obama is expected to speak at the service.Lewis will then be buried at South-View Cemetery in Atlanta.He died last week from pancreatic cancer at the age of 80.Lewis served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 33 years as the congressman from Georgia’s 5th congressional district that includes Atlanta.Mourners lined the streets along the route where a hearse carrying Lewis’ body traveled Wednesday on its way to the state capitol.Many people stood in long lines to file past the flag-draped coffin, with viewing hours extended late to try to accommodate all who wanted to pay their respects.At a ceremony, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp called Lewis a “beloved Georgian, an American hero and a friend to all who sought a better, fairer, more united society.”Thursday’s services mark the last in a week of celebrations of Lewis’ life. His body was carried Sunday across a bridge in Selma, Alabama where as a young man in 1965 he was among civil rights marchers beaten by state troopers. His body lay in state for two days at the U.S. Capitol in Washington before being taken to Georgia.
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By Polityk | 07/30/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
How US Companies Are Helping Americans Get Out the Vote
Hundreds of companies in the U.S. are using a variety of methods to get Americans to vote in November’s presidential election. Many are giving their workers paid time off on Election Day, while others are helping people register to vote, offering reduced fares for transportation to polling stations or helping to feed them once they’re there. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more from the spokesperson of a company with employees worldwide and a political expert who says these incentives could have a significant impact on voter turnout.
Camera: Various newsfeeds, Reuters, AP, AFP
Produced by: Julie Taboh/Adam Greenbaum Reuters, AP, AFP
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By Polityk | 07/30/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Trump Extracts Campaign Cash in Texas Oil Fields
On a visit to Texas less than 100 days before this year’s election, U.S. President Donald Trump promoted his energy policies, warning that the state’s oil and gas industry would be destroyed if his rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, was elected.“The radical left,” Trump said Wednesday, “is fighting to abolish American energy, destroy the oil and gas industries and wipe out your jobs.”Texas ranks highest among all 50 U.S. states in the energy sector in terms of employment and total production. But the industry has been hit hard recently by low prices and the coronavirus pandemic.The president made his remarks to employees of Double Eagle Energy, a midsize crude oil and natural gas company in Midland in the hot and dusty Permian Basin.“There’s a huge overlap between workers in the energy industry here in Texas and his political base of support,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a Republican political consultant in Austin.Earlier in the day at a pair of political events in Odessa, Trump raised $7 million in campaign contributions at a time when opinion polls show a narrower-than-expected race against Biden in Texas, a must-win state for the president.American and Texas flags fly from the tops of cranes near an oil rig by the site where President Donald Trump delivered remarks about American energy production during a visit to Midland, Texas, July 29, 2020.’Kind of a tough job’“So, he has kind of a tough job here to sort of deliver the message and deliver the policies that make the base happy and keep the money flowing to his campaign. But at the same time, not alienating those voters in the middle, those independents and swing voters who would support an agenda that Republicans support,” Steinhauser told VOA.“There have been a number of surveys and public polls that have been released that show that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are essentially fighting at a tie right now,” he said.In a statement earlier Wednesday, Biden criticized the president for politicking in Texas amid the spread of COVID-19 and in the wake of Hurricane Hanna’s ravaging of the southeastern part of the state.“Mr. President, now isn’t the time for politicking or photo-ops,” said the statement issued by Biden’s campaign. “Texans need a President with the experience and vision to fight for families no matter how many catastrophes reach our shores.”Texas has voted Republican in presidential elections for the past three decades. Trump, in 2016, beat Democrat Hillary Clinton by 9 percentage points.In this year’s election, Texas is worth 38 electoral votes out of the 270 needed to win the presidency.’We love our environment’“I don’t think Biden’s going to do too well in Texas,” predicted Trump as he blasted the Democrats’ environmental policies, such as the Green New Deal.“People don’t know that. We love our environment,” the president said of his environmental policies, which he contended have given America the world’s cleanest air and water.President Donald Trump holds up a permit for energy development after signing it during a visit to the Double Eagle Energy oil rig, July 29, 2020, in Midland, Texas. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, stands second from left.Environmentalists, however, have expressed alarm over the Trump administration’s dismantling of about 100 rules and regulations imposed by previous administrations and promoting hydraulic fracking, a process to extract oil and gas from shale rock, including on public lands.Immediately after his remarks in Midland, Trump signed four permits allowing the expansion of oil transportation infrastructure in the region.VOA’s Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.
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By Polityk | 07/30/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
US Lawmakers Try to Bridge Differences on New COVID Relief Bill as Deadline Looms
The looming expiration of federal assistance tied to the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to cut a financial lifeline for tens of millions of Americans. With time running out, Republicans and Democrats reportedly remain far apart on a possible extension of benefits. VOA’s Mariama Diallo has the story of a COVID survivor struggling to pay medical bills who desperately needs federal relief to continue.
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By Polityk | 07/30/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
US Treasury to Recommend Options to Trump About Tik Tok
The Chinese-owned app TikTok is under a security review by the U.S. government, which will make a recommendation on the matter to President Donald Trump next week, according to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.Trump said Wednesday, “we are thinking about making a decision” about TikTok.The video-sharing social media app, is extremely popular in both the US. and around the world. It has already been downloaded 2 billion times worldwide and 165 million of those downloads were in the U.S.The app features not only entertainment videos, but also debates and takes positions on political issues, such as racial justice and the upcoming U.S. presidential election.TikTok to Exit Hong Kong Market Over New National Security Law Decision by Chinese-based app follows decisions by Facebook, Google and Twitter to briefly suspend review of Beijing requests for user data in semi-autonomous city U.S. officials are concerned that TikTok may pose a security threat, fearing that the company might share its user data with China’s government. However, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has said it does not share user data with the Chinese government and maintains that it only stores U.S. user data in the U.S. and Singapore. TikTok also recently chose former Disney executive Kevin Mayer as its chief executive in a move seen as an effort to distance itself from Beijing.Mnuchin said that the U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS), an interagency group led by the Treasury Department, will be looking into TikTok. CFIUS’ job is to oversee foreign investments and assess them for potential national security risks.CFIUS has the ability to force companies to cancel deals or put in place other measures it deems necessary for national security.
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By Polityk | 07/30/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
US Congressman Gohmert Tests Positive for Coronavirus
U.S. Congressman Louie Gohmert of Texas says he has tested positive for the coronavirus.Gohmert, a Republican, had been seen recently without a mask on Capitol Hill, including at least part of the time while he attended the House Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday to hear testimony from Attorney General William Barr.In a video, Gohmert said he was screened Wednesday at the White House before he was due to depart with President Donald Trump on a flight to Gohmert’s home state and tested positive. Gohmert, who said he is asymptomatic, did not travel with the president.Gohmert said in an interview with CNN last month he sometimes did not wear a mask because he was being tested regularly.But in the video, he said, “I’ve worn a mask more in the last week or two than I have in the whole last four months.“Now that I apparently have it, I will be very, very careful to make sure I don’t give it to anybody else,” he said.House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat, criticized the 66-year-old lawmaker and other Republicans for not wearing masks. Nadler, however, also posted a message on Facebook, wishing Gohmert a full and speedy recovery. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was quoted as telling MSNBC, “I’m so sorry for him,” when learning that Gohmert had tested positive for the coronavirus.Responding to news of Gohmert’s positive coronavirus test, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer criticized him and many other Republicans for acting irresponsibly and not consistently wearing a mask. “Too many Republicans have continued to act extraordinarily irresponsibly, including Louis Gohmert. Louie Gohmert ought to quarantine himself right now. He had this test, as I understand it, prior to the Judiciary Committee hearing (Tuesday); he was in the committee room. He put on his mask when he sat down in his chair. He came into the room without a mask on,” Hoyer told reporters.
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By Polityk | 07/30/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Lawmakers to Examine Trump Census Order Excluding Undocumented Immigrants
A U.S. House of Representatives committee is set to discuss Wednesday an order by President Donald Trump calling for undocumented immigrants to be excluded from the national census that takes place every 10 years. Those scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee include Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham, as well as four of his predecessors. The census has vast implications for the country, with the results used to decided how many congressional seats each state gets as well as the allocation of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending. Trump issued an executive order earlier this month in which he argued that having people who are in the country illegally affect representation in congress and political influence “would be a perversion of our democratic principles.” The Democrats who chair the House Oversight Committee said Trump’s order went against prior assurances from administration officials who pledged at earlier hearings to conduct a complete count that includes everyone residing in the United States. Committee leaders said at Wednesday’s hearing they not only want to examine Trump’s executive order, but also “other efforts to politicize the 2020 Census.” The Trump administration previously sought to include a question about a person’s citizenship on the census survey, but the Supreme Court struck down that effort last year. Opponents of the citizenship question argued it would likely cause immigrants to refrain from participating in the census, leading to an underrepresentation of their numbers in the count.
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By Polityk | 07/29/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Democrats, GOP Far Apart as Virus Aid Talks Intensify
Negotiations launched, the differences over the next coronavirus aid package are vast, a gulf between Democrats’ $3 trillion proposal and Republicans $1 trillion counteroffer, with millions of Americans’ jobless benefits, school reopenings and eviction protections at stake.
As top White House negotiators return to Capitol Hill on Tuesday the leverage is apparent: They are meeting at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. Republicans are so deeply divided over the prospect of big government spending it’s leaving Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell with a weakened hand.
It’s unclear whether any agreement can be reached between Congress and President Donald Trump before Friday’s deadline for expiring aid.”We cannot afford to fail,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said as the chamber opened.
The outcome will be a defining one for the president and the parties heading into the November election as an uneasy nation is watching and waiting for Washington to bring some end to the health crisis and devastating economic fallout.
Key to the debate is the $600 weekly unemployment benefit bump that is expiring for millions of jobless Americans. Republicans want to slash it to $200 a week as an incentive to push people back to work. Democrats have shown flickers of willingness to curb the federal aid but are refusing to go that low.
McConnell is defending cuts to unemployment assistance saying Democrats “pretend it’s controversial.” Republicans, he argued, believe the federal supplement is too generous, on top of state benefits, and people should not be paid more while they are at home than they would if they were on the job.
“The American people don’t call that a controversy, they call that common sense,” he said.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., accompanied by Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich., left, and Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., speaks at a news conference on Capitol Hill July 24, 2020, on the extension of federal unemployment benefits.
Pelosi dismissed the GOP’s proposal as “wrong” and Schumer responded by waving a copy of a New York newspaper on the Senate floor with the headline summing up the Republican attitude as: “Let them eat cake.”
With the virus death toll climbing and 4.2 million infections nationwide, both parties are eager for a deal. There is widespread agreement that more money is needed for virus testing, to help schools prepare to open in the fall and to shore up small businesses but they are far apart on the details.
Republicans seek $16 billion for virus testing but Democrats want $75 billion.
For school reopenings, Democrats want four times the $105 billion Republicans propose.
Democrats want to extend a federal eviction moratorium on millions of rental units that is expiring Friday, but Republicans are silent on evictions.
Republicans provided no new funding for cash-strapped states and cities, preferring to provide flexibility in how they spend previously approved aid. Democrats propose to provide nearly $1 trillion to avert municipal layoffs of government workers.
One area of common ground is agreement on a new round of $1,200 direct payments to Americans earning $75,000 or less.
But Democrats also add a “heroes’ pay” bonus for frontline essential workers, money food stamps and other assistance that Republicans do not provide.
“We have to do what’s right for the American people,” Pelosi said late Monday after meeting with the White House negotiators.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows will return to Capitol Hill after huddling for nearly two hours late Monday with Pelosi and Schumer at the speaker’s office.
The Republicans come to the negotiating table hobbled by infighting and delays. McConnell, R-Ky., said he wanted to hit “pause” on new spending after Congress approved a sweeping $2.2 trillion relief package in March. But Pelosi, D-Calif., took the opposite approach, swiftly passing a $3 trillion effort with robust Democratic support. In the intervening months, the crisis deepened.
Even as McConnell, flanked by top GOP chairs Monday at the Capitol, unveiled his long-awaited proposal, conservative Republicans quickly broke ranks arguing the spending was too much and priorities misplaced. Half the Republican senators could vote against the bill, some warned.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. scoffed that McConnell’s bill was sure to win majority support — from Democrats.
“He has all the Democrats on his side,” Paul said of the Republican leader.
Republicans were scrambling to justify providing $1.7 billion for a new FBI headquarters in Washington, a non-pandemic-related expense that’s a top priority of the president but not of lawmakers or McConnell. Trump’s hotel is across the street from it on Pennsylvania Avenue.
As bipartisan talks unfold, the White House is now suggesting a narrower relief package may be all that’s possible with Friday’s approaching deadlines. Democrats have dismissed that as too meager.
The $600 weekly jobless benefits boost, approved as part of the March aid package, officially expires July 31, but because of the way states process unemployment payments, the cutoff was effectively Saturday.
Under the GOP proposal, the jobless boost would be reduced to $200 a week for two months through September and phased out to a new system that ensures no more than 70% of an employee’s previous pay. States could request an additional two months, if needed, to make the transition.
Economists widely see signs of trouble in the economy, which showed an uptick in the spring as some states eased stay-home orders and businesses reopened, but it now faces fresh turmoil with a prolonged virus crisis as states clamp down again.
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By Polityk | 07/29/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
US Democratic National Convention to Require Masks, Distancing
Everyone attending the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee next month will have to wear a face mask, consent to daily testing for COVID-19, fill out questionnaires and maintain a physical distance from others.Organizers of the convention released details of the coronavirus safety plan Monday, three weeks before the Aug. 17 start of the four-day event. The convention has been scaled down from original plans and now will be mostly online with only a few hundred people gathered at the Wisconsin Center in downtown Milwaukee.Attendees will have to self-isolate for a minimum of 72 hours before departing for Milwaukee or when first entering the convention’s main venue if they’re already in the city. Once at the convention, attendees must fill out a daily questionnaire indicating that they are not experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 and have not had contact with anyone who is infected.All convention guests, law enforcement, media, and staff must agree to daily COVID-19 testing, either at the Wisconsin Center or another offsite location. They must also agree to follow any other “reasonable restrictions that convention organizers may impose based on changing health conditions.”While presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and everyone else will be required to wear a mask once inside, anyone making a speech will be allowed to remove theirs. The podium will be 20 feet from other people. Organizers are also encouraging attendees to wear a face shield or goggles to protect their eyes.Organizers are also recommending that attendees “avoid bars, restaurants, and other locations where social distancing is not possible or not practiced.””Ensuring the safety and well-being of everyone involved with the convention is our top priority,” said convention spokeswoman Katie Peters. “After consultation with public health officials, the Democratic National Convention Committee will implement robust health and safety protocols that will govern the convention’s in-person activities and keep attendees safe before and during the convention.”Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, a Democrat, called the safety protocols “thoughtful and thorough.””While it is important to protect every person attending the convention, it is also important to protect the entire Milwaukee community,” Barrett said. “These protocols establish reasonable requirements in order to prevent additional COVID-19 infections in Milwaukee.”Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have spiked in Wisconsin since mid-June, with roughly a third of the state’s 49,417 cases in Milwaukee County and nearly half of the state’s 893 deaths there. A city ordinance requires masks to be worn when in a building that is open to the public or outside in a public space and within 6 feet of any other person who is not a household or family member.
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By Polityk | 07/28/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Trump Lawyers Renew Legal Challenge on Tax Records Subpoena
President Donald Trump’s lawyers filed fresh arguments Monday to try to block a criminal subpoena for his tax records, saying it was issued in bad faith, might have been politically motivated and calling it a harassment of the president. Lawyers filed a rewritten lawsuit in Manhattan federal court to challenge the subpoena by a state prosecutor on grounds they believe conform with how the U.S. Supreme Court said the subpoena can be contested. They asked a judge to declare it “invalid and unenforceable.” FILE – Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., responds to a question during a news conference in New York, May 10, 2018.The high court ruled earlier this month that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. could subpoena tax records from Trump’s accountant over his objections. But the court said Trump could challenge the subpoena as improper just as anyone else can. Trump’s lawyers had argued that the president could not be criminally investigated while he was in office. In their new court papers, Trump’s lawyers said the subpoena of his tax records was “wildly overbroad” and “amounts to harassment of the President.” They said it was issued in bad faith, copying a Congressional subpoena. “Whether the District Attorney photocopied a congressional subpoena for political reasons, for efficiency reasons, or for both, he knowingly and intentionally issued a wildly overbroad subpoena for the President’s records,” the lawyers said. They said the subpoena seeks detailed information about all of Trump’s assets in the U.S. and abroad for a 10-year period. “Simply put, it asks for everything,” the lawyers wrote. FILE – This combination photo shows, from left, President Donald Trump, attorney Michael Cohen and adult film actress Stormy Daniels.Vance sought the tax records in part for a probe of how Trump’s then-personal lawyer arranged during the 2016 presidential race to keep the porn actress Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal from airing claims of extramarital affairs with Trump. Trump has denied the affairs. Vance, a Democrat, has requested eight years of the Republican president’s personal and corporate tax records. Danny Frost, a spokesperson for Vance, declined comment Monday. The Supreme Court had returned the case to a federal judge in Manhattan who has arranged for both sides to finish filing their legal arguments over challenges to the subpoena by mid-August. Last year, the same judge ruled against Trump in a written opinion that was upheld by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. In their new court filing, Trump’s lawyers said the tax subpoena “demands voluminous documents related to every facet of the business and financial affairs of the President and numerous associated entities — from the banal to the complex, from drafts and memoranda to formal records, from source documents to summaries.” They said it was wrong for Vance to seek records dating to 2011 when he was primarily investigating events that took place in 2016. The lawsuit said the subpoena concerns entities in California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. It said other affected entities are located outside the U.S., including in Canada, the Dominican Republic, Dubai, India, Indonesia, Ireland, the Philippines, Scotland, and Turkey. “Taken together, the subpoena demands an accounting and analysis of every single asset and liability of the President, including each one of the listed entities,” the lawyers wrote, calling the request “an overreaching demand designed to pick apart the President.”
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By Polityk | 07/28/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Civil Rights Icon Rep. John Lewis Lies in State at Capitol
The body of the late U.S. congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis is lying in state again Tuesday at the Capitol in Washington for mourners to pay their last respects. Lewis died last week at the age of 80 after a yearlong battle with advanced-stage pancreatic cancer. His flag draped casket was escorted Monday to the Capitol where he served the people of his Georgia district for 33 years.The hearse with the flag-draped casket of Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., drives on 16th Street, renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza, near the White House, July 27, 2020.Before arriving on Capitol Hill, the motorcade carrying his body took a final journey past several civil rights landmarks in Washington as well as a new mural on a street near the White House reading “Black Lives Matter.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California speaks during a service for the late Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., as he lies in state at the Capitol in Washington, July 27, 2020.In remarks Monday in the Capitol Rotunda, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Lewis the conscience of the Congress. “It is fitting that John Lewis joins this pantheon of patriots, resting upon the same catafalque as President Abraham Lincoln,” she said. A catafalque is an ornamental wooden framework that supports a coffin lying in state. Pelosi had led a delegation Monday to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to greet Lewis’s casket. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., speaks during a memorial service for Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., at the U.S. Capitol, July 27, 2020, in Washington.Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also praised Lewis, saying “Lewis lived and worked with urgency because the task was urgent.” Absent from the ceremonies was President Donald Trump, who has publicly traded words with Lewis on Twitter. After Lewis said the president was not legitimate, Trump called Lewis’ congressional district “crime-infested.”Vice President Mike Pence paid his respects later Monday along with Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden. Due to concerns over the coronavirus, the public viewing is taking place just outside the Capitol on the building’s east side. Visitors are required to wear masks and engage in social distancing. Lewis is the second Black lawmaker to lie in state in the U.S. Capitol. Congressman Elijah Cummings, who died last year, was the first. The flag-draped casket of the late Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a key figure in the civil rights movement and a 17-term congressman, lies in state, July 27, 2020, at the Capitol in Washington, D.C.Lewis’ body will be flown to Atlanta to lie in state Wednesday in the Georgia Capitol. A funeral will be held at Ebenezer Baptist Church, the historically black church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached. He will be laid to rest in Atlanta’s South View Cemetery. Lewis rose to fame as a leader of the modern-day American civil rights movement of the 1960s. At 23, he worked closely with King and was the last surviving speaker from the August 1963 March on Washington where King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. FILE – Martin Luther King Jr., second from right, speaks at a news conference next to John Lewis, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, in Baltimore, Maryland, April 2, 1965.The civil rights movement led Lewis into a career in politics. He was elected to the Atlanta City Council in 1981 and to Congress in 1986, calling the latter victory “the honor of a lifetime.” He served 17 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia’s fifth district.
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By Polityk | 07/28/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Host Notre Dame Pulls Out of First US Presidential Debate
Citing concerns over the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the University of Notre Dame on Monday pulled out as host of the first 2020 U.S. presidential debate, which will instead be held in Cleveland on Sept. 29, the Commission on Presidential Debates said Monday.The first debate between President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, will now be co-hosted by Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic, the commission said in a statement.Rev. John I. Jenkins, Notre Dame’s president, said in a statement that the health precautions necessary to stage the debate “would have greatly diminished the educational value of hosting the debate on our campus.” Student attendance would be restricted and volunteer opportunities minimized, Jenkins said.The relocation marks the second time a debate site has been moved because of the pandemic. In June, the University of Michigan bowed out of the third debate on Oct. 15, and the event was shifted to Miami.Two other debates are scheduled in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Oct. 7 and in Nashville on Oct. 22.
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By Polityk | 07/28/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Trump Wears Mask, Voices Hope for Coronavirus Vaccine
For the second time, U.S. President Donald Trump has been photographed wearing a mask amid the coronavirus pandemic. Trump wore the face covering as he toured a North Carolina laboratory where key components are being manufactured for a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Novavax. “I trust all Americans to do the right thing, but we strongly advise everyone to especially, especially focus on maintaining a social distance, maintain a rigorous hygiene, avoid crowded gatherings and indoor bars and wear masks when appropriate,” Trump told a group of reporters traveling with him just before his tour of the Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies Innovation Center. “Nothing’s happened like this since the end of World War II,” the president said of the billions of dollars being spent in the global race to produce and mass deploy a vaccine in record time. Before the tour of the plant, Trump spoke to several dozen North Carolina politicians, scientists, White House officials, journalists and Secret Service agents; Trump was the only person not wearing a mask. The president, who has faced criticism for what is perceived as a belated and inadequate response by the federal government to the coronavirus pandemic, said the U.S. states “largely had what they needed” but that all of them “are not out of the woods.” Trump defended his administration’s response to the pandemic, despite the U.S. reporting the largest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world. “We report our cases. Most of the world doesn’t,” Trump said. The United States has conducted more than 52 million tests, the president said, adding, “nobody’s even close.” President Donald Trump wears a face mask as he participates in a tour of Bioprocess Innovation Center at Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies, July 27, 2020, in Morrisville, North Carolina.Trump said U.S. officials are monitoring caseloads in Latin America, a region of particular concern. “You have some very, very highly infected countries outside of our borders,” he said. The mortality rate for U.S. COVID-19 patients older than 18 is 85% lower than it was in April, according to the president, giving credit to better therapies and improved knowledge about the coronavirus. In the past week, the disease killed more than 1,000 Americans a day for five straight days, according to the Vice President Mike Pence, center, gestures as he speaks during a news conference with FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn, left, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, right, at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, July 27, 2020.While Trump was in North Carolina, Vice President Mike Pence was in Miami, where clinical trials of another vaccine jointly developed by the National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc. began Monday. “It’s a historic day, a day when we begin in earnest to work on a vaccine,” Pence said. Some health experts say it sometimes can take years for a safe, effective vaccine against a disease to be successfully developed. Food and Drug Administration chief Dr. Stephen Hahn was with Pence in Miami and told reporters the FDA “will not cut corners” to evaluate a vaccine. Several other countries are also working on developing a COVID-19 vaccine.
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By Polityk | 07/28/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Pelosi Pushes Republicans for Quick Coronavirus Aid Deal
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed the White House and Senate Republicans to negotiate quickly Monday to renew expiring federal unemployment benefits for more than 16 million Americans who are out of work because of the coronavirus pandemic.As the administration of President Donald Trump and Senate leaders prepared to release a $1 trillion coronavirus aid package, Pelosi called for them to immediately come to her office in the U.S. Capitol to work out a deal with Democrats who want a $3 trillion spending plan to bolster the faltering U.S. economy.“Time is running out,” Pelosi said. “If Republicans care about working families, this won’t take long.”But in fractious Washington, Republicans and Democrats are at odds over the continuing amount the federal government should pay unemployed workers, in addition to the less generous amounts they receive from state governments.The national government has paid millions of jobless workers an extra $600 a week for the last four months, but the stipend expires on Friday. The White House and Republicans want to cut two-thirds of the payments down to $200 a week, while Democrats are pushing to continue the current $600 figure through the end of 2020.White House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow talks to reporters at the White House, Tuesday, April 7, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)White House aides said Sunday the lower amount, along with state assistance, would give workers about 70% of the wages they once earned before being laid off, a figure Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow called “quite generous.”The two political parties also disagree on other coronavirus assistance, who should get more money and how much. They also are debating whether to grant legal immunity to businesses and their employees from being sued for possibly infecting customers with the coronavirus, as Republicans are proposing over Democratic opposition.With the Friday deadline looming, the White House and Republican lawmakers have called for passage of a limited coronavirus aid package, with the rest of the details of the assistance hammered out over the coming weeks. But Pelosi has balked at a piecemeal approach.”We can move very quickly with the Democrats on these issues,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Sunday.But Pelosi attacked the more limited Republican aid plan.“Children are hungry, families cannot pay the rent, unemployment is expiring, and the Republicans want to pause again and go piecemeal,” Pelosi said.”We have stood ready to negotiate for more than two months,” she said. She implored them to come to her office “and get the job done.”Republicans have objected to continuing the larger unemployment payments because more than half of the U.S. jobless workers collected more in unemployment benefits than they were earning while employed.A May survey also showed that about a fifth of unemployed workers rejected their employers’ offers to return to work because their unemployment checks were higher than their wages on the job.Nearly 147,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus, while more than 4.2 million have been infected, with both figures the highest national totals across the world.
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By Polityk | 07/28/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Wealthy Donors Pour Millions into Fight over Mail-in Voting
Deep-pocketed and often anonymous donors are pouring over $100 million into an intensifying dispute about whether it should be easier to vote by mail, a fight that could determine President Donald Trump’s fate in the November election. In the battleground of Wisconsin, cash-strapped cities have received $6.3 million from an organization with ties to left-wing philanthropy to help expand vote by mail. Meanwhile, a well-funded conservative group best known for its focus on judicial appointments is spending heavily to fight cases related to mail-in balloting procedures in court. And that’s just a small slice of the overall spending, which is likely to swell far higher as the election nears. The massive effort by political parties, super PACs and other organizations to fight over whether Americans can vote by mail is remarkable considering the practice has long been noncontroversial. But the coronavirus is forcing changes to the way states conduct elections and prompting activists across the political spectrum to seek an advantage, recognizing the contest between Trump and Democrat Joe Biden could hinge on whether voters have an alternative to standing in lines at polling places during a public health crisis. Some groups are even raising money to prepare for election-related violence. “The pandemic has created a state of emergency,” said Laleh Ispahani, the U.S. managing director for Open Society, a network of nonprofits founded by billionaire progressive donor George Soros. “Donors who haven’t typically taken on these issues now have an interest.” How much will be spent is unclear because many of the organizations are nonprofits that won’t disclose those details to the IRS until well after the election. Even then, many sources of money will remain unknown because such groups don’t have to disclose their donors, commonly referred to as “dark money.” Tax filings, business records and campaign finance disclosures offer some clues. They reveal vast infrastructure that funnels money from wealthy donors, through philanthropic organizations and political groups, which eventually trickles down to smaller nonprofits, many of which operate under murky circumstances. On the conservative side, organizations including Judicial Watch, the Honest Elections Project, True the Vote and the Public Interest Legal Foundation are litigating cases related to voting procedures across the U.S. A substantial portion of the financing comes from Donors Trust, a nonprofit often referred to as the “dark money ATM” of the conservative movement. The organization helps wealthy patrons invest in causes they care about while sheltering their identities from the public. In other instances, funding comes from charitable foundations built by the fortunes of Gilded Age industrialists. Litigation is a primary focus. Democrats and good government organizations are pushing to eliminate hurdles to absentee voting, like requiring a witness’s signature or allowing third parties to collect ballots. Conservatives say that amounts to an invitation to commit voter fraud. As these issues wind their way through courts, they say judges could decide complex policy matters that often were already debated by state legislatures. “The wrong way to go about this is to run to court, particularly a week or two before an election, trying to get judges to intervene and second-guess decisions legislatures have made,” said Jason Snead, the executive director of the Honest Elections Project. His organization is a newly formed offshoot of the Judicial Education Project, a group that previously focused on judicial appointments and received more than $25.3 million between 2016 and 2018 from the Donors Trust, records show. They are deeply intertwined with the conservative Catholic legal movement and share an attorney, William Consovoy, with the Republican National Committee, which has pledged $20 million for voting litigation. Leonard Leo, a Trump confidant who was instrumental in the confirmations of the president’s Supreme Court nominees, plays a leading role. He’s now chairman of a public relations firm called CRC Advisors, which is overseeing a new effort to establish a clearinghouse for anonymous donors to fund conservative causes, including the fight over vote by mail. The firm played a significant role in the 2004 election by publicizing unfounded claims made by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth, which questioned Democratic nominee John Kerry’s record as a Vietnam War hero, records show.The group’s involvement in vote by mail marks a sea change for Republicans. Claims of widespread voter fraud have long energized segments of the party’s base. But it did not elicit much interest from donors, and the handful of groups devoted to the issue operated on minuscule budgets. But in recent years, Democrats have mounted legal challenges that threatened voting laws championed by conservatives. And Trump’s repeated focus on “rigged elections” has made the issue part of a broader culture war. Still, some activists question the GOP establishment’s commitment to the cause. “They aren’t going to take on Republicans like we have,” said Catherine Engelbrecht, the founder of True the Vote. While Republicans are focused on the courts and raising doubts about vote by mail, the challenge faced by Democrats is far more daunting. In addition to litigation, they must mobilize their base during a pandemic. That includes educating the public about vote by mail, a difficult task when door-to-door canvasing isn’t an option. Some groups are donating directly to local governments. In Wisconsin, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit with ties to left-leaning philanthropy, has donated $6.3 million to the state’s five largest cities to set up ballot drop boxes, help voters file absentee ballot requests and expand in-person early voting. Even before the pandemic, government funding for elections was limited. Since then, the outbreak has escalated costs while cratering tax revenue. “Due to COVID, there definitely has been a higher cost,” said Mayor John Antaramian, of Kenosha, which received $863,000 through the grant — roughly four times what the city budgeted for the election. “Is there a financial shortfall on that basis? Of course.” Much of the money on the left is likely to come from a series of nonprofit funds controlled by the consulting firm Arabella Advisors, which typically routes upwards of $500 million a year to causes supported by liberal donors. The firm was founded by Eric Kessler, who served in Bill Clinton’s White House. The firm has been instrumental in financing so-called resistance groups following Trump’s election. And some nonprofits they’ve provided seed money were responsible for millions of dollars in TV advertising that blistered Republicans during the 2018 midterms. They’ve also pioneered the practice of creating “pop-up” organizations: groups that appear to be grassroots-driven efforts to influence public policy, which use trade names that obscure a deep pool of resources from those with ideological or financial motivations. The firm recently registered a handful of trade names for groups that appear to be focused on voting rights, records show. Another effort Arabella Advisors are involved in, the Trusted Elections Fund, aims to raise between $8 million and $10 million in case the pandemic leads to chaos in November. The group is preparing for potential foreign hacking of state voting systems, “election day or post-election day violence,” as well as contested results. A Trusted Elections Fund representative declined to comment. But a two-page summary available online elaborated on their aims. “Philanthropy has a responsibility to make sure that we are prepared for emergencies that could threaten our democracy,” it read.
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By Polityk | 07/27/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Twitter, Facebook Become Targets in Trump and Biden Ads
Social media has become the target of a dueling attack ad campaign being waged online by the sitting president and his election rival. They’re shooting the messenger while giving it lots of money.
President Donald Trump has bought hundreds of messages on Facebook to accuse its competitor, Twitter, of trying to stifle his voice and influence the November election.
Democratic challenger Joe Biden has spent thousands of dollars advertising on Facebook with a message of his own: In dozens of ads on the platform, he’s asked supporters to sign a petition calling on Facebook to remove inaccurate statements, specifically those from Trump.
The major social media companies are navigating a political minefield as they try to minimize domestic misinformation and rein in foreign actors from manipulating their sites as they did in the last U.S. presidential election. Their new actions — or in some cases, lack of action — have triggered explosive, partisan responses, ending their glory days as self-described neutral platforms.
Even as the two presidential campaigns dump millions of dollars every week into Facebook and Google ads that boost their exposure, both are also using online ads to criticize the tech platforms for their policies. Trump is accusing Twitter and Snapchat of interfering in this year’s election. Biden has sent multiple letters to Facebook and attacked the company for policies that allow politicians, Trump specifically, to freely make false claims on its site. Biden is paying Facebook handsomely to show ads that accuse Facebook of posing a “threat” to democracy.
Meantime Trump is paying Facebook to run ads trashing the medium he uses like none other, Twitter.
“Twitter is interfering in the 2020 Election by attempting to SILENCE your President,” claimed one of nearly 600 ads Trump’s campaign placed on Facebook.
It’s “a huge departure from 2016,” said Emerson Brooking, a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, a Washington think-tank. “If you were leading the Trump or Clinton campaign, you weren’t writing letters to Facebook all day long. It wasn’t so much a central campaign issue. Now it seems like it very much is.”
Americans, after all, are on high alert about the platforms’ policies after discovering that Russian trolls posted divisive messages, created fake political events and even used rubles to buy Facebook ads intended for U.S. audiences in the 2016 election. Research already shows the Kremlin is at it again.
Since the last presidential election, Facebook and Twitter have banned voting-related misinformation and vowed to identify and shut down inauthentic networks of accounts run by domestic or foreign troublemakers. Before this year’s election, Twitter banned political ads altogether, a decision a company spokesman told the AP it stands behind. And Facebook, along with Google, began disclosing campaign ad spending while banning non-Americans from buying U.S. political ads.
Facebook didn’t comment for this story.
But calls to deflate Big Tech’s ballooning power have only grown louder from both Democrats and Republicans, even though the two parties are targeting different companies for different reasons to rally supporters.
Those politics will no doubt be on full display Wednesday, when four big tech CEOs, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Apple’s Tim Cook, testify to a House Judiciary Committee panel as part of a congressional investigation into the tech industry’s dominance.
Biden has focused on Facebook, with a #MoveFastFixIt campaign that admonishes Facebook for not doing enough to protect users from foreign meddling or being duped by falsehoods, particularly those spread by Trump about mail-in voting.
His campaign just last month spent nearly $10,000 to run ads scolding the company on its own platform.
“We could lie to you, but we won’t,” says one of Biden’s ads. “Donald Trump and his Republican allies, on the other hand, spend MILLIONS on Facebook ads like this one that spread dangerous misinformation about everything from how to vote to the legitimacy of our democratic process.”
Despite criticizing Facebook, Biden’s campaign said it’s still purchasing millions of dollars in Facebook ads because it’s one of the few ways to counter Trump’s false posts — since Facebook won’t fact check him.
The ads are also a cheap and effective way for the campaigns to rally supporters who are unhappy with the platforms, said Kathleen Searles, a Louisiana State University political communications professor.
“We do know that anger can be very motivating — it motivates them to get their name on an email list, or donate $20,” Searles said. “What better way to get people angry than a faceless platform?”
While Biden has focused on Facebook, Trump has honed in on Twitter, and occasionally Snapchat, with his campaign running online ads that accuse both companies of “interfering” in the election.
Twitter became a Trump campaign target after the company rolled out its first fact check of his inaccurate tweet about voting in late May. Twitter has since applied similar labels to five other Trump tweets, including two that called mail-in ballots “fraudulent” and predicted that “mail boxes will be robbed” if voting doesn’t take place in person.
Trump responded by signing a largely symbolic executive order challenging Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides protections from lawsuits for internet companies that have served as a bedrock for unfettered speech online.
“It’s preposterous that Silicon Valley, the bastion of diversity and liberalism, is terrified of intellectual diversity and conservative voices,” Trump deputy national press secretary Ken Farnaso said in a statement.
Republican leaders have since joined in railing against Twitter.
This month, Rep. Jim Jordan, a firebrand conservative from Ohio, demanded Twitter hand over a full accounting, including emails, of how it decided to fact check the president. Saying “big tech is out of control,” Republican Sen. Ted Cruz joined dozens of conservative media outlets, Trump staffers and politicians who waged a two-day campaign last month urging their Twitter followers to ditch the platform and join Parler, a social media app that does not moderate its content as closely.
Facebook could be next for a face-off with the president and his allies now that the company has vowed to label any posts — Trump’s included — that violate its rules against voting misinformation or hate speech. Facebook has yet to take such action, though.
“Social media censorship is going to be a very potent campaign issue,” Brooking said. “And there’s going to be incentive from a number of folks running for office in 2020 to push the envelope still further, to try to invite more and more social media moderation because they see it as a potent political stunt.”
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By Polityk | 07/27/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Independent Voters Are There for Issues, Not Ideology
While a majority of voters in the United States identify as either Republican or Democrat — the two major political parties — a growing number of voters see themselves as independent or unaffiliated with any party.
“Personally, I’ve never really felt either major party represents my interest,” Ellen Moorhouse, who identifies as an independent voter, told VOA.
Moorhouse, 30, is deputy communications director at RepresentUs, a political and government reform advocacy group which aims to reduce corruption and gridlock. Thirty-five percent of Americans under the age of 30 say they are independent or unaffiliated, according to the Spring 2020 Harvard Youth Poll.
Independent Voting is one organization that connects independent voters in an effort to build a network and a movement to reform the electoral process. The group’s mission has changed significantly since its formation in the 1990s, moving away from a focus on alternative political parties.
“We made a shift at that point away from a party building orientation to what you might call a voter empowerment orientation,” Jackie Salit, president of the organization, told VOA, noting that independent voters want to vote “for the person, not the party.”
“They want to be involved in the issue, not the ideology,” Salit said.
In 2018, FILE – A young voter casts her ballot during early voting in Chicago, Illinois, Oct. 14, 2016.Moorhouse grew up in Massachusetts in a conservative Republican family. She said she was raised with views informed by a desire for less government regulation, but that the idea of taking the government “out of my bedroom” has actually shaped her philosophy as an independent.
“If we’re talking about liberty and choice, you know, then it’s your choice to own a gun and it’s my choice to get an abortion,” Moorhouse said. “No matter how polarizing the issues, the true heart of it is liberty, and you don’t get to then hand pick which choice isn’t right.”
Corley, an independent voter who asked to be referred to by his last name, was raised by lifelong Democrats. He said he thinks identity politics have led him and his friends to believe they’re Democrats, too. However, a few years ago, when they did an exercise listing various issues and values on a whiteboard, he realized he may be more of a Republican.
“We’ve been tricked,” he remembered thinking.
Corley went back and conducted the exercise with his parents.
“I said ‘Mom, you’re a Republican — you just vote Democrat!’” he recounted.FILE – A young voter, left, leaves a polling station after casting his ballot in Florida’s primary election, in Orlando, Florida, March 17, 2020.But as many as 81% of independent voters tend to lean toward one major party over the other when faced with only those two options, according to Pew research.
Data from the 2018 CIRCLE study shows that of young independents who said they are “very likely” to vote, many of them (40%) favor a Democratic candidate.
But those voters still say it is important to them to be registered as an independent.
“Even if I walk into my polling place and select a Democrat ballot every time, I think registering as unaffiliated is an acknowledgment that the Democratic Party doesn’t really represent me [and a lot of younger voters] because, in practice, they aren’t progressive enough,” Copeland, a student at Appalachian University in North Carolina, told VOA via a Twitter message.
North Carolina is one of nine states in the United States with semi-closed primaries — which means that unaffiliated voters may choose to vote either in Democratic or Republican primaries, but those affiliated with a certain party can only vote in that party’s primary.
The rest of U.S. states and the District of Columbia have a range of primary options, from open (where voters can cast ballots across party lines) to closed (where only voters registered with one of the two major parties can vote in that primary).
Many voting rights groups say closed primaries are a kind of voter suppression, and have led to independent voter organizations and advocates to call on more states to change their systems.
“The Constitution gives us a right to vote. It doesn’t say the right to vote only when you register in a party,” Javier Luque, an independent voter in New Jersey, told VOA. “No, it means the right to vote means the right to vote, and something has to be done.”FILE – Young voters wait on line at a polling station at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, March 3, 2020.Many voters like Luque identify as independent voters because they say they’ve been disenfranchised by the system in recent election cycles. In particular, those who watched as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders twice ran for, and lost, the Democratic presidential nomination were disappointed.
Sanders campaigned on many of the issues that top the list of concerns, especially during a pandemic, for voters under the age of 30.
“Things like ‘Medicare For All,’ universal basic income, reforms to rent and mortgage that would prevent people from losing their homes or being evicted,” Luque said.
“I’m young, I have a lot of student debt,” Moorhouse said.
“Policing and access to education,” Copeland wrote.
And for all of them, voter rights and election reform.
“We feel like we’re independent, neither major party represents our interests or our futures. How can we fix that structurally so that we can get those people in the pipeline so that, ultimately, our public servants and elected officials represent us?” Moorhouse asked.
“In a more desirable, functional political system, there would be more freedom to vote outside your party and doing so wouldn’t risk electing a candidate you don’t want,” Copeland wrote.
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By Polityk | 07/27/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Barr Able to Put His Stamp on Executive Power as Trump’s AG
Gathered in the small assembly hall in Little Rock, Arkansas, their chairs spaced 6 feet (1.83 meters) apart, the business leaders listen admiringly to the nation’s chief law enforcement official.
They ask Attorney General William Barr about elder fraud. They ask about the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, about protection of federal monuments. And each thanks Barr for his devotion and service, praising him as a patriot who is working tirelessly to protect America and restore order.
But there are those who disagree. Outside, Black Lives Matter protesters approach the doors, screaming, chanting and banging on the windows. The business leaders strain to be heard over the din.
“We’ve been here an hour and now we all understand what you go through every day,” a middle-age banker tells Barr, “so thank you.”
Barr can expect this kind of praise when he appears Tuesday for the first time before the House Judiciary Committee — but only from its Republicans. To them, he is a conservative stalwart, an unflappable foe of the left and its excesses, and — most importantly — a staunch defender of President Donald Trump.
The reception from the Democrats will be closer to the hostility of Little Rock’s demonstrators.
In the course of roughly 18 months in office, the 70-year-old Barr has become inexorably linked to a norm-busting president with sagging popularity and uncertain reelection prospects.
His actions, including the investigation he launched into the Russia probe, have deepened criticism of him as Trump’s faithful protector. Democrats have suggested he should be impeached and are holding hearings into what they say is the politicization of the Justice Department under his watch.
He came to the job with the reputation of an establishment Republican, and the expectation, by some, that he would temper the behavior of an impulsive and iconoclastic president. He has not, leading some to believe he has tailored his principles to conform with Trump’s views on politics and the law.
In fact, for decades Barr has made no secret of his commitment to law and order and his support for expansive presidential power. Those views have married neatly with a president who has repeatedly tested the limits of executive authority, a pairing that has benefited both men and perhaps allowed Barr to let down his hair more than ever before.
The people who know him insist that Barr is just being Barr — that he is not motivated by ambition or anything other than the opportunity to put his heartfelt beliefs into practice.
“He doesn’t have anything to prove from a professional or career standpoint,” said his longtime colleague and friend, attorney Chuck Cooper. “He’s been at the apex of the legal profession for a long time. And so, in that respect, he’s unlike any other attorney general. He’s already ascended to that pinnacle once before.”
Only one other attorney general has served two non-consecutive terms — John J. Crittenden, who held the job under presidents William Henry Harrison and John Tyler and later Millard Fillmore in the 19th century. Barr’s first stint was from 1991 to 1993, under President George H.W. Bush.
He first encountered Bush, then director of the CIA, when Barr was working for the intelligence agency’s legislative counsel while attending law school. Bush was testifying before Congress against a proposal to notify people whose mail had been read by the CIA.
Barr would recall, in an oral history for the University of Virginia: “Someone asked him a question, and he leaned back and said, ‘How the hell do I answer this one?’ I whispered the answer in his ear, and he gave it, and I thought: ‘Who is this guy? He listens to legal advice when it’s given.'”
Clearly, he liked having the ear of the powerful.
Devoutly Catholic son of the headmaster at a tony prep school, Barr had an upper-class, New York City upbringing: parochial elementary school, then storied Horace Mann prep school, and on to Columbia University and George Washington University for law.
He was conservative from a young age. It is often noted that as a kindergartner, he gave a speech for Dwight Eisenhower. He announced he was supporting Richard Nixon in his Roman Catholic elementary school and a nun took him aside and promised to pray for him. He told a high school counselor he wanted to run the CIA.
But he did not stay at the CIA. He held a clerkship with a U.S. Court of Appeals judge on the D.C. circuit, then went into private practice — though he kept a toe in the political world, working on candidate vetting, among other things. He served in the Reagan White House for more than a year.
Then, when Bush was elected, Barr joined the Justice Department — first as assistant attorney general of the Office of Legal Counsel, then as deputy attorney general, and finally as attorney general.
Even then, his views of executive power were expansive: He advised George H.W. Bush’s administration that congressional authorization was not needed to attack Iraq but said a resolution of support would be helpful, nonetheless. He blessed Bush’s desire to pardon Reagan administration officials in the Iran-Contra scandal as within the president’s authority, and provided legal justification for the Bush administration to invade Panama and arrest Manuel Noriega.
His post-government career included a string of lucrative private-sector legal jobs — including general counsel for Verizon Communications and attorney for the Caterpillar construction equipment company — until he answered Donald Trump’s call to replace Jeff Sessions as attorney general.
Barr arrived at his confirmation hearings with credentials as a member of more mainstream, and conventional, Republican circles than Trump. He was seen as a reasonable choice to restore normalcy to an agency riven with tumult, including an attorney general whose recusal from the Russia investigation left him openly and publicly despised by the president.|
Despite early indications of an askance view of the Russia investigation — he authored a memo months before his nomination critical of special counsel Robert Mueller’s efforts — he struck a soothing note at his confirmation hearing.
Mueller would of course be permitted to finish his work, he said. A president who offered a pardon in exchange for the concealment of incriminating information may well be committing obstruction, Barr said. And a nominee who had proposed names other than his own for the job reassured the Senate that, as someone already near the end of his career, he had no need to curry favor with the president.
He was confirmed 54-45, mostly along party lines.
But that support began to erode weeks later after he cleared Trump of obstruction of justice allegations even when Mueller and his team had pointedly declined to do the same, and after he produced a summary letter of Mueller’s investigation that painted a more flattering portrait for the president than the special counsel had done.
He’s since initiated an investigation of the Russia probe that Trump supporters have embraced, but that Democrats see as vindictive and backward-looking.
“In his confirmation hearing, I came in with an open mind, especially because a series of people who’d previously served with him in the DOJ, a long time ago, had reached out to me to say they believed he was committed to the rule of law and would be a good attorney general,” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del. “But I have become more and more concerned about his priorities, and his leadership as the months have gone on.”
Barr’s supporters and friends describe him as unmoved by the criticism, committed to actions that he sees as appropriate and proper regardless of what anyone thinks.
“Nobody likes criticism, but Bill is one of those folks who follows his own path and is self-confident enough that he believes he’s doing the right thing in each case. I think he’s less affected by public criticism than some. I would compare him to someone like Justice Scalia,” said Andrew McBride, a Washington lawyer and longtime Barr friend.
Which is a good thing for Barr, because in his second term as AG he has faced far more criticism than he did in his first. And as Barr often jokes, he’s far more recognizable now than he was in the 1990s; he’s even been stopped in European bars for selfies.
He sought leniency in the sentencing of Trump ally Roger Stone — his idea alone, he insists, and a “righteous decision based on the merits.” The move promoted angry dissent in the Justice Department and the swift resignation of a well-regarded prosecutor, and though the judge did impose a sentence shorter than what the trial team had sought, Trump commuted the sentence anyway.
He also moved to dismiss the prosecution of former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn, a request the Justice Department expected would be simple but that has instead produced a pitched fight before a federal appeals court.
He tried to fire the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, but that didn’t go precisely as planned when U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman refused to step aside, leaving Berman’s deputy in his place instead of the prosecutor Barr had selected to replace him.
The actions have resulted in open letters signed by thousands of Justice Department alumni who have demanded Barr’s resignation.
They’ve also reinforced criticism that he is facilitating the vision of a president who has shown little regards for the historic norms that have for decades guided the relationship between the White House and the Justice Department, chief among them that law enforcement operates independent of politics when it comes to cases and matters.
Trump and Barr have broken on occasion: Trump wanted a full-on prosecution of players in the Russia probe, like Andrew McCabe, and bristled when Barr asked him to stop tweeting about Stone, saying that the tweets were making it impossible to do his job.
But largely, Barr has delivered, Trump has told confidants, including when he moved to drop the Flynn prosecution and ousted Berman.
And it was Barr, acting on the president’s “law and order” pledge, who stood in Washington’s Lafayette Square last month before law enforcement cleared the street of demonstrators at the height of the George Floyd protests. A short time later, he stood just a few feet away as the president held a Bible aloft outside St. John’s Church, creating one of the defining — and, as it turned out, politically damaging — moments of his presidency.
Barr fancies himself a lawman’s lawman. While sheriffs and even many rank-and-file officers adore him, after all these years he doesn’t quite fit in with the blue-collar world of the working-class cop.
Just before Christmas, Barr visited New York’s One Police Plaza to meet with New York Police Department brass after a series of suicides among New York police officers. Later that night, he hosted a thank-you dinner for hundreds of officers. The NYPD sent two officers from each precinct, along with some chiefs, the NYPD’s commissioner and his chief deputy.
As the officers streamed into the Queens catering hall, bagpipes played in the background. (Barr is a competitive bagpipe player, though he also rocks out to Shakira.)
The officers were offered drinks. But they were in uniform — Barr didn’t realize that they were not allowed alcohol. Barr apologized and told them to eat up. He paid the bill — well over $10,000 — out of his own pocket, handing the owner his credit card.
Barr has devoted numerous speeches to discussing restoring the rule of law in America. A signature line: There is no more noble profession than being a law enforcement officer. Even as the nation engages in a growing conversation about police reform, Barr has loudly cautioned that going too far — allowing the pendulum to swing all the way — would be detrimental.
Earlier this month, Barr flew to South Carolina and Arkansas to meet with police officials and community leaders. At a predominantly African American church, community leaders told him they didn’t want to “defund” the police. The officers in their communities needed more training and better resources. Police officials shared the same views.
Barr has said he recognizes there is racism in the U.S., and that there’s reason for some communities to be more suspicious of law enforcement than others, but he doesn’t think that the system is systemically racist.
“Like all power, it can be abused. And people just sort of act like it is an either-or situation, it’s all about abuse or, you know, beat the Iron Fist,” Barr said in an interview.
Instead, he believes it is incumbent upon the government to ensure there are adequate policies in place to protect against abuse and that officers have proper training. But going too far and pushing to defund or disband police departments or moving quickly to bring criminal charges against police officers without robust investigations is likely to lead to a mass exodus of officers, he argues.
The demonstrations happening across the country aren’t a totally new phenomenon for Barr, and George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer is reminiscent of a major civil rights investigation he handled in his first stint as attorney general — the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles in the early 1990s.
When a state jury acquitted three officers, and failed to reach a verdict on a fourth, it was the Barr Justice Department that brought federal charges in the case, leading to convictions of two officers.
Barr is one of the most hands-on attorneys general the nation has ever seen. He often digs into the minutia of cases or pressing investigations and demands briefings, sometimes every half hour.
But Democrats on Capitol Hill have accused Barr of acting more like Trump’s personal lawyer than America’s chief law enforcement officer. For Barr, that’s a criticism easily shrugged off.
“I dismiss it because like many other talking points these days, there’s never any actual particular matter presented to support it, so I ignore it as just part of the general background noise,” Barr said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
But the criticism isn’t limited to congressional Democrats. Many former federal prosecutors have puzzled over actions that they see as breaking against Justice Department convention and tilting in the favor of Trump allies, including his push to drop the prosecution of a former adviser, Michael Flynn, who had already pleaded guilty.
Like Trump, he believes there must be a thorough investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation that shadowed Trump’s presidency, even as Democrats decry those probes as politically motivated. What seems “to upset them is that I am dead set on making sure we get to the bottom of what happened during the 2016 election period,” he said.
He points to the Justice Department inspector general’s report that found flaws in how the FBI’s Russia investigation was conducted. Despite the problems the watchdog office identified, it nonetheless determined that the FBI had a legitimate basis to launch a full investigation — a finding Barr disagrees with — and that the probe was not motivated by political bias.
At the end of the day, Barr insists his most controversial decisions have been right and just.
“I think the only way to handle this kind of job, especially in the kind of environment we are in, is to just put one foot in front of the other, and every time a decision is brought to you, you make a decision and walk away with a clear conscience,” Barr said.
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By Polityk | 07/27/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Experts Say Collecting Immigration Data Through US Census for Reapportionment Is Unconstitutional
President Donald Trump’s bid to exclude undocumented immigrants from a census tabulation used to determine how many U.S. representatives are apportioned to each state is unworkable and unconstitutional, according to civil rights groups and several American cities and counties suing the administration.“It can’t be done,” Sarah Brannon, managing attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project, told VOA, adding that the citizenship determination Trump is mandating would be hard to ascertain and “not very reliable.”Another civil liberties group, Common Cause, filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging Trump’s directive, joined by cities in New Jersey and Georgia. Later in the day, Arlington County, Virginia, said it was joining the suit.“The Constitution requires an accurate count of our population every 10 years,” Arlington County Board Chair Libby Garvey said in a statement. “We must have an accurate count of everyone living in Arlington and refuse to allow this unlawful effort to scare people and suppress the census count of our immigrant community.”Others are applauding the executive order. Alabama’s Attorney General Steve Marshall called it a “victory” for the state.“When the states’ congressional seats and Electoral College votes are divided up, representation should be based on those people who reside in their states and this country lawfully,” Marshall said.The Supreme Court last year blocked the Trump administration from including a citizenship question on the 2020 census.In an executive order issued earlier this week, Trump directed Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the U.S. Census Bureau, to present data as to the number of undocumented people counted by the census. The administration would then exclude the undocumented from each state’s census count for the purpose of determining whether a state loses, gains or retains members in the House of Representatives, a process that occurs every 10 years.The executive order reads: “For the purpose of the reapportionment of Representatives following the 2020 census, it is the policy of the United States to exclude from the apportionment base aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status under the Immigration and Nationality Act.”The U.S. Constitution makes no mention of citizenship in relation to the census or congressional apportionment, a point underscored by law professor Ilya Somin, who teaches at George Mason University in Virginia.“Section 2 of the 14th amendment specifically says that representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state,” Somin, a self-described libertarian, told VOA. “I think the overwhelming likelihood is the courts will rule against [Trump’s directive] because it is blatantly unconstitutional.”Population subset not countedOn Tuesday, the Trump administration argued the Constitution “does not specifically define which persons must be included for the purposes of apportionment and requires only that representatives be apportioned according to what has long been understood to mean the ‘inhabitants’ of each state.”But Howard University Constitutional Law Professor Steven Jamar told VOA the argument the administration is using deals with a subset of people – such as tourists and business travelers – who, though they might be counted in the census, are not counted for apportionment purposes.“There are some people who are not within the state on the date of the census. They are traveling or they’re out of the country. … There are some people who are just tourists visiting the state from somewhere else. And those people have historically not been counted for apportionment purposes. … they’re generally not even counted in the census because they aren’t resident in the state. But an immigrant, whether they’re documented or not, is residing in the state,” Jamar said.Trump, however, vowed to “collect all of the information we need to conduct an accurate census and to make responsible decisions about public policy, voting rights, and representation in Congress.”Last year the Supreme Court blocked an attempt by the Trump administration to add a citizenship question for the first time in 60 years.“It’s not about who can vote. It’s not about citizenship. It’s about whole persons residing in the state. So, the question is really just ‘Who’s living there?’” Jamar said.Conservatives agree with administrationThe Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington, agrees with the administration’s directive, adding that Trump acted “firmly within his statutory authority to determine who are the ‘inhabitants’ of a state for purposes of apportionment.”“The administration must now work diligently to collect and make available the data necessary to support and implement this substantial change, and hopefully this change can be implemented swiftly,” according to a statement.In 2018, the state of Alabama filed litigation against the U.S. Census Bureau and argued the current system of apportioning congressional seats gives an unfair electoral advantage to states with more undocumented immigrants and that Alabamians would likely lose a congressional seat and an Electoral College vote if undocumented immigrants were counted. The lawsuit is currently pending before a federal court.The Pew Research Center in its latest report showed that if unauthorized immigrants were excluded from the apportionment count, California would lose two seats instead of one, Florida would gain one instead of two, and Texas would gain two instead of three. Alabama, Minnesota and Ohio would keep a seat that they would have lost if apportionment were based only on total population change.The report, released Friday, is based on projections of Census Bureau 2019 population estimates.“In addition to these states, 11 more would gain or lose seats based on population change alone, no matter whether unauthorized immigrants are included or excluded,” according to the analysis.Gathering immigration dataThe administration has not disclosed how it would identify undocumented immigrants. The questions in the census questionnaire does not include or require respondents to disclose their immigration status or citizenship status.Terri Ann Lowenthal, a census consultant who once served as the staff director of the former House oversight subcommittee for the census, said all the data available on the undocumented immigrant population are estimates.“We have some sense, right, we do have states that provide benefits to undocumented persons and so they have some administrative data, which give us some sense of the size of the population. But again, having said that, the apportionment formula for seats in Congress is an extraordinarily complex mathematical formula, I always say, that about five mathematicians in the country can explain,” Lowenthal said.She is more concerned about the heightened fear the directive creates in immigrant communities.“I’m concerned that this fear will affect participation in the rest of the census. The census still has to count more than 35 percent of households in this country, in the remaining field operation,” Lowenthal said.This week, the Census Bureau started to visit households that have yet to respond. The bureau has also reported that so far 62 percent of U.S. households had completed their census forms.The first results were due December 31 but because of the coronavirus outbreak, the Census Bureau has delayed fieldwork, and some of these dates have changed. The agency has also asked Congress to extend the legal deadline to publish data.Stacey Abrams, a Georgia Democratic politician and voting rights activist, told VOA that people on both sides of the aisle need to worry about this directive because when the population is not accurately counted, everyone suffers. In 2019, Abrams launched a nonprofit to ensure that “hard-to-count” populations are recorded during the 2020 census.Abrams emphasized the lack of legality to gather immigration status data.“The census cannot inquire about the citizenship of any person. It’s not on the form. They can’t ask it out loud. And if you get that question, close the door and call the Census Bureau,” she said.
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By Polityk | 07/26/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Women Reflect on Sexist Slur That Often Goes Unpunished
Ask a woman if she’s been called the B-word by a man — perhaps modified by the F-adjective — and chances are she’ll say, “You mean ever, or how many times?”Because most women will tell you it’s a pretty universal experience, especially if they’ve held a position of power in the workplace. “I’d say, maybe 25 times?” estimates Ellen Gerstein, who spent years in technology publishing, a fairly male-dominated field, before becoming a pharmaceutical executive. “And that’s just to my face.”In fact, Gerstein says, use of the word as a slur against women has come to feel so unfortunately routine that her own memories of it tend to blur together — unlike, say, the time 20 years ago when a male colleague asked her who she’d “lap danced” to push a project ahead. But she says she was filled with admiration when she heard Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez take to the floor of the House and call out a male colleague for vulgar words.”I thought, listening to her, ‘Wow, you’re 100% right,'” says Gerstein, now 52. “Why didn’t I apply those same standards to myself?”Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks on Thursday, widely shared online, amounted to a stunning indictment not only of the words of Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Florida, who she said called her a “f—————g bitch” in front of reporters, but a culture of abusive language against women that can lead to violence. Her speech resonated with many women — in politics and out, supportive of her politics or not — who said the language had been tacitly accepted for far too long.The moment was extraordinary, says Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, not because the language was new — as Ocasio-Cortez herself said, it was nothing she hadn’t heard waiting tables or riding the subway — but because of where it took place, and especially because the freshman congresswoman had the confidence and the support of her colleagues to call it out in such a public way.”This is all part of a shift,” Walsh says, attributing the change to the #MeToo movement, in large part. “Women are feeling empowered to speak up and believe they will be heard.” More than a dozen Democratic colleagues — but no Republicans — joined Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, in speaking out against sexist behavior, including from President Donald Trump.The moment led Gloria Steinem, the nation’s most visible feminist advocate, to reflect on her own struggles with the word Barbara Bush once famously said “rhymes with rich.””It took me years to learn what to do when someone calls you a bitch,” Steinem told The Associated Press in an email. “Just smile in a calm triumphant way, and say, ‘Thank you!'”Steinem, 86, said she hadn’t realized the strategy could be helpful to other women until it made it into the script of a recent off-Broadway play about her life, “and every night, women in the audience burst out in big relieved laughter.”Still, Steinem noted, “Refusing to be hurt may not really change the people who are trying to hurt you.” She called for both “cultural and workplace penalties for such behavior,” and, more profoundly, “raising our children to empathize and treat others as we want to be treated.”Gerstein, too, says she found it helpful to repurpose what was intended as a slur into a compliment. “I didn’t want to feel like a victim, so my theory was to own it,” she says. “As if to say, ‘What you’re really saying is I’m tough, I’m bossy, I’m determined and I’m damned good at what I’m doing.'”Ocasio-Cortez “owned” the word as well when she tweeted, in response to Yoho’s alleged remarks: “Bitches get stuff done.” That itself was a throwback to a 2008 sketch on “Saturday Night Live,” in which Tina Fey and Amy Poehler discussed the slur as often applied to Hillary Clinton. “Yeah, she is. And so am I,” notes Fey on the “Weekend Update” segment. “You know what? Bitches get stuff done.”Feminist author Andi Zeisler, co-founder of the nonprofit Bitch Media, notes that the sketch marked the beginning of a long and evolving process of women “reclaiming” the word, much like the word “queer.””We don’t get to control who uses it and how,” explains Zeisler. “We can only control the way we conceive of it.”Of course, context is everything. When used as Yoho allegedly did, the word is intentionally gender-specific and heavy with implied power dynamics, says Walsh, of Rutgers.It “otherizes women, it dehumanizes them and tells women they don’t belong in these institutions and positions,” Walsh says. “It is about silencing women and keeping them out.”Jen Singer, a freelance writer in New Jersey, says that “when men call you a bitch, it’s a warning shot across your bow — a reminder that they have power and you had better not overstep your bounds.”It’s the feeling that Jennifer Bogar-Richardson, an educator also in New Jersey, felt when she learned that a superior had referred to her as a “ho” in a meeting with colleagues years ago, using words from a Chris Brown song to indicate she’d been disloyal.”I felt naked,” says Bogar-Richardson, 44, “because it obviously didn’t matter how smart I was, how intelligent or how well I did my job. I’m nothing more than that name.”Mila Stieglitz, a 22-year-old New Yorker who graduated college in May, found herself feeling conflicting emotions as she watched Ocasio-Cortez’s speech. On the one hand, she was disheartened to learn of the sexist language experienced by the congresswoman — at 30, only eight years her senior — something she’d hoped was more an issue for an earlier generation. On the other, she said she was inspired by her outspokenness, and the support she received from colleagues.”As I enter the workforce, I recognize there’s been so much progress since my mother’s generation, for which I’m grateful,” Stieglitz said. “But these instances also highlight to me how much more needs to be done.”
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By Polityk | 07/26/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
AP FACT CHECK: A More Measured Trump Doesn’t Mean Accurate
President Donald Trump in recent days suddenly acknowledged the gravity of the coronavirus pandemic and edged away from some of his most audacious falsehoods about it. That’s not to say he gave the public an honest accounting.Trump minimized the potential risk to children and those around them as he advocated reopening schools. He again marveled at the number of COVID-19 tests being performed in the U.S. even as the overwhelmed testing system crucially fails to deliver sufficient access and timely results.And he cited a low U.S. death rate from COVID-19 compared with other countries, when the global statistics appear to contradict him.All this while Trump canceled Republican National Convention events in Jacksonville, Florida, bowing to the reality that many Republicans were reluctant to go a state where the virus has been out of control. Meantime his press secretary peddled false internet rumors that the “cancel culture” led to the cancellation of a cartoon about puppies.A review of some statements from the past week:TESTSTRUMP, on the U.S. approaching 50 million tests: “This allows us to isolate those who are infected, even those without symptoms. So we know exactly where it’s going and when it’s going to be there.” — briefing Tuesday.THE FACTS: This is by no means true.In many if not most parts of the country, people who manage to get a test can wait for many days for the results because labs are overwhelmed. In the meantime, those people could be and in some cases surely are spreading infection. And many people who want a test but report no symptoms can’t get one.Some labs are taking weeks to return COVID-19 results because of the crushing workload from the surge of new cases.”There’s been this obsession with, ‘How many tests are we doing per day?'” said Dr. Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The question is, how many tests are being done with results coming back within a day, where the individual tested is promptly isolated and their contacts are promptly warned?”KIDS and COVID-19TRUMP on young people and the virus: “Now, they don’t catch it easily; they don’t bring it home easily. And if they do catch it, they get better fast. We’re looking at that fact.” — briefing Wednesday.THE FACTS: That isn’t a fact. He doesn’t have the science to reach this broad conclusion. His coronavirus task force coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx, and other public health officials have said repeatedly that while children appear to get less sick from the virus than adults, the threat to young people and their ability to spread the virus are not understood because not enough research has been done on kids and COVID-19.Birx underscored the point Friday on NBC’s “Today” show. Whether children under 10 spread the virus the same as older children “is still an open question” she said.”We know that children under 18 are less sick, but there are some that suffer terrible consequences if they have underlying conditions,” she added. “Children under 10 do get infected. It’s just unclear how rapidly they spread the virus.”Trump has been pushing for schools to reopen and at one point threatened to withhold federal money if they don’t. While his assurances about children were unsupported, they were a step back from his earlier rhetoric that portrayed kids as practically immune to infection. “It’s very unique how the children aren’t affected,” he said in early May. “Incredible.”U.S. DEATHSTRUMP on the U.S. and other countries in the pandemic: “We’ve done much better than most. And with the fatality rate at a lower rate than most, it’s something that we can talk about, but we’re working, again, with them because we’re helping a lot of countries that people don’t even know about.” — briefing Tuesday.THE FACTS: No, the U.S. does not shine in comparison with other countries. The U.S. has experienced far more recorded infections and deaths from COVID-19 than any other country, including those with larger populations, and it lags a number of other nations in testing and containment.Trump seems to have edged away from claiming that the U.S. mortality rate is the world’s best, after being confronted on that point in his Fox News interview a week ago with Chris Wallace. His more modest boasts since, though, also are not correct.Understanding deaths as a percentage of the population or as a percentage of known infections is problematic because countries track and report COVID-19 deaths and cases differently. No one can reliably rank countries in this regard.The statistics that do exist fail to support his assertion.In an analysis of the 20 countries currently most affected by the pandemic, the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center finds the U.S. with the fourth worst rate of deaths per 100,000 people — only Britain, Peru and Chile are seeing more reported deaths as a proportion of their populations.On another measure, looking at what percentage of reported cases lead to death, the U.S. is in the middle of that pack, with a case-fatality ratio of 3.6%Looking at deaths among all countries, not just the ones most suffering at this stage of the pandemic, the U.S. fares somewhat better but still not among the best. Its recorded 44 deaths per 100,000 compares favorably with Britain (68.6 per 100,000) as well as Spain (60.8), Italy (58) and Sweden (55.7), for example, but poorly with Canada (24), Brazil (40), Mexico (33) and dozens more countries.Disparities in reporting are only one reason not to take these numbers conclusively. Many factors are in play in shaping a death toll besides how well a country responded to the pandemic, such as the overall health or youth of national populations.’CANCEL CULTURE’KAYLEIGH McENANY, White House press secretary, on Trump: “He’s also appalled by cancel culture, and cancel culture specifically as it pertains to cops. We saw a few weeks ago, ‘Paw Patrol,’ a cartoon show about cops was canceled.” — briefing Friday.THE FACTS: No, ‘Paw Patrol’ was not canceled. Fake rumors online said it was. And it’s not about cops. It’s a cartoon about puppies. The lead puppy is a cop. There’s a firefighter puppy, too.MASKSMcENANY, when asked about Trump’s change in tone this past week in urging people to wear masks: “There has been no change. …The president has been consistent on this.” — news briefing Friday.THE FACTS: Trump’s messaging has been inconsistent, to say the least.Trump from the beginning has made clear that wearing masks is voluntary and shunned wearing one in public. He frequently ridiculed Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for wearing a mask in public. In May, when a reporter declined to pull down his mask to ask a question at a news briefing so Trump could hear better, the president mocked by saying, “OK, because you want to be politically correct.”And Trump told The Wall Street Journal last month that some people may wear them as a political statement against him.”People touch them,” he said. “And they grab them and I see it all the time. They come in, they take the mask. Now they’re holding it now in their fingers. And they drop it on the desk and then they touch their eye and they touch their nose. No, I think a mask is a — it’s a double-edged sword.”This past week, as his poll ratings on the handling of the coronavirus have fallen, Trump on Monday tweeted a photo of himself wearing a mask and called it an act of patriotism. That evening, he was seen maskless at the Trump International Hotel in apparent defiance of D.C. coronavirus regulations, according to video footage of the event.”We’re asking everybody that when you are not able to socially distance, wear a mask, get a mask,” Trump said Tuesday at his first appearance at a coronavirus briefing since April. “Whether you like the mask or not, they have an impact.”TRAVEL RESTRICTIONSTRUMP: “You know, one day, we had a virus come in, and I closed the borders, did a lot of things that were very good. … And nobody wanted to do it. I wanted to do it. We closed the border to China. We put on the ban. We didn’t want people coming in from heavily infected China.” — briefing Tuesday.THE FACTS: He didn’t ban travel from China. He restricted it. Dozens of countries took similar steps to control travel from hot spots before or around the same time the U.S. did. The U.S. restrictions that took effect Feb. 2 continued to allow travel to the U.S. from China’s Hong Kong and Macao territories over the past five months. The Associated Press reported that more than 8,000 Chinese and foreign nationals based in those territories entered the U.S. in the first three months after the travel restrictions were imposed.Additionally, more than 27,000 Americans returned from mainland China in the first month after the restrictions took effect. U.S. officials lost track of more than 1,600 of them who were supposed to be monitored for virus exposure. VETERANSTRUMP: “On the VA, we got Veterans Choice. Nobody thought that would be possible. That’s been many decades. They’ve been trying to get Veterans Choice. It’s called ‘Choice,’ where they can go get a doctor if they have to wait on line for two weeks or five weeks or two days.” — briefing Tuesday.THE FACTS: It’s false that he achieved Veterans Choice when other presidents couldn’t. President Barack Obama achieved it. Trump expanded it. It has not eliminated delays for care, including for those with waits of “two weeks” or “two days.”The program allows veterans to see a private doctor for primary or mental health care at public expense if their VA wait is 20 days (28 for specialty care) or their drive to a VA facility is 30 minutes or more. After the coronavirus outbreak, the VA took the step of restricting veterans’ access to private doctors, citing the added risks of infection and limited capacity at private hospitals.
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By Polityk | 07/25/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
For Racial Justice Protests, US Taps Tactical Border Squads
They are the most highly trained members of the Border Patrol, agents who confront drug traffickers along the U.S.-Mexico border and track down dangerous fugitives in rugged terrain.One day this past week, they were in a far difference setting — a city park in Portland, Oregon, looking for two people suspected of throwing rocks and bottles at officers guarding the downtown federal courthouse.Federal Agents Use Tear Gas to Clear Portland ProtestEarlier Friday night, the protest had drawn various organized groups, including Healthcare Workers Protest, Teachers against Tyrants, Lawyers for Black Lives and the ‘Wall of Moms’Beyond the debate over whether the federal response to the Portland protests encroaches on local authority, another question arises: whether the Department of Homeland Security, with its specialized national security focus, is the right agency for the job.It’s not just the Border Patrol Tactical Unit that has been called to duty in Portland. DHS has dispatched Air Marshals as well as the Customs and Border Protection Special Response Team and even members of the Coast Guard.”The Department of Homeland Security was never intended as a national police force let alone a presidential militia,” said Peter Vincent, a former general counsel for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is also an agency within DHS.The deployment of DHS agents and officers is legal, both under existing law and an executive order President Donald Trump signed June 26 to protect federal property and monuments. But it has made the agency, created to improve the nation’s response to terrorism, a target of widespread criticism.Congress plans to delve into the issue Friday, when the House Homeland Security Committee holds a hearing on the federal response to the protests in Portland and Trump’s announcement that he plans to send federal agents to Chicago and Albuquerque, New Mexico, to help combat rising crime while making “law and order” a central theme of his reelection campaign.”Americans across the country are watching what the administration is doing in Portland with horror and revulsion and are wondering if their cities could be President Trump’s next targets,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who is chairman of the committee.As of Monday, there were 114 federal agents and officers deployed to downtown Portland, according to an affidavit from Gabriel Russell, the regional director of the Federal Protective Service, the DHS component that provides security for federal buildings.UN Slams US Security Forces for Violent Crackdown on Anti-Racism Protesters in PortlandUN official says people have a right to protest peacefully and should not be subjected to unnecessary, disproportionate and discriminatory use of force Protests have been taking place in Portland since May 26 but the federal agents kept a “defensive posture” by staying inside federal buildings until July 3, Russell said in the affidavit, filed in response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union seeking protections for journalists and other legal observers covering the demonstrations.That night, according to Russell, protesters attempted to set fire to the federal courthouse and DHS deployed a Rapid Deployment Force as part of “Operation Diligent Valor.” That same night, Trump stood before Mount Rushmore and accused protesters around the country who have pushed for racial justice of engaging in a “merciless campaign to wipe out our history.” He later criticized officials in Portland for allowing demonstration to get “totally out of control.” The officers deploying to Portland are “highly trained,” and many wear camouflage because that’s their duty uniform on the southwest border, according to acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf, responding to charges of a militarized response to the protests.In addition to their previous training, they took a 90-minute online course on the mission and jurisdiction of the Federal Protective Service, police powers and criminal regulations, according to a course description provided to The Associated Press.Richard Cline, principal deputy director of the protective services, told reporters that DHS officers are given additional training to ensure they act within guidelines established by the Justice Department as they assist an organization that was “quickly overwhelmed” by violent demonstrators.Wolf also defended tactics such as tear gas, rubber bullets and having officers sweep people off the street into unmarked vehicles, evoking images of a secret police force.”We are only targeting and arresting those who have been identified as committing criminal acts, like any other law enforcement agency does across the country every single day of the week,” he said.On Wednesday, agents from the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, known as BORTAC, set out from the federal courthouse just after midnight in pursuit of two people in dark clothing and carrying makeshift shields suspected of throwing rocks and bottles at officers, according to court records. The agents struggled with the two, eventually restraining them and turning them over to the Federal Protective Service. One, a 19-year-old man, was charged with felony assault of an officer.In addition to rocks and bottles, agents and officers at the courthouse have been struck with ball bearings, improvised explosives, fireworks, and balloons filled with paint and feces, Russell said. Some have also had lasers shined at their eyes. At least 28 officers have been injured and officers have made at least 43 arrests, mostly for misdemeanors.While the use of BORTAC officers in this environment is unusual, it’s not unprecedented, said Michael Fisher, a former senior official with the agency and member of the unit. BORTAC officers have been used to serve warrants on suspects considered dangerous, protected emergency personnel during natural disasters and were sent to Los Angeles during the 1992 riots, Fisher said. “What was happening in Portland is the police were not enforcing a lot the laws and it just escalated and that’s the reason it’s gone on well over 50 days now,” said Fisher, who now runs a security company. Local officials have in turn accused DHS of inflaming the situation, an argument bolstered by the fact that protests grew larger as controversy intensified over the tactics of the federal agents. Former DHS officials concede the agency has worked with state and local law enforcement before, with the consent and cooperation of local authorities. But in Oregon, officials have accused the federal government of inflaming the situation and asked it to withdraw.Vincent, who left ICE in 2014 and now works as a consultant, said some current officials are “extraordinarily uncomfortable” with what they have been asked to do in Portland.”I am deeply concerned as someone who believes in the mission of the agency and knows and respects its officers and agents that these activities will irreparably damage the agency’s reputation,” he said.
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By Polityk | 07/25/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
6 Days of Memorials to Begin for Civil Rights Icon John Lewis
A six-day series of events memorializing the life of the late civil rights icon and member of the U.S. House of Representatives John Lewis begins Saturday in his hometown of Troy, Alabama, and culminates next week with his funeral in the state of Georgia.A public service celebrating Lewis will take place Saturday morning at Troy University, where Lewis will lie in repose for visitors to pay their respects. Later in the day, a private ceremony will honor him at a chapel in Selma, Alabama, ahead of another public viewing.On Sunday, Lewis’ body will cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where he and other voting rights demonstrators were beaten in 1965 on a day known as “Bloody Sunday.”His body will be carried to Alabama’s capital, Montgomery, where Mayor Steven Reed is encouraging people to line the sidewalks on the final leg of that journey. Officials are asking the public to wear face masks and socially distance.Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has ordered flags to be flown at half-staff on Saturday and Sunday in honor of Lewis.During the nearly weeklong memorial events, Lewis’ body will lie in state at the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery, the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta and the U.S. Capitol in Washington.U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced earlier this week that visitors could pay their respects to Lewis in the U.S. Capitol on Monday and Tuesday.Due to the coronavirus, the public viewing will take place outside the Capitol building instead of inside in the traditional Capitol Rotunda. The lawmakers said social distancing will be “strictly enforced” and face masks will be required.The Georgia Democrat will be the second Black lawmaker to lie in state at the Capitol, following Congressman Elijah Cummings, who died last year.Lewis’ family said there will also be a procession through Washington next week and said members of the public will be able to pay their respects in a “socially distant manner.”Lewis’ funeral will be held Thursday at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. was once the pastor. Following the service, which will be private, Lewis will be interred at South View Cemetery in Atlanta.Lewis died last Friday at age 80, after a yearlong battle with advanced pancreatic cancer.He rose to fame as a leader of the modern-day American civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s. At 23, he worked closely with King and was the last surviving speaker from the August 1963 March on Washington where King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.The civil rights movement led Lewis into a career in politics. He was elected to the Atlanta City Council in 1981 and to Congress in 1986, calling the latter victory “the honor of a lifetime.” He served 17 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia’s fifth district.
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By Polityk | 07/25/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
US Presidential Rivals Argue Over Who Is Tougher on China
In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic that originated in China, President Donald Trump has adopted an increasingly hardline policy against Beijing, elevating U.S.-China policy as a major issue in the presidential election campaign. Trump, who this week ordered Beijing to close its consulate in Houston, Texas, has criticized his Democratic Party rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, as being soft on China. But as VOA’s Brian Padden reports, Biden also portrays himself as tough on China and has criticized Trump’s polices as inconsistent and ineffective.Producer: Brian Padden.
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By Polityk | 07/25/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
