Розділ: Політика
Biden Decries Trump’s Mobilization of Military Resources to Quell Protests
Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden has expressed concern “for the very soul of our country” after President Donald Trump vowed Monday to use the military to end “the riots and lawlessness” that have broken out across the United States in the aftermath of the death of a black man who died in police custody one week ago in Minneapolis. In a nationally televised address in the White House Rose Garden, the president warned that “if a city or state refuses to take the actions necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.” The comment was an apparent reference to the 1807 Insurrection Act, which allows presidents to quell lawlessness during emergencies. The law was most recently used in 1992 amid rioting in Los Angeles after another African-American man, Rodney King, was beaten by police. Trump said he was “mobilizing all available federal resources, civilian and military, to stop the rioting and looting, to end the destruction and arson, and to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans, including your Second Amendment rights.” The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects the rights of all American citizens to own firearms. Just before the president spoke, reporters awaiting his remarks in the Rose Garden could hear loud explosions from volleys of tear gas fired around Lafayette Park, where riot police holding shields aloft pushed back peaceful demonstrators. Rubber bullets were also fired, and police on horseback were brought in to clear the area. The movement by law enforcement came less than a half-hour before a 7 p.m. curfew went into effect for Washington. The action cleared the way — but not the smell of the tear gas — around St. John’s Church, a block north of the White House, to which Trump walked just minutes after the curfew went into effect. The historic Episcopal Church, known in Washington as “the church of the presidents,” suffered minor damage Sunday evening when a small fire was set in its basement. In front of the boarded-up church, Trump held up a Bible, referred to the United States as the “greatest country in the world,” and said, “we’re going to keep it safe.” President Donald Trump holds a Bible as he visits outside St. John’s Church across Lafayette Park from the White House, June 1, 2020, in Washington. Part of the church was set on fire during protests on Sunday night.Then Trump walked back to the White House surrounded by heavy security. Hours after the president’s speech and his appearance in front of St. John’s, Biden, the president’s presumptive Democratic opponent in this year’s November presidential election, denounced Trump’s actions on his Twitter feed. “He’s using the American military against the American people,” Biden wrote. “He tear-gassed peaceful protesters and fired rubber bullets. For a photo.” “For our children, for the very soul of our country, we must defeat him.”Bishop Mariann Budde, the leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, also expressed her disapproval of Trump’s actions on her Twitter feed. “Tonight President [sic] just used a Bible and a church of my diocese as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus and everything that our church stands for. To do so, he sanctioned the use of tear gas by police officers in riot gear to clear the church yard,” Bishop Budde wrote. “President Trump’s decision to invoke the Insurrection Act, and his inflammatory rhetoric, proves that he cannot lead us through these tumultuous times and unite the country. Instead, he has decided to rely on the use of force to address those who he views as a threat,” Congressman Adam Smith, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement. The president, according to Defense Department officials, has ordered the Army to deploy an active duty military police battalion for Washington, the single jurisdiction where the military can do so without first consulting the governor of a state. National Guard forcesAll 1,200 National Guard forces in the nation’s capital have been mobilized, and five states were quickly sending between 600 and 800 additional Guard troops, some armed with lethal weapons, according to officials. Additional U.S. active duty troops, including military police and engineering units, have been placed on standby outside the District of Columbia but are poised to move in if necessary, officials say. Late Monday night, a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter flew low over the rooftops of Washington’s historic Chinatown district in a “show of force” maneuver, sending protesters scattering to avoid the dust and debris kicked up by the helicopter’s rotors, which also snapped the branches off trees.Demonstrators react as a helicopter circles low as people gather to protest the death of George Floyd, June 1, 2020, near the White House in Washington. Floyd died after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers.Trump’s action is being viewed as his most overt flexing of authoritarian muscle since he took office 3½ years ago. “We are teetering on a dictatorship,” Don Lemon said on the cable news network, CNN, immediately following the president’s remarks. “I think the president is playing a very, very dangerous game here.” The president has repeatedly referred to CNN as “fake news” and frequently characterizes the mainstream U.S. media as “enemies of the people.” Trump calls governors ‘weak’Earlier Monday, governors received a lecture from Trump, the defense secretary and the attorney general, exhorting them to get tough with unruly protesters on the streets of America’s cities. In a conference call with governors about the violent demonstrations across the country, the leaders of the states were sharply criticized by the president. “Most of you are weak,” the president told them, according to an audio recording of the call. “You have to dominate. If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time. They’re going to run over you, you’re going to look like a bunch of jerks.” Trump is facing criticism for not adopting the traditional presidential role of “consoler-in-chief” since the death of African-American George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis, prompted a national outpouring of agony and anger. The president, instead, has spent time on Twitter attacking Biden, other Democratic politicians and lumping them in with the far-left radicals he blames for the violence in recent days. The call with Trump on Monday was “deeply disturbing,” said Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat. “Instead of offering support or leadership to bring down the temperature at protests, President Trump told governors to ‘put it down’ or we would be ‘overridden,’” she said in a statement. About half of the governors have already activated National Guard units to assist law enforcement in quelling the unrest. But more members of the guard are needed on the streets, according to the president. A demonstrator is taken into custody by police after a curfew took effect during a protest over the death of George Floyd, Monday, June 1, 2020, near the White House in Washington. “They’re ready, willing and able. They want to fight for the country,” Trump said to the governors. “I wish we had an occupying force in there.” Los Angeles, specifically, is “not using the greatest resource you can use,” Trump said of the military forces under state control. Trump and the White House are blaming the violence on a loose coalition of far-left activists, known as “antifa” (for anti-fascist), whose members campaign against what they view as acts of authoritarianism, homophobia, racism or xenophobia. The Republican president warned on Twitter earlier that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Trump later denied that the phrase was a warning that vandals would be shot and said he did not know it had been used prominently by Miami’s police chief in 1967 in response to violent crime in black neighborhoods. “It’s a movement that if you don’t put it down it’ll get worse and worse,” said Trump to the governors Monday. “These are radicals and they are anarchists.” White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany asked at a White House news briefing about the Michigan governor’s reaction, said she does not understand why Whitmer would be disturbed by the president telling governors to do their jobs. Another Democrat, Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, told the president, “I’ve been extraordinarily concerned about the rhetoric that’s been used by you. It’s been inflammatory.” The president replied: “I don’t like your rhetoric much either,” criticizing Pritzker’s response to the coronavirus outbreak. “I think you could’ve done a much better job, frankly.” Attorney General William Barr told the governors, “we have to control the streets … and that requires a strong presence.” Professional instigators are looking to move from strong to weak states to cause mayhem, Barr said, adding this was based on intelligence reports. “They’re all looking for weak spots,” Trump said. “You got to arrest these people” and put them away for years. “These are terrorists. They’re antifa and radical left.” Trump specifically called on New York City and Philadelphia “to toughen up.” Trump said the initial response in Minnesota was “weak and pathetic,” but Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, deserved praise for deploying the National Guard, which knocked down demonstrators “like bowling pins – a beautiful thing to watch.” On the conference call, Defense Secretary Mark Esper told the governors that “the sooner you mass and dominate the battle-space, the quicker that this dissipates.” A week after Floyd, 46, died in police custody after a white police officer was filmed pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck for more than 8 minutes, peaceful demonstrations have been overshadowed by urban violence across America. Businesses have been vandalized and looted, public monuments damaged and law enforcement officers firing rubber bullets and tear gas at protesters, some of whom have pelted police with bricks, firecrackers and bags of bodily fluids. Thousands of people were arrested across the United States during demonstrations Saturday and Sunday. California on Monday ordered state government buildings closed in downtown areas. In Chicago, two people were killed during demonstrations on Monday in the Chicago suburb of Cicero and 60 people were arrested, the Associated Press reported. Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser moved up the nightly curfew by four hours, to 7 p.m. McEnany said of Trump, “He does understand that pain” of the lawful demonstrators.” She added, “it’s really a shame” that radicals on the streets are dampening the message of the peaceful protesters.
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By Polityk | 06/02/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Macy’s Hit as New York Imposes Curfew Amid Floyd Protests
New York City imposed a late-night curfew Monday that failed to prevent another night of destruction, including arrests after a break-in at the iconic Macy’s store on 34th Street, following protests over George Floyd’s death. As the 11 p.m. deadline to get off the streets approached, bands of protesters marched peacefully through Manhattan and Brooklyn, but police simultaneously responded to numerous reports of roving groups of people smashing their way into shops and emptying them of merchandise. The doors of Macy’s flagship Manhattan store were breached. Police pulled two handcuffed men out and put them in a van. People rushed into a Nike store and carried out armloads of clothing. Near Rockefeller Center, storefront windows were smashed and multiple people arrested. Bank windows were smashed. Wreckage littered the inside of an AT&T store.Protesters rally against the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in Times Square in the Manhattan borough of New York City, U.S., June 1, 2020.Video posted on social media showed some protesters arguing with people breaking windows, urging them to stop, but instances of vandalism and smash-and-grab thefts mounted as the night deepened. “We worked hard to build up the business, and within a second, someone does this,” said the owner of a ransacked Manhattan smoke shop, who identified himself only by the name Harri. “Really bad.” New York joined other cities around the country in imposing a curfew after days of unrest. It comes on top of months of restrictions on public gatherings already imposed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Enough mayhem happened before the curfew took effect that Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted that it would move up to 8 p.m. Tuesday. The curfew lifts at 5 a.m. De Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the outbreaks of violence the previous two evenings — which left stores ransacked and police vehicles burned — gave them no choice to impose a curfew and boost police presence, even as they insisted they stood with the throngs of peaceful demonstrators who have spoken out for several days against police brutality and racial injustice. “We can’t let violence undermine the message of this moment,” de Blasio said in a statement. He and Cuomo are Democrats. Big crowds rallied in Times Square and Brooklyn on Monday afternoon and marched through the streets for hours. As in previous days, the demonstrations in daylight were peaceful, with officers mostly keeping their distance from marchers. A nighttime march through Brooklyn was also peaceful, and police let it continue for hours after the 11 a.m. curfew passed. But midtown Manhattan descended into chaos as night fell. There were dozens of arrests, police said. De Blasio tweeted at 1 a.m. that there were also “real problems” in the Bronx, which had largely escaped previous nights of unrest unscathed. Video posted on social media showed multiple piles of rubbish on fire on a debris-strewn street and people smashing into stories. Another video showed a group of men beating a police officer who was alone and down on the ground, smashing him with pieces of wreckage until he pulled his gun and they ran. After the curfew took effect, police moved more actively to clear the streets, chasing after and knocking down some people who wouldn’t comply as they streamed toward Times Square. At the same time, the city’s elected public advocate, Jumaane Williams, and some other officials held a news conference in Brooklyn criticizing the curfew. “In the black community, every time we ask for resources or assistance, they send police,” said Williams, a Democrat. People exit damaged stores after the glass was knocked out in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York, June 1, 2020.Earlier in the day, one Times Square demonstrator, Giselle Francisco, considered the curfew necessary. “There are people who have ulterior motives, and they’re trying to hijack the message,” the New Yorker said. Police Commissioner Dermot Shea expressed doubts earlier Monday about whether a curfew would be heeded. Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a retired police captain whose borough has been a focal point for demonstrations and some damage, also had doubts. “There are real deep, legitimate wounds, and if we’re not going to put the same level of energy into correcting those wounds as we’re going to put into telling people not to come out at 11, then we’re going to fail, and this is going to prolong the problem,” said Adams, a Democrat. Bystander Sean Jones, who watched as people ransacked luxury stores in Manhattan’s chic Soho neighborhood Sunday night, explained the destruction this way: “People are doing this so next time, before they think about trying to kill another black person, they’re going to be like, ’Damn, we don’t want them out here doing this … again.’” Monday marked the fourth night in a row of mainly peaceful daytime demonstrations, chaotic nights, hot spots of violence and arrests, with the mayor’s daughter among those arrested over the weekend. Chiara de Blasio, 25, refused to leave a Manhattan street officers were clearing Saturday because people were throwing things. She was released with a court summons. Her father said Monday she told him she’d behaved peacefully and believed she had followed officers’ instructions. Thousands of people have taken to the streets around the nation to express outrage over Floyd’s May 25 death and other killings of black people, particularly by police. Floyd, who was black, died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee on his neck. On Sunday, some New York City police officers knelt with protesters. But officers have also clashed with demonstrators. Shea said the department is investigating officers’ behavior in about six confrontations, including one in which two police vehicles plowed through a group of protesters Saturday in Brooklyn. During Sunday night’s demonstration, video posted to social media showed a police officer pulling a gun and pointing it at demonstrators on a debris-littered Manhattan street moments after a protester used an object to deliver a crushing blow to another officer’s head a few yards away. “That officer should have his gun and badge taken away today,” de Blasio said. Cuomo said some officers had exacerbated tensions with some “very disturbing” actions. Police union president Patrick Lynch said Cuomo was ”wrongly blaming the chaos on the cops.”
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By Polityk | 06/02/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Joe Biden Seeks to Clinch Democratic Party Nomination in Nearly a Dozen Primaries Tuesday
June 2 was supposed to be the finish line for what seemed like an endless 2020 U.S. presidential primary campaign. In most election years, a party’s nominee for president of the United States is locked up by then. For the last 33 months, 33 people campaigned for the Democratic nomination for president. The June 2 primary states could possibly crown a nominee. But then the coronavirus pandemic hit and dramatically scrambled the campaign calendar. In mid-March, states started to postpone their primary elections to prevent crowds at voting places and to buy time to expand vote-by-mail opportunities. Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Dakota and the District of Columbia were already scheduled to hold primary elections next Tuesday. However, in an effort to contain the spread of the coronavirus, six other states postponed their primaries until June 2 — making it the second biggest day for selecting delegates behind “Super Tuesday” on March 3 when roughly a third of all the delegates to the Democratic national convention were chosen. The six states are Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island.WATCH: Tuesday primary electionsSorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
Voters drop off ballots in the Washington State primary, March 10, 2020 in Seattle.Currently, five states hold elections by mail only. Most of the other states allow voters to request an absentee ballot without needing an excuse, such as military duty, disability or being away from home on Election Day. A few states still require a valid excuse and are not making an exception for the coronavirus. Steven Mulroy, a University of Memphis law professor who represents several voters, is suing the governor of Tennessee to loosen absentee ballot requirements. “It is an unreasonable burden on our fundamental right to vote to require that we vote in person when we know that congregating with others in person creates a significant risk of infection and then transmission of the disease to other people, many of whom will have underlying conditions that make them particularly vulnerable,” Mulroy said. Idaho was among 13 states that moved their primaries to June 2 or beyond. The state decided to conduct the primary by mail only. More than 400,000 people — 47% of Idaho’s registered voters —- asked for absentee ballots, an “unprecedented response,” according to the secretary of state’s office. The deadline for Idaho voters to turn in their ballots is June 2.
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By Polityk | 06/02/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Eight US States Holding Party Elections on Tuesday
Eight U.S. states and Washington, D.C., are holding Democratic and Republican Party primaries on Tuesday.Four of the primaries had been scheduled weeks ago but were delayed because of fears of the coronavirus pandemic.The voting involves picking nominees for seats in the Senate and House of Representatives in the November 3 national election.But the day’s voting could also officially hand former Vice President Joe Biden the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination to face President Donald Trump in November.Biden, who served two terms as second in command to former President Barack Obama, is already the presumptive nominee, with more than 20 other candidates having dropped out of the Democratic nomination race. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the last of Biden’s vanquished foes, remains on ballots and could pick up more delegates to the party’s national convention in August. Depending on how many delegates Sanders wins, it could be enough to prevent Biden from numerically clinching the presidential nomination ahead of other state primaries in June and into July.FILE – Former U.S. vice president Joe Biden, left, and Senator Bernie Sanders greet each other with an elbow bump before the start of the 11th Democratic Party 2020 presidential debate in a CNN Washington Bureau studio in Washington, March 15, 2020.Biden needs 425 more delegates to secure the 1,991 majority of convention delegates needed to win the nomination, with 479 at stake in the Tuesday voting.Voters are headed to polling places or voting by mail in Indiana, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, all of which postponed their original voting dates because of the coronavirus threat. Other regularly scheduled votes are set in the states of Iowa, Montana, New Mexico and South Dakota, along with the vote in the city of Washington.The elections are occurring as the U.S. is engulfed in days of protests over the death last week of a black man while in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota, along with the limited reopening of businesses throughout the country that were closed because of the coronavirus threat.As a result, voter turnout could be lower than usual, although mail-in balloting has boosted voter participation in some states during the pandemic.Key racesIn the Eastern state of Maryland, Democratic Congressman Kweisi Mfume took over the late Congressman Elijah Cummings’ seat several weeks ago in a special election. But he faces several opponents in a party primary for the nomination to a full two-year term, including Cummings’ widow, Maya Rockeymoore Cummings.In the Western state of Montana, Sen. Steve Daines, the Republican incumbent, is heavily favored in a party primary. A likely victory for Daines would set up a key November Senate contest against Gov. Steve Bullock, who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination and is also favored in his Senate primary contest.Republicans now narrowly control the Senate, but a prospective Daines-Bullock contest in the November election would be one of the key races determining Senate control starting next January.A Senate Republican primary is set in the Western state of New Mexico, with several contested congressional primaries scheduled in the Eastern state of Pennsylvania and four contested House primaries in the Midwestern state of Iowa.
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By Polityk | 06/02/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Protests Aside, Trump Focuses on Election
U.S. President Donald Trump’s focus Monday remained on the reelection contest five months from now, even as dozens of American cities cleaned up from a sixth night of chaos protesting the death of a black man in the Midwestern city of Minneapolis. “NOVEMBER 3RD,” Trump tweeted, referring to Election Day, when he is running for a second four-year term in the White House against former Vice President Joe Biden. With Biden, a Democrat, leading Republican Trump in all 40 national polls of U.S. voters in May, the president unleashed a string of Twitter attacks. “Sleepy Joe Biden’s people are so Radical Left that they are working to get the Anarchists out of jail, and probably more,” Trump tweeted about protesters arrested in the past week. “Joe doesn’t know anything about it, he is clueless, but they will be the real power, not Joe. They will be calling the shots! Big tax increases for all, Plus!” Trump said. Sleepy Joe Biden’s people are so Radical Left that they are working to get the Anarchists out of jail, and probably more. Joe doesn’t know anything about it, he is clueless, but they will be the real power, not Joe. They will be calling the shots! Big tax increases for all, Plus!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 1, 2020Countering Trump, Biden, speaking in Wilmington, Delaware, vowed to address “institutional racism” in his first 100 days in office if he is elected and create a police oversight body. Biden, staying at his home in Delaware during the coronavirus crisis, has struggled to be heard above the din of the public debate in Washington. But he has called the upcoming election a fight for the soul of the nation, hoping to contrast his quieter approach to public discourse with Trump’s more incendiary attacks on his foes. With the significant racial overtones of the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man who was pinned to the ground by a white police officer as he gasped to breathe, Biden left his home to meet with about a dozen local black leaders in his hometown. Later, he planned a virtual meeting with mayors from Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago and St. Paul, Minnesota. “Hate just hides,” Biden said, speaking of race relations in the U.S. “It doesn’t go away, and when you have somebody in power who breathes oxygen into the hate under the rocks, it comes out from under the rocks.” Biden’s aides noted that while he did not appear on television over the weekend, he spoke about Floyd’s death before Trump did and has voiced compassion for the protesters. Trump linked Biden, who served eight years as former President Barack Obama’s second in command, to the more radical elements in the protests against the police action a week ago that killed Floyd. Floyd was held face down on a Minneapolis street by police officer Derek Chauvin, who pushed a knee against his neck for more than eight minutes even as he repeatedly said he could not breathe. Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder and second degree manslaughter in the case. “Get tough Democrat Mayors and Governors. These people are ANARCHISTS,” Trump tweeted about the protesters. “Call in our National Guard NOW. The World is watching and laughing at you and Sleepy Joe. Is this what America wants? NO!!!” Get tough Democrat Mayors and Governors. These people are ANARCHISTS. Call in our National Guard NOW. The World is watching and laughing at you and Sleepy Joe. Is this what America wants? NO!!!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2020In another tweet Sunday, Trump said, “Law & Order in Philadelphia, NOW! They are looting stores. Call in our great National Guard like they FINALLY did (thank you President Trump) last night in Minneapolis. Is this what voters want with Sleepy Joe? All Dems!” Law & Order in Philadelphia, NOW! They are looting stores. Call in our great National Guard like they FINALLY did (thank you President Trump) last night in Minneapolis. Is this what voters want with Sleepy Joe? All Dems!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2020Trump also blamed another of his favorite targets, the national news media, for allegedly promoting civil unrest in the U.S. “The Lamestream Media is doing everything within their power to foment hatred and anarchy,” he said. “As long as everybody understands what they are doing, that they are FAKE NEWS and truly bad people with a sick agenda, we can easily work through them to GREATNESS!” The Lamestream Media is doing everything within their power to foment hatred and anarchy. As long as everybody understands what they are doing, that they are FAKE NEWS and truly bad people with a sick agenda, we can easily work through them to GREATNESS!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2020“Much more ‘disinformation’ coming out of CNN, MSDNC, @nytimes and @washingtonpost, by far, than coming out of any foreign country, even combined,” Trump alleged. “Fake News is the Enemy of the People!” Much more “disinformation” coming out of CNN, MSDNC, @nytimes and @washingtonpost, by far, than coming out of any foreign country, even combined. Fake News is the Enemy of the People!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2020
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By Polityk | 06/02/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Obama Urges Protesters to Use Momentum to Participate in Local Politics
Former U.S. President Barack Obama said Americans protesting the death of George Floyd must use momentum from the demonstrations to achieve real change by participating in local politics. “I’ve heard some suggest that the recurrent problem of racial bias in our criminal and justice system proves that only protests and direct action can bring about change,” Obama wrote in an article published Monday on the website Medium. “I couldn’t disagree more,” he said. Obama said, “eventually, aspirations have to be translated into specific laws and institutional practices – and in a democracy, that only happens when we elect government officials who are responsive to our demands.” While the former president argued that it is important to elect a president, Congress and federal judiciary that recognize the “ongoing, corrosive role that racism plays in our society,” he said, “the elected officials who matter most in reforming police departments and the criminal justice system work at the state and local levels.” He noted that voter turnout in local races is usually “pitifully low, especially among young people” which, he said, “makes no sense given the direct impact these offices have on social justice issues.” Police use pepper spray against protesters in Portland, Oregon, May 31, 2020, in this still image taken from video obtained by Reuters.Obama criticized protesters who turn to violence, echoing other politicians. Protests have spread across the country after the death of a black man, George Floyd, in police custody in Minneapolis last week. Video footage shows a white officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes before he died. Many of the larger protests often begin peacefully but later turn into rioting. In his article, Obama did not mention U.S. President Donald Trump, who has been criticized by some officials for his response to the demonstrations. Trump has not made a major public statement to address the protests but has expressed sympathy for Floyd’s family and issued a series of tweets demanding a crackdown on protesters. One of his tweets, calling the Minneapolis protesters “thugs” and saying, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts” was flagged by Twitter for inciting violence. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden spoke to black community leaders in Delaware Monday, promising if elected to “deal with institutional racism” and to set up a police oversight body in his first 100 days in office. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, called Monday for citizens to use this moment of unrest to push politicians to make changes. He called for a national ban on chokeholds and excessive force by police as well as independent investigations of police abuse. Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Friday the latest cases of police brutality in Minneapolis and Louisville are “absolutely horrendous.” He also urged protesters in both cities to remain peaceful, saying violence “is not helpful to anyone.”
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By Polityk | 06/02/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
US Heads Into A New Week Shaken by Violence and Pandemic
With cities wounded by days of violent unrest, America headed into a new week with neighborhoods in shambles, urban streets on lockdown and shaken confidence about when leaders would find the answers to control the mayhem amid unrelenting raw emotion over police killings of black people.
All of it smashed into a nation already bludgeoned by a death toll from the coronavirus pandemic surging past 100,000 and unemployment that soared to levels not seen since the Great Depression.
Sunday capped a tumultuous weekend and month that saw city and state officials deploy thousands of National Guard soldiers, enact strict curfews and shut down mass transit systems. Even with those efforts, many demonstrations erupted into violence as protesters hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at police in Philadelphia, set a fire near the White House and were hit with tear gas and pepper spray in Austin and other cities. Seven Boston police officers were hospitalized.
In some cities, thieves smashed their way into stores and ran off with as much as they could carry, leaving shop owners, many of them just ramping up their business again after coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, to clean up their shattered storefronts.
In others, police tried to calm tensions by kneeling in solidarity with demonstrators, while still maintaining a strong presence for security.
The demonstrations were sparked by the death of George Floyd, a black man who pleaded for air as an officer pressed a knee into his neck. Floyd’s death in Minneapolis came after tensions had already flared after two white men were arrested in May for the February shooting death of black jogger Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, and the Louisville police shooting death of Breonna Taylor in her home in March.
The scale of the coast-to-coast protests rivaled the historic demonstrations of the civil rights and Vietnam War eras.
“They keep killing our people. I’m so sick and tired of it,” said Mahira Louis, 15, who was at a Boston protest with her mother Sunday, leading chants of “George Floyd, say his name.”Scenes from Sunday’s George Floyd Protests Around US, WorldFires, vandalism, looting and violence – much of it aimed at police – have flared over the last five nights.Tensions rose Sunday outside the White House, the scene of three days of demonstrations, where police fired tear gas and stun grenades into a crowd of more than 1,000 chanting protesters across the street in Lafayette Park. The crowd ran, piling up road signs and plastic barriers to light a raging fire in a nearby street. Some pulled an American flag from a building and threw it into the blaze. A building in the park with bathrooms and a maintenance office went up in flames.
The district’s entire National Guard — roughly 1,700 soldiers — was called in to help control the protests, according to two Defense Department officials who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.
As the protests grew, President Donald Trump retweeted conservative commentator Buck Sexton who called for “overwhelming force” against violent demonstrators.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, visited the site of protests in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, and talked to demonstrators. He also wrote a post on Medium expressing empathy for those despairing about Floyd’s killing.
At least 4,400 people have been arrested over days of protests, according to a tally compiled by The Associated Press. Arrests ranged from stealing and blocking highways to breaking curfew.
In Salt Lake City, an activist leader condemned the destruction of property but said broken buildings shouldn’t be mourned on the same level as black men like Floyd.
“Maybe this country will get the memo that we are sick of police murdering unarmed black men,” said Lex Scott, founder of Black Lives Matter Utah. “Maybe the next time a white police officer decides to pull the trigger, he will picture cities burning.”
Yet thousands still marched peacefully in Phoenix, Albuquerque and other cities, with some calling for an end to the fires, vandalism and theft, saying it weakened calls for justice and reform.
In downtown Atlanta, authorities fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of demonstrators. Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said t wo officers had been fired and three placed on desk duty after video showed police surrounding a car Saturday, and using stun guns on the man and woman inside.
In Los Angeles, a police SUV accelerated into several protesters in a street, knocking two people to the ground. Nearby in Santa Monica, not far from a peaceful demonstration, groups broke into stores, walking out with boxes of shoes and folding chairs, among other items. A fire broke out at a restaurant across the street. Scores swarmed into nearby outlet stores in Long Beach. Some hauled armloads of clothing from a Forever 21 store away in garbage bags.
In Minneapolis, the officer who pressed his knee onto Floyd’s neck has been charged with murder, but protesters are demanding the other three officers at the scene be prosecuted. All four were fired.
“We’re not done,” said Darnella Wade, an organizer for Black Lives Matter in neighboring St. Paul, where thousands gathered peacefully in front of the state Capitol. “They sent us the military, and we only asked them for arrests.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz brought in thousands of National Guard soldiers on Saturday to help quell violence that had damaged or destroyed hundreds of buildings in Minneapolis over days of protests. That appeared to help minimize unrest, but thousands marching on a closed freeway were shaken when a semitrailer rolled into their midst.
Disgust over generations of racism in a country founded by slaveholders combined with a string of recent racially charged killings to stoke the anger. Adding to that was angst from lockdowns brought on by the pandemic, which has disproportionately hurt communities of color, not only in terms of infections but in job losses and economic stress.
The droves of people congregating for demonstrations threatened to trigger new outbreaks, a fact overshadowed by the boiling tensions.
In Indianapolis, two people were reported dead in bursts of downtown violence this weekend, adding to deaths reported in Detroit and Minneapolis.
In tweets Sunday, Trump blamed anarchists and the media for fueling violence. Attorney General William Barr pointed a finger at “far left extremist” groups. Police chiefs and politicians accused outsiders of causing the problems.
At the Minneapolis intersection where Floyd was killed, people gathered with brooms and flowers, saying it was important to protect what they called a “sacred space.”
Among those in Minneapolis was Michael Brown Sr., the father of Michael Brown, whose killing by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, set off unrest in 2014.
“I understand what this family is feeling. I understand what this community is feeling,” he said.
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By Polityk | 06/01/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Biden Meets with Black Leaders at Local Church Amid Unrest
Joe Biden met with community leaders at a predominantly African American church in Delaware Monday morning, leaving home for a second consecutive day to address exploding racial tensions that have begun to reshape the upcoming presidential election.
Biden, the former vice president who will represent Democrats on the ballot against President Donald Trump this fall, has struggled in recent weeks to be heard from his basement television studio over the noise of dueling national crises. But after another night of violent protests, the 77-year-old Democrat gathered with roughly a dozen local black leaders during an intimate meeting in his hometown ahead of a virtual meeting with mayors across the nation.
That low-key, high-touch approach marked a sharp contrast to that of Trump in recent days, who has made little effort to unify the country. The Republican president was scheduled to speak to governors and law enforcement officials on Monday, but he spent much of the weekend using Twitter as a bullhorn to urge “law and order” and tougher action by police against protesters around the country. He warned Friday that, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
Trump also lashed out at Biden Monday, tweeting that “Sleepy Joe Biden’s people are so Radical Left that they are working to get the Anarchists out of jail, and probably more.”
In the early moments of Monday’s gathering at the Bethel AME church in Biden’s hometown of Wilmington, the former vice president listened quietly and took notes in a spiral notebook. All of the attendees, including Biden, wore face masks.
“The vice president came to hear from us. This is a homeboy,” said Pastor Sylvester Beaman, before Biden and those present bowed their heads in prayer.
Biden’s softer approach may foreshadow how the presumptive Democratic nominee presents himself in the five months before the presidential election, emphasizing calm and competence as a contrast to a mercurial president. It is an approach that carries the risk of being drowned out by the much louder, more persistent voice of Trump.
“He’s not in office, and he certainly does not have the megaphone like the person currently occupying the White House does, but I do think our people are looking for someone who can make them feel better during these extremely tough times,” said Rep. Val Demings of Florida, whom Biden is considering as a running mate. “America just needs to be reassured that there’s someone who’s understanding, someone who’s willing to say, ‘Yes, we do have some issues,’ and someone who’s willing to address it.”
Reassurance requires presence, though, and that has been a hurdle for the former vice president, driven inside by the coronavirus pandemic, still working to adapt to the power of social media as a substitute and without the natural platform of a public office.
Biden delivered a well-received address on Friday calling on white people to shoulder the responsibility of ending America’s systemic racism. But he was largely out of sight over the weekend, which marked the fifth anniversary of the death of his son Beau Biden.
Monday marked just his third public appearance since the pandemic exploded in mid-March.
Biden and his wife, Jill, marked Memorial Day by laying a wreath at a veteran’s memorial near his Wilmington home last week, and the former vice president’s campaign posted pictures of him visiting a protest site in another part of the city on Sunday afternoon. Earlier, he wrote a post on Medium expressing empathy for those despairing about the police killing of George Floyd.
“The only way to bear this pain is to turn all that anguish to purpose,” Biden wrote in a message attached to the Sunday photo. “And as President, I will help lead this conversation — and more importantly, I will listen.”
Monday morning’s gathering featured 15 invited religious, political and educational leaders, including Delaware Democratic Rep. Blunt Rochester. They all wore masks and spaced out among the wooden pews. Pasted notices on the main entrance cautioned people from entering if they had a cough or other symptoms that could indicate they were suffering from coronavirus.
Much of Biden’s campaign strategy centers on trying to draw a contrast with Trump on temperament and values. He’s called the White House contest a battle for the soul of the nation and has been particularly forceful in condemning Trump’s handling of moments of racial tension.
Democrats believe the former vice president draws a contrast with Trump in such moments that works in his favor. They note that while Biden didn’t appear on television all weekend, he spoke about Floyd’s death before Trump addressed it and has shown compassion for the protesters.
Trump has alternated between expressing alarm over Floyd’s death and sympathy for his family and issuing tweets antagonizing protesters and disparaging his political enemies.
And in an election that is likely to be a referendum on the sitting president, some Biden aides say privately that the best plan may be to let Trump do himself in.
Yet there is also a recognition that Biden needs to do more than simply wait for voters who may be turned off by Trump to turn toward him. And some Democrats who have criticized Biden in the past for not being more visible during the onset of the coronavirus said he is making the right moves now.
“I’m sure they have some reluctance, understandably, right now to politicize it. That’s not who he is,” said Democratic strategist James Carville. “There might be a time for eloquence, but I think that simplicity is eloquence right now.”
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By Polityk | 06/01/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Joe Biden Likely to Clinch Democratic Party Nomination Tuesday
June 2nd was supposed to be the finish line for what seemed like an endless 2020 US presidential primary campaign, but the coronavirus pandemic changed all of that. Steve Redisch tells us more.
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By Polityk | 05/31/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Transcripts Released of Flynn’s Calls With Russian Diplomat
The Trump administration’s new national intelligence director waded into political waters in his first week on the job, declassifying documents that allies of the president say bolster their contention that former national security adviser Michael Flynn was wrongly pursued.The extraordinary decision to release transcripts of Flynn’s calls with a foreign country’s ambassador, a closely guarded secret for more than three years, is part of an ongoing Trump administration effort to disclose information from the Russia investigation in hopes of suggesting that Obama-era officials acted improperly.The transcripts of calls with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador at the time, provide opportunities for partisans on both sides to advance their perspectives of the investigation.They appear to show, as prosecutors have alleged, that Flynn urged Kislyak to refrain from escalating tensions with the U.S. in response to newly imposed sanctions against Russia. Flynn pleaded guilty of lying to the FBI about that call.But Republicans who maintain that Flynn was simply trying to avoid aggravating the situation with the Kremlin quickly pointed to the transcripts to say the calls were proper. Trump’s Justice Department dismissed the case this month, saying the FBI didn’t have a basis to question Flynn in the first place.FILE – Then-U.S. Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, testifies before a Senate Intelligence Committee nomination hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 5, 2020.The documents were released Friday by Senate Republicans after being declassified by John Ratcliffe, a former Texas congressman and loyalist of President Donald Trump who was sworn into the job earlier this week.Ratcliffe’s predecessor as intelligence director, Richard Grenell, this month declassified a list of names of intelligence and Obama administration officials who in late 2016 and early 2017 requested to see the identity of an American citizen that was concealed in classified intelligence reports. That name was revealed to be Flynn.There is nothing unusual about that process, known as unmasking, and it’s been more prevalent at the beginning of the Trump administration than it was at the end of the Obama administration. But supporters of the president have suggested that the requests were made for political reasons.
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By Polityk | 05/30/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
North Carolina Governor: RNC Hasn’t Submitted Safety Plan
North Carolina’s governor said Thursday that his administration hasn’t received the written safety plan for the upcoming Republican National Convention requested by his health secretary in response to President Donald Trump’s demands for a full-scale event.
Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, said during a media briefing that RNC organizers have yet to turn over written plans for how they envision safely holding the convention in Charlotte in August amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Top GOP officials countered in a letter that they need more guidance and assurances from Cooper.
North Carolina Health and Human Services Secretary Mandy Cohen sent a letter Monday to the top RNC organizer asking for the written plans after Trump demanded in a tweet that North Carolina guarantee a full-scale, in-person convention will be held. Cooper and Cohen say that they had discussed various scenarios with convention organizers but want their plan in writing.
“We’re ready to hold the RNC convention in North Carolina in a safe way. And for weeks and months, the health experts in our office have had conversations with the people organizing the RNC about how to have it in a safe way,” he said.
But despite the request Monday, Cooper said: “We’ve yet to see” a written safety plan from RNC organizers.
Cooper said his administration required a similar written plan from NASCAR ahead of its recent race in the Charlotte area that was held without fans. He said he’s in similar discussions with sports teams including Charlotte’s NFL and NBA teams.
Top GOP officials later released a letter they sent to Cooper on Thursday saying they need further direction and assurances from him to move forward. The letter also offers several proposed steps to screen and protect convention attendees’ health.
“We still do not have solid guidelines from the state and cannot in good faith ask thousands of visitors to begin paying deposits and making travel plans without knowing the full commitment of the governor, elected officials and other stakeholders in supporting the convention,” said the letter.
It was signed by Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and Republican National Convention President Marcia Lee Kelly.
The letter, which doesn’t represent a finalized safety plan, proposes steps including apps asking attendees daily health questions, taking attendees’ temperature before they board transportation, health checks again at the NBA arena serving as the center of the convention and aggressive cleaning and sanitizing of public areas.
Trump threatened in a tweet Monday to move the convention unless Cooper guarantees a full-capacity gathering. Then on Tuesday, Trump reiterated the idea by saying he wanted an answer from Cooper within a week, or he’d be forced to consider moving the convention somewhere else.
Florida and Georgia’s governors have said they’re interested in hosting.
Asked about Trump’s demand for an answer within a week, Cooper told reporters: “We’re not on any timeline here.”
Cooper has gradually eased business restrictions, with restaurants now allowed to offer limited indoor dining. But entertainment venues, bars and gyms remain closed under his current order that also caps indoor mass gatherings at 10 people.
Local Republican officials have noted that Trump isn’t a party to the convention contract and doesn’t appear to have the power to unilaterally move the event, which is scheduled to start in 90 days after two years of planning.
The county surrounding Charlotte has had the most virus cases of any in North Carolina, and the state is experiencing an upward trend in cases.
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By Polityk | 05/30/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
White House Punts Economic Update as Election Draws Near
The White House has taken the unusual step of deciding not to release an updated economic forecast as planned this year, a fresh sign of the administration’s anxiety about how the coronavirus has ravaged the nation just months before the election.
The decision, which was confirmed Thursday by a senior administration official who was not authorized to publicly comment on the plan, came amid intensifying signals of the pandemic’s grim economic toll.
The U.S. economy shrank at a faster-than-expected annual rate of 5% during the first quarter, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. At least 2.1 million Americans lost their jobs last week, meaning an astonishing 41 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits since shutdowns intended to prevent the spread of the coronavirus began in mid-March.
Trump argues that the economy will rebound later this year or in 2021 and that voters should give him another term in office to oversee the expansion. But the delay of the updated midyear economic forecast, typically released in July or August, was an indication that the administration doesn’t want to bring attention to the pandemic’s impact anytime soon.
“It’s a sign that the White House does not anticipate a major recovery in employment and growth prior to the election and that it has essentially punted economic policy over to the Fed and the Congress,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist for the consultant RSM.
The senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, maintained that the underlying economic data would be too uncertain to convey a meaningful picture about the recovery.
But the political stakes of a weakening economy are hard to overstate, especially in states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin that are critical to the president’s reelection.
According to an AP-NORC poll conducted in May, 49% of Americans approve of how the president is handling the economy. That has dipped over the last two months, from 56% who said so in March.
Still, the economy remains a particular strong point for Trump. Before the outbreak began, and even as the virus started sending shock waves through the economy, approval of how he had handled the issue was the highest it’s been over the course of his presidency.
Since then, views on the economy have reversed dramatically.
The May poll found that 70% of Americans call the nation’s economy poor, while just 29% say it’s good. In January, 67% called the economy good.
Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, and liberal economists swiftly seized on the report’s delay to argue that Trump is seeking to avoid putting his administration’s imprint on bad economic news in the months before the Nov. 3 vote.
“This desperate attempt to keep the American people in the dark about the economy’s performance is not only an acknowledgement that Trump knows he’s responsible for some of the most catastrophic economic damage in American history, but also a sign of how stunningly out of touch he is with hard working Americans,” said Andrew Bates, a Biden campaign spokesman.
While the economic forecast is being delayed, updated information about the nation’s budgetary situation will still be released as expected this summer, the senior administration official said. A significant decline in tax receipts, as well as outlays from almost $3 trillion in coronavirus-related aid bills, is sure to produce a multitrillion-dollar government deficit for the budget year ending Sept. 30.
Paul Winfree, a former Trump White House director of budget policy, doubted that the holdup on the economic update was on Trump’s radar.
“Honestly, I don’t think the president thinks about the publication of the mid-session review and the politics around it,” Winfree said.
Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, noted that the law requires the White House to update its budget forecast. That responsibility is even more important given the uncertainty in the economy and the trillions of dollars in aid that have already changed the trajectory of government spending, she said.
“By staying silent on how to reallocate those federal dollars under an unprecedented economic downturn, the executive branch is doing a disservice to taxpayers and avoiding tough discussions we need to have about the new fiscal reality,” she said.
Jason Furman, who led the White House Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration, said the Trump administration pointing to economic uncertainty as the reason to put off the forecast doesn’t hold weight.
Trump has repeatedly predicted improvement in the third and fourth quarters of this year, and the president just this week predicted 2021 is going to be “one of the best years we’ve ever had.” White House senior adviser Kevin Hassett said earlier this week that a double-digit unemployment rate was possible in November.
“You have to make decisions on incredibly uncertain information right now,” Furman said. “They are out on TV every day making economic forecasts and predictions about what’s going to happen in the economy.”
The Trump team’s economic projections, like those from earlier administrations, have tended to be overly optimistic. Last year’s review estimated that the economy would grow more than 3% last year, but the actual gains were a far more lukewarm 2.3%.
It similarly claimed that growth under Trump would cause the budget deficit to fall as a share of the economy. That estimate could never have anticipated the outbreak of the coronavirus that forced more than $3 trillion in aid as the deficit is on course to reach new highs.
In 2017, the Trump administration criticized the Obama administration for rosy expectations of growth during the Great Recession more than a decade ago. An updated forecast in the mid-session review could make the Trump White House a similar target for criticism.
Jared Bernstein, a former economic adviser to Biden, said a timely update on the state of the economy is more important than ever.
“The idea that you’d abrogate that responsibility now is pretty serious fiscal malpractice,” Bernstein said. “They don’t like the numbers they’d have to write down. This is a White House that is in denial about the trajectory of the economy.”
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By Polityk | 05/29/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Twitter Adds ‘Glorifying Violence’ Warning to Trump Tweet
Twitter has added a warning to one of President Donald J. Trump’s tweets about protests in Minneapolis, saying it violated the platform’s rules about “glorifying violence.”
Trump, a prolific Twitter user, has been at war with the company since earlier this week, when it applied fact checks to two of his tweets about mail-in ballots.
The third tweet to be flagged started as a message of support for the governor of Minnesota, where there have been three days of violent protests over the death of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man who pleaded for air as a white police officer kneeled on his neck.
Trump added at the end of his tweet, “Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
Twitter did not remove the tweet, saying it had determined it might be in the public interest to have it remain accessible. It does that only for tweets by elected and government officials. A user looking at Trump’s timeline would have to click to see the original tweet.
On Thursday, Trump targeted Twitter and other social media companies by signing an executive order challenging the lawsuit protections that have served as a bedrock for online free speech.
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By Polityk | 05/29/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
What is Section 230 of Communications Decency Act?
QUESTION: What is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act?ANSWER: Section 230 “is one of the most valuable tools for protecting freedom of expression and innovation” on the internet, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a U.S.-based global nonprofit digital rights group.The original purpose of the 1996 Communications Decency Act was to restrict free speech on the internet, the EFF said. The Supreme Court, however, struck down anti-free speech provisions after objections from the internet community, including the EFF.Section 230 says, in part, that “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”Q: What is an interactive computer service?A: An interactive computer service is partially described in the CDA as “any information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including specifically a service or system that provides access to the internet.”This means internet service providers such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon are subject to CDA regulations.A variety of interactive computer service providers that generally include any online service that publishes third-party content are also required to comply with CDA regulations. Examples are Twitter, YouTube and Vimeo.Q: Does the CDA provide protections for online intermediaries? If so, what are they?A: Section 230 protects them from civil liability. It says, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph.”In summary, Section 230 protects online intermediaries against multiple laws that could otherwise hold them legally accountable for the content and actions of others. Regular ISPs are protected, as are essentially any online services that publish third-party content.While the measure protects them from some of their users’ content, it does not completely do so, as they must still comply with certain intellectual property and criminal laws.Q: Do other countries offer legal protections to interactive computer services, as Section 230 of the CDA does in the U.S.?A: Many other countries do not have similar laws, according to the EFF. While Canada, European countries and Japan provide high levels of internet access, most major online services are U.S.-based.”This is in part because CDA 230 makes the U.S. a safe haven for websites that want to provide a platform for controversial or political speech and a legal environment favorable to free expression,” the EFF says.Source: https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230
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By Polityk | 05/29/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
House Democrats Withdraw Controversial Surveillance Authorization Bill
U.S. House Democrats cancelled a scheduled vote on a controversial set of surveillance authorization measures Thursday, citing the threat of a presidential veto looming over their efforts to pass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).“The Administration — particularly some in the Justice Department — would like nothing better than to not have a bill,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement Thursday. “Without a bill, there would be none of the bill’s important protections for civil liberties. Without a bill, there would be all the leeway in the world not to protect Americans’ privacy. Clearly, because House Republicans have prioritized politics over our national security.”But the FISA bill, which had passed the Republican-majority U.S. Senate earlier this month in a bipartisan 80-16 vote, faced challenges from both parties when the Democratic-majority U.S. House added amendments.Changes in the House version caused the U.S. Department of Justice to withdraw support for the bill Wednesday, threatening a veto from President Donald Trump.“Given the cumulative negative effect of these legislative changes on the Department’s ability to identify and track terrorists and spies, the Department must oppose the legislation now under consideration in the House. If passed, the Attorney General would recommend that the President veto the legislation,” Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd said in a statement.The law establishing procedures for surveillance of foreign powers or foreign agents has drawn criticism from defenders of civil liberties, who seek protections for American citizens who may be subject to unlawful searches.Senate Intelligence Committee member Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. questions CIA Director John Brennan on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 9, 2016.At issue was an amendment by Democratic Senator Ron Wyden that was defeated by just one vote in the U.S. Senate but added by Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren in the version under consideration in the House.“As the overwhelming bipartisan majority of the U.S. Senate has demonstrated, Americans do not want the government looking at the websites they visit, the YouTube videos they watch and the internet searches they conduct without a warrant,” Wyden said in a statement Tuesday applauding the addition of the Lofgren amendment.“The House language protects U.S. persons with the same clear blanket prohibition provided by my Senate amendment. That means that it doesn’t matter if the government specifically intends to collect U.S. person records or not. Nor does the government get to decide when it is ‘reasonable’ to believe it is not collecting U.S. person records. If the person whose web browsing or internet searches are of interest could be a U.S. person, the collection is prohibited.”The shift by the DOJ follows a Trump tweet Tuesday night calling on House Republicans to vote against the bill.“I hope all Republican House Members vote NO on FISA until such time as our Country is able to determine how and why the greatest political, criminal, and subversive scandal in USA history took place!” Trump tweeted.President Donald Trump speaks at an event in the Rose Garden White House, May 26, 2020, in Washington.Trump has alleged the FISA program was used illegally to spy on members of his 2016 presidential campaign in a bid to prevent him from winning the presidency. He had already tweeted a veto threat relating to an earlier House-passed version of the bill this past March.A DOJ investigation found last year the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had committed errors in its investigation into Russian interference into the 2016 election, including mistakes in an application to put former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page under surveillance. However, the investigation did not find any evidence of political bias as Trump alleges.“It was used for surveillance on Americans and every day we learn something more. Shouldn’t we take an opportunity to correct that? Lo and behold the Speaker is now coming to the same position I told them would be best a couple of days ago,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters Thursday.House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, D-Calif., speaks to reporters at his weekly news conference at the Capitol in Washington, July 25, 2019.McCarthy announced Republican opposition to the bill Wednesday, calling for more time to reach bipartisan consensus.“I’m interested in making sure the FISA court has reformed and able to sustain itself, that it’s looking at foreigners, not Americans,” McCarthy told reporters Wednesday.Progressive Democrats also reportedly had concerns about the legislation, spelling trouble for the bill attaining the numbers needed for passage. Pelosi said Thursday lawmakers would continue to work on the legislation to insure it passes with a veto-proof majority.
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By Polityk | 05/29/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Trump Continues to Claim broad Powers he Doesn’t Have
Threatening to shut down Twitter for flagging false content. Claiming he can “override” governors who dare to keep churches closed to congregants. Asserting the “absolute authority” to force states to reopen, even when local leaders say it’s too soon.As he battles the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump has been claiming extraordinarily sweeping powers that legal scholars say the president simply doesn’t have. And he has repeatedly refused to spell out the legal basis for those powers.”It’s not that the president doesn’t have a remarkable amount of power to respond to a public health crisis. It’s that these are not the powers he has,” said Stephen Vladeck, a University of Texas School of Law professor who specializes in constitutional and national security law.Trump to Sign Executive Order Aimed at Reining in TwitterUS president lashes out at social media platform after it slapped a fact-check alert on a pair of his tweets about mail-in ballotsFirst it was Trump’s assertion that he could force governors to reopen their economies before they felt ready. “When somebody’s the president of the United States, the authority is total,” he claimed.Trump soon dropped the threat, saying he would instead leave such decisions to the states. But he has revived the idea in recent days as he has tried to pressure governors to allow churches and other places of worship to hold in-person services, even where stay-at-home orders and other limits on large gatherings remain in effect.Asked Tuesday what authority he had to enforce such a mandate, Trump was cagey.”I can absolutely do it if I want to,” he said. “We have many different ways where I can override them and if I have to, I’ll do that.”The White House declined to spell out any specific statute, but White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement that “every decision the president has made throughout this pandemic has been to protect the health and safety of the American people.””Getting the nation back to work, back to sporting events, back to churches, back to restaurants, and doing so safely and responsibly is the president’s shared goal with governors and the private sector, but the cure cannot be worse than the disease,” Deere said.Trump “certainly does not have the power under any reasonable reading of the Constitution or federalism to order places of worship to open,” said Matthew Dallek, a historian at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management who specializes in the use of presidential power.But Dallek said that just because Trump doesn’t have the authority to do most of the things he’s threatened, doesn’t mean he won’t, for instance, try to sign executive orders taking such action anyway — even if they are later struck down by the courts.”What has limited Trump previously? Not very much. So I think he will do whatever seems to be in his best interest at any particular moment,” Dallek said.Trump, he said, also could try to abuse his powers to leverage other instruments of government, from the Department of Justice to the IRS, to push for investigations or launch regulatory crackdowns to punish states, cities or companies. Trump also has showed he’s willing to exercise powers that modern presidents have largely avoided, including his recent purging of inspectors general.When the president declared the pandemic a national emergency back in March, he activated more than 100 different statutory authorities. Yet Trump, said Vladeck, has failed to exercise many of them.”I think one of the real ironies of this entire moment is that the president actually has a remarkable array of powers that he hasn’t brought to bear. All the while he continues to claim stunning powers that he doesn’t have,” he said.That includes the Defense Production Act, which Trump could have used far more aggressively to force companies to mass produce supplies including masks and ventilators. Instead, he used it in more limited ways. And while the Justice Department has threatened to join lawsuits against states that move too slowly, a statement of interest filed by the department in Illinois last week didn’t raise any federal constitutional claims.Trump Threatens Action Against TwitterPresident lashes out at social media platform after it put fact-check alert on pair of his tweets about mail-in ballotsEven if he doesn’t follow through on threats, Trump’s statements still can have consequences as he uses his bully pulpit.”He’s still trying to wield his often outrageous interpretations of the law as a cudgel to bludgeon others,” said Joshua Geltzer, founding executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center.Trump is now on a tear against Twitter after the social media platform, which he uses to speak directly to his more than 80 million followers, slapped fact-check alerts on two of his tweets claiming that mail-in voting is fraudulent.On Thursday, he was preparing to sign an executive order aimed at curbing liability protections for social media companies. “Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!” he tweeted Tuesday. A day later Trump added that: “Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen.”While Congress could pass legislation further regulating social media platforms, Trump “has no such authority,” said former federal judge Michael McConnell, who now directs Stanford Law School’s Constitutional Law Center. “He is just venting.””There is absolutely no First Amendment issue with Twitter adding a label to the president’s tweets,” added Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, who won the case that prevents Trump from banning his critics from his Twitter feed. “The only First Amendment issue here arises from the president’s threat to punish Twitter in some way for fact-checking his statements.”But Jack Balkin, a Yale University law professor and First Amendment expert, said that’s not Trump’s point.”This is an attempt by the president to, as we used to say in basketball, work the refs,” he said. “He’s threatening and cajoling with the idea that these folks in their corporate board rooms will think twice about what they’re doing, so they won’t touch him.”For Rutgers University media professor John Pavlik, who studies online misinformation, Trump is simply trying to fire up his political base.”For Trump,” he said, “this is about politics.”
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By Polityk | 05/29/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Tennessee Suit Seeking Vote-by-Mail for All Heading to Court
A Tennessee lawsuit that seeks to let all voters cast ballots by mail due to the coronavirus pandemic is headed to court Thursday.
During the video conferencing hearing, a Davidson County judge will weigh whether to order a temporary injunction of more than a dozen excuses to qualify to vote absentee in Tennessee in the August primary. Those range from being sick to being 60 or older.
The lawsuit argues universal vote by mail eliminates risk of catching COVID-19 at the polls or unknowingly spreading it. State officials say they “cannot feasibly implement” the quick and costly shift.
Memphis-based voting rights group #UpTheVote901 and several voters filed the lawsuit. Two other lawsuits similarly seek the expansion of absentee voting in Tennessee for the 2020 elections. The American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, which is leading the other state court lawsuit, has sought to participate in Thursday’s hearing.
The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the Campaign Legal Center have sued in federal court.
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By Polityk | 05/28/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Trump to Sign Executive Order Aimed at Reining in Twitter
U.S. President Donald Trump will sign an executive order Thursday regarding social media platforms, after Twitter tagged a pair of his tweets with a fact-check warning.Sources close to the White House say the president’s executive order would require the Federal Communication Commission to clarify a section of the Communications Decency Act that largely exempts online companies like Twitter and Facebook from any legal liability from any content posted by their users.The order also directs the White House Office of Digital Strategy to redouble its efforts to collect complaints of online censorship and submit them to the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department.Trump Threatens Action Against TwitterPresident lashes out at social media platform after it put fact-check alert on pair of his tweets about mail-in ballotsTrump on Wednesday threatened to “strongly regulate” or shut down social media platforms. He said that Republicans feel that “Social Media Platforms totally silence conservative voices.” He alleged that social media sites attempted — and failed — during the 2016 election to stifle conservatives’ voices. “We can’t let a more sophisticated version of that happen again,” Trump wrote on Twitter.On Tuesday, an unprecedented alert on the @realDonaldTrump tweets about mail-in balloting prompted the president to accuse Twitter of interference in this year’s election and of “completely stifling” free speech.“I, as President, will not allow it to happen,” he concluded..@Twitter is now interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election. They are saying my statement on Mail-In Ballots, which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, is incorrect, based on fact-checking by Fake News CNN and the Amazon Washington Post….— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020When those viewing Trump’s flagged tweets on Tuesday clicked on the warning placed by Twitter, they were taken to a notification titled: Trump makes unsubstantiated claim that mail-in ballots will lead to voter fraud.The alert, linked to stories from CNN and The Washington Post, and also included a fact box:What you need to know- Trump falsely claimed that mail-in ballots would lead to “a Rigged Election.” However, fact-checkers say there is no evidence that mail-in ballots are linked to voter fraud. – Trump falsely claimed that California will send mail-in ballots to “anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there.” In fact, only registered voters will receive ballots. – Though Trump targeted California, mail-in ballots are already used in some states, including Oregon, Utah and Nebraska.”Social media companies have been struggling with the spread of misinformation and the need for fact checking for years, most prominently in the last presidential election,” said Marcus Messner, the director of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture.“Twitter is right to flag incorrect information even when it involves tweets by President Trump,” Messner told VOA.The journalism professor noted the action “walks the fine line between fact checking and being accused of censoring political speech through more drastic measures such as deleting posts and suspending accounts. But the question remains whether the fact tags with links to news articles will even be recognized by supporters of President Trump, who regularly dismiss all reporting from mainstream media. The effect of the fact tags in this heated partisan environment might be limited.”It is unclear what legal leverage Trump has over Twitter, which does not need any government licenses to operate as do radio or television stations.A Twitter spokesperson said the company took the unprecedented action, based on its new policy announced earlier this month, because Trump’s tweets “contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots.”Twitter has also been facing calls to remove Trump’s tweets that push an old conspiracy theory about the death of a congressional staffer.The president has stopped short of directly accusing Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, who hosts a morning program on the MSNBC cable channel of killing a woman in 2001 even though the politician was 1,300 kilometers away at the time and authorities ruled her death an accident.Scarborough was once friendly with Trump but has become a fierce on-air critic of the president.Timothy Klausutis, widower of Lori Klausutis, has written to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey claiming the president has violated the social media company’s terms of service and “has taken something that does not belong to him-the memory of my dead wife-and perverted it for perceived political gain.”
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By Polityk | 05/28/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
US Congress Approves China Sanctions Over Ethnic Crackdown
Congress voted Wednesday to toughen the U.S. response to a brutal Chinese crackdown on ethnic minorities, adding another factor to the increasingly stormy relationship between the two countries.The House passed a bipartisan bill that would impose sanctions on Chinese officials involved in the mass surveillance and detention of Uighurs and other ethnic groups in the western Xianjiang region, a campaign that has drawn muted international response because of China’s influence around the world.The measure already passed the Senate and needs a signature from President Donald Trump, who said this week he’ll “very strongly” consider it amid U.S. anger over China’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak and tension over a Chinese plan to restrict civil liberties in Hong Kong.Both issues emerged, along with other sore points in the China-U.S. relationship, as Republican and Democratic members of Congress spoke in support of the bill. No one spoke against it, and it passed by a 413-1 vote.”Beijing’s barbarous actions targeting the Uighur people are an outrage to the collective conscience of the world,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a floor speech in support of the bill.FILE PHOTO – In this Dec. 3, 2018, a guard tower and barbed wire fences are seen around a facility in the Kunshan Industrial Park in Artux in western China’s Xinjiang region.It was the first bill in history to pass with proxy votes after House Democrats, over Republican objections, adopted a measure allowing such votes in response to the coronavirus outbreak.Congress late last year voted to condemn the crackdown in Xianjiang, where Chinese authorities have detained more than a million people — from mostly Muslim ethnic groups that include Uighurs, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz — in a vast network of detention centers.This new legislation is intended to increase the pressure by imposing sanctions on specific Chinese officials, such as the Communist Party official who oversees government policy in Xianjiang.The legislation also requires the U.S. government to report to Congress on violations of human rights in Xianjiang as well as China’s acquisition of technology used for mass detention and surveillance. It also provides for an assessment of the pervasive reports of harassment and threats of Uighurs and other Chinese nationals in the United States.A provision that would have imposed export restrictions on surveillance and other equipment used in the crackdown was initially passed in the House but then stripped out in the version that passed in the Senate earlier this month.Despite the limitations, the legislation amounts to the first concrete step by a government to penalize China over the treatment of the Uighurs since the existence of the mass internment camps became widely known in recent years, said Peter Irwin, a senior program officer at the Uighur Human Rights Project.”It signals that a member of the international community is actually taking some steps to address the problem,” Irwin said. “The legislation itself has to spur the rest of the international community, particularly the European Union and other powerful blocs of states, to actually take this as a template and pass their own legislation.”FILE – Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, attends a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 23, 2019.Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican and chairman of the House China Task Force, called what’s happening in Xianjiang a “cultural genocide” of Uighurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups.The passage of the bill with strong bipartisan support would “show the Chinese Communist Party and the entire world that their treatment of the Muslim Uighurs is inexcusable and will not be allowed without serious consequences,” McCaul said.China has publicly brushed away criticism of its crackdown in Xianjiang, which it launched in 2014 as the “Strike Hard Against Violent Extremism” in a vast resource-rich territory whose inhabitants are largely distinct, culturally and ethnically, from the country’s Han Chinese majority.The Chinese government, when not bristling at criticism of what it sees as an internal matter, has also said the detention camps are vocational training centers. Uighur activists and human rights groups have countered that many of those held are people with advanced degrees and business owners who are influential in their communities and have no need of any special education.People held in the internment camps have described being subjected to forced political indoctrination, torture, beatings, denial of food and medicine and say they have been prohibited from practicing their religion or speaking their language. China has denied these accounts but refused to allow independent inspections.
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By Polityk | 05/28/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Will Mail-In Voting in US Turn Election Day Into Election Week?
A shift to mail voting is increasing the chances that Americans will not know the winner of November’s presidential race on election night, a scenario that is fueling worries about whether President Donald Trump will use the delay to sow doubts about the results.State election officials in some key battleground states have recently warned that it may take days to count what they expect will be a surge of ballots sent by mail out of concern for safety amid the pandemic. In an election as close as 2016’s, a delayed tally in key states could keep news organizations from calling a winner.”It may be several days before we know the outcome of the election,” Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s Democratic secretary of state, said in an interview. “We have to prepare for that now and accept that reality.”Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose, pleaded for “patience” from the public. “We’ve gotten accustomed to this idea that by the middle of the evening of election night, we’re going to know all the results,” LaRose said Wednesday at a forum on voting hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center. “Election night reporting may take a little longer” this year, he warned.Delayed results are common in a few states where elections are already conducted largely by mail. But a presidential election hasn’t been left in limbo since 2000, when ballot irregularities in Florida led to weeks of chaos and court fights.’Very problematic’For some election experts and Democrats, the prospect of similar uncertainty is especially worrisome this year, as Trump disparages mail-in voting as fraudulent and has claimed without evidence that widespread mail balloting will lead to a “rigged” election.”It’s very problematic,” said Rick Hasen, a University of California-Irvine law professor. “There is already so much anxiety about this election because of the high levels of polarization and misinformation.”Hasen is among the experts who have been studying the strains on the U.S. electoral system during the pandemic. He recently convened a bipartisan group of academics to recommend safeguards for a disputed election. Some members have gamed out dramatic scenarios like state legislatures or governors refusing to seat electors, or a candidate refusing to cede power.Meanwhile, some Democratic operatives, lawyers and even the presumptive presidential nominee have grown increasingly vocal with their concerns that Trump will try to meddle in the election. Joe Biden recently said he thinks Trump may use his office to intervene: “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.”Trump campaign spokesperson Ken Farnaso called the accusation “another unsubstantiated creation of the liberal conspiracy theory machine.”Trump said last year in an interview that he would accept the results of the 2020 election. Since then, however, the coronavirus has dramatically changed how Americans vote.As voters look for a safer alternative to in-person voting, election officials from both parties have promoted mail-in and absentee voting options and requests for mail ballots have surged in the primaries. Many states expect to be scrambling to process millions more in November.While each state runs its own process, those mail ballots can take longer to count. In some states, the ballots can be accepted several days after Election Day, as long as they are postmarked before polls closed. And while some states count the ballots as they come in, others — notably the critical battlegrounds of Michigan and Pennsylvania — have laws that forbid processing mail ballots until Election Day, guaranteeing the count will extend well past that night.That doesn’t mean The Associated Press and other news organizations won’t call a winner. The AP regularly calls races before the official vote count is complete, using models based on partial results, past races and extensive polling.But in particularly tight contests, the AP and other news organizations may hold off on declaring a winner. That could lead to a national roller coaster ride of shifting results.Slow count in November?In Arizona in 2018, for example, Republican Martha McSally was narrowly winning the initial tally of in-person votes and mail ballots that had arrived days before Election Day. More than a week later, after election officials were able to tally all the mail votes that arrived on Election Day, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema won the senatorial race by more than 2 percentage points. Arizona changed its procedures to try to speed up the vote count this year.In Michigan and Pennsylvania, two states that helped hand Trump his 2016 victory, Democrats have pushed to relax the laws forbidding them from processing ballots before Election Day but faced GOP resistance.In Michigan, GOP leaders had argued it would be improper to handle ballots before Election Day. But on Wednesday, the state’s GOP-controlled Senate signaled a shift, advancing a bill that would allow the processing of absentee ballots the day before Election Day. Benson said even if the bill passes, she expects a slow count in November.”It’s certainly going to be a challenge,” Benson said.In Pennsylvania, only 4.6 percent of the state’s voters voted either early or by mail in 2016. But now both parties are urging voters to send in mail ballots for next week’s primary elections, and officials are overwhelmed by absentee ballot requests.Philadelphia says it won’t even begin to count mail ballots until after the end of primary day, June 2. Forrest K. Lehman, elections director in Lycoming County in central Pennsylvania, warned: “In terms of November, if they don’t let us start canvassing sooner than the day of the election, there’s no way anyone can responsibly call Pennsylvania on election night.”Another factor that could delay the count is Democrats’ push to require states to accept mail ballots postmarked on Election Day. Democrats have filed more than a dozen lawsuits demanding that standard and note that the U.S. Supreme Court required it for Wisconsin’s April 7 election.But, because of that requirement, Wisconsin couldn’t release results from its election until April 13.
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By Polityk | 05/28/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Trump Threatens to ‘Strongly Regulate’ or Shut Down Social Media Platforms
U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to “strongly regulate or close down social media platforms, after Twitter tagged a pair of his tweets with a fact-check warning. In a Wednesday morning tweet, Trump said that Republicans feel that “Social Media Platforms totally silence conservative voices.” He alleged that social media sites attempted — and failed — during the 2016 election to stifle conservatives’ voices. “We can’t let a more sophisticated version of that happen again,” Trump said.On Tuesday, an unprecedented alert on the @realDonaldTrump tweets about mail-in balloting prompted the president to accuse Twitter of interference in this year’s election and of “completely stifling” free speech. “I, as President, will not allow it to happen,” he concluded. .Fact checking needed, critics say
“Social media companies have been struggling with the spread of misinformation and the need for fact checking for years, most prominently in the last presidential election,” noted Marcus Messner, the director of Virginia Commonwealth University’s school of media and culture. “Twitter is right to flag incorrect information even when it involves tweets by President Trump,” Messner told VOA. The journalism professor noted the action “walks the fine between fact checking and being accused of censoring political speech through more drastic measures such as deleting posts and suspending accounts. But the question remains whether the fact tags with links to news articles will even be recognized by supporters of President Trump, who regularly dismiss all reporting from mainstream media. The effect of the fact tags in this heated partisan environment might be limited.” Texas A&M Communications Assistant Professor Jennifer Mercieca, who refers to Trump as “an outrage president” who uses social media to “go around the news filter and speak directly with his supporters and set the nation’s news agenda” says Twitter’s strategy “allows Trump to communicate, but enables his audience to think more critically about the content of his message.” Mercieca, author of “2020: Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump,” accuses Trump of using his Twitter account irresponsibly to spread “conspiracy, racism and misinformation.” The president’s response to the action by the platform “is to further use outrage to condemn Twitter for the policy while vaguely threatening that he would do something to stop them,” she told VOA. It is unclear what legal leverage Trump has over Twitter, which does not need any government licenses to operate as do radio or television stations.Twitter stands by decision A Twitter spokesperson said the company took the unprecedented action, based on its new policy announced earlier this month, because Trump’s tweets “contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots.” During an exchange with reporters in the White House Rose Garden earlier Tuesday, Trump, responding to journalist’s questions about his mail-in ballot accusations, claimed the state of California — the most populous in the country — would be sending out “millions and millions of ballots to anybody,” including those who “don’t have the right to vote.” California is planning to send every registered voter a ballot by mail for the November 3 election, a plan that prompted the Republican National Committee to sue California Governor Gavin Newsom. The action by Twitter to flag Trump’s tweets “is a small step in the right direction. But we can all do our part to call out the lies,” California Secretary of State Alex Padilla tweeted on Tuesday evening. “The president is intentionally spreading false information about vote by mail and blatantly trying to suppress the vote.” .@Twitter “fact-checking” @realDonaldTrump is a small step in the right direction. But we can all do our part to call out the lies. The president is intentionally spreading false information about vote by mail and blatantly trying to suppress the vote. RT the TRUTH. pic.twitter.com/oaJGH41K1I— Alex Padilla (@AlexPadilla4CA) May 26, 2020Calls to delete some tweets
Twitter has also been facing calls to remove Trump’s tweets that push an old conspiracy theory about the death of a congressional staffer. The president has stopped short of directly accusing Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, who hosts a morning program on the MSNBC cable channel of killing a woman in 2001 even though the politician was 1,300 kilometers away at the time and authorities ruled her death an accident. Scarborough was once friendly with Trump but has become a fierce on-air critic of the president. “We are deeply sorry about the pain these statements, and the attention they are drawing, are causing the family,” said a Twitter spokesperson on Tuesday. “We’ve been working to expand existing product features and features so we can more effectively address things like this going forward, and we hope to have those changes in place shortly.” Timothy Klausutis, widower of Lori Klausutis, has written to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey claiming the president has violated the social media company’s erms of service and “has taken something that does not belong to him-the memory of my dead wife-and perverted it for perceived political gain.” Questioned by reporters in the Rose Garden about the tweets on Tuesday, Trump did not prevaricate. “I’m sure that, ultimately, they want to get to the bottom of it and it’s a very serious situation,” the president said of the deceased woman’s relatives, calling for law enforcement to re-open the investigation. “As you know, there’s no statute of limitations. So, it would be a very good, very good thing to do.”
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By Polityk | 05/27/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Biden Knocks Trump for ‘This Macho Stuff’ in Shunning Masks
Joe Biden said Tuesday that wearing a mask in public to combat the spread of the coronavirus is a sign of leadership and called President Donald Trump a “fool” who was “stoking deaths” for suggesting otherwise. Democratic presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his wife Jill Biden arrive to place a wreath at the Delaware Memorial Bridge Veterans Memorial Park, in New Castle, Delaware, May 25, 2020.The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s comments came a day after he wore a black face mask while making his first public appearance in more than two months. Biden has remained at his Delaware home amid a pandemic that has frozen the presidential campaign, but he marked Memorial Day by laying a wreath at a nearby veterans’ memorial with his wife, Jill. Trump later retweeted a post that appeared to make fun of a photo of Biden in his mask, though he later said he didn’t mean to be critical. In an interview with CNN, Biden responded, “He’s a fool, an absolute fool, to talk that way.” “He’s supposed to lead by example,” Biden said. The former vice president also noted that nearly 100,000 Americans have been killed by the virus and suggested that as many as half of those deaths were avoidable but for Trump’s “lack of attention and ego.” Federal officials have recommended that people cover their nose and mouth in public when other measures, such as practicing social distancing of at least 6 feet (1.8 meters), aren’t possible. But the issue has become increasingly politically charged, with Trump refusing to wear a mask and polls finding that conservative Americans are more likely to forgo them as well. Biden didn’t wear a mask during the CNN interview, which was conducted outside his house, but he sat 12 feet (3.6 meters) from the reporter. “It’s just absolutely this macho stuff,” Biden said of Trump bristling at wearing a mask in public, a practice the former vice president called being “falsely masculine.” “It’s cost people’s lives.” Biden added that the president is politicizing the issue and “it’s stoking deaths. That’s not going to increase the likelihood that people are going to be better off.” U.S. President Trump hosts Rose Garden event on treating diabetes at the White House during coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Washington.After Biden wore the mask on Memorial Day, Trump retweeted a post by a political commentator that featured an image of a masked Biden over the comment, “This might help explain why Trump doesn’t like to wear a mask in public.” Asked about that during a subsequent event in the White House Rose Garden, the president responded, “Biden can wear a mask.” “But he was standing outside with his wife, perfect conditions, perfect weather,” Trump said. “They’re inside, they don’t wear masks and so I thought it was very unusual that he had one on. But I thought that was fine. I wasn’t criticizing him at all. Why would I ever do a thing like that?” Trump then asked the reporter who was following up with a second question to remove the mask he was wearing, complaining he couldn’t hear him. When the reporter instead said he would speak louder, the president replied: “Oh, OK, ’cause you want to be politically correct.” Federal guidance does not recommend that people wear masks when at home. Still, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany used the same line of argument on Tuesday. She noted that Biden has foregone a mask while appearing for frequent online events from his home, something he did during a virtual fundraiser held Tuesday night. “It is a bit peculiar,” McEnany said. “That in his basement, right next to his wife, he’s not wearing a mask. But he’s wearing one outdoors when he’s socially distant. So I think that there was a discrepancy there.” For his part, Biden changed his Twitter profile picture to one of him in the black face covering, and he tweeted Tuesday night: “Wear a mask.” Meanwhile, the former vice president has continued to face fallout from a remark he made Friday on “The Breakfast Club,” a radio program influential and popular in the black community. He had commented, “If you’ve got a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or for Trump, then you ain’t black.” That sparked criticism from some African American activists, and Biden made a previously unscheduled appearance on a U.S. Black Chamber of Commerce conference call hours later to say that he “should not have been so cavalier.” He went further Tuesday, telling CNN, “I shouldn’t have done that. It was a mistake.” “When I say something that is understandably, in retrospect, offensive to someone, and legitimately offensive — making it look like taking them for granted — I should apologize,” Biden said. “I don’t apologize for every mistake I make because a lot of them don’t have any consequences.”
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By Polityk | 05/27/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Trump Accuses Twitter of Election Interference After It Tags His Tweets with a Warning
U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening unspecified retaliation against Twitter after the social media platform tagged a pair of his tweets on Tuesday with a fact-check warning. The unprecedented alert on the @realDonaldTrump tweets about mail-in balloting prompted the president to accuse Twitter of interference in this year’s election and of “completely stifling” free speech. “I, as President, will not allow it to happen,” he concluded. .Fact checking needed, critics say
“Social media companies have been struggling with the spread of misinformation and the need for fact checking for years, most prominently in the last presidential election,” noted Marcus Messner, the director of Virginia Commonwealth University’s school of media and culture. “Twitter is right to flag incorrect information even when it involves tweets by President Trump,” Messner told VOA. The journalism professor noted the action “walks the fine between fact checking and being accused of censoring political speech through more drastic measures such as deleting posts and suspending accounts. But the question remains whether the fact tags with links to news articles will even be recognized by supporters of President Trump, who regularly dismiss all reporting from mainstream media. The effect of the fact tags in this heated partisan environment might be limited.” Texas A&M Communications Assistant Professor Jennifer Mercieca, who refers to Trump as “an outrage president” who uses social media to “go around the news filter and speak directly with his supporters and set the nation’s news agenda” says Twitter’s strategy “allows Trump to communicate, but enables his audience to think more critically about the content of his message.” Mercieca, author of “2020: Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump,” accuses Trump of using his Twitter account irresponsibly to spread “conspiracy, racism and misinformation.” The president’s response to the action by the platform “is to further use outrage to condemn Twitter for the policy while vaguely threatening that he would do something to stop them,” she told VOA. It is unclear what legal leverage Trump has over Twitter, which does not need any government licenses to operate as do radio or television stations.Twitter stands by decision A Twitter spokesperson said the company took the unprecedented action, based on its new policy announced earlier this month, because Trump’s tweets “contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots.” During an exchange with reporters in the White House Rose Garden earlier Tuesday, Trump, responding to journalist’s questions about his mail-in ballot accusations, claimed the state of California — the most populous in the country — would be sending out “millions and millions of ballots to anybody,” including those who “don’t have the right to vote.” California is planning to send every registered voter a ballot by mail for the November 3 election, a plan that prompted the Republican National Committee to sue California Governor Gavin Newsom. The action by Twitter to flag Trump’s tweets “is a small step in the right direction. But we can all do our part to call out the lies,” California Secretary of State Alex Padilla tweeted on Tuesday evening. “The president is intentionally spreading false information about vote by mail and blatantly trying to suppress the vote.” .@Twitter “fact-checking” @realDonaldTrump is a small step in the right direction. But we can all do our part to call out the lies. The president is intentionally spreading false information about vote by mail and blatantly trying to suppress the vote. RT the TRUTH. pic.twitter.com/oaJGH41K1I— Alex Padilla (@AlexPadilla4CA) May 26, 2020Calls to delete some tweets
Twitter has also been facing calls to remove Trump’s tweets that push an old conspiracy theory about the death of a congressional staffer. The president has stopped short of directly accusing Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, who hosts a morning program on the MSNBC cable channel of killing a woman in 2001 even though the politician was 1,300 kilometers away at the time and authorities ruled her death an accident. Scarborough was once friendly with Trump but has become a fierce on-air critic of the president. “We are deeply sorry about the pain these statements, and the attention they are drawing, are causing the family,” said a Twitter spokesperson on Tuesday. “We’ve been working to expand existing product features and features so we can more effectively address things like this going forward, and we hope to have those changes in place shortly.” Timothy Klausutis, widower of Lori Klausutis, has written to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey claiming the president has violated the social media company’s erms of service and “has taken something that does not belong to him-the memory of my dead wife-and perverted it for perceived political gain.” Questioned by reporters in the Rose Garden about the tweets on Tuesday, Trump did not prevaricate. “I’m sure that, ultimately, they want to get to the bottom of it and it’s a very serious situation,” the president said of the deceased woman’s relatives, calling for law enforcement to re-open the investigation. “As you know, there’s no statute of limitations. So, it would be a very good, very good thing to do.”
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By Polityk | 05/27/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
US Closes Probes into 3 Senators over Their Stock Trades
The Justice Department has closed investigations into stock trading by Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California, Kelly Loeffler of Georgia and Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, according to people familiar with notifications sent to the senators. The senators came under scrutiny for transactions made in the weeks before the coronavirus sent markets downhill.The developments indicate that federal law enforcement officials are narrowing their focus in the stock investigation to Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C, the former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman. Agents showed up at his Washington-area home almost two weeks ago with a warrant to search his cellphone.Senate records show that Burr and his wife sold between roughly $600,000 and $1.7 million in more than 30 transactions in late January and mid-February, just before the market began to dive and government health officials began to sound alarms about the virus. Burr has denied any wrongdoing.Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., listens during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, May. 5, 2020.Loeffler, Inhofe and Feinstein were notified Tuesday that they are no longer under investigation, according to three people familiar with the contacts but not authorized to speak about them. A spokesman for Loeffler, who is in a competitive re-election race, said in a statement that the Justice Department’s decision “affirms what Senator Loeffler has said all along – she did nothing wrong.”The spokesman, Stephen Lawson, said that scrutiny of the trades was a “politically motivated attack” by her political opponents and the news media. Loeffler, a Republican who became a senator in January, and her husband dumped substantial portions of their portfolio and purchased new stocks around the time Congress was receiving briefings on the seriousness of the pandemic. Loeffler’s husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, is chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, and she has said the accounts were managed by third-party advisers. Feinstein reported that her husband sold off between $1.5 million and $6 million worth of stock in Allogene Therapeutics before the market drop. The San Francisco-based biotech company researches and develops cures for cancer. Inhofe sold anywhere between roughly $395,000 and $850,000 worth of stock he held in multiple companies in late January and early February, according to a disclosure. Like Loeffler, both Inhofe and Feinstein denied any wrongdoing or involvement in the trades. Inhofe, a Republican, tweeted in March that he had asked his financial adviser to move him out of stocks and into mutual funds in 2018, shortly after he became chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Both Loeffler and Feinstein had acknowledged contacts with the Justice Department. A spokesman for Feinstein said earlier this month that the Democratic senator was asked “some basic questions” by law enforcement about sales her husband made and had voluntarily answered questions.A Loeffler spokesperson had said that the senator forwarded documents to the department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Senate Ethics Committee “establishing that she and her husband acted entirely appropriately and observed both the letter and the spirit of the law.”Meanwhile, Burr temporarily stepped aside as chairman of the intelligence panel during the probe, saying he didn’t want it to be a distraction. He also called for the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate his actions.A spokeswoman for Alice Fisher, Burr’s attorney, declined to comment. She has said that the senator has been “actively cooperating” with investigators.”From the outset, Senator Burr has been focused on an appropriate and thorough review of the facts in this matter, which will establish that his actions were appropriate,” Fisher said in a statement.Burr has acknowledged selling the stocks because of the coronavirus but said he relied “solely on public news reports,” specifically CNBC’s daily health and science reporting out of Asia, to make the financial decisions.
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By Polityk | 05/27/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Republican Governors Invite Trump to Move Conventions to Their States
Three Republican governors are offering to hold the party’s 2020 national convention in their state if North Carolina doesn’t satisfy U.S. President Donald Trump’s demand for a full gathering in August. The governors of Florida, Georgia and Texas all say their state would be the ideal place for Republicans to gather. The convention, where Trump is certain to be nominated for a second term, is set to open in Charlotte on August 24. But Democratic Governor Roy Cooper has yet to give Trump assurance that the state will be fully reopened from the coronavirus restrictions by then. FILE – North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper speaks to supporters in Raleigh, N.C., March 3, 2020.Trump is giving Cooper a week to make that promise or Trump says he will take the convention — and the millions of dollars in revenue it generates — elsewhere. Trump is suggesting a political motive behind Cooper’s inability to commit. “We have a governor who doesn’t want to open up the state. He’s been acting very, very slowly and very suspiciously,” Trump said. Cooper’s office has said he will make his decision based on science and the desire to protect the public. Meanwhile, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp made a pitch to entice his fellow Republicans to convene there, tweeting Tuesday, “With world-class facilities, restaurants, hotels, and workforce, Georgia would be honored to safely host the Republican National Convention.” Texas has made a similar appeal and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said Tuesday he “would love” to have either the Republicans or Democrats meet in his state. Democrats are scheduled to hold their convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but coronavirus restrictions could alter those plans.
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By Polityk | 05/27/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Georgia Gov Offers State as Alternative GOP Convention Host
Georgia’s governor is offering his state and its “world-class facilities” as host of the Republican National Convention — a day after President Donald Trump threatened to pull the convention out of North Carolina if that state’s Democratic governor doesn’t assure him that the August gathering can go forward despite coronavirus fears.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, sent an open plea to Trump on Tuesday to consider his state as an alternate site for the quadrennial convention, which is set to gather more than 2,500 delegates and thousands more guests, press and security officials. Plans have been underway for more than a year to hold the convention in Charlotte, but Trump and national Republican officials have expressed concerns that local officials may not allow gatherings of that size during the pandemic.
“With world-class facilities, restaurants, hotels, and workforce, Georgia would be honored to safely host the Republican National Convention,” Kemp tweeted Tuesday. “We hope you will consider the Peach State, @realDonaldTrump!”
Over the weekend, Trump complained that North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper was “unable to guarantee that by August we will be allowed full attendance in the arena.”
He added that Republicans “must be immediately given an answer by the Governor as to whether or not the space will be allowed to be fully occupied. If not, we will be reluctantly forced to find, with all of the jobs and economic development it brings, another Republican National Convention site.”
GOP officials say a determination is needed in the coming weeks in order to begin final preparations for the convention.
Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel said the president “is right to ask for assurances from North Carolina” about the convention.
“We want to have it in North Carolina, the president wants to have it in North Carolina,” she told Fox News on Tuesday morning. “It’s just the governor. He has to work with us. Every state we talk to says we want to nominate the president here, but this governor is up for reelection and hasn’t given us the reassurances we need. We need to be able to move forward in a concrete way. We are going to have those discussions.”
The Democratic mayor of Atlanta, Georgia’s capital and by far its largest city, said in a statement Tuesday that its reopening plan doesn’t mesh with Kemp’s offer to hold the convention in Georgia.
“Like North Carolina, the City of Atlanta is following a phased, data-driven approach to reopening. That plan does not contemplate hosting a large gathering event in August,” Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said. “In fact, several long-standing City-supported and sponsored events have already been canceled in order to comply with CDC guidelines.”
David Shafer, chairman of Georgia’s state Republican Party, said in a text message that he spoke to Kemp on Tuesday morning. “We have reached out to Republican National Committee Chairman Ronna Romney to let her know that, if North Carolina falls through, Georgia is ready to help,” Shafer told The Associated Press.
“Under Governor Kemp, Georgia has led the nation in safely reopening its economy,” Shafer said. “We have first class facilities, a skilled workforce and a reputation for hospitality second to none. We would be proud to host the Republican National Convention.”
Kemp spokeswoman Candice Broce declined to answer questions about the hasty bid and instead referred questions to Shafer.
Georgia became a lightning rod for both criticism and praise when it was one of the first states in the nation to allow businesses including tattoo parlors and bowling alleys to reopen in late April. Trump criticized Kemp’s decision at the time, saying “It’s just too soon,” but later said he was only expressing concern about certain places, like tattoo parlors, being reopened, adding: “I think it’s wonderful.”
As it tried to nail down convention plans, the Trump campaign announced it was promoting two veteran political aides to senior leadership roles. Bill Stepien, the former White House political director, will serve as deputy campaign manager, the campaign said. Stephanie Alexander, a regional political director, will become the campaign’s chief of staff.
The pair bring additional political experience to the campaign’s upper echelon, which is led by campaign manager Brad Parscale, a relative newcomer to national politics who ran Trump’s digital effort in 2016.
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By Polityk | 05/27/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
